AI Can't Replace This One Human Skill | Storytelling Still Wins – Part 2

Can artificial intelligence really replace human creativity?

In Part 2 of this fascinating discussion, communication expert Larry Wilson explains why AI can create content—but only humans can create stories that inspire, persuade, and connect emotionally.

Using examples from The Odyssey, Rocky, Hollywood, and everyday business, Larry reveals why storytelling is one of the most valuable communication skills you can develop in the AI era.

Whether you're an entrepreneur, salesperson, content creator, business owner, leader, or simply curious about the future, you'll discover why communication—not technology—is your greatest competitive advantage.

In this episode:

•  Why AI needs great human prompts 
•  The power of storytelling in business 
•  What every salesperson can learn from Hollywood 
•  How conflict creates compelling stories 
•  Why communication is the future-proof skill 
•  Using empathy and active listening to connect with people 
•  How Wilson Method principles help you succeed in the AI age 

If you want to become more persuasive, more influential, and more successful in a rapidly changing world, this episode is packed with practical insights you can use immediately. 

Hosted by Larry Wilson
Produced by: Verbal Ninja Productions
Producer: R. Scott Edwards
Sponsored by: The Wilson Method

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Link: TheWilsonMethod.com

Transcript

Larry Wilson 0:00

Hi, this is Larry Wilson, and this is How to Talk to Humans. This is the podcast that shows you how to improve your communication skills. Are you looking to get a better job? Are you looking to find a relationship? Are you trying to do things in your life that have frustrated you and eluded you so far? I can show you so easily how to change that. Now, I can only do it with humans. If you're looking to deal with vampires, anomalies, extraterrestrials, this is not the joke. But if you're really looking to improve your communication skills, I can show you what I've learned in 40 years in the show business working with the biggest celebrities and superstars in the world. And their secrets are unbelievable. What I'm going to be teaching you during the course of this podcast every week are tools that you can use to communicate toward Signet. Hi, thanks for joining me again for part two of last week's show. There was so much I wanted to share with you, I didn't want to take up too much of your time. So here's all the good stuff that follows up the good stuff from part one. And for those of you who are late to the party, communication is human. That's great news. It's great news for you. It's great news because we're humans. And if you accept that, now I realize some people may object to that, same way other people may object to gravity or the seasons. You know, it's not fair that summer doesn't last all year. It's not fair that it gets cold in winter. Okay. But we have to play the cards we've been dealt here. And if in this world this is the way humans interact, it might be in our best interest to study it, practice the skills involved with it, develop an expertise at it so that we have something very few other people have. Expertise in communication. That's really all we're talking about here. And as you know, none of it's hard. None of it. None of it requires a college education. It requires you being able to speak and understand English well enough to understand what I'm saying. But I would be the first one to say there's probably people out there who don't speak English who are expert communicators in their own language. I cannot address that because English is really my primary language. I can speak a little bit of a couple other languages, but not the way I can speak in English. And that's what we're talking about here. We're all storytellers. So you better hone those skills. You better learn what appeals. And the wonderful part of this, the reason I say it's great news about AI, is if Homer could write this story, The Odyssey, 3,000 years ago, means anything we come up with now has to be in the same vein, the same tradition. All the Odyssey is, is a man who goes to war to defend his country, to defend his principles. We'll see what Christopher Nolan says. But he wants, when he's done and victorious, he wants to return home. And he does not have the luxury of airplanes or things like that. He has the luck, not really luxury, but he's required to use ships that rely on men to row them. Hundreds of men rowing to get home, thousands of miles. It takes him 20 years to get home. And everyone's telling his wife that he's dead. If he was alive, he'd be back. Well, we, the audience, whether we're listening to the poet Homer tell this story 3,000 years ago, or whether we're listening to the story retold a thousand years later at the time of the birth of Christ, or whether we've only learned it in the last few years, 3,000. We're listening to this, thinking, no, he's alive, he's alive. And his wife, the most beautiful woman in the world, but his wife refuses to give up on him. And his wife is saintly and stalwart, and she's she's beleaguered by suitors, hundreds of people who think if I marry her, I'll be king. And so it has nothing to do with love or how they feel about her. So this is this is all the stuff. Can you feel it? This is all stuff of a great story. I mean, an unbelievable story. And so we know, I hope you know by now, as I've tried to drill into you, if his aim is to get home, and he just jumps on a ship and they row home, and there's his wife, and then his wife. We the audience don't really enjoy that. We want drama. What does this mean? Where does drama come from? Conflict. Conflict. Now, some of you are saying, I'm not a screenwriter, I don't want to be a screenwriter. Uh, I'm not a book writer, I don't want to be no, no. But if you sell cars, there's a story to be told here. Because you might be able to say to a customer who comes in, if you're using Wilson method technique, you might ask them why they've come to you. And hopefully you're listening, you're using active listening. So when they say, Well, you know, I wanted a safe, reliable, cost-effective car for my daughter. How old is your daughter? My daughter's 19. Okay. And what does your daughter do? Does she drive a lot? Does she drive a lot? There's there's a lot of active listening for you to get information. They're telling you what story they want to hear. So that you can say, you know, it's interesting you should say this. Because I'm not asking you to lie. I'm hoping that you're able to use your personal real life experience to craft a story. The story might be: I have a friend who felt the same way, and he got his daughter the most expensive car that's laden with all these safety features. And his daughter didn't drive it. Why? Because it was too complicated. She couldn't figure out some of the electronics. Maybe that's part of the story. Until she found this car, that is the car you're representing at your car dealership. Maybe that's what this car has a lot of electronic elements, but not too many. It's simplified them, it's made the experience better for the driver. It's got a better interface. Maybe that's part of the story. Or maybe the story is maybe the story is more hair-raising. Maybe the story is uh they bought one of these cars from you. They weren't looking for safety, they were looking for good fuel economy, and they found it because this is a hybrid car. It uses both gasoline and electric. Maybe that's your story. And then there was a terrible snowstorm, and the person driving the car drove off a cliff and fell hundreds of feet and was unharmed because of all these safety features they didn't know about. And the construction of the maybe that's the story. It's a fantastic tale for someone to tell someone who's concerned about some of their body. So you see, it's not just about screenwriters, it's more obvious about screenwriters. They have to come up with something to engage us. But we're all concerned about the same things. And if you're employing empathy and you're listening, actively listening, you have a ton of information. You might make up a story on the spot. Or you might have several stories, you might have three different stories that all emphasize different things. But whatever they are, that person I told you about before, who was just imagining we were making this up, someone who has uh offers services or creates some goods or something, that person who felt like I shouldn't have to tell a story. I should just be able to say, look here. Yes, look here, it's fine. But the person who tells a story, they're always going to do more business because it's hardwired into our brains. We want those stories. And, you know, I I've mentioned before young screenwriters, there's always some young screenwriter who thinks, oh, I'm gonna blow everyone's mind. I'm gonna write an unhappy ending to this story. All young screenwriters think they're the first one to ever think of this. And sometimes they might be mildly successful. I can't think of one off the top of my head, but it's possible. But you want to see a film with a happy ending? Stream Rocky, Sylvester Stallone's breakthrough film. You'll see unbelievably powerful, well-crafted, simple story. Doesn't have to be big, complicated affair, doesn't have to be that at all. Rocky is so simple. He's a low-level boxer, he's a paluka who gets a chance at the heavyweight championship of the world. That's the whole story. Now, there are obviously other elements in there, but that's the whole story. I'm telling you, you will find yourself on the edge of your seat, and you may even find yourself yelling in excitement at the end of that film. Stallone, I don't know him, I've never met him, but he's a tremendous writer. Or was, I don't know if he's written anything recently, but boy, does he understand people, or he did when he wrote this, and I think it was probably very close to his heart, this film. And not because of the boxing. I don't know if he really ever boxed or not, but the idea of being nobody and getting a shot at being somebody that's a powerful, powerful story. And you can see it could be extrapolated in a lot of ways onto a lot of other situations, and it could easily be that has to do with your business. It could be that you came up with something very simple. And uh again, I'm not telling you to pretend or or say something that isn't true. I don't want that, but I think if you start to look at your real life experience through this lens of being able to share it with others as a story, you may say, Oh, yeah, I guess I'm sort of like the Rocky of uh, I'm gonna try and make up something absurd here, I don't know what it would be, of uh frozen yogurt. Maybe you cook or you created confections or something like this, and you came up with a fantastic recipe for frozen yogurt, and you opened a little frozen yogurt, maybe you couldn't even afford. I'm making all this up, so but maybe you couldn't even afford to rent a storefront. Maybe you just had a a rolling cart that you sold your frozen yogurt out, and maybe because this is this is what grips us when you show us the obstacles the hero has to overcome. That reaches into us, and you've got us now, because we've all had obstacles we've had to overcome. They're just different ones for everybody. For somebody, it might be learning to read if you have dyslexia, maybe that's the obstacle. Somebody else, it might be uh finding a group of people that you can be friends with, maybe that's the obstacle. Somebody else, it might be they need a million dollars to do some kind of deal, and that's the obstacle. But they're all the same. Do you see? It doesn't matter what the specifics are, the hero, and there should always be one person who's the hero, has a goal, something they want to achieve, and there are obstacles in the way. So when you present this as a frozen yogurt stand, maybe the city shuts you down right when you start to get successful because you don't have the proper licensing for a cart, and then maybe a big yogurt franchise opens nearby where you usually have your cart. Maybe there's a ton of, maybe there's stuff you need, maybe you need a special kind of milk to make the yogurt active. But you can see how if you look at it, there are real obstacles in the path to you achieving your goal. That's great storytelling. And AI will never be able to do this. It can't. It's not a person, it's not a thing, it's a machine. It's like saying, Oh, I hope my car can make a really nice spaghetti sauce. Well, it can't. It's just a car. What are you crazy? It's just a car. I mean, gee, I really hope my telephone can um make this new girl I met fall in love with me. It can't. Now, these machines can imitate stuff if we teach them, but they're not alive, they're not humans. That's our ace in the hole. That's our incredible, undeniable power. We're the humans. And this incredible stuff I saw last night in this film Pomegranate, it lives or dies on the storytelling. Young person, I'm saying he's young, I'm just guessing he must be, who created this, did an extraordinary thing. I mean, he really think about the first men to walk on the moon. Yeah, that's the equivalent of what this guy did. Is it perfect? No, it's not perfect yet. But I'm telling you, it's going to improve in leaps and bounds. It's going to be. It's going to be transformative. But his I suspect his storytelling is good. I suspect he himself sees there, there are a lot of suggestions in that film, Pomegranate, showing how much he understands the importance of having a hero, having a goal, and the obstacles to getting there. He clearly understood it. I don't know if it's consciously he understands it. You know, there's some people who are storytellers who just work by instinct. But when they hit those points, that's when they're successful. And I'm positive that this guy's storytelling is going to get better and better and better because he's human. And there was almost a suggestion in pomegranate that that was the thing that was missing from these artificial experiences. It was almost self-referential. Like the director writer was talking about what he was doing and how he felt about it. I may be reading too much into it, but that's how it felt to me. You'll see if you go and look at it. It's free online. If you look up pomegranate, I'm sure it's there. And like I say, in another couple weeks, it'll be a lot of people be talking about. So the point is that we humans have the ability to tell the stories. If you're a screenwriter or a fiction writer, or even a non-fiction writer, I guess, still up to you. If you're in business, still the same thing. You're still a fiction, I guess. Well, I'm hoping you're not telling people stories that are untrue and pretending they're real. Oh, yes, I'm a congressional medal of honor winner. Please don't do that if it's not true. If you are a congressional medal of honor winner, what a fantastic tale you have to tell. But that's, you know, that's so obvious. That's like saying Helen of Troy, most beautiful woman in the world. That's so much the peak experience, you know. It doesn't have to be. And that's part of the lesson of Rocky, is that nothing as grand as Congressional Medal of Honor winner. But you'll see. You'll see with all these things. But everything we talk about here, honing your ability to communicate, this is the future. This really is the future. And you've heard me talk about, I think there's a divide of people who are bad at communicating, and you see them on TikTok and stuff going, hey man, I mean, just like, I don't know, I mean, whatever. And you think, I don't really know what you're talking about. Well, versus people like me. I think my communication is very, very clear. I'm sure it could be better, but I strive always to keep improving it. But I think it's pretty clear at this juncture. I should also mention another precept of Wilson method that I often harp on is that you must ask for what you want. And this could not be more apropos than in regards to dealing with AI. It's not a person. Yes, it may be loaded with a whole bunch of information, but it's not we know because of our lives of growing up things that real people do when we talk to them. Unspoken things, semiotic information they may convey with a raise of an eyebrow or a downturn or downturn of the mouth or per all these little tiny things. Yes, AI can learn those and mimic them, but it's not a human being. So it's very important that we not assume that other people know what we're thinking, what we're trying to say. It's our job. It's our job to practice these tools to make it almost impossible to misunderstand us. Now, we're talking about AI, it may just have a blind spot about something because somebody didn't program it with that, and that's really beholden on you then to ask it. That's what those prompts are. You're asking it. I want you to blah blah blah, whatever it is you're asking. The clearer you are, the better you're able to paint a picture with words, the more successful you'll be, the better the result. Doesn't mean you have to hit a home run every time you're bat. How about just a bunch of singles? You give it a prompt, it returns something. Now you go back and say, that was pretty good, but I want it to be more like a manual. You clarify and clarify. And every time you keep going, I think the computer people call this iterations, but you might just call it versions of whatever it is you asked it to do. But the good news is, unlike a human who might get frustrated with you and say, hey, I've given you five versions if your communication makes what you're asking for. And I'll tell you something. Perfect example to wrap this up. Perfect example in real life. Many of you know, I'm the founder of a nonprofit here in northern Nevada that's devoted to fostering children's literacy. I have this crazy idea that it might be a good thing if kids learn to read. And everywhere in this country, they're not learning very well. Nevada's way down the list. There's so many kids in Nevada who are not reading at their grade level. It's dreadful. And of course, like anything else, it's not hard to do if you have someone to help you, to mentor you, to assist you. So I started this nonprofit called Education Renaissance of Nevada Initiative. We've been doing this big event called Spellbinders every year for the last 12 years. This year we'll be doing it first week of October, and it's free for the entire community. It's fantastic. But I have more board members this year who've been extremely helpful. And one of them said, you know what? We need to have a gala as a fundraiser, a dinner, special dinner, where we're able to raise money and talk about what we do. So I said, great. So we've put together this gala, which is September 8th. It's a five-course dinner, and then I'm bringing in these gold medal-winning close-up artists to perform at people's tables. And then there's going to be a whole special auction of some wild things that we've brought together from a bunch of different sources. It's going to be incredible. But we have to sell tickets to it to raise money. And the tickets are not inexpensive. Some of my board members have been stymied by this. They've sent out emails, and I've said this is great sending emails. I've managed to sell a number of tickets by asking people to purchase them. I mean, our nonprofit is a 501c3 nonprofit, which means that if you were to buy a ticket to the gala, it's tax deductible. I'm supposed to say to the fullest extent allowed by law. So my experience has been that it's not, uh please don't misunderstand, it's not the most efficient way. I understand sending out an email to 7,000 people who follow you on social media, that's reaching more people. I'm just not sure it's as effective when I speak one-on-one to people, or one-on-two, or one-on-three. They understand more of what we're trying to do with this nonprofit. They understand why we need money. They understand we're trying to raise money. And so we're putting together this spectacular evening, this gala, that will be really, I think, uh, it may be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. And that's when people seem to respond to me and say, okay, sign me up for two tickets right away. And I say, thank you very much. It's because I've asked for what I want. It's not just me telling them about the gala and crossing my fingers and hoping, it's me telling them, we really need your support. Here's what you can do. I really would like you to buy a couple of tickets. A woman I spoke to last night, I think, was talking about buying five tickets. And once she does, I'm going to reach back out to thank her and ask her if there's some more friends of hers who are also interested in helping children learn to read. Because if they are, maybe she can get them and they'll all be at one table and we'll have a special thing just at their table. There's all kinds of things we can do. But it's so simple, it works, and you can do it. It's as simple as that. To ask for what you want. And I hadn't planned to say that, but it's funny that it sort of comes full circle around you have to ask AI for what you want. You have to be very clear, very specific. You can't be vague or hemming or hawing. It's funny, isn't it? It works with humans, it works with machines. It's incredible. Oh, and I should sign off by saying, those of you, if if any of you are interested in coming to the gala, I'd love to have it. Oh my god, it would be fantastic. You can find out all about it at Nevada Shines.org. Thank you for being here. And if you have any questions, it doesn't have to be about the gala, could be about AI, could be about what we've discussed here. I hope you'll reach out to me, Larry, at WilsonMethod.com. This has been Larry Wilson. I want to thank you for spending this time with me, and I hope you found this information useful. If you're looking for more, you can find it at thewilsonmethod.com. There's a ton of stuff there. In fact, if you want it, you can even speak to me because I'm human. Send me an email at info at wilsonmethod.com because I read every single one. I hope that you'll join us next week in this continuing journey. And you'll be with me for the next episode of How to Talk to Eat.