q & a with michael margolis of...

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202.255.1467 ET © 2012 Debbie Weil [email protected] 1

Q & A with Michael Margolis of GetStoried.com

I talk with Michael Margolis about the power and utility of storytelling as a business tool. Debbie: Hello everybody. This is Debbie Weil and we have another fantastic guest

speaker for Beta Author Boost. Michael, Welcome. Michael: Thanks, Debbie. Debbie: Michael, I know you're in the business of storytelling. I went on all your websites

for more details and I'm probably not going to tell your story just right, but I'll give it a try. You’re a branding and change consultant. But about three years ago you had a life changing event and shifted course – now, you're a self-‐published author and you're founder of http://www.GetStoried.com.

Get Storied is an education, advisory and publishing company with the goal of teaching the world, and specifically business – how to think in narrative. Michael is now a leading voice in the world of storytelling, especially storytelling as a business strategy for branding and innovation.

He has a self-‐published book -‐ Believe Me http://www.amazon.com/Believe-‐Me-‐Vision-‐Leadership-‐Bigger/dp/0984260803 -‐ a storytelling manifesto for change makers and innovators and he is also the founder of the Reinvention Summit, about which he will tell us more at the end of our interview. We have two topics Michael. One is storytelling and one is about your experience with CreateSpace.com, Amazon’s self-‐publishing and Print-‐on-‐Demand arm. Let's start with storytelling. Why is storytelling so important for writers?

Michael: As you alluded to in the introduction, I want to set some context. We are going

to talk about storytelling, not from the perspective of wanting to tell a better anecdote and the notion of recounting a really cool episode or time in my life. That’s all really important and that’s a core part of storytelling for writers but we are going to talk about storytelling from the perspective of business, branding

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and from the perspective of building and attracting a tribe of like-‐minded

individuals who identify and connect with your message. If you are a writer and you are self-‐publishing, you are creating a book, your

personal story is actually key to your perceived work and value. Think about it this way: there are a thousand books out there on consulting, on marketing, on innovation, and on home decoration. Whatever your niche or area of specialty, there are so many other books on that same very topic.

So what is going to make your book most interesting is by bringing your voice,

personality and point of view to the surface. If that is what people will ultimately connect with and my guess is most people who are in your program are looking to publish a book or an eBook from the perspective of a book as a business card. From that place, your personal story will get people to connect with who you are, what makes you tick and how you see the world. This is actually one of the most important objectives of creating this book in the first place.

Debbie: Well put. That was absolutely spot on and I think it is something that Beta

Authors have been wrestling with in terms of how to structure their book and how to tell the story of whatever their message is. So on that point, give us some storytelling techniques that business authors could use in a short book to make it memorable and compelling.

Michael: I would be happy to but if I can I want to speak about one other thing first that

just needs to be acknowledged. The hardest story to tell is always our own. When it comes to this process of sharing your story, it is one of the most vulnerable and fear inducing acts that any of us go through. Everything that we have been taught and trained about how we are supposed to do business and the old way of personal branding actually goes counter to the notion of just telling your story and drawing people into your world.

There are a lot of insecurities and inadequacies, which I have suffered and

struggled with my whole life. This is what brought me to storytelling myself, because for most of my life I felt lost in translation. I was a nerd before it was cool to be a nerd and I come from a very creative family. My father is an inventor, my mother is a teacher, artist and toy designer – a lot of creative

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freedom, but with those two parents you can imagine they never taught me how

to fit in or belong anywhere. That has become part of my own journey. We teach what we need to learn most. I have been obsessed with storytelling for over a decade.

I used to be a message architect and strategic story teller and then I went

through a divorce, I lost my business, I was on the brink of bankruptcy and in that phoenix rising, I built a global education platform to teach marketers and change makers how to tell their story. The first thing that I did was I wrote my manifesto, Believe Me. I wanted to acknowledge that there is a reason why there is a lot of fear and resistance around telling our story, especially if any of you, and I am imagining most of you are in one way or another, an innovator, change maker, a pioneer, a visionary.

There is something about what you do that is new and different and we have to

all work through this programing that says if we speak the truth, bad things happen. When we really go open kimono to the world and we really say what we are thinking, we might die.

Debbie: Let me ask you another question. Are people afraid of telling their story because

they think they are not good enough, or they are not special enough or they did not go to the right university or they have not worked for the right companies? Is that part of it?

Michael: Yeah -‐ here is the funny thing: I speak to many different audiences around the

world and I always take a poll. Most of the time, the poll reveals that most of the people in the room do not think they are storytellers. The moment you say, “Oh tell me a story,” we immediately think, “Oh God, I have to perform? You want me to get up on stage?”

We think of this as an act of storytelling. Part of what I think we can explore

through the rest of this conversation is that storytelling is more about becoming conscious of how you frame the conversation of who you are and the problems and challenges that you are trying to solve. If there are ways that people can identify and relate to that, then they will want to go on the journey with you. Let’s focus on your original question now.

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One of the first tips for all of you to think about is a very simple story positioning formula. I teach this formula in my online course called “The New About Me,” which teaches people how to reinvent their bio into a story, especially for experts and authors and speakers. If using this story formula for story positioning, you should say that you have been on a journey and have something to share.

Key secret of storytelling: share your struggle or lessons learned

You should explain that you have had to learn things the hard way and want to share your lessons with the audience so that they do not have to struggle and suffer the same way you did. For each and every single one of you, there is a deeper motivation and reason behind your work. Maybe it is some kind of riddle you are trying to solve, something that speaks to your inner geek or something around personal development, such as cultural change or making the accounting process more human and approachable.

Whatever that thing is that turns you on, you have realized that there is a better

way to solve it, that there is something missing from the general conversation surrounding the issue. That is when you start thinking about the story you want to tell in your book because that will be the context and frame you need to set up. You must also give people a sense of what you had to overcome on this journey to realize that there is a higher, more important truth that you will discuss in your book. I think doing this will help others who have been suffering and struggling with the same thing. Does that make sense?

Debbie: It absolutely does. It fits in perfectly with my much more mundane request to

our authors to figure out in an introduction or “Chapter One” -‐ how to explain who the are, why they feel compelled to write their book, who it is for and what it will do for the reader.

You said it much more eloquently. If you are going to have a desire to write a

book, I think it comes out of that place that you are talking about – that you want to tell the world something they have not been told before, which you feel strongly and passionately about. I love the way you said it because it makes it more fun to think about. Just keep going with whatever you want to talk about.

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Michael: One quick comment. I want to respond to your point of telling authors to focus

on something the audience has not heard before. From my perspective, based on the fact that we live in a world of infinite knowledge, people can find out whatever they need to know searching on Google. They probably have heard the information they are reading about before, but what will make a book powerful is the emotional content found within the book.

It’s your ability to take a subject or topic that people might be familiar with or

they have an interest in and bring it to life and imbue it with the energy and passion. If you do this, people are able to absorb the information found in books and find meaning; it actually means something to have an emotional experience. One of the ways to do that is to establish your own emotional experience, as we already discussed. It is your personal story.

Let me give everybody a very simple formula, or at least a concept, that you can

play with: the idea of super-‐hero origins. Think of your favorite superhero: Batman, Wonder Woman, and The Incredible Hulk – they all have an epic origin tale for how they came into their powers. We usually forget this, but there are few superheroes that were born superheroes. Instead you are made a superhero based on circumstances and the choices that you make in the face of those circumstances.

Thus, circumstances and choices are really important. There is a way to set this

up theme up. I love to use Gary Vaynerchuk http://garyvaynerchuk.com/ as an example, a huge gregarious voice in the world of social media. Gary is an American businessman, born in Belarus, who used to make one thousand dollars a weekend selling baseball cards. He had a franchise of neighborhood lemonade stands before the age of 11. So, you have this legendary epic story about a natural born hustler – you see it in his back-‐story.

Now you might say, well I am no Gary Vaynerchuk. That’s cool. I have another

friend, Margarita, a coach, who tells the story of how she first discovered and honed her coaching skills in kindergarten, where she learned how to tie her shoelaces and then preceded to teach everyone else in the room how to tie their own shoelaces. If you know Margarita, this story really captures her personality. Thus, she has this little origin tale. What you want to do is anchor whatever your

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obsession, interest or passion is, in order to let people know that this is who you were born to be and it is your place of natural authority.

It could be something that happened in childhood or something that occurred

early in your career, but that super hero origin is going to give you a deeper level of confidence and presence, as well as make you focus on what your worker mission is. When people connect to that part of your energy, they are then able to emotionally connect to the contents of a book.

Debbie: The shoelaces story you just told captures so perfectly what you mean by finding

your place and natural authority. Are there any tips related to storytelling that you think will be useful as these authors get further into the writing of their short book. We have really been in the thinking phase the past two weeks, which has many steps itself, such as what is the idea, focusing the idea and organizing the idea. As they go forward, what would you tell them to help them think of how to use storytelling?

Michael: Two more things that I want to speak to. The first is the issue of context. One of

the things that everybody is struggling with, as we all go through reinvention in our careers, our businesses, and our society, is locating ourselves. We try to answer the questions: Where am I? Where do I belong? Where am I going? These questions may be in regards to themselves or their enterprise. Therefore, the context is critical in your book.

The context is important because if there is no context, then the audience will

have trouble understanding why the subject matters, how it relates to them and why they should care. If you notice, a word that keeps coming up here is “why?” This is the second point I am going to make, which is that storytelling starts with asking “why?” There is a reason why little kids like asking “why?” You also should think about why you are you even telling your story.

Your intentions or motivations are critical because people are so suspicious and

cynical today. We all know that many people use a book as a business card. There are lots of books out there that are not worth the paper they are printed on. It’s just a vanity press, a bunch of garbage. So, worry less about it needing to be the authoritative book on this subject, an encyclopedia that is 1000 pages

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long and instead go for a shorter book that really has something to say. Go from that place of intention and motivation.

What is the gift that you want to share with people? That gift is what you want

to think about because it is the golden principal of storytelling. This principal of storytelling is about reminding and helping people to see that they share more in common with you, than their differences. That’s why we fell in love with Harry Potter or James Bond or whoever your favorite heroes or characters are from stories.

There is a part of you that sees yourself in the story. Even if it is aspirational part

of yourself, it is still really important to put yourself in the story. Then people will know what is at stake for you. If you do that, if you are willing to share a bit about why you care so much about the topic you are writing about, it will help you educate your readers to let them know you really care about them, that you know what they are going through.

That power of empathy is really critical. That is what is going to get your

audience to trust and believe in you. They will then want to go on a journey with you by reading your book and will ultimately want to be in a relationship and do business with you. I do have a quick little checklist that you can use to engage your audience and make them want to take the journey with you. The checklist consists of truth, empathy and vulnerability.

For truth, think about what is missing from the conversation in your field or

industry. You want something that will make people go, “Wow, there is some heat to this. There is some edge, and it's provocative. I like this. This person is going for it and taking a risk.” So you have to start with truth. You might have to dig around to find it, but start with truth.

Empathy is letting people know that you care about them. This is not just about

your own ego, but also about whether or not you understand what people are going through. It is also about your ability to describe and paint that struggle and the challenge of trying to overcome whatever it is they are trying to overcome. Third is vulnerability.

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Again you must break through this old model of guru leadership, that says things like, “We are here on stage with all the answers.” Our social media culture is changing how people want to relate to experts. If you can share some of you’re own foibles, if you can be a little self deprecating about how you have been trying to work through some of this stuff and how you are even a work in progress, people will trust and believe in you so much more than if you act as the expert with all the answers.

Debbie: It gives me the shivers listening to you. It is absolutely congruent to what I tell

Beta Authors about writing a kick-‐ass book – one that really grabs the reader’s attention and provides some value. But let’s shift gears.

This is going to sound so unsexy, but let's talk about Print-‐on-‐Demand and your

beautiful book. If you could tell everyone listening a little bit more about what it meant to use CreateSpace.com as your Print-‐on-‐Demand publisher. How much did it cost? How long did it take? How you were able to get such a beautiful design? A lot of people worry that their book will look amateurish and like it was self-‐published. Is there anything you want to tell us about that?

Michael: Yeah. Well first of all, I am almost a paid spokesperson for CreateSpace. To be

totally forthright, I originally discovered them and used them. I self-‐published my book on CreateSpace in 90 days -‐ from the first word on paper to having the paperback book available for sale on Amazon. I was a man on a mission two years ago, the summer of 2009. I was in a midst of this divorce, I was broke but I thought, “This is going to launch my new business.”

I just knocked it out. Mind you, my book is only 88 pages long. I only had one

person complain and say that they felt they were gypped because it was only 88 pages long. More than 12,000 people have read my book and I have had only one complaint about the length. So keep that in mind. So, that’s the beauty of CreateSpace. I went the DIY model with them, so it was zero upfront cost, I just found out the specs that I needed so I could submit the thing in the right margins and did it that way.

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Debbie: Remind us whether CreateSpace could create the Kindle eBook version for you. Michael: No, they do not, but it’s really easy though. There are multiple partners within

the Amazon family and that’s Kindle Direct Publishing, which is a sister company. https://kdp.amazon.com

More later about how to use Kindle Direct Publishing for your eBook.

Debbie: Or you can get another formatter to do it. Well that’s good but this is separate.

CreateSpace is for the printed edition of your book and you submitted your files in InDesign, which is pretty high end…

Michael: No. InDesign is just what my designer worked in. All CreateSpace wants or needs

is a copy of your book that is formatted with the right margins for whatever size of book that you are choosing. You download a little template they give you and they tell you the margins you need to use and show you a couple of formatting suggestions. I did the total DIY version of CreateSpace, which is zero up front cost and I hired my own designer and copy editor to produce it all.

All in all, I spent about $4,500 and that included the cost of putting together a

little book micro-‐site, which is Believemethebook.com, if anyone wants to see that. I just found some really good freelancers and was able to get that cut rate. To answer your question about design, if you are writing a short little printed book or an eBook, design really does matter. I conceptualized my book by creating a two-‐page spread to each chapter.

There is a quote for each chapter, an axiom on storytelling, a short little

anecdote or teaching piece and some reflective questions. Then I have all sorts of front matter and back matter and extra bonus resources, I really did turn it into a business card for myself, but there is also a lot of substance in those 88 pages.

Debbie: Well I read it. I think it is very impactful and it is filled with material. It is very

beautiful. It is also an unusual size.

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Michael: Yes, I think it’s a 6 x 6, I decided to make mine square. I just wanted to have a

different look and feel. It has a bright yellow cover. I wanted something that just popped and felt different. That you could just put out on your coffee table. It had this real sense of uniqueness to it. Then when you flip through it, it’s designed for ADD culture.

In two minutes you will get something, it jumps out at you. You can spend two

minutes reading a page or two and you will get a kernel to chew on. You can read it cover to cover and when you get to the end, it takes you back to the beginning. It’s meant to have layers to it so that where ever you are in your journey – if you are an expert at storytelling or you are just getting started, there is something there for you.

The book went on sale October of 2009 and within two and a half months, I

made back all the costs on the book. So for the Christmas holidays, I decided to give away a PDF version for free. All I asked was for an email in exchange. That became a huge success and I continued to give away a digital version for free. That is how our email list has grown to over 12,000 clients.

For a free PDF copy of Michael’s book, go to http://www.getstoried.com

People expand their email lists using all sorts of different bonuses. I just chose to

make it my manifesto because I really felt that it framed the conversation about the world of storytelling in a provocative and edgy way. It is not a how-‐to book, although you can certainly get a lot of provocation and some great kernels, tidbits and examples by reading it. It was meant to be a conversation starter and a platform builder and that is exactly what it has been.

I get invited to do keynotes and trainings all around the world and get paid

$8,000 to $12,000 per gig to do it. I have all sorts of eCourses online and we are doing our Reinvention summit http://www.reinventionsummit.com/register/ , which is our storytelling’s biggest online conference. It [took] place April 16 – 20, 2012. In this case, I have also focused on being an evangelist for the larger field, the market of business storytelling.

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I have 20 other leading voices across the world of storytelling. Folks like Robert McKee, who is a legendary Hollywood screenwriting coach, Rohit Bhargava who is a really great author, a former NFL player, folks from the social change world, folks from Zappos and Circque du Soleil. I am just looking at storytelling from a lot of different angles. In fact, if people are interested in that event, you can go to Reinventionsummit.com and sign up for a free 5-‐part video series that will then tell you about the online summit that is happening.

Debbie: I loved the Reinvention site and the free videos as a marketing tactic. One more

quick question in regards to the PDF version versus the other two versions, the Kindle eBook version and the printed version. Obviously the PDF version is not really competing with the printed version because it is such a beautiful designed book – some people want the book so they order the print edition.

Do you worry about people downloading the PDF versus getting it for Kindle?

What if the PDF version is just as beautifully designed as the printed book? Obviously you won’t really see that on the Kindle. Do you have any comments on that? Because people are asking me how to design heavily illustrated books for Kindle.

Michael: Well that is exactly why I have been slow at creating a Kindle version. We

actually have it in the works. Debbie: Oh you don’t have a Kindle version? Michael: Yes, we don’t have a Kindle version available yet but it’s actually just waiting for

approval. We had to update some of the marketing pages of the book and then it will be published. But it just hasn’t been a priority because, here's the thing – I'm using the digital version of my book as an email list builder and lead generator, because I get to trade an email address for the digital copy of the book. If I put it on Kindle, I'm not getting that same permission to interact with my audience. So I haven't had a huge incentive to create a Kindle version; and also because our book is so visually dynamic, and in the first couple generations of Kindle it was plain text, it hasn't been a priority.

The bigger question about giving away the book versus people buying it – has it

cannibalized sales of the book? Absolutely. But here's the thing, you don't make

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your money on the book. Unless you're a best-‐selling author with a huge distribution deal from a publishing house and selling thousands of copies, you're not going to make money from the book. The book is a business card and a platform builder. I've sold 2000 physical copies of the book, so I get a royalty check each month from $350 to, one month I almost broke $1000. It's a nice bonus, but I never wrote the book from the place of making money that way. I make maybe $6000-‐12000 a year on book sales; but one keynote speech is worth my entire yearly book sales.

Debbie: There are so many lessons to be drawn from that. One is that there are so many

kinds of books; one that is a beautifully illustrated design piece – even now, that's not really the best format for Kindle. But you are an “author” because you did make your book available in print.

Michael: Right, it's in the Amazon Bookstore. Debbie: Whereas if it was just a PDF download, it would be different. Michael, I'm sitting

here nodding my head. Michael Margolis, of GetStoried.com and ReinventionSummit.com. Both sites are beautiful and well worth checking out. Full disclosure: I was one of the speakers for Michael’s Reinvention event.

Michael: I love what you're doing, Debbie, and I just want to acknowledge everyone in

your tribe and community. The work you [those listening] are doing in creating your book is one of the best and smartest things you can do for building your platform, and getting in touch with your story. The process of writing a book forces you to think about “What's the story that's worth telling?” and “What's my meaning, message, and gift?” You'll get so much out of this, and you couldn't be in better hands working with Debbie. I'm jealous and I can't wait to be a student in your program at some time.

Debbie: Michael, that was brilliant. Thank you so much for your time. This is an edited transcript of a Q & A interview recorded live with Michael Margolis on March 22, 2012.

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