Steve Multer is the founder of Steve Multer Corporate Storytelling, a strategic brand messaging partner for Fortune and midsize organizations to maximize their connection with customers, partners, and media analysts. As a spokesman and keynote thought leader, Steve has crafted and delivered over 20,000 onstage and onscreen presentations for more than 150 global brands including Cisco, Fujifilm, Siemens, HP, Panasonic, Bayer, Intel, and NTT Data.
He trains global C-suites and sales teams in winning communication methodologies, and he's coached thousands of executive and industry speakers to increase impact through value, passion, and human connection. Steves new book is Nothing Gets Sold Until the Story Gets Told.
“Trust yourself to tell a value story for the benefit of other people. Once you start doing so, you'll be amazed at how much clearer, more formidable, solid, and successful your daily engagements and communications become, both personally and professionally. ”
- Steve Multer
Websites: https://corporatestorytelling.com , https://stevemulter.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevemulter/
Email: steve@stevemulter.com
Website: Rewire, Inc.: Transformed Thinking
Hello and welcome, everybody, to this episode of The Insight Interviews. I've got a guest today that, you know, I think I say I'm excited about all of our guests, and, Steve, I'm certainly excited about you, but this one I'm interested in. I did wake up excited because I know that we're going to be talking about stories today and what a real expert in the field has to say about that. So, Steve Multer, story extraordinaire, written books, traveled the world, has a database in his phone that, I don't know, either I'll tell you about or maybe Steve will tell you about. But anyways, without further ado, Steve Multer, welcome to the show.
Jason, thank you so much. Such a pleasure and a privilege to be here with you, with all of your listeners, and hopefully we'll create some great value for everybody here on the conversation today.
Yeah, I do feel confident that that's going to happen. Steve, you said that you've listened to a few of the episodes. You probably know the first question that I'm going to ask you, which is, I don't know, maybe very different or nothing to do with storytelling, but I'd like to ask you, as you and I engage each other today in the middle of February, in the cold, dead of winter type of thing, what are you grateful for today?
I'm grateful actually, for what we are doing right now. You and I were talking a little bit before you hit record on this, and we were talking about how we agree that when we speak or when we communicate or when we get the chance to engage with somebody else, this is a service concept. It's about serving other people. The great communication is finding somebody who's interesting, intelligent, brings a unique perspective to the world, who enjoys life, and we get to sit down and talk with somebody else and share that with them. I think that's a gift. I think that's a total block of gold. So, I look for that in my own work wherever I can. I think it's what sustains me in the work and the business that I do. But the ability to find a fellow traveler out there in the world, meet somebody new and get a chance to connect and talk with them, I mean that's a good day right there.
Yeah, that answer tells me that we're going to have a very good conversation today. Based on that answer, gosh, man, I could talk about gratefulness for the rest of the time, but I'm starving to dig into what you do, how you do it, and then maybe a few tips or some insights from you that our listeners could learn from and potentially even put into work in their own businesses. So, by way of introduction, I've read your bio that you supplied to us, I went to your website, I feel like I could do a mediocre job at best, introducing you. Would you mind just introducing yourself to The Insight Interviews world, please?
Absolutely. All right, so we're going to keep this succinct. I've been at it for a long time. I could go and on, and we're not going to do that. So, by trade, I was an actor for many, many years, and I stumbled in the mid-1990s from the acting stage into what then was called corporate theater. It's a very different world than it was right now, but this was a mix of trade shows, events, and we used to do the most ridiculous things representing major corporations, singing, dancing. You've probably seen articles about this or seen videos of some of the silly things that people used to do in the 1990s. But what we were also doing at that time was delivering marketing and professional content on behalf of that organization in as professional, credible, and solid a manner as we could. And as soon as I arrived at that particular moment, my first client was a company called Tiboli Systems. They had just been purchased by IBM, and like so many during the.com era, they were overnight gazillionaires and throwing money around left and right, including hiring people like me to speak on their behalf and help them tell their stories. And I stumbled into this in 1996 and I said, that is fun. I want to do this. And as I stayed in the business and developed my own company, it was a matter of realizing that I might have the ability to help others get better at telling their own stories. First, that came from a corporate environment. How could I help a company tell a better story to its clients, to its customers, to media analysts, to its partners? And then that really expanded to the point where I think I might be able to help others tell a better story in every facet of their lives and personal. And that's the gift of what I've been able to do for a good number of years. So today, I am still a professional corporate spokesperson, but at the same time, I've been able to parlay that into being an executive speaker coach at a sales team and sea level team presence trainer for winning communication and a broadcast and streaming host and a moderator and a content writer and author in a number of other areas. So, that's kind of the short version of what I do, and I'm lucky enough to do it for a lot of fortune brands. And we could list those brands, but not necessary. You can find those elsewhere.
Yeah. By the way, the brands, I have seen some of them, and I will tell you, audience, that Steve, while that's a fascinating story, and to think that you've been doing this since the 90s, I'm like, okay, this guy's got some tread underneath of him.
And a few extra wrinkles around the eyeballs.
Well, yeah, but you've got some travels, and you're doing the brands that you do help. I mean, these are brands that you would recognize, listener, let's just put it like that. And so, when I look at that and I'm like, okay, these are big brands around the world that's listening to Steve, he probably has something to say, and he probably has something that people find of value. So, what is it today, so we understand kind of where you came from, and thank you for that, you were succinct in that. Sometimes I ask that question, Steve, and, like, we're 45 minutes later going, should we do something else? So, thank you.
It's not about me. It's about the folks listening to the show right now.
What is it now that you're doing? We're recording this in the early part of 2024. What is it right now that you're seeing where when you engage a new organization, there's a first one or two things that you look for, and maybe one or two things that you do to get some wins? Would you mind just speaking to that a little bit?
Absolutely. So typically, I am brought on board by one of three different buckets of clients or organizations. Number one is a company that I've been representing for a number of years. So, my biggest and longest-term client has been Cisco. I've been with Cisco since 1997, and I've been one of their primary faces and voices for that particular organization. But I also help them with a combination of marketing, content creation, how to tell stories across the different business units that will not only connect with customers but will also drive a sense of cohesion across this entire widespread company of 70,000 plus employees, multinational, where everybody really understands what everyone else is doing, and frequently within an organization, this is one of our biggest problems. Everything is heavily siloed, and trying to get people to know the entire big picture of the story that that particular brand tells the marketplace is incredibly challenging, as I'll work with them on an ongoing basis. Another bucket might be a brand that's been around for a long time, that's venerable, that's been very successful, but they've lost the thread of their own corporate story. Maybe because the founders of the organization are long gone. They either sold off the company or passed it along to their next generation a number of years ago. And they've gotten so far from the original story excitement that the brand was founded on, that now they're so busy selling product that they no longer understand how to differentiate themselves within the marketplace or tell a compelling story to a new or even an aging customer. And then the third company that might bring me on board is either a startup brand or a mid-sized brand. In some cases, it's going to be a large brand, maybe even a fortune, but a new CMO arrives at the organization, and they're brought in based on a massive quantity of experience. They look around and they say, oh no, the story that we're telling the marketplace right now is, buy my solution, buy my service, or we are the best, and that CMO knows enough- they are such an expert that they look around and say, we're never going to make it on, that. We will not hit our growth patterns or our goals if we continue on that path. We need to figure out how to completely revamp the story that we're telling the market, let's work with this Steve guy, and they’ll bring me on board. So, there are a number of ways that I might enter a situation, but the goal is always the same. It is to try to take the team that I'm working with, step them back a bit so that they get more of a big picture, and they stop thinking in terms of dollar signs; they stop looking at the marketplace as a wallet, and they start to look at the marketplace as a group of fellow human beings, and they want to connect with those human beings as friends, colleagues, and trusted confidants. And the minute they do that, the minute we can begin to alter the nature of their brand storytelling and turn them into more successful corporate storytellers.
Yeah. Even listening to you, I already feel like I know you well enough to know that you do that really well. Even when you and I first came on Zoom today, right, I was having some weird tech issues, and you took it and rolled with it, and you said some funny things, and you made a connection with me, and usually I'm the one making other people feel comfortable. You naturally slipped into that role with me, and so, one, I can tell, you got the goods. You walk your talk. But moreover, I'd like to focus in on that last bucket. So, I think many of our listeners, probably the bulk of our listeners, fall into that last bucket, right? It's a startup, it's a mid-sized company, and they're working on their story, and they just haven't been able to get it right, or what they think is right. And so, what might be either one or two examples, maybe a story of a real-life client, or something where our listener who might fit in that bucket, go, that's something I should think about, or maybe I should go through that exercise. Anything come to mind when I ask that question?
Absolutely. And we all should. Yes, you should. I should. Any of your listeners should. This is an ongoing process. This isn't like you discover the golden fleece and you're done. No, this is lifelong. In every engagement, we have to keep it going. And it really ties directly to your areas of specialty, emotional intelligence, brain-based leadership.
"So important, because the mindset, the successful business mindset, is all about understanding the people that we are communicating and connecting with. How do we increase that connection? And the best way we can do it, and it's a first good thing that we can all focus on, is what I call the flow of content hierarchy, which is how do humans’ onboard information when it comes to winning engagement or winning communication? And we can think about this personally, and we can think about it professionally within our brands."
So, I'll give you the way this works. Level one, we connect with the human. Everything that we do in terms of good communication starts with human to human. It's personal engagement. Who am I speaking with, why am I speaking with them and how do I serve them in the best way possible? We start with human first. Engagement. Number two is we talk to people as consumers. If we can get past the human level now, they're going to start listening to us, and now we can talk to them as buyers. Meaning, would this person buy what I'm saying? And buy can be with a dollar sign in front of it can be financial or it can be with your valuable time. Why would you commit more time to me? Why would you invest in me? So, consumer comes second. And then the employee or the corporation is the third level of communication. By the time you try to get somebody to become a part of what we're doing on a corporate level. So, if we think human first, consumer second, employee third. Those are the three levels of a human being. And the problem is most people communicate brand, sell, market by flipping it upside down. They start by talking to the person as an employee, as a corporation. They sell to the company first, they sell to the buyer, the individual consumer second, and they leave the human for last. Simple fact is, until someone knows why they should pay attention to you, they won't. We have to connect with the human being first and say, I understand you. You and I speak the same language, we come from the same place, we want the same things, we find value in the same things. And once you like me, or once you trust me, or once you feel what this person is worth paying some attention to, now I can speak to you as a consumer. Now I cut through that first level, and I can start to think, well, what would matter most to you and how can I provide it for you? How can I deliver value to you in a way that you want to invest in? And then if I get past that level, now, I can say, all right, let’s start talking money. What are you actually going to invest as far as your time and as far as your money in this product, solution, service, capability that I want to offer you? But I can't start there. I have to connect with you as a person first. And most companies get that wrong. They start by trying to sell something. So that's a really good tip right out of the gate. If you are with a startup or you are trying to figure out how to alter your business model, start by speaking to a human being first and not to a contract first.
So, thank you for that. I'm sitting here feverishly taking notes, and you see me nodding my head. I'm in agreement with everything. There's nothing there that I could pick apart. I do have, like, 38 questions, but I'm taking notes and I'm agreeing with you. I don't know that an agreement serves you or me or our listeners, and I can go human first, of course, right? Is there a specific example, or, I don't know, use your vernacular story, like, is there an example that you can come up with without breaking confidentiality, is there anything that you can come up with where you're like, yeah, I had this guy, Larry, or I had company, ABC, over here, just to take me by the hand like a kindergartner, or walk me through what you just explained.
Love it. I'm going to give you two quick stories, and I'll try to truncate them and keep them small. So, this whole foundation of corporate storytelling, and let me very quickly define what corporate storytelling is. You'll find a thousand definitions. Most of them are very complicated. Here's the way I define it. Corporate storytelling is combining the details of your topic with personal experiences that your audience can relate to, find value in and become passionate about themselves.
Yeah.
Hopefully that makes sense.
Yup.
But first, if you can create some correlation between you and the person or people you're talking to, they're more likely to hear that business connection. That's what corporate storytelling is. So, the first story I wanted to tell, this whole concept was launched, founded in its certain way, in an area called content marketing by John Deere Company. John Deere himself was long since passed away by this point, but Deere and company, for those of you who don't know, I mean, if you've never seen it, for whatever reason, a north American US tractor company, very big in farming and agriculture, still the number one to this day, but back in the 1890s, they realized that they were losing a good amount of sales because a number of other tractor manufacturers had come out there on the market and farming equipment manufacturers, and they realized, if all we're doing is competing product to product to product to product, people have a very hard time deciding between those different products because. They’re not expert enough to know the exact differences. So, Deere Company created a newsletter. It's actually a magazine called the Furrow. And in the Furrow, they said, we're not going to sell tractors. What we're going to do is talk to our users talk to our subscribers about life on the land. What does it look like? What does it feel like? What do you go through on a daily basis? What challenges are you up against? What does success look like for you? And let's just tell you good stories. Why we do what we do and why you do what you do and what we have in common. And guess what? People loved it. The stories made sense. And they bought John Deere tractors because they understood who Deere was.
Yeah.
They realize these people know exactly what I'm going through. They know what I know, and they feel the way I feel, and so I trust them. So, talk to me about your tractors.
Right.
So, we can bring that all the way up now to modern day going from content marketing to corporate storytelling. Like I said, Cisco is my longest-term client. I do a huge amount of work with them. A number of years ago, I was hired by the team there to help them create the storytelling for a very large trade event that was taking place and that they had been to for many years, but they no longer went to because they were no longer a part of that particular industry. And they said, all right, here's a problem, Steve. Our CEO has been asked to give the opening keynote of this event because he's a futurist, a forward thinker, a fantastic speaker, very motivational, very well known. However, his company no longer exhibits at this trade fair and has nothing to do with this trade fair.
That's a conundrum. Sure.
What do we do? How do we tell that story? So, we dived in. We realized with no product to talk about, with nothing to sell, with nothing new to show to the marketplace, what story could we tell? Because we were required to, in order for that CEO to have that position in the keynote space. We had to have an exhibit, a big exhibit, we had to be a top-level sponsor, and we had to tell a good story. So, what we came up with was, well, let's look around at what everybody else at this trade event is doing, and what do we do to support all of them? Turn them into successful brands. And that's the story that we told, and it worked out brilliantly. It got a lot of eyeballs on Cisco that they would not normally have gotten, and in a very different way than they were used to without selling any product, and it turned out to be one of the most successful things that we'd done in that decade. It was very, very exciting. So that gives you a good example of how we can be there for others and as you said, so rightly earlier, when we support others, it comes back to us tenfold. I always say, never chase a dollar; do what you believe in, do what you care about, and the dollar will chase you, and that's exactly what happened in this instance.
So, let's go down that path now for a minute. I have seen over the years, and you have too, and I want you to help me reconcile this a little bit. I believe in everything that you just said there at the end, to the point where I've experienced it in my own career. I've seen it work out great for our clients, but I've also seen plenty of passionate people that are following their why and they can't pay their mortgage. And so, I'd like to, there is this, man, we got to keep an eye on the dollars because we got to keep the lights on. We have responsibility to run a profitable business. So just reconcile those two things. Like if you wouldn't mind entering into that discussion for a minute, because I believe it's an important one, especially for startups. I see that like follow your passion. You can do anything. I do think all of that's true, but there's also a lot more to that story, and so, I don't know, when I give you that feedback, what do you think, Steve?
Oh, Jason, that is such a good and vital question. I'm going to take both a positive and a negative approach to that. When you're a startup, let's start with that. When you are a startup, you are going to be one of one, two, three, maybe four people that has come up with a concept, an idea, a gap in the marketplace that you believe the market actually needs and that you can fulfill. And you've got a head of steam behind you, you've got an incredible quantity of passion, and you are the corporate storyteller. There's nobody else to do it. You're the one out there every day, trying to find backers, you're trying to find resources, you're trying to raise funds, you are developing your core concepts, you are looking for people to sell those concepts to, and you're very engaged, and that's great. It feels like the hardest, but it is actually the easiest aspect of running a business. When you're passionate about something, you're not working, you're playing, you're having a good time, you're doing something you believe in. The problem is once you have found that equity and once you have started to scale according to the level of equity that you have managed to develop, you’re going to reach a certain point where one of two things is going to happen.
Either the marketplace is not going to be interested in what you're selling and you're going to realize, I'm out of cash, but the reason I'm out of cash is what I thought was such a unique, special idea, the market didn't respond. And maybe it's because of the product and maybe it's because of how you were telling the story about that product, that it just didn't connect with people. But let's say it does work. And suddenly you get somebody to say, I like that, that's good. I'm going to invest in that. I'm going to help carry it forward. And maybe you go to product launch. And then if you're lucky, not only do you launch, but maybe you didn't get purchased by another organization. And now you're in every Walmart and you're on Amazon and you're in Costco. And you're just cranking left and right. Now the hard part is to maintain that level of passion. You no longer have to tell the story, the story is telling itself. And therefore, what do you do? Do you continue to up your storytelling or do you now let the purchases take care of the storytelling? So, these are the two sides of that coin. Sometimes, as you're saying, you have to keep the lights on, and if it's become so hard to do it, it's the market, gently, maybe not so gently, tapping you on the shoulder and saying you need a better idea. I know you believe deeply in this. But for whatever reason, your marketplace doesn't. And that may not be your fault. What it means is if you're a true entrepreneur, it's time to move on to the next idea. And as somebody who has started a number of companies yourself, you know exactly what I'm talking about.
I do.
"The idea is gold. Sometimes letting the idea go is the most intelligent thing you can do to clear up the bandwidth to come up with your next great idea."
Great advice. I know you've got more to say on it, but that nugget right there is such good advice. Yeah, hard to take sometimes, but really good.
And it's really not a net negative. So, I know a lot of what you talk about frequently is mindset. And I talk about that a huge amount with my customers as well. A negative mindset is death, but failure in a business concept or failure in communication or failure in an investment, that is not a negative. That is combination of a learning experience. But even more than that, it can actually be a springboard to a much better position. So, for example, as a writer, I love to write late at night. Sometimes I'll write from 11:00 at night until 03:00 in the morning, and I guarantee you 100% of the time it is pure garbage. I wake up in the morning, I look at it, and I say, oh, for heaven's sake, that is just as bad as it can be. And I ball it all up or. I hit delete and I move on. But what I always say is that bad writing that I do, and of cleanses my palate, so now I know what I don't want to say. And knowing what I don't want to say is every bit as valuable, maybe more valuable, than knowing what I do want to say. It gets the cobwebs out. And sometimes ideation, content creation for an organization, a new business, a new brand, startup idea, it's a way to get the bad ideas or the less good ideas out of your head in order to clear the palate for the next great idea that will make up for all the bad ideas. It's the way Hollywood works. 999 film failures in order to create that 1000th film that carries the brand, that carries the production studio for the next two years.
That's right. That 1000th episode or movie or script or whatever, it doesn't happen without the previous 999. That's the trick. And Steve, I even fall into this category, and I write a lot as well. Like, okay, today's my day to write our monthly newsletter, and it's going to be fabulous. And I haven't been writing for weeks, and all of a sudden, I'm just expected to whip out genuine amazing thoughts. No, you got to write, write, write, and one, put in your reps, two, get the trash out, kind of like you're saying, that is what leads to the good thing. And I don't care if you're talking, about writing or content creation or what it is that you do in your business, so, yeah, thank you for that. I appreciate your take on that and just your own personal example with writing. I do believe that that's the case. And I even wrote down, sometimes giving up on your goals can be the best thing that happens.
Amen.
In and of itself, that's a tough concept, but taking in the greater context of how you said it. Yeah, absolutely it can. Because one, you learn, two, it's what leads to whatever the next great thing is for you.
Absolutely. And you need the bandwidth. And today, especially our bandwidth is more stressed and strained than ever before.
Yeah.
If you find yourself at a position where you are not enjoying what you're doing any longer on a business front, I'm not suggesting that anyone give up. I'm suggesting a mindset shift where you take that step back and you say, all right, what am I doing to either create my brand, to build my brand, to expand, to scale the brand, to get better investment in the brand, better buy in to the brand? If I am struggling this hard, it's not because the brand is unworthy. It's because of the story I am telling to everybody I'm communicating with. And for whatever reason, that story isn't landing with them. And now you are back in the driver's seat because as the leader of that brand or as a core player in that brand, you get the ability to step back and say, all right. Why are people not connecting with what we are trying to accomplish here together? I have something that is so worthwhile, so valuable to them, why can't they see it? And it always lies with us. We always have to look within first and say, it's because I'm not telling the right story. And now the power is yours again. Good. Let's not talk about changing the product. Let's not talk about changing the foundational aspects of our business methodology or how we market or how we produce. Let's take a look at the story that we tell and how can we make that more compelling and more engaging, and more value driven for others? Meaning, how can we stop serving ourselves as the company and start serving the people that we want to connect and communicate with? Because when we serve others, it comes back to us tenfold. And this is an aspect not only of business, but it's of everything. If you're a faith-based person, that's the way faith works. Serve others and it comes back to you. It's the way it works with children. If you happen to have kids, when you serve your kids, when you do what they need, most of the time that comes back to benefit you. So, it's not pure altruism. There is definitely a payoff for us in doing things correctly in this regard, but you have the power with your marketing, with your promotions, with your business, with your brand, to tell a better story to everybody you talk to, and you're going to see the results.
Yeah, it's the packaging piece, and sometimes the tricky part about that is it needs to be genuine, it needs to be authentic, because if you're doing it only because, oh, it'll come back to me, I don't know, man, I find that the market figures that out, too. And so, it does need to be authentic and genuine. And I don't know that we have a script to be authentic and genuine, you just kind of either is or you're not. But I think conversations like this and some of the things that you just said can give the CEOs, the CMOs, the people in the c suite, and the people are making decisions around this really some food for thought. So, thank you for that.
Do you know who Robert Dilts is? D I L T S? Don't know if you know Robert Dilts is.
Not off top of my head.
So, I learned about Robert Dilts from a colleague of mine, Christian Galves., who's based in Germany, a remarkable speaker and trainer and coach, and he's so good at what he does. But he introduced me to Dilts, and Dilts has a concept called the coach state. And coach is an acronym that stands for centered, open, aware, connected, whole, and I find coach state to be so valuable for us as communicators for organizations, but also as human beings. People connecting with other people. And what it really goes down to is being in the here and now, going beyond our own ego center to be totally engaged with and in service of our audience. And an audience can be an audience of one person, my spouse, me, talking to my boss, me talking to my client, or it can be me standing on a stage or in front of a camera talking to 10,000 people in an arena. But it's the idea that when we are connected to the moment, to ourselves, and to someone else, genuinely, authentically, as you just said a moment ago, we increase compassion, empathy, interest, others, spontaneity, authenticity, joy. These all rise to the surface. So, the idea very, very quickly, and I'll just go through it. Centered. You are grounded in your own communication. You believe in it, you understand it. You know why we're here together. Why are we talking with one another? What's the point? What's the purpose? I'm centered in this particular moment. I'm open to anything. Whatever you say to me right now, whether I agree with it, disagree with it, think it's great, think not so sure, I am open to anything you say, and you are completely open to me. And by being open with one another, man, we just increase the opportunity for positive connection. Aware. I'm aware of my surroundings. I'm aware of what's going on. So, in your case, you're in the middle of a very stressful move right now, you got a lot going on, you're building a new house, your mailbox just got knocked over. I've heard about this all before.
You've given out all my secrets.
Well, not your secrets, your landscaper's secrets. But at any rate, I'm aware of what's going on and what you bring to the table. So, for example, for those of you that are listening, Jason is not in his usual spot right now. He doesn't have all the equipment around him that he likes to have around. And yet I'm aware of that. He's aware of my situation, and we understand where we are. So, if people are under stress, under a lot of pain, maybe they're going through something personal. Being aware of that and honoring it. So important to good communication. Connected. Whatever you say, I'm in it for you. I'm connected to what you're saying. I'm not thinking of other things. I'm not looking at my phone. I'm not wondering, looking over your shoulder for the next interesting person to walk in the door. I'm connected to you. And hold may be the most important. When we are done saying something, it's not about rushing to make it about us or to take it back again. I'm going to hold on what you said, and I'm going to hold on to that for a moment and process it. And when I'm done, then I can take the power of the conversation back. So centered, open, aware, connected, hold. It's a great methodology for successful business and interpersonal human communication.
Man, on that note, Steve, I feel like if we literally just hit end right there, that'd be like a mic drop moment. So many things to say about it.
Robert Dilts. And thank you, Christian Galves.
Yeah, big time. Big time. Is there last question, and then we will wrap up here. Anything that you're particularly excited about or any ask of our audience or any type of wrap up that you would like to mention before we jet today?
Absolutely. Everybody who is listening right now, you are naturally a good and gifted communicator. People who doubt their ability to successfully communicate, it's not that you don't have it within you, you do. It's that it's been trained out of you over many, many years. There was a great neuroscience study that came out in 2014 in the frontiers of human neuroscience about glossophobia, which is just the Latin technical word for fear of public speaking, which is still the most prevalent fear. But what glossophobia really is, is something called FNE. It is fear of negative evaluation.
Yeah.
Basically, fear of judgment from a negative evaluation by other people. And what I'll tell you is other people are not judging you based on your communication. You don't need to fear them. They are so busy negatively judging and evaluating themselves that they don't have time to negatively judge and evaluate you. So, trust that what you say has value. So, when you talk about your business, when you talk about your brand, when you talk about your service or your solution or your capability, go ahead and trust yourself. As long as you are serving others and creating value for other people, you don't have to worry that they're going to evaluate you. Why does this person need to tell me anything? Who the heck do they think they are? No, they've got it all wrong. Humans don't think like that. We're just glad that it's not us up there talking, that it's you up there talking. So go ahead and take those reins. So that's the last thing I would mention in terms of something that I want to leave with other people is just trust yourself to tell a value story for the benefit of other people. And the minute you start doing it, you’ll be amazed at how much clearer and how much more formidable, solid, successful your daily engagements and communications become, both personally and professionally.
Steve again, double mic drop, brother. So good. How do people find you?
Glad you asked that. So, I am super easy to find. The name of my company is Steve Multer, Corporate Storytelling. You can go to either one, Stevemulter.com or corporatestorytelling.com. They're both going to point right back at me. If you'd like to learn more or get in touch and communicate, or if I can support you or serve you in any way, please let me know. And I will offer a little freebie to anybody in your audience who would like to take advantage of it. So, I have created an e-guide, a free e-guide called Five Paths to Passionate Storytelling. It's a very simple PDF, but there are five ways that anybody, no matter where you are in your career, in your educational status, your socioeconomic status, what it is that you produce or create within your brand, anybody can put these five things to work right away today and start up leveling the success of your communication. And if you want to get that e-guide, just go to either Stevemulter.com or corporatestorytelling.com. Go to corporatestorytelling.com/guide. Just add the slash guide at the end and then put in the code. soldtold23. All one word, all lowercase. Ssldtold23 And you can download that e-guide that goes to my book title, which is called Nothing Gets Sold Until the Story Gets Told. And it came out in 2023. So that's why sold, told, 23. But yeah, go and grab that. Pick it up. And if you want to sign up for my weekly two-day tips and tricks, you can do that as well at the same space, and I'll keep reaching out to you and giving you new ways to think about great corporate storytelling.
Your use of alliteration is off the charts, man. The titles that you come up with. And if you're driving and listening to this, we'll put all of this in the show notes, so don't worry about it. Thank you for the offer of the free guide. I'm actually going to go grab it myself. This is very good. Steve, dude, you brought the goods today, man. Thank you so much. I'm excited to just incorporate some of the things. I've had some insights myself that I'd like to incorporate in what I've learned today. I hope our listeners feel the same way. We'll make sure to put your website, your email address, the link to the free guide, how to get there in the show notes, but brother, thank you so much for being a guest on the show today.
Brother, thank you as well, Jason. Truly appreciate it. To everybody who's listening, thank you for investing your time and your interests in, not only Jason, as you always do, but in me as well. And it's been a gift and it's been a privilege. Truly appreciate it.
Until next time, Steve, take it easy. And thank you so much.
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