Stop Talking at People. Start Speaking to Them. | John Elbing

In this episode of MarketPulse Pros & Pioneers, we sit down with John Elbing to explore why the most powerful leadership skill in a world of AI, automation, and digital transformation is still deeply human: perspective. John shares how avoiding conflict in his early career became a superpower, teaching him to see situations through other people’s eyes and build influence through understanding rather than force.

Together, we unpack why so many change programmes and technology projects fail, not because the tools are wrong, but because the people are forgotten. From customer experience and brand strategy to leadership communication and storytelling, John explains why progress only sticks when leaders genuinely understand how others experience their world.

The conversation moves into the future of work, the limits of automation, and the role of story in making ideas land. John reflects on learning to move from memorising presentations to telling stories, why humans cannot be replaced by systems, and how great brands and leaders succeed by respecting how people actually think, feel, and decide.

This is a grounded, practical, and deeply human discussion about leadership in complexity, the psychology of customers, and why seeing the world from someone else’s standpoint changes everything.

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Transcript

Paul 0:02

He didn't set out to teach storytelling. He lived a life that forced him to understand it. Elbing is Eling is the strategist who helps companies stop talking at people and start seeing the world through their customer's eyes. He's the creator of the StoryBuilding Method, framework that turns scattered internal messages into stories that actually land. His own path moved through engineering, banking, innovation management, entrepreneurship, and startup coaching before he founded standpoint across those worlds, he became the quiet translator in the room. the person who could take the complexity the emotion and the conflict in priorities and shape them into something people actually understood. He's coached hundreds of founders across Europe and lectures in digital transformation and entrepreneurship at leading Swiss universities. His bestselling book StoryBuilding distills the method ship not by theory alone, but by a lifetime of reinvention and the stories that pushed him forward. John, welcome to the show.

John 1:04

Hey Paul. Thanks for having me. Great to be here.

Paul 1:08

It's a genuine privilege and I love. Having fellow storytellers on board the podcast.'cause it's one of the things I'm massively passionate about. to say I'm an expert storyteller in any way, shape, or form, but I love stories and the foundation of this podcast now. So, to have somebody who's built their career and their entire business around the idea of telling stories for businesses, it's a genuine privilege to have you along. I'm just gonna dive straight into the thick of it, John into the meat of the conversation. When you think about when you were younger, when you were a, when you were a child, what were the clues that you saw things and people in patterns and differently to the people around you?

John 1:45

So one of the things I think was that I was in a family that was, there were no conflicts, no one raised their voice. And the worst my parents could tell me was something like. Were disappointed. There was and so I came out, I didn't know how to manage conflict and so conflict was a big problem for me. So I got in the habit if I needed to say something difficult. I got in the habit. Of rehearsing it in my head and then wondering, and then trying to feel what the other would feel and then tweaking it so I could say it in a way that could be received by the other person. And at the beginning it was really, to avoid conflict, but then it court of became a, habit, it was a defense mechanism early on. But then I found that it become a superpower where when people talk to each other, when interactions, I immediately, I can feel what's happening in the people. And this kind of empathy of taking the other person's standpoint. My, brand is standpoint because, it's really taking the other side's standpoint. And so when you're talking you're talking from their standpoint, it's their story. It's all this kind of thing. And, that was 50 years ago. But so now it's I built that into, to what I do.

Paul 3:01

And where did you grow up John Because I'm conscious you're in Switzerland now, so the whole story as to where you got where you are now, right?

John 3:07

Yeah, I didn't get that. So yes, I am, I'm in Switzerland. I was born in the States I my parents had a job opportunity. It was supposed to be just a year and then, 50 something years later, I'm still here, there, everyone else moved back. And yeah, that I guess there's some story there too.

Paul 3:24

It's a long journey for the holidays, right?

John 3:26

Yes. And especially now going to this.

Paul 3:29

Yeah.

John 3:29

Yeah,

Paul 3:30

so then your first kind of step out from from childhood into young adulthood was working in engineering technology space, right?

John 3:37

Yeah, so I've always been good in math. I've always been very logical. And so I did, I was, I did a good university here in Switzerland in math, and then computer science. I was a software engineer. quickly I would say I switched into, project management and team management and things around, what do we build and what do we, kind of thing. And, so one thing that was interesting, I came into a bank to take, to manage the internet. This was, turn of the century kind of thing, and it was just before their merger with a smaller bank. And there were 87 task force to manage this merger, all about tech, systems and data and stuff, and nothing around the people. So I went to see the partners saying, Hey, we're gonna pull the plug on everything they know the networks, the connections the everything. And they said do you wanna do something about that? And I did this change management thing where it was getting people to talk to each other and, realising that these people were scared to come into this new system and then do training and meetups and switching people around in teams and things which wasn't at all my job. And so that was the kind of the first big experience of this idea of, being around people, how they feel, what they need, what they know, the challenges, and not just the tech.

Paul 4:59

And I think that's true no matter what. business I look at, whatever business you have, we're all in the people business, whether you're in tech. whether you're in SaaS, whether you're in banking, finance, it doesn't matter. You are always in a people business. But somehow we've become obsessed with the processes and the technology as of opposed to the main component of any business, which is the human element, right?

John 5:20

Yeah, and I think, with AI coming along, it'll be more and more important. The human side is the one thing that'll never be quite quite automated. You can, a lot of things they'll be able to do faster and better maybe with ai. But that real human element will always be important.

Paul 5:36

Believe me, when judgment day comes on, I'm first on the list to be n knock on the door by the robots. I think chatgpt is not over the moon with the way I talk to it sometimes. When you're in those, you're in technical roles, project management, product management there's not a lot of people at a young age understand the people element of that. Normally I, when I speak to people, it's people who have matured in their years somewhat been around a long time and start to see that actually the people are far more important. Than the technical aspects. Is that something that you tweaked onto at a young age? Then would you say that you saw beyond all that early on and were able to get ahead because of that? Do you think?

John 6:13

I don't even think that's it. I don't know. I guess I was being in this, American, in a Swiss school, with not perfect French. I was the right kind of foreigner, there are other foreigners that weren't, that were, there might be the wrong kind of foreigner. I, was the, I was always felt accepted and brought in and it was more a positive and something interesting. And so I got into that and felt that was pretty that, that was easy. Pretty young. I had a studio. I lived on my own. And so all the parties were at my place kind of thing. So yeah. But I think the real next step. Was this idea I always wanted to be, and there's probably some, something behind that too. I wanted to present, I wanted to be on the stage, in all these different jobs if you had to do a thing and presenting and things like that. And I think, I really think if you're a team and one knows how to present and one know how to how to do the actual job, it's the one that's gonna present that's gonna get more of the. Of the credit, learn to talk about what you're doing. But so I always volunteered to do the presentations and I was really bad at it, but somehow I kept at it. There are other things I was bad at that I gave up on, like being a salesperson. But. And I tried. And I tried, and then one at one point there was this click to say, instead of trying to learn by heart to format it as much as possible, go the other way and tell a story. It's like you have a slide deck, for each slide you know the story you want to tell and you tell it. And that is a hundred times better than having this fixed, rehearsed thing. And that was quite a click. This idea to. And then the other thing is that I went into improv theatre and so I did 7 or 8 years of improv where you learn to say stupid things and be ridiculous and go out anyways and be in front of an audience. and finally all these years later, I I'm much more comfortable, talking in public and, inventing stories on the fly and things like that. But I wouldn't say I was a, I was a natural. I've. met people that, the natural salesperson or the natural this, but I really feel, if you go at it you can get there. You have to have the motivation. And so yeah. So that's so that's sort of part of it. So you know where when I'm working with a company. I can tell their story, bringing all these elements together. I've developed a methodology, I have a theory behind it and all these things, but then all I can also be, take their customer standpoint and tell a story as they would want to hear it. And often, that is they're a little bit surprised and they're struggling about that.

Paul 8:52

So if you think about the industries you worked in, you've worked in lots of different industries that all wouldn't necessarily connect together there, there's not from the outside perspective, a logical link. What's what, how did you move between them all? What was the connect and elements for you? Was it just happen chance and circumstance, or was there a plan behind it all that you followed?

John 9:11

No. I would say, I am I had a job as a software engineer, so then I got into tech and then, just in the, late. Late previous century. It was late 20th century. I did the first internet, e-banking sites for some banks. But that brought me into, other different kinds of projects. And then I, so I think tech has been the thing, I kept going into tech. I but I did a MBA in finance and I thought, Ooh, finance never again. But to have that kind of background, a lot of these things, I haven't programmed in decades, but somehow I can talk tech. And I, finance is really not my thing, but I can talk finance. And then I did some startups that didn't work. And then I had to pay the bills. So I went, worked for marketing agencies. So again, I'm not doing websites and Google ads or anymore, but I, I have the, this marketing background. So somehow this mix is, I can talk to people on these different levels. And, how does the tech, how do, but then the finance and the marketing and the thing all come together. And that's how I think I got into startup coaching. So I've been doing that for 10 years or more. Where I've had anything from, really high tech, this, I have one that's a. wristband that analyses your emotions and injects them into video games and the video game changes based on your emotions. And then that's in the morning. And then in the afternoon, I talk to the world leader of garden shears. and then there's a coffee machine, and then there's, some, online service with ai and then there's something else. And I used to change jobs every 2 years when I was bored and now I change jobs every 2 hours and it's really fun.

Paul 11:00

So what was the point where you decided that you were gonna go out away from the corporate world and try, and you mentioned you, you've run your own startups you've advised startups. What was the point where you thought a corporate career was no longer what you wanted to pursue? What was there a turning point?

John 11:14

I feel like could, I could have, try any job in the world and it just, the length, but at some point I'll get bored. And I had some really interesting jobs and I stayed, a few years and some less, where it was less long. But somehow this, I guess I don't like having a boss and I don't like really being a boss either. And so being independent, is that right? That balance? And I wanna always try new things. So then one was the startup, and then I realised I don't wanna, I love the idea behind a startup. I, did this crazy project and thing and everything, and then you have to actually sit down and do it and administrate it and have a company and pay salaries and stuff. And that wasn't really for me. I did this incredible ride sharing application that was probably a mix of Uber, way before Uber. And no one ever sat in a car. And so my friends say that I was too early and, but I know the real story that, you know, that I, that, I built this amazing thing, but I probably could have tested the idea in an Excel spreadsheet and realised that it wasn't gonna work. Instead of putting hundreds of thousands of Euros into.

Paul 12:25

It's an amazing journey though. It's an amazing journey and I think I think it's an amazing amount of self-awareness to be able to figure out where you want to sit in the world. And I also think it's an amazing connection. Like I, find we, we talked about this offline, right? you and I are very aligned in that I've got a technical background as well. I was once a software engineer. I never programmed in anger is what I jokingly refer to it as. I realised when I finished university, that I didn't wanna spend the rest of my career sat behind a desk. And so I went out into. the big wide world and I did retail for 15 years and 10 years as a volunteer police officer. And then realise that actually people are really tiring most of the time. So actually I do wanna sit behind a desk for the rest of my career. I've done my bit in the real world and now I can deal with people on screens and sometimes in the coffee shop and it's much nicer. So I do feel like we're very much aligned along that side of things, but at what point did you start getting involved with the universities as well? Because you lecture at universities, right?

John 13:19

So I think there's a question of an ecosystem. So I got, at first I started coaching for this one big incubator here in Geneva. And then, through their connections, I got into the statewide innovation platform. And then when you're known, the local university, you get a one day course here, and that gets you into one more. And then there's another platform and then there's another thing. And so right now I'm coaching projects for the Swiss. There's a Swiss state humanitarian program, so it's all NGOs that are in international cooperation. And because, someone heard about someone and connect me and that's a lot of fun.

Paul 14:01

I love that. has there ever been a moment where were asked to look at a project or a business and you just thought, why, how am I here? Am I able to do this justice? If this is outside my skillset, or do you believe that kind of everything's, as long as you stay within your area of expertise, that you can support anyone with any business? I thought, how's it work in your head?

John 14:22

So I have this kind of general thing where I can talk at a certain level on a, about finance and marketing and product and tech and things. And then I have specialised in storytelling where I built this methodology over, number, a number of working through I went back to Nashville to get certified in StoryBrand, which is this one storytelling framework and and all that. But I'm very open to what I'm good at and what I'm less good at. And I can redirect people. At a certain level, that's good enough. And if you need more than that, go see Bob or Mary or whatever, because they're really good at what they do. Yeah. Yeah. So I but it is fun that I feel that when you're, when you wanna talk about what you're doing, it's really universal. If you wanna convince your spouse to, go to the beach instead of the mountains, it's, the story structure is pretty similar than if you wanna sell your widget or whatever on your website. I've worked with nonprofits, I've worked with, associations. I've in the humanitarian thing I've worked with really deep tech with a company that makes. Pumps for, cars, pulling trailers or something, and that, that mix, allows you to say, okay, who are you talking to and what are their aspirations? What are they, what are their challenges? What, how can you help thing and trigger stuff.

Paul 15:45

So tell us about StoryBuilding then. So it's your framework, um, your business that you've built it's your process that you've built your business around, right? Walk us through what it means to your clients when you work with them.

John 16:32

So I called it StoryBuilding. Instead of storytelling, I find that storytelling is this buzzword that's everywhere. That is like, how can we put a nice little coat of paint on our story? We should start like this and do, and StoryBuilding is the fact of. Building a the story that you want to tell, then you can go and do a website or a pitch or a video or a campaign. And what I've found is that there we, when we encounter a brand, we go through three steps and I feel that a lot of companies ignore that this first step and the last steps kind of thing. So the first step I think I call recognition is you have to recognise yourself in your brand. If I go on to, I'm looking for some, I'm an independent consultant. I'm looking for some app and it says, we're the best for teams. And I think that's first for me and they lost me. And maybe it works very well for me on my own but I'm not their target. And if I, if I land on a thing that says we're specialised in independent consultants with a white beard and a cat living in Switzerland, I think I'm not sure what they do, but. Damn. They know me. So I'm gonna look, you walk down the street, you wanna have a coffee with a friend, you're gonna pass three coffee shops without even slowing down. And then one will be the one because somehow you recognise yourself. And I think a lot of companies say, Hey, we do this. And it's up to you to figure out if it's for you and people. You waste a lot of energy to say, is that for me? Is that for bigger companies, small companies? Who is that for? And that's enough for you to switch and go look at the next, you did a, the next one. So there's a lot of emotion in that. It's do they recognise my aspirations, my challenges, and you think, ooh, young fathers worry about the nutrition of their babies. And if you're a young father, you think, oh yes. And if you're not great too, because you're not gonna get the wrong people either. And then you have to talk about what you do. And I usually companies know how to talk about what they do. That middle part is pretty easy, even though I think you can insist on things like differentiation. Everything is out there, so people don't necessarily wanna know. Is there a benefit to that? It's, why is it different from the next one? There's a lot about what category you're in and things like that, but anyway, so once you, once I think, Ooh, that's great. That's, that looks, I'm gonna go do that. And then the fir and so then I call perception, and then there's a third step called projection, which is this idea to say, okay, but what is it gonna be like? So I have to go buy it and then I'm gonna install it, but then I have to set it up and then I have to learn how to use it, and I have to use my old system in parallel to the new system. And then will, but if I have a problem, will they be there? And then how do I recycle it? And then and I think, okay, I'm gonna really do this but I'll come back next week and then I don't.

Paul 19:21

Yep.

John 19:21

And so if you can accompany people through that process so they feel, oh, okay, that's gonna be easy. I get that. And remind them of, oh, but yeah, but it's gonna solve this, and this. And close your eyes and imagine this positive future. So in this process, with a strong recognition at the beginning. You have a better quality pipeline because you're, it's the right people that are looking at what you're doing. And then if you can accompany them to do a few steps, they pre-live working with you. There are a few steps farther down that pipeline in engagement. Instead of saying, okay, I'm gonna look step back and I'm gonna look and I evaluate, they think, oh, okay, that sounds interesting. What's the next step? And so overall that, that makes quite a difference in engagement. And so if you can build a story. Where people recognize themselves, they un, emotionally, they recognise they understand intellectually what's going on, but then they can, they already want to, they're already stepping into what it'll be like. That's often, so sometimes they, people, companies don't do some of those, or they do it in the wrong order. They say, Hey, this is really easy to buy, and I'm not, don't, I'm not there yet, or way at the end they say, this is for this person, but it's, it's too late or things. And so the this, going through that, those steps in that order actually works pretty well.

Paul 20:49

I love that phrase that you threw in the middle of the pre-live, the experience. I love the idea. And I think if more businesses took that up, then we'd all be in a lot better place. Because you're right. Like businesses give. A certain experience, they give a certain feeling, they work in a certain way. And all we want as consumers is to know what that's gonna be like in advance and be honest with us. And I think if you can do that, then the benefits are not just making the sale, but keeping your customers, reducing your churn you increasing what they spend because we're so much better aligned between between what they expected and what you deliver. And you don't. And I think if you get that then you also, it limits on what you feel you need to deliver. Because some people are obsessed with delivering exceptional customer experience. For example. The program is just the best program you'll ever use in your life. It doesn't need to be, it needs to do what it says on the tin. It needs to do it the way we said we were gonna do it, and we need to deliver on that consistently. But it doesn't, like Ikea, right? Like IKEA doesn't deliver amazing customer experience, but we know what we're gonna get before we walk through the doors. We know exactly what it'll be like every time we walk in when we walk out. We know what we're gonna walk out with and what we have to do when we get home. but think if more businesses could just be that honest rather than worrying about their image or trying to attract market, and again, it goes back to that recognition at the beginning, right?

John 22:16

So

Paul 22:16

just got to People off.

John 22:17

not only that to this honesty, but by taking your customer standpoint, you often realise actually this little thing is really important for them. I had, there's this, I've told this story too many times, but there was this plumber. Their ad was we're on time. It wasn't we're a good plumber because people weren't worried that there would be, they wouldn't be a good plumber. What they're worried is that they have to wait around all day, and by recognising that they were able to connect and say, not only, oh great, they'll be on time, but. They, that's, they take that into account. They understand that's important for me. And and then well, then of course you have to deliver.

Paul 23:00

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And it, it has to be like we said, it has to be that honest kind of vision for the business. What are we about? Because you can't be about everything. You have to be about something or or a bunch of things. And identifying what that is clearly, I think that's a beautiful, So I'm a startup now looking at. Who I am, how we come. So I've got, I've got my product there and I'm ready to go out to market. What is it that you would, what's the first step for them that they can sit down and do today? Perhaps that sets them on the right path.

John 23:31

What I've developed is I have a series of canvases. So there's these, there's squares, and each square you have to say, so what, who are, who is your customer? And then what are their aspirations? And then what are their challenges and what triggers them? And all these questions, and often I found that first of all, it's just this idea of flipping the script and taking your customer standpoint and stop. How can I talk about what I do? It's like, how can I, talk about their situation and how I fit in to make their life better. And it's funny'cause all you know, sometimes. Companies will say, since I give this service, the problem must be that they don't have my, their, they don't have my service. It's really that one-on-one thing, but in people's minds it can be something completely different. So all these steps you really have to play around with. Who is my client and how do I want to describe, how can I describe them? So they really recognise themselves and that means often niching down, it's better to be really loved by a smaller group of people than to have, be lukewarm for a larger group of people. So one example I had, I worked with a nonprofit that was into water purification. And normally water purification is you bring chlorine in powder form in a truck and you, and then you put it in the water and that, purifies the water and people don't get sick. And they have a system where they produce chlorine on site with electrolytes and salt and water thing. And so I said, what's the problem? And the problem is people get sick and then we digged into it and we realised no, the problem is that trucks get stuck in the mud. And so on these sites, sometimes there was a storm or a thing or something and the truck doesn't arrive and people get sick. And so by producing it locally that, so what kept these people up at night was, managing the logistics of the trucks. Of course, at the end of the day, the whole point is for people not to get sick, but we weren't really helping them not get sick. We're helping them. Being sure that this continuity and things like that. And there, there's surprisingly often this level of, you, you stop at that first, straightforward thing. That's the most obvious. But if you can express it a little bit differently and actually how people think about it ai, AI is everywhere. Often you see these, this AI thing is a miracle. It'll do these amazing things. And so I've worked with a number of companies and I you found that there are a lot of companies that want that understand that there's, they can gain productivity and do some good things with ai so they don't need convincing about the potential. They need convincing about, we manage privacy, we manage hallucinations, we have a setup, it's. We can accompany you to get to the doing this instead of, everyone is saying, hey, with us, we're, it's gonna be a miracle.

Paul 26:37

Yeah.

John 26:37

You, once you see that a 100 times, you don't know who to believe. And so if you tackle that, that doubt, instead of tackling just this first level feature it actually connects pretty well.

Paul 26:50

And I think that's what you said at the very last sentence that you said there is about the connection, right? So I think it's not just that people are able to see that you understand their problem, they also recognise that you've seen them, that you. Looked into life, their role, you feel seen, the trust that creates, huh? This person actually understands me. Therefore, product, even if it's more expensive, their service, even if it's harder to start up, in the long run, provides the same benefits. Actually, I'd rather work with somebody who gets me. And I think we're all after that. I think that is the big differentiator for so many businesses that ability to help your customer feel like they can recognise themselves in you, you said. I think that's a beautiful way it and I think that's a good place to start. If you're, if you have a company and you wonder how can level up a little bit, your messaging and all that. Start out by, of course you take your customer standpoint, but then describe them as they would, want to be described. A lot of these software companies talk about users. No one thinks of themselves as a user. That, that word is you are defined as the fact that you use my service, no, Yeah I'm the consultant that use your, I'm the designer that uses your services. I'm the. Yeah, I get it. I think that's beautiful. I think that's a lovely way to, John, I could probably talk to you all afternoon on this topic and dig deeper and deeper. I think we'd have to have you back on the show you'd be if you'd be open to it. I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation today. if there's anything you'd like to leave the audience with what's that one thought?

John 28:31

Hey, why don't so go onto my website standpoint.Ch I'm in Switzerland, ch and drop me a message in my contact form and say you're coming from Paul. And then I'll set up an hour session and we can talk about your brand.

Paul 28:46

Can't say fair than that. Can't say fair than that. Thank you so much for your time today, John. It's been an absolute pleasure talking about StoryBuilding with you. i'll see you around in the feed and we will have to stay in touch. Thank you for your time Great. Thank you Paul. This has been great fun. Take care. See you.