The Essential Role of Storytelling: From Fairytales to Business Ethics

Garrett Hammonds and Nolan Rogers tackle a fundamental human element: Storytelling. From dissecting the basic components of a story to debating if a story needs an audience, they reveal why narratives are more than just entertainment – they are the programming language of humanity18. Learn how ancient tales influence modern life and the surprising ways stories drive business decisions. This episode offers insights into the complex relationship between storytelling, ethical marketing, and human connection. Understand why knowing your audience's story is key and how building your own narrative is essential for your brand and personal growth. Don't miss this deep dive into the power and necessity of stories in our lives and work.

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Podcast is produced by Hammonds Media. For assistance with you digital marketing needs, visit https://www.hammondsmedia.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:01

Business

SPEAKER_00: 0:05

Solutions Business Solutions We back. It's me, Garrett Hammons, and Nolan Rogers, and it has been an incredible day. Today's going to be a little bit different, though. Nolan, tell everybody what... the heck we're actually doing with this podcast. Well, so practically, there is an ulterior motive. If one of us is ever to get sick or a guest is unable to appear on the podcast, this is here for your listening pleasures. You're welcome. But secondly, we both are consummate storytellers, officially in one form or fashion or another, and it seems to be a pretty regular trend and theme with people that either A, They don't know what stories they need to tell themselves. B, they don't know how to tell the stories themselves. Or C, they don't even know what that is. So let's open the floor in general between the two of us as far as let's just talk about storytelling. Let's talk about how we came across the skill set of that, how we would define it, and what do we do with it when other people don't know how. Yeah. I mean, I think you touched on it right there where what– What even is a story? How do we define a story? It's a huge question. It's gigantic. And I guess we can just make it really simple. And I would argue, let's just make it a simple linguistic thing of a story as a subject, a verb, and an object. A thing that is doing a thing. The action that it is taking on a thing that is having something done to it. It's just a sentence. A story is a complete sentence. I like it. It's interesting on my end, you know, there's... When we start flushing out so many different types of stories, and, you know, a story, the way that we first get introduced to it in, like, grade school is you have your rising action and your... Your, you know, climaxes and your falling actions and, you know, those things, those things matter. But I think something that has a plot and, and a purpose behind it, you know, is that. is that a story or does it have to have other characteristics in order to be able to, to qualify? Well, and it's, it's the same issue of in business, a minimum viable product, right? Like what are we going to consider the minimum viable story that we're going to accept? But if we have, you know, poetry, we have haiku, we have anything that can say the leaf ripples on the water period. Like that's a story. It conjures an image in your mind, right? And it also takes you someplace depending upon how you tell that simple sentence. So is a story something that exists if there is no one there to hear it? And I'm going to argue yes. I think so too. Mostly because I'm a fan of Plato myself. I'm a recovering Aristotelian philosopher. But I would argue that all... story exists in this kind of perfect ethereal state, just somewhere, just based upon how stories come to me, how other artists describe how things appear before them, or just how things arrive in the world. We have to take ourselves and kind of put a backseat on what we presume we do as far as storytelling. I would almost argue that stories themselves have their own agency and they just find whoever they need to tell it through. Yeah. I think one characteristic that I really like seeing incorporated in a story, though, is that stories really, in order to be useful, have to have meaning behind them. They have to have purpose. And so when Jack and Jill went up the hill, I need to figure out Why in the world, if they're falling down, who cares? I fell down when I was a kid. Well, and funny you mentioned Jack and Jill. So Jack and Jill went up the hill. Jack fell down, broke his crown, and Jill came tumbling after. Right after him. Right after him. Most of our Grimm's fairy tales, our nursery rhymes, a lot of those linguistically and historically... have roots going back tens of thousands of years to things that we would see in the sky, and Jack and Jill in particular, is about the sun and the moon and the eclipse cycle. And so we've had these stories about the sun and his sister going about their business doing things, Artemis and Apollo. I mean, all the saints and then the ladies that would follow him around. We have these understandings of these sovereign beings that go up and rise to a high place, and then they come together and fall back down. Something bad happens. And Jack and Jill going up the hill is one of those stories that just mirrors something we've seen in the sky forever. Yeah. And it's then the question of, well, why do we keep telling those stories? Why are those important? Why do we sing those little rhymes to our kids even though we don't necessarily even know what they mean?

UNKNOWN: 5:46

Right.

SPEAKER_00: 5:47

And I would argue that it's because it's one of the necessary functions of life. I don't think humans as a sentient conscious being that is somehow different from animals. We were not entirely sure how, but I'm going to argue that we are one form or fashion or another. And storytelling is that facet. I think without stories, humanity and how we experience our lives doesn't exist. I'm going to, I'm going to yes. And you here too. I had a, a, communications course in college that was about narrative theory. And I actually, I think that every single one of our lives is a, is a living narrative. It's a living story. And those lived narratives, um, that's why I kind of asked you, do you have to have an audience? And, and in some sense, if, if there's something you are telling as a story, you are just as much an audience as, as somebody who's listening. Um, And so when we apply this to businesses, or just everyday life, what are the ways we can put stories into effect that are useful? How do we incorporate them into our everyday lives? Well, one, this dovetails perfectly into The Crow. I've been having to eat for the past three months of realizing that people didn't care about whatever business name I came up with to describe what I do. People cared about Nolan Clay Rogers. People purchase my story and the products of what's come out of that story. People don't necessarily purchase Hammond's Media. They purchase Garrett and Grace. I would argue that the way that we start narrowing this down is we have to presume up front that a business owner, all the relevant constituents, and the employees, those individual stories are what people purchase. Yeah, I think the businesses who do it right. But then it's a strange... it's a strange conversation when you start to scale, um, because say somebody like Sephora, Sephora is incredible at their, their content that they produce, telling the stories of their individual store managers and the influencers who, um, you know, help to get their product out there. But then it's like, you know, you look at, at, um, I don't know, Ford, Ford, you have, you have these macro stories being told, but it's more of like, like lifestyles and we do buy things because of a brand that we relate to. other people who also have the brand. So the story takes a different form. It's not about the individuals at the company. It's about the individuals in their community who also associate with that same lifestyle and brand. And that's part of the problem where people get into the issue of ethical business or a good salesman versus a sleazy salesman. It's the question that I have to ask a lot of my clients in session is, whose stories are you running off of? Are you running off of stories that you and your family generated for yourself based on your own best understanding of the world and you and your context within it? Or are you running off of stories that you've only read in books and seen on TV and have been just packaged and handed to you to make your neurons fire at the expected rates to get you to buy? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's something that... It's a huge problem in the marketing industry because... We don't really have any—we have unspoken ethical handbooks, but we don't have a whole lot of regulatory bodies in place for this. Now, there are certain things that, you know, there are legal requirements of it, but there's a lot of tactics that, you know, we call them—oh, there's a new name for them— subversive patterns. It's essentially manipulating people. And so stories are powerful, but not always in the right ways. And there's kind of then the curiosity, because what you're mentioning is just a tool. So we can also argue that a subversive pattern is my understanding that I can shift my tone to ask my daughter a question, and I can get different results based on the tone. So am I a a more or less moral person for shifting my tone upwards to get her to pay attention to me and shift where she's paying attention to? Am I immoral for having to shift my tone to be monotonous and lower in order for her to understand the seriousness of a situation? And I would argue the use of the tool isn't the manipulation. It's not the moral wrong. No, it's the intent. So it's like if I'm marketing... you know, using some of these, these subversive patterns. I hope that's the right, the right terminology for it. Sounds good for now. I accept the story. And I'm marketing a product to people who are living off of the retirement funds who maybe can't afford it, but I'm going to convince them using X, Y, and Z to do it anyway, through my storytelling or the, the, you know, all the different tactics that I incorporate. And then now they are more impoverished. Maybe they, they can't get, you know, the next meal, but they have whatever I sold them, you know? So that's, that's, you know, pattern, the exact same tactics can be used. And in one instance, be ethical. And in another instance, be unethical. Exactly. And I, part of me argues that the reason why one is more ethical than the other, because a company wants to be able to sell its product, right? That is the spoken understanding of like somebody that has a business talks to you. It's like they have something to sell you. Right. But the problem, especially in that old retirement age folks, why they're so preyed upon is because they're alone. Nobody talks to them. Nobody checks in on them. And so what does that mean? They have a deficit of stories. They don't have their kids calling them up every other day and seeing how they're doing, hearing the story of the past few days and then being able to tell them their own stories. But if the only phone call they've gotten that's a real human is somebody selling them something and they're selling it with verve and excitement and they're able to connect with them and use some of those rapport building techniques that most salesmen know, that's the only human interaction they've had that has made them feel good. Yeah. In who knows how long. And that's really the pernicious portion is outsourcing agency to, well, it's the salesmen or the marketers. Well, they're just the bad guys. I would argue that it's the community we entrench ourselves in that is at more fault for bad, unethical marketing techniques working in the first place. Yeah. Well, and it's interesting because there are some things most of the time in life that we're going through, especially nowadays, we're filling our schedules. And so, sorry, going off on a little bit of a different direction, but hopefully I'll follow. But the things we fill our lives with, we're always trying to find shortcuts to save time in other places. Dr. Robert Cialdini, who's a big guy within the behavioral marketing space, he It calls them click words because it's the sound of a tape recorder when you press play. It's, you know, it just goes around. But it's these automatic responses that we, not everyone's susceptible to them in the same ways, but most of the time as a general rule, we are. You know, for instance, when we use the word because in a sentence, there was a big study that was done where somebody was wanting to, Cut in line. And, you know, in one instance, there were several different instances, so I'll butcher it if I try and do the whole thing. But essentially, if the control is not saying because, but asking you to cut in line, and then saying, hey, can I cut in line because, insert whatever, the study found that whether there was... a reasonable thing after the because or an unreasonable thing. If it was just a repeatment, hey, can I cut in line because I really need to cut in line? It still had a much higher percentage of people letting you cut. It's just wild to me. There's so many things out there that our brains just process in such unique ways. Well, and it's also... It speaks to human craving as well, because if you just cut in line, but you don't give anybody a reason, that's a lack of a story, right? And so anybody that sees you cut in line say, hey, there's no reason. The story here is that we're all after this thing. And the rules are, you've got to do this, that, and the other. But when we tell a small because story, I've got to cut in line real quick because I have this really big meeting that I've got coming up and it's going to really affect my promotion for my wife and kids. Whether that story is true or not, it makes a person feel special. And it engenders pro-social behavior of, oh, I'm helping this person. I'm doing them a favor. And it's kind of back to what makes, say, unethical sales work is a lack of human connection. And so if we just understand that storytelling, it's not only something that is required for us to live good lives, we spend billions of dollars across multiple industries for storytelling entertainment, for business purposes, for making a profit, but also just in our own lives. We see little things happen, and we don't necessarily know why, but we tell ourselves a story about them. And so it just really unfolds back to how... It just seems to be that we need stories so much we will accept any story that comes across us, especially if it's a bigger story than the one we're living right now. And I think that's where the pernicious nature of some of the unethical things come in is realizing that a lot of people aren't living a very big story. And what is our duty as people that are entrenched in a community, in a global exchange of ideas? What stories should we be telling? I think, I think, um, so my brain, I, I straight away want to go to like, like tackle tactical conversations. Like in this instance, we tell these stories in this instance, we, you know, but I love where, where we've gone today in that, you know, stories are about connection. Stories are about being understood, you know, somebody on the phone, if you, you know, If you haven't had a lot of human connection and somebody is giving you a sales pitch where they seemingly understand you, it's going to make a big impact. And then you layer on top of that a bunch of other... human conditioning things from repeated patterns of stories where we assume something, even if that's not what's happening in the stories being told to us. That's one really interesting element is... Let's talk a little bit, if you don't mind, about the understanding portion. How do we use stories to be understood? Mm-hmm. So this is kind of not a roundabout way of getting to that. How do we use stories to be understood? But which stories help us understand life itself is also an interesting direction to go first. Because Bruno Bettelheim, he was a child psychologist about the 60s and 70s. And he learned that children who were just raised on the little engine that could, just chugging up the hill, right? It's a very simple story that we don't even know why he was chugging up the hill. We just know that he was on a track, we're going up, and he thinks he can, he thinks he can, and then he finally comes back down the other side of the hill. That's it of that story. Versus children who were read Rapunzel, Little Red Riding Hood, the classical Grimm's fairy tales, the children who only had these modern little engine that could stories were less able to deal with the hardships of life. They had lessened outcomes as far as success, as far as mental stability, as far as grit and determination to just get through hard times in life. Whereas people that had As little children, those just basic Grimm's fairy tales that we all take for granted all the time, those stories were so much richer in symbolism and imagery and tradition that it allowed them to deal with their parents' divorce, or it allowed them to deal with bullies at school, or it allowed them to find their purpose in the world, just because the story was richer than the modern little engine that could. And so I think part of the to-be-understood we have to be fed stories that actually allow us to understand the world as well. So it's this weird input output problem of scientifically, we understand that humans are not blank slates. We do have some inborn processes and understandings, but there's also parts of us that can be programmed and philosophers of wax poetic on our humans innately good or humans innately bad. It seems more like humans are innately programmable and the programming language is story and And that's then what allows us to be understood is if we've had garbage input most of our lives, this is why censorship laws and other things come into place because they're intended to make sure that we're being fed with good programming, good stories that will allow us to be understood better by the wider public. But then it's the problem of what stories are we cutting off? How are we determining that value of What is a good story again? Right, right. Let's not even bring in like propaganda. I know,

SPEAKER_01: 20:45

right?

SPEAKER_00: 20:47

Yeah, no, it's such a powerful thing when harnessed correctly. And there's even a whole, you know, It started off as just a book called Story Brand, Build Your Story Brand. But there's a lot of people who have joined in and they've had a bunch of sub-companies or offshoots that they've built now. I kind of go back to some of those patterns of stories that we go through. One of the things that I was hearing from you is that we don't just need to hear one of story, we need a diversity of stories in order to be well-rounded in how we process the world. Most definitely. And especially to the degree to which, again, in my industry, self-knowledge is the gig. I'm trying to give you tools to understand yourself. The problem is most people, they either don't have the time, they may not have the introspective skill sets to be able to do that. But it also means that most people, how they're going to be able to get on a better track is be exposed to different internal nutrients that they may not know they need, which is then where we get public broadcasting versus private broadcasting, stories in the night from your grandma versus stories that are at reading time at the local public library. All of these things are so important to understand in just how do we get these stories to people. which then is the problem of the medium is also the message. When we make an Instagram post that shows one level of investment of the storyteller, but also the audience, whereas whenever we're face to face, which is where most business owners from my understanding, get the most success is when one human can talk to another human and tell their stories back and forth. Even if that story is just how much things cost to do this job. That's where most business gets done because it's this true investment and exchange of stories between two people. Even if that story is just a profit and loss statement. And it gets to the problem, like you were saying, of propaganda or anything else. How do we get here? How do we determine the quality? And most of it is, one, we've just got to know that if we're not getting the results we want in life, we need to know that we need better stories. I think that's step one. And then step two is knowing that we need better stories is asking yourself if you can tell your own story about yourself. Who are the characters in your story? What, what, what are their goals? How are they going to get from point one to point two and beyond, you know, having, having those things, things blocked out incredibly helpful in life and in business. And, um, I'll say as well, one thing, this is just a marketing pet peeve on my side. When you were building out audience segments, if you have built out audience segments, not everybody does. What your most powerful tool is, is understanding who they are and being able to say, I do this. get what your pain points are. I understand what platforms that you're on. I understand who you have to ask permission from in order to buy this product. It's going to be one of your biggest selling tools. And in fact, when I'm creating customer avatars with clients, I don't do it with everybody, but it's useful sometimes. I often will say, if we unpacked the contents of this person's pocket. What would be in their pockets? And it's like people will say, what am I going to learn from that that's going to help me with my marketing? Well, do they have an iPhone or do they have an Android? Do they carry a pack of cigarettes? It's going to tell you quite a bit, actually. But it also just puts you in the mindset of how can I have a deep understanding of these people? And the more you understand them and their stories, the more you're gonna be able to communicate your story. And at the heart of it, when marketing is done ethically, you're trying to be able to help people solve problems that they need legitimate solutions to. You shouldn't be trying to help people solve problems that they don't need solutions to or something that's not a problem that you're still selling them something for. But I want to ask you about this because this is a really interesting thing, the human-to-human interaction. I think about my e-commerce businesses that I work with where a lot of the time you go to a website and you buy something and you leave. So there's not that direct human-to-human interaction. Where do you see... I have thoughts on this, but what do you think about those types of stories? Those, to a degree, they make me think of hagiography. So hagiography is the study of... That's a big word. It's basically the study of how does someone become a saint? How does somebody have this divine, magical story that comes around them? So you can make a hagiography of Christ. You can have a hagiography of an ancient historical figure that we only have their name on a tablet. You can make it of any politician you can think of. You can make any story appear divine. But what hagiography does in particular is in the study of medieval Europe, it creates these pilgrimages, these saints that have left us holy relics or holy wells or special places. that drove an entire industry of pilgrimage from one cathedral to another, from one small village to another, just based on the stories of the special people that were around them. Now, where this comes into e-commerce is the understanding of, again, part of what people are buying, whenever they're not necessarily buying person to person, they're buying a story that's attached to the item, which also means that the storytelling is visual, The storytelling is any recommendations that they've heard. The storytelling is, in part, how big of a problem does this thing they are buying, sight unseen, solve for them? Yeah, absolutely. Well, first off, wasn't expecting the direction you went with that, but quite fun. But yeah, and that kind of goes back around to at scale, different businesses, the story looks... you know, varied depending on what you're doing and what size of a company that you are. And, um, a lot of the time branding, branding, people think, okay, I get a, I get a logo and, uh, you know, I, I try and use some specific words. Branding truly is not about what you do. It's how your audience perceives you. And all of those efforts that you're putting on, on your end is your attempt to influence the that brand. But the brand is truly controlled by the audience. And so as audience members, with a lot of these companies we interact with, we have a tremendous amount of power and then in a lot of instances we have very little power. Talking to you, Google. But that also infolds in a lot of what people misplaces the agency. So it's not just the marketing agency's fault. It's the agency of our own internal marketer because we're not willing to sell ourselves on our own story and its own importance. And so for a lot of business owners or people in general that it's like, well, where do I start? What do I have to do? How do I tell stories? Tell it to six, seven year old you. That is your customer. That is your client. Because most people's state of consciousness when they are buying, they're not buying as an adult. They are buying because a tiny them feels freer, feels safer, feels like a problem is going to get solved. that puts a whole lot less stress on big you. And so the best place that any person can start when they don't know how to tell stories or they don't think it's quality is just write the copy, make the video. Gosh, I'm really having to read myself the right act over here. Okay, yes, there will be a YouTube video out for the end of the week. Good Lord, Nolan. You just have to write it to you because that's the only thing we can do. is when we actually unpack that process of going through all the cool stuff we've done or the not cool stuff and the failures that creates brand, that creates investment, that creates differentiation and niching down just by telling the story to you. And that's what you have to do first as a business owner. Because otherwise, even if they go to Hammonds Media or if they go to some other agency, if they can't even sit down and see themselves as the thing that's valuable... It doesn't matter what strategy gets come up with. So with that, this has been a lovely discussion, Garrett. I always appreciate getting to chat with you untrammeled despite our time constraints, which we'll have to hang out some more. What a cool story we made today. It was a wonderful story. And we are so excited to hear the stories that our network continues to come up with. So as always, stay sharp. Think biz.