No Mercy / No Malice: The Prof G Storytelling Playbook

This episode is brought to you by Accenture. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows. Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result, less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most. Learn more at accenture.com/spotify. Morning decisions. How about a creamy mocha frappuccino drink or a sweet vanilla? Smooth caramel maybe or a white chocolate mocha. Whichever you choose, delicious coffee awaits. Find Starbucks frappuccino drinks wherever you buy your groceries. Your body isn't a problem to fix. It's a system to support. From PMS to pregnancy to menopause. Ollie's women's wellness line is built on real science for every stage. No guilt, no stigmas, just science backed supplements that work with you, not against you. Choose science over shame. Find support at a retailer near you or on ollie.com. That's olly.com. This week, we're airing a post originally published last August. Entrepreneur is another word for, wait for it, salesperson. And a salesperson is really a storyteller. Every business begins with a story compelling enough to capture people's imaginations and their capital. None of the businesses I've started made any sense at first, then they did or they didn't. Prop two media is no different, except stories are our product. Today, our research lead, Mia Silverio, explores the art and science of effective storytelling. I've been on hundreds of Zoom calls with Scott. Not an exaggeration. Over the past five years, I've learned how he crafts powerful presentations. This is how we think about business storytelling at ProfG Media. Scott will often stop me when we're reviewing his decks to call for more drama. Infusing a narrative with drama and emotion separates an exceptional storyteller from a mediocre one. A good storyteller is simply a good entertainer. Am I discounting the importance of underlying content? Somewhat. But the unfortunate truth is that even if you have revelatory information to share, it's not gonna have an impact if no one's paying attention. As writer and podcaster Derek Thompson observed, there's something overlapping in the Venn diagram between what is demanded of stand up comics and what is demanded from public intellectuals, and that is, explain this shit to me. Make me feel something. Research tells us that experiences that elicit emotions are more memorable than ones that don't. Your story doesn't need to make your audience cry or laugh, but it should inspire thoughtfulness or surprise, promote introspection or curiosity, or evoke longing or guilt. At the very least, you need to be self aware enough to make a deprecating joke about a dull topic. Two ways to inject emotion into your presentations. Number one, lean into provocative, contrarian takes that surprise your audience or challenge their assumptions. The first slide of Scott's 2024 TED talk asked, do we love our children? The …