it's STORY TIME: UNCORKED with DAVE SUMMERS

If it's your story - why do you let others write it and tell it for you? Do you really believe that you're writing your own story? Do you fully claim the pen? Do you fully own the paper and the power of crafting the tale of your life, or are you abdicating that to others? And, how do you take your personal, professional, business, or organization's story back and create a new narrative that will enhance your positive impact and effect on you and others: after all - it's your story, and you can learn to tell it better.

This UNCORKED conversation with Dave Summers, owner and founder of Pine Mountain Digital, explores the importance of owning and crafting one's own story and how to create a new narrative that enhances positive impact. Throughout our conversation, Dave emphasizes the need for authenticity in storytelling, capturing attention, and entertaining and engaging your audience. 

Tim Windsor
the UNCOMMODiFiED Podcast – Host & Guide
& Author of the UNCOMMODiFiED Book
tim@uncommodified.com
https://uncommodified.com/ 

PRODUCERS: 
Kris MacQueen & Alyne Gagne
MUSIC BY: https://themacqueens.com

Transcript

it's STORY TIME: UNCORKED with DAVE SUMMERS

PLEASE NOTE: UNCOMMODiFiED Podcast episode transcriptions are raw text files and have not been proofed or edited. They are what they are … Happy Reading.

© UNCOMMODiFiED & TIM WINDSOR

[00:00:00] If it's your story, why do you let others write it and tell it for you? Every great story has heroes and has villains. My question is, which one are you and might you be both on any given day? you really believe that you're writing your own story? Do you fully claim the pen? Do you fully own the paper on the power of crafting the tale of your life or your business?

Or are you abdicating that great responsibility to others? And lastly, how do you take your personal, your professional, your business, or your organization's story back and create a new narrative that will enhance positive impact and effect on others around you? After all It's your story and you can learn to tell it better.

And that's what our conversation is going to be about tonight. Welcome back to the show, my friends. Welcome back to another Uncommodified podcast, another Uncorked conversation. Today my guest is Dave Summers. Dave, welcome to the show. 

Hey, Tim, it is so great to meet you. It was like I said before we turned on the camera, I feel like I know you after watching your podcast and your videos on, on LinkedIn [00:01:00] and whatnot. It's great to meet you live in person. 

Awesome. You as well. And Dave, , same back. Dave and I have connected over this grand platform of LinkedIn and I've been connecting with Dave and listening to his content for a while and really intrigued by what's going on there. Dave and I connected and I said, Hey, let's, braille out a conversation about this thing that Dave's so passionate about.

I'm really passionate about and that story and narrative and how do we craft it and how we tell it. That's a big part of this. But of course, this is an uncourt conversation. So, uh, Dave has graciously come into my world tonight, so we're going to uncork a drink together and have a 

conversation. Dave, what are you going to drink? 

Okay, this is fun for me. I get to plug the locals here. This is Blackberry Farm Brewery Pilsner, and it's, it's brewed by obviously Blackberry Farm, which is right down the road in Willand. Tennessee in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains. And it's a nice little pilsner, very tasty, surprisingly good. 

Awesome. And so, you're from Tennessee? 

Originally, No?

uh, I've been, I'm, I'm a Tennessee transplant. I've been [00:02:00] here for about, oh, you're going to make me remember this. I'm going on my fourth year down here. I'm sort of a expatriate, you 

Okay. Fair enough. Awesome. Well, listen, I'm drinking a beer. It's not local to me, but it is from a small brewery. It's actually about three hours from my house. This beer is actually a non alcoholic IPA. And I started exploring non alcoholic beers in the last while. And most of them frankly are disgusting, really not worth worth it.

But these guys actually make a great one and I ship it to my house. So this is called near zero. If you're in Ontario, Canada, you should check it out. It's actually a pretty decent beer for a non alcoholic beer. I'm going to try one of those 

tonight. 

All right, here we go.

Cheers, my friend. 

Oh, right back at you. 

That's good stuff. See, you got it. Listen, if you, when you can drink a beer on a podcast and you're, you're, you're already 

halfway 

Right. I'm sitting next to you at the bar. It's 

I know that's sort of the, that's sort of the ethos I'm trying to create. So, so Dave, in light of the fact that we're going to be talking about story and how to tell it and how to [00:03:00] enhance it and how to create it, create a story and communicate it, which is your area of expertise, which I'm excited about.

So instead of me introducing your story tonight, I'm going to let you do that. So here's a question, Dave, who are you and what 

is your story? 

I'm Dave Summers. I'm the owner founder of Pine Mountain Digital, which is basically me at this point. But I do outsource a lot of other creative content. Design and content work to other people in my in my sphere, but I'm a digital media consultancy. I help people show up better online, whether it's live events such as like this, , or book launches or product launches.

So there's the live components and there's the on demand components. , I, I have many podcast, , clients, associations, government organizations, international geopolitical organizations. I help people with video blogs. , A lot of those people are C suite [00:04:00] executives who just want to show up better, kind of brand themselves outside of their company.

And I work with a lot of university professors, authors, and thought leaders as well. And again, it's a mixed bag. It's audio, it's video. I help them put it together. I help them kind of get to the core of the message they're trying to communicate. And, I work really hard at trying to get them to be, and this is probably a dangerous word to use, but I'm sure you dance around it a little bit yourself.

I try to get them to be authentic. I try to get them to be their real, their real selves, their real voices, that type of thing. So 

Which is hard to

do. 

it's, well, and, and for what kind of reasons, , they're fearful. , or they're too confident, or they've watched too many, I'm not going to drop names here, but they've watched too many high level consulting, uh, feel good, , [00:05:00] life coach, , stuff, and, They think they have it figured out, you know, and also a lot of the other work that surrounds their showing up online, the branding that surrounds it, whether it's the graphic, the audio, , the imagery, , isn't appropriate for them.

I mean, how many times do.

you see people who use these, these videos that, and you're like, Whoa, what, what is this? What am I looking at? It's like Pixar or industrial light and magic. And then you find out it's just. That's Joe Bagadonets, who just wrote this book about, you know, coaching or working with China or something like that.

And you're like, you know, this is so off brand. Anyhow, I help people think through stuff like that. And I, I work with the content that they have either generated themselves or that I'm, I'm able to help them produce. 

Okay. Awesome. So Dave, I mean, imagine you weren't just born into this. You probably didn't do start doing this from the time you were a little wee baby. So how did you find yourself in this career? Like, how did you, how did you find yourself? What was your journey? What's your story of , how you found [00:06:00] yourself coming into this and what 

attracted 

to you 

Well, there's the really long miniseries version answer to that. , and then there's the , I think a more abbreviated version. So I'll kind of give you I'll give you the montage of how I got here. Okay. At a very early age. , I was a huge fan of Godzilla movies. And, , why was that? Well, it was interesting to me as a kid growing up and I'm talking like eight years old.

, I used to catch the movie of the week or something like that from the New York cable stations and they would play the same movie like that. all weekend long. And so you could watch it over and over again. And Godzilla was featured a lot. And in early age, , I realized it was a guy in a suit at a really early age.

I was like, they, they dressed up this guy and they blew up scale model Tokyo. And then for the next movie, Tokyo was back and they blew it up again. And the thing I marveled at, even as a young kid was, , there's people in there. And [00:07:00] there are people making this thing to blow it up and tell a story, but there was, , there was production there.

There were people behind a camera. There were people putting in sound effects and bad animation and whatnot. So that's kind of how I get started in the whole storytelling and deconstructing. the bits and pieces of what went into a story. I did some animation when I was a kid. I was a musician all the way through school, learned how to read music.

I'm a bit of a drummer, you know what I mean? So there was always this sort of deconstructing, but also performing, you know, side of it. I got into college. , and what I did at college was I had a dual major and this is the weirdest major way back then was I, I, I did film and video production as my primary major bachelor of fine arts degree.

And my minor was in business. , so people are like, what are you sniffing? Why are you doing the two of those together? And that turned out to be hugely important to me because I got to a point where, , I was able to. storyboard [00:08:00] better. I was able to budget better. I was able to, again, take things apart, take a, take a project and, and take it apart, , and, , deliver something that, , you know, it was everything I wanted to get done in that project was done because I had accounted for the time and the money and the creative and the whatnot.

, and you also learn how to, you know, build teams and work with a lot of people, both in front and behind the camera. Yeah. Then, , I studied computer programming because I met the girl I was going to marry, who I'm still married to three children, three grandchildren later, you know what I mean? And, and so I'm an old guy and, , I needed a job.

, so I studied computer programming. I became a computer programmer. , and, and. I was very kind of resentful at a certain point, you know, that I wasn't making movies, and I wasn't making videos, and I wasn't employed by some major network or something like that. I was like, Oh, if I haven't ever had to do it all over again, I'd never study filmmaking, whatever.[00:09:00] 

And then something weird happened. , I can't remember the exact, you know, group of years that had happened, but, , all of a sudden, , desktop computing, desktop, computer systems became far more sophisticated, , with the colors and the sounds and the video they were able to deliver. And there I was, , working for a fortune 50 company at that point, , helping them figure out how they could utilize the burgeoning new nascent multimedia capabilities that were in these computers for training, , for marketing purposes, for presentations, for all these different kinds of things.

And who's the only computer programmer working in the place that has a film and video background. That's Dave Summers, you know? And so. 

I immediately got shunted into, , online. Well, online boy, back then it was CD, CD ROM based learning, desktop video, desktop [00:10:00] animation. , I was hired away from that consumer products company by, , back then it was Anderson consulting, which is Now, Accenture.

I did a lot of multimedia consulting with them for a while, got hired by another consulting company. and eventually I got to the point where. American Management Association on the training side, I became their director of digital media production and there it was more web based. Everything had come off of the CD ROMs and it was all, web delivered.

So, and then you got to the point where you were delivering stuff on these as well. And, , I'm independent. I leverage a lot of the technical stuff that I love doing. , so I got the technical chops. I work hard at keeping my, my technical skills, you know, I call it state of the market fresh. , but I also have, , you know, cold, hard opinions about, , what I think, what works online.

, and I, and I understand things like short attention span theater, and, , I understand things like authenticity, [00:11:00] you know? So again, I'm blabbing and I'm blabbing, here, but it's, it's, that's kind of the little bit of a journey about how I, arrived, you know, where I, am right now. Um, , 

here because that gives my listeners some sense of who you are, where you've come from, and your background in this conversation. So, so let me paint you a picture. Let's just say I came to you and said, look, I want to figure out how to tell a better story, and I want to understand what makes a better story.

And what are the typical problems that people run into when they're trying to craft and communicate their story? , and again, if you're listening in, I always say you're listening in to it for a reason. So you could be a owner of a business you're listening in. You could be a, you could be a member of a community organization.

You could just be a person wanting to have a better sense of how to communicate online, whatever it looks like. But what makes that a great story, Dave, what's the, what are the components and what are the problems? What are major mistakes that [00:12:00] people typically make when they're trying to tell a better story, , in the, using these kinds of tools.

well. It's again, there's a long and a short answer to that. think I'll give you an intermedium answer. I would have to

get close enough to that client or potential client to really have a sense of , what I think their superpower or what their product superpower is, or what their new book, let's say one of my clients is an author, you know, what's in that book that , no other book has in it, you know, and it's sort of sussing out that, well, here's,, your special ingredient, you know, right here. And it's getting them to. Talk about it. The most important skill I have and the thing I have to work very hard at is I have to listen very carefully to what they think is the important thing. Now we may end up after an hour of discussion me saying, Yeah.

but that's that's not really it. [00:13:00] And I've been paying super close attention.

They probably brushed up against the thing that makes this truly compelling and truly unique. you know, a personal story about where I got this idea or what movie I was watching or what music I was listening to when I came up with this idea. , and from that we can back up a little bit and we can start establishing what are the kind of emotional or psychological stepping stones to that, , destination, you know, that arrival point.

And sometimes that's easy. And sometimes again, that's, that's very conversation driven. , , what I do in, in order to suss out a use case, I'll call it, you know, just that, but I think a quick exercise I get them to do is I get them to tell me their elevator pitch, , and back in the day, the elevator pit, you know, we, we still talk about it right now.

We call it the elevator pitch, [00:14:00] sorry, quotes.

And, , you had, you had. If you were pitching and you got the, the CEO in an elevator, you had 30 seconds to two minutes to hit him with your thing, you know, and that's still a worthwhile exercise because it gets you to distill your, your stuff down, , to, what are, what are the critical, , attractive different, , components, you know?

And the challenge I have is after we get to that sort of elevator pitch is a lot of these people feel well. Well, then that's it. It's we video the elevator pitch. And I'm like, well, not exactly, you know, because sometimes an elevator pitch is actually too long or sometimes an elevator pitches and enough.

And with some of the video work, I do particularly kind of the short attention span 

Yeah. 

type stuff. It's very important that you leave people with We want you know, a minimum of three, a maximum of five, really interesting [00:15:00] points or things for them to think about questions that a potential client of theirs, a purchaser of their product or service, , should be thinking about in their heads.

But it also is leaving them at the end of this video or at this program with good news. We're not boiling the ocean in a five minute You know, video, what we're saying is here's three things I can tell you right now. Great news. Here's the website. Here's the PDF. Okay. The other great news is this isn't just one three minute video.

This is this is one of seven videos. Each is approximately three minutes long. So even though you're only watching a two to three minute video. It's part of a family. I call it part of a family, you know, and that's what I try to get people to do. So it's listening. It's bullet pointing.

A lot of people require a visual. for what we're doing. If they have some type [00:16:00] of graphical components or flows or branding that's already associated with it, I'll work with them to come up with a storyboard. Storyboard is a very effective way to, before you actually start crunching away at cuts and fades and up and down in motion graphics, to, you know, you walk before you learn to run.

You know what I mean? You communicate, you know, this, you, you save time and effort on doing pre production before you actually get to the, production of it. So I listen, I held their story and I'll be honest with you. The first , a couple of prototypes I do from the, and I make it very clear that this is an iterative process.

I'm not Babe Ruth. I'm not going to get up there the first time, point to the fence, and hit it out of the park. We're going to come up with two or three ideas. I'm going to give you something to bounce off of. You're going to say, Yeah,

that works. Hey, I didn't think about it that way. You know what I mean?

Or that's a little too far, a field for me, but at least I give them [00:17:00] something to react to, , beyond the storyboard. You know, it might be an animatic. It might be a really sort of a low tech video or something, but they get it. They get a feeling of where I'm trying to go with the direction. And most importantly, with the momentum of this stuff, because it's very, a lot of the work I do, it's very momentum driven.

It's so easy to stall out on a, on a digital media, , project, , either audio or video. But momentum is such a critical thing. And many times if you create that, then they'll pull you through, you know, but other times you have to prompt them and push them a little bit.

Does that make sense? 

No, it does. It's very fascinating, actually. And I love the way you describe that. And I think, you know, momentum is a powerful force when we think about it, creating it and sustaining it. So I'm interested to know, as you work with people, and we talked, when we first started, you talked a little bit about the challenge around authenticity.

So, what, , Is the core reason from your perspective, like what causes a person [00:18:00] struggle with their authentic self and trying to bring that? And, what does it do in a video or in a campaign that you're running or you're trying to do as a communicator when you are authentic?

What does that actually do for you in the story you're telling in the way that it's received by the listener?

Um, from a storytelling perspective, I mean, think about, you know, I'm a cub scout boy scout from ages and ages ago and some of the most memorable, crazy, scary ghost stories I ever heard were sitting around, a crackling campfire on some October evening, camping out with these, with these other kids, 

and what made that so scary was the, I mean, the scene was set, the environment was set, whatever, but the, the person telling the story, , you know, had your attention. So you work really hard at getting people comfortable. [00:19:00] With, capturing attention, with not being afraid to entertain, with not being afraid to be entertained.

You know, how much of marketing is fear, you know what I mean, , put a little bit of a fear or, you know, a little bit of doubt or anxiety in their head, you know, , ask yourself these two questions, you know, and, it's not being afraid of pushing an emotional button. I think that's an important thing is getting people comfortable with the fact that, , It's okay to bring emotion into it.

Just, I mean, not over the top emotion, unless you're like crazy Eddie, you know, selling stereos or something like that. But, , it's getting people comfortable because at the end of the day, it's, it's your face. It's your voice. It's your message. And, , there's a million self help books out there. What makes you so unique, you know, and part of that might be.

, something I call a back story, Peter Parker was bitten by a radioactive spider, you [00:20:00] know, and isn't that a cool origin story? Well, what's your origin story? You know, and that could play into, , getting people comfortable with talking about what their value proposition is, either for their, their book or their product or their offering or their association or whatever.

It's, it's, , And, and that sounds like a very manual thing. It sounds pretty low tech, but it's, it all starts and ends with that. , , it's also getting them comfortable with them, hearing their own voice. And, , a lot of the work I do, , I'll like, I'll, I'll be on Riverside, like we're on Riverside here, and, and I'll be on or whatever, and we'll just record the conversation.

And then I'll transcribe it and then I'll go through the transcription. All Right.

I won't an AI enabled. Super brain, you know, we'll transcribe it. , and then I'll go through it and I'll. like Lego bricks. I'll sort of create this set of Lego bricks that help us tell the story. . And I'll say, well, you mentioned this, [00:21:00] you mentioned this, but here's a really clever thing you did or said, or turn a phrase, you might find a way to incorporate that.

So again, it's taking stuff apart. I think that's a big part of, of getting people comfortable is getting them to understand and appreciate that they've got nothing to be afraid of, that they already have the secret ingredient in their blood, , or their superpower, you know, somewhere up in their head.

It's just getting them, , comfortable, , with the process to pull that out and present it to the world. , but again, it's, you know, Grandma Moses, you know, famous American folk painter, didn't start painting until she was like 85 or whatever, and her paintings are priceless now, but she's authentic.

Nothing else looks like a Grandma Moses picture, you know, and it's getting people to understand that What's in you? You know what I mean? 50 year old author, [00:22:00] you know, 42 year old college professor, whatever, what pictures do you have inside your head? You know, , 

no, at the end of the day, we're all trying to sell something.

We're trying to, help them sell their product or their book or their service or, , whatever. or in the case of an association, their membership or their values or that conference, you know, that kind of thing. , So you bring that in, but you don't start with that. 

For me, that's always the, I joke about it, but that's always the great news, you know, great news. Here's a way we can go further, you know, great news. Remember that thing I told you about earlier, here's how you can do that for you, or that's in chapter five of the book I just wrote, you know, that kind of thing. 

Yeah, no, and it makes sense. So I'm interested to know. I mean, scripting is a big challenge for people, , and I do a lot of sales training and I have for number of years and salespeople, for instance, viscerally have a negative response when you say , we're going to write some scripts.

My proposition has always been to [00:23:00] salespeople. Scripts are not the problem. It's lack of commitment to practice and rehearsal. That's the problem. Because if going back to the film, you know, you, you, you grew up watching all these films, you had this epiphany from a film, that there was just a man inside that suit.

Well, I had an epiphany years ago in relationship to the training I do with particular sales professionals around scripting, which is, you know, You think of a great movie that you watched recently, you know, you think of an excellent movie that you watched and you were just so into it and it brought you into it and you couldn't believe, it was amazing.

You know, it never dawns on us when we're watching that, that, oh man, this is just a script. You know, these are not the actor's words, but the reality is, at one moment in time, those words were fully authored and, and possessed by another human. Through the dedication and commitment to rehearsal and practice, you synthesize that script in such a way that it becomes yours, and you might even go off script a bit, but the reality is, is that all those words that you're now gathering together and bringing into this conversation with such eloquence and power, they're actually [00:24:00] someone else's words at some point.

And so, personally, I, you know, I don't think scripts are a problem. I think lack of rehearsal is a problem. My question to you is, when you're working with somebody, do you typically find that, are, are they working from a script? Are they, and, and then how do they find the sweet spot with that? Because that's 

a delicate balance, I 

think.

Mm 

it truly is. And I'm going to be totally up front with you. I think you and I come at this From two different directions, and I very much respect the way you do it. I'm sure you have a lot of success with it. Most of the time I try to talk them out of scripts. , and what do I mean by that? I mean, unless I'm working with a professional actor or professional voiceover artist.

 I don't want them reading a script. I don't want that at all. , because, , And maybe they could get to that point with rehearsal. 

Right.

 I'm a bullet point guy. I'm an outline guy. And, and for me working the [00:25:00] challenge, the heavy lifting,, comes from what are those bullet point items?

Again, I'll, I, the metaphor I use ad nauseum again and again, and again is Lego bricks. We're creating Lego bricks. And The engineering, the thought engineering, the creation, the conversation, the listening that has to take place to derive and create these Lego bricks, which build the outlines, which build the notes and stuff like that.

 Are more important to me than a script. If I get to the point where there's a script, again, 99 times out of 100, I'm pushing for that to be read by a professional actor or voiceover talent. I have a production bias when it comes to that. Now, rehearsal is super important. Getting them comfortable is super important.

But I'd much rather have them as non digital media experts and performance artists and actors. I'd much rather have them work from an [00:26:00] outline of keywords and a thought flow and get them comfortable with it because then they can catch on the keywords, but the conversational stuff that surrounds it, like the spackle that surrounds it is them, is their conversation.

Now that takes practice, you know, sometimes other people are super relieved because again, I have some bad examples of senior level executives reading scripts and they're dreadful. But if we switch to an outline format, it's them. Wow. I'm talking to Tim. Tim's saying something to me, you know, and the on ramp to something like that.

Again, a lot of the work I do is very momentum and very speed based, and we can get something meaningful done and get a reaction to it quicker through this Lego brick, , outline, type of approach versus a script. I'm not anti script, I'm just saying for most of 

and listen, 

and Dave, 

not the way to 

go. 

really [00:27:00] like the conversation because, you know, I'm suggesting in some ways I would use a script. Now that's not video based, okay? When I'm doing training, that's a little different. I like the pushback that you're saying, and I would agree generally in the sense that I don't think the average person is really adept with a full script.

And so I think maybe what I'm hearing partly is one of the lessons here that you ought to be taking this conversation and listening is a script might be way too burdensome for you. An outline with keywords may be a better way to frame your story and frame, frame the thing that , you're saying, whether you're recording that or whether you just up in front of a group of people in your organization at a quarterly meeting, and you're telling the story of your organization and its success or whatever, maybe not working from a full script or notes.

Maybe that becomes a problem because then that it becomes very robotic and not human, so that's a problem. So I, I like that. That's really good, wise advice. So here's a question. What are some of the typical problems that people sort of make when they're trying to tell their story and you watch people online and you see what's going on [00:28:00] and you would say, man, you know, these are the one or two things that typically people are not quite getting right and it, and here's the problem maybe that it even creates in your mind.

I'm going to go back again to sort of this idea of use cases, or at least preliminary questions I have for potential clients or people who come to me. And one of the very first, the second or third question you ask is, well, who's the audience? Who's the audience for this piece of content, for this video, for this podcast, whatever, who's the audience?

And, again, nine times out of 10, they don't have experience with web video or digital media production or whatever. And they'll just off the cuff off the top of their head say, well, everybody, I want everybody to like this video and get something from, and you're like, okay, timeout, you know, let's, let's take a step back and, and, and, and see.

You've got three minutes, three minutes, five minutes, whatever. I'm again, I'm, I'm Mr. Short attention [00:29:00] span here. And, 

if it's a video for everybody, it's a 45 minute discovery channel show on dark matter and how Einstein was wrong, you know, and it's so deep and it's so dense and you cover it from three different angles and, you know, all this other stuff.

If we get a handle on who the audience is. Well, it's mid level managers who are interested in blah, blah, blah. You know what I mean? It's purchasing agents who need to have a better grasp of, this or that, you know, of the other thing. , then you can pull things down and say, what would just light them up?

 That audience with this offering. With what we're trying to sell here or what you're trying to communicate, because many times the work I do, it's educational, and I don't want to get caught up in buzzwords and acronyms and stuff like that. That isn't going to mean anything to your typical, you know, Joe Bag of Donuts, type of audience, comfortable with identifying who this audience is, or at [00:30:00] least in the neighborhood, 

hmm. 

You know what?

We can hit certain acronyms. We can hit certain buzzwords because they're going to be an attractor, ? , and so it's doing that work on the front end of determining audience, determining message, , tone, sometimes they're very serious and I got to talk them down and say, sure, it's a serious topic, but just as a spin, what if we took a a fun approach to it.

 What if we had a little fun with it? You know, , and not only that, a lot of times I take the pressure off of them by saying, if it's a video, maybe it's a video blog, maybe it's a podcast where you have a conversation with somebody and you're not totally on pressure for being on screen or your voice.

 For X amount of time, and you have to God help you be interesting for, you know, five minute stretches and stuff like that. But there's somebody else you're having a conversation with that can be in and around this [00:31:00] topic. You want to, get out into the world. Sometimes they get, they're incredibly grateful and they're very relieved that they don't have to carry the whole thing, 

so sometimes it depends. Sometimes that works as well. 

Interesting. So, so focusing and understanding your audience is a critical piece of creating good content that's going to live within a certain thing. Trying to speak to everybody at once, not, not a generally great idea. And then you've got the, I don't know, we'll call it the fun factor, but bringing something maybe into that, 

that creates a unique or uncommodified, approach to that subject matter so that it does stand on its own. It stands out a little bit in that. And so you've got this thing around focusing on an audience. You've got the bringing the right tone and what, what tone.

And I, I think intonation, you know, when I think of tone, I also think of intonation, you know. It's amazing how loud a whisper can be. When I speak and communicate in public, like in live [00:32:00] settings, I change intonation, I change pitch. And part of that is getting people to sort of almost emotionally leaning in to want to hear.

And there's something that happens. And so when you can be, not just monotone, but you can have some crescendoing, you can have some of that whisper and Get a little bit more quiet and get people in I think there's some really powerful tools that we can use as communicators Whether it is again in person, but then particularly when once we're getting into or video, you know production quality is important You know, for those of you who follow my podcast, you know, and I told this today when we started, you know, we do not produce , our video on YouTube.

And that frankly is probably not a great idea. We don't have a massive YouTube following. I probably need to really look at if I should, do I want to do it? I should probably do it better now, but when it comes to audio quality, because again, it's so important to me, I have two producers that work for me.

One of them is a musician and the other is a technical editor. And I know that because we've gotten comments that [00:33:00] I think our production quality I'm very proud of. We've actually had people contact us about the production quality of the uncommodified podcast. Now, of course I get to control my mic typically, obviously, cause I'm in my studio.

My guests, not so much now with you, Dave. Different because you understand this you've got your quality of experience is a lot different than a lot of the guests that I talked to you, but again, these kind of things, you know, I mean, bad audio is bad audio. You can't I mean, it's just it's just terrible to listen to.

 And so production value and production quality is something and it's almost like for me and maybe Dave, I'd like your advice on this. I have a philosophy and I could be dead wrong. And by the way, if I am, please, please challenge me because I love it. I actually feel like in today's world. You either got to go super raw and underproduced like you're like Blair Witch, you know, out in your backyard with your iPhone, which is fine.

And that'll work on social media. Or you get or or you probably need to get really good production value. But if you get stuck in the [00:34:00] middle where it's it's just really. Poor. That's a problem for me. But I think you can get away with really underproduced stuff, but it's all about environment. Like, what is your gut on

that? 

my my gut on that?

is I'm a snob, my gut. Sorry. True confessions. My, 

good. I like it. Give it to me, Dave. Give it to me right between the 

eyes. 

my gut is. I can't forgive you if you have bad audio. 

Well, bad audio, of course. Don't like

bad

It, it starts with great audio and when I say great, we, we were blessed to live in a time where we have digital media technology, both hardware and software that allows, average people to record high quality stuff, whether it's audio and video. The point is you have to, hit that bar and I call it the battle for enough.

You know, what is, what is enough? And on the audio side, it's crisp, it's clear. I can hear consonants [00:35:00] begin and end. I can hear clear S's. I Don't hear. Fans or noises or ambulances or barking dogs or whatever. And that's ironic because you've seen my dawn patrol video blog. I do on LinkedIn and it's my dog is like my co star.

 But I work hard even on that video blog. I work very hard to make sure that the, the audio and the video under the circumstances is as crisp as it can be and the audio is as tight, and well balanced as it can be. And most of them are shot outside. I'm hiking, I'm walking at dawn patrol, you know, walking my dog or in the backyard or something like that.

So I have trouble forgiving people for bad bad audio. Bad video. Yeah, I'm a little snobby with that, too. There, it's don't jitter, don't shake. Some people are shooting stuff on their phone, and I can see every bounce of their step or their run or something like that. And I'll forgive it if it's [00:36:00] like a 15 15 30 second, you know, video that's very pithy or funny or something I'm into, but don't ask me to put up with every step for a minute, 90 seconds.

I, I, I, I'm sorry. So you, you have to attain enough. What's that threshold you have to hit? If you've got the time and you've got the money, you've got the time, and let's say you're doing a primarily an audio program, and I seriously admire you for the way you approach the audio side of this program.

You're only doing yourself a service. You know, years from now, people will listen to Tim Windsor and go, man, that sounds good, you know, and you're doing your audience a favor. You know, you're not asking them to put up with you. You're saying, Hey, you know, there's some, this is a person who cares about it.

So it's, you're right.

It's, it's the quality 

Yeah. 

and quality And quality [00:37:00] matters. And between you and me, and I know you agree, you don't have to actually admit it in public, but I know you agree. Uh, there is so much, much when I say capital M, there is so much garage and not good people quality stuff that's available on the public internet on YouTube. 

Yeah. 

it's like 85 to 92 percent of it is, is this garbage people other than if they're funny cats or goldfish doing something stupid, great. But if you're trying to make me passionate about something, if you're trying to tell a story, if you're trying to turn me on to something, if you're selling your book, oh boy, you 

And I, and I agree, by the way, Dave, I agree. I agree 

with you. 

it matters. 

It does matter. And, you know, it's kind of funny that we're talking about this and I get challenged all the time, which I love. I have a good friend of mine. His name's Terry Black. And Terry is a wonderful friend of mine. He's an artist.

He's a film producer. He's worked with the likes of Daniel Langlois. I mean, he's a force to be [00:38:00] reckoned with. He's a really fascinating guy. And Terry is a good friend of mine. And Terry, Graciously will call me up sometimes, particularly around my video that I'll shoot or something, and he will graciously chew me a new one, which I, which I 

appreciate,

actually,

It's out of

love. Tim, it's out of love. he 

it is. But it does. And he and he will critique. You'll say, Tim, like, Seriously, did you not think of, and we were, we were shooting a podcast video recently, we did a live recording in my producer's, uh, uh, dining room, and we, and it was a different, we don't typically do it that way, and we had three people on a mic and all that.

Anyways, you know, just sort of not thinking through the process, just shooting video. Well, Terry calls me and he's like, Tim, yeah. You gotta take that video down, man. That's terrible. He said, did you not think of where you put the guy's book? Did you not think of, you know, your scotch bottle was right in front of the guy's face most of the time.

Like, did, and he's like, do you not think of these things? And I'm like, Terry, no, [00:39:00] actually I don't think of these things. So, so, but you know what? I, I, this is what I believe. You know, Benjamin Franklin is famously quoted as saying, if it hurts, it instructs. Okay, so every once in a while, I get frustrated.

Feedback and it hurts a bit, you know, you go, Oh man, that hurts my ego. But you know what, Terry's right. I can do better and I can challenge myself. So listen, as we bring this podcast in for landing, so I want your, your challenge around, you know, audio, it's gotta be, it's audio is big videos, big, but what your biggest sort of pet peeve.

When you look at stuff and you go, man, you know, it's your story and you could tell it better. You know, that sort of theme we're talking about. What's the number one thing, and it could be something we already talked about. I don't know, but what's the number one thing that just sticks in Dave's crawl where you go, man, in this day and age, you could do better.

You can learn to do better. Just think about this next time.

yep, yep. I can give you an answer to that without thinking about it too much. 

Get it done. Get to the point. state your case, [00:40:00] go away, say goodbye. It's don't talk for too long. Don't be boring. And one of the best ways to not be boring is to get it over with. Don't oversell. Okay. If it's a sales thing, you know, get in, get out. So I think that's my, my pet peeve is, um, people feel.

And some of them are wonderful people. I'm sure they're wonderful people, but they talk for too long. and when you get to the point where you're again, short attention span theater, when you get to the point where you become even the slightest bit boring, or you do something, you have a mannerism that annoys me or something, then I begin to get distracted.

And then I begin to notice the weird little magnets you have on your whiteboard behind you. And, you know, then I begin to notice like the little plastic binge you've got up on your storage. And then I notice your shirt's got a fray on the, you know what I mean? It's, it's, you want to do yourself a [00:41:00] favor, figure out how to get your point across.

Um, be interesting, deliver passion. You know, drop a couple gold bars and, and you know, it's like that movie, that thing you do. One of my favorite movies of all time, the best instructions are from, uh, you know, not coincidentally, Tom Hanks, who's their manager, you know, also the director of the manager who basically says you get up there

you sing the song, and then when you're done, you unplug your, your guitars, everything, and you.

Run. You don't walk. You run off stage. You know what I mean? So that's my advice. It's get in, get out. 

That's great advice, by the way, and I love it. I'm laughing because you're talking about things of annoyance, and I'll go back to Terry. Terry, I'm a hand talker, okay? So, and, uh, so, Terry tells me to change the frame so my hands aren't so in it. And I say, Terry, if you tied my hands behind my back, I'd be a mute.

So, I, Terry will always send me this text after and say, too much hands, too much hands. So, I'm trying to get my hands down a little bit, which is really hard, because I am a hand talker. I'm not Italian, but I could be [00:42:00] Italian. If you tied my hands around my back and most, most days I'm mute. So it's a challenge and I, and I'm learning in this, you know, again, this is what I love about this grand thing.

I'm learning as I go. And this conversation is helpful for me, Dave, and I love having it. I'm learning some things as we go. And I think that's really great advice. You know, get to the point, get out. That's powerful advice. Get to the point and get out that if we'll, if we could all just learn that we'd be 

better off.

So Dave, quick 

question. Oh, go 

But the only thing I want to add on to that is, leave them with, I mean, get out, of course, get out, but, but leave them with good news. Great news. Here, here's, here's, here, great news. Here's the PDF. Here's my website. Here's my book. Here's three other videos you can look at.

Great meeting you. You know, that kind of thing. See you 

I'm gonna distill it down to get it done, get in. Get out, leave them 

with good news, and get off the stage. That's not, that's, there's the 

Dave Summers. Boom. Right there. It's a T 

shirt. 

Dave, you, have instructed me already in the wisdom of shooting audio and video.

This is good stuff. Okay, so Dave, quickly. [00:43:00] Somebody wants to hunt you down. They want to talk to you about how you can help 

them. How do they find Dave? 

Um, the two best ways are I'm on LinkedIn. Um, just you'd look for Dave Summers on LinkedIn. I'm, I'm there. I post , a once a week video blog on Thursday mornings called Dawn Patrol. I have a lot of fun with that. There's a short and sweet. There's production value. They're informal. I'm Dave Summers.

Hopefully they're authentic. Um, and my website, Dave?

summers. com. 

Awesome. And by the way, I'm going to, I'm going to vote for Dawn Patrol. It is authentic. It's real. I love watching the videos. They're super inspirational. There's times where you and I will chat back and forth of the messaging. And I, I really appreciate what you're contributing to this online world. It's when we found each other through this and I have a lot of respect for what you do.

It is an art form. It's a, you know, it's part gift. It's, a heck of a lot of learning and understanding and expertise. And I appreciate the discipline that you have and the encouragement. You're a super. Great encourager, Dave. You encourage people online, you contribute, uh, you're, have this [00:44:00] really graciousness.

I, I 

feel it's a word we don't use a 

lot anymore, 

Well, I, in my older years, in my elder years, I, 

listen, there's a certain graciousness to who you are and how you interact with people. And I appreciate that a lot. So thank you very much. So here's a question. You're going into a room. This is the uncommodified podcast. My question at the end of these conversations, usually this, so you go into a room, Dave, A full of people and you're bringing your unique, authentic Dave into that, room.

What is Dave bringing into that room that you know is your authentic and unique 

contribution? 

I make it my business to meet. As many people as I can immediately learn as much as I can about them as quickly as possible. So I'm, I'm a bit of a, a gadfly in, in meetings and in groups of people I don't know. I, I tend to move from table to table or, you know if there's alcohol involved from bar to bar or whatever, but it's it's just getting to know people and getting to see if I can.

within a short amount of time, [00:45:00] get them to tell me their story. You know, and if it's a business story, great. If it's a personal story, even better. If it's a crossover, wow, we have a, we have a hit there. So it's some, I work really hard at being a good listener. And what that does is it immediately puts me in the mode of.

You know, I frequently see myself as like a virtual or like a digital stage manager. I kind of think like if, if I were taking this person on the road where I work, you know, how can I help them? How can I help them tell that story? What would I do to help them with that? So I guess I just make it my business to meet a lot of people and think and listen very closely, but think about how I can help them.

Get whatever they, get the message out, you know, that 

awesome. Well, listen, we all got a story and I think that we don't spend a long enough time discovering the stories of others. We often are too concerned with our own story and how we're going to write it. And I love the fact that you're trying to help people understand their story. Tell it in more unique ways or more professional [00:46:00] ways, which is great.

But at the end of the day, we all have a story and I'll go back to what I said at the beginning. You've got a story and you have to take responsibility for it. You've got to fully claim the pen and the paper and the power to write it. And whether you're writing it in this narrative of your life or you're writing a story in relationship to your business or your community organization, you have a responsibility.

And leaders have a responsibility to understand the story of their organizations and how to tell them better to their employees and to their customers. We have stories that we need to discover from one another. And so if you're listening in, my encouragement or challenge to you is, uh, be a gadfly. Be, be what Dave just encouraged you to do.

Go out into your community, into your next meeting you go into, and make it a challenge, give you a challenge to discover the unique stories of two or three people in that room. Find out what their story is, and then figure out how your story and their story connect and how you can write a better story together into the future of your lives.

Again, thanks for listening in. We appreciate your [00:47:00] time. You listened in for a reason. Challenge yourself. What's your story? Find the stories of others. Have an excellent day. Cheers. Dave, thanks so much for joining me.