"Words Can Do WHAT?! Are We Serious Right Now?!" - Tucker Bryant, Poet & Speaker - How Stories Happen #5
How do we craft a metaphor that works? More importantly, perhaps, how do we ensure the metaphors we use pivot to the audience to teach them something in their lives or work, without them getting lost? Do we overtly explain the lesson? Imply it? Some combination? It’s a delicate dance, and few do it like Tucker Bryant.
Tucker isn't just a keynote speaker; he's a poet who has taken the stage everywhere from corporate boardrooms to major conferences, importing what he knows from the world of verse to the world of business innovation. After working at Google, Tucker transformed his own unique perspective and skill as a poet into keynotes that grip audiences by the thousands, leaving lasting impressions on everyone from marketers to HR pros to C-suite executives.
In this episode, we dive into Tucker's signature story about a young poet named Robert. We find a macro-level shape to the metaphor and apply it back in the audience’s more literal world, before re-working some of the story to add some drama, tension, and lessons — all to make Tucker’s message feel inescapable and irresistible to audiences. We talk pacing, pivoting, and probably a third-P (and why lists of three really matter when we list examples.) (For real, that’s in there.)
Whether you're looking to deliver a powerful speech, tighten your brand's message, or inspire action in your next conversation or piece of content, this episode is for you.
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Full Transcript
(Created with AI and may contain some errors)
Tucker Bryant [00:00:00]:
My name is Tucker Bryant, and I am a poet and keynote speaker.
Jay Acunzo [00:00:03]:
So you just saying poet sort of answers this question about, like, where storytelling fits. Also, you saying speaker, obviously that's a big storytelling act as well. So I want to zoom in on the poetry thing. A mere mortal, which you are not, would shy away, let's say, from talking openly, confidently, and even staking your whole reputation on poetry and then turning around and facing a business audience and talking to professionals about innovation and their careers and their growing their companies and all these things. Is there a synapse that doesn't fire correctly in your brain that causes you to fear that prospect? Or was there a time in your life where you were a little intimidated by that? Talk to me about the relationship between poetry and then bringing that to a world that maybe looks askance at poetry.
Tucker Bryant [00:00:50]:
Yeah. Yeah. I think both of those things are accurate. I both have many synesthes that don't fire, or whatever the correct phrase is. And also, there were moments that kind of shaped that perspective. The history is that I was in love with poetry. In college, it was all I did. While all my friends were doing silly things like studying and getting prepared for a successful career, I was in my room writing flowery words about stuff that were related to my feelings.
Tucker Bryant [00:01:17]:
And so the end of college, all my friends had done these internships. I had done nothing. And I realized that I needed to kind of eschew my poetic inclinations to try to pay my corporate dues. And so I threw that stuff away, dove into tech, worked at Wikihow and then Google for a few years. But while at Google, had a couple of conversations with folks on my team who I guess had. They had, like, discovered a couple of old videos of me performing and were like, you know, it was one of those things where it's like, oh, the junior person on the team, let's have.
Jay Acunzo [00:01:47]:
You show and tell.
Tucker Bryant [00:01:48]:
And so got to perform a couple of things, but didn't want it to just be like a, let's share this poem, and then just have it be like a fun three minutes, and then I'll leave. I wanted there to be some connection to what the folks on my team were trying to do. And so it kind of was this jumping off point to start exploring what the connections were between what a poet tries to do in their work and what professionals are trying to do every day. And so did that exploration, really enjoyed it, dove deeper and deeper into it, and kind of was a little bit enticed by the thing that you alluded to at the beginning of, like, no one else is doing this, because it made it feel like it was a white space. And so, yeah, both a little bit of idiocy, as well as the wading into the waters and realizing there might be something interesting to explore here.
Jay Acunzo [00:02:33]:
What was the first talk you ever gave to a business crowd where you were trying to use poetry as a source of insight that they needed? Do you remember as you went up there? Was there any fight or flight reflex going on? What was that first talk where you're like, okay, I'm actually stepping out over the wire, and I'm talking about poetry to a business crowd, which, by the way, I'm doing this for a fact. I fully believe in what you're talking about. And everybody, by the end of this episode will, too. But I just imagine that the cultural norms might present a source of friction. So I'm just curious about that first ever speech you gave where you were teaching something about poetry to a business crowd. What was the speech, and what was going through your mind?
Tucker Bryant [00:03:09]:
Oh, 100%. Yeah. It's funny. There are two answers I could give, and I'm gonna give the one my first in person audience. Cause I did a couple of, like, I had, like, a virtual talk I did late in the pandemic, where it was, like, I got on stage, totally empty crowd in an auditorium with, like, a couple hundred seats. And so that was, like, an interestingly, you know, strange waiting in. But then a year later or so, when things opened back up, I got on stage to a tech audience. They did tech SaaS, sales software, if I'm incorrect.
Tucker Bryant [00:03:39]:
And, yeah, there was this moment of, like, oh, my gosh. The second I got on stage, it was like, should I be here? Is this the right. Like, are we all okay? Do we know what's going on? But at a certain point, I feel like you gotta just recognize that there is a level of unknown and use it as a testing ground. And so I was talking about the importance of sort of vulnerable sharing that poets do when they get on stage, and how that can help us be more effective as leaders and as innovators. I guess in that sense, it was almost like a meta point of, like, I felt a little awkward, you know, actually having the gall to get on stage and do this thing, but gave it a shot, and it resonated with folks. I'm not going to use the reverse resonance thing that I learned from you.
Jay Acunzo [00:04:22]:
Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. People need to hear this. This is a PSA right now, Tucker, for everybody listening. It resonated with me. Not, I resonated with it unless it can tell you, hey, Tucker, you resonated with me, and it an inanimate object, right? Like, you know, the message resonates with you. You don't resonate with the message. Let's just put out that PSA, and for once and for all, let's solve and cure reverse resonance syndrome.
Jay Acunzo [00:04:48]:
It afflicts many a communicator. And this, I like to joke, this show tips off the rails very early every episode, and we've reached that moment.
Tucker Bryant [00:04:57]:
Spit. Poet.
Jay Acunzo [00:05:00]:
You mentioned you were into poetry in college. What was the earliest poem you can remember, I'm assuming before college, as sort of stopping you in your tracks and making you go, huh, there's something to this whole poetry thing.
Tucker Bryant [00:05:12]:
Oh, my gosh. There's this poem whose name I still cannot pronounce, which is really embarrassing, by a poet whom I love, named Joshua Bennett. The poem, I believe, is called Babalanoptra. Something along those lines. I'm sure if you try to spell it out, you'll find something like it on Google. It's a love poem to a long distance love he had, in which he uses a whale as a metaphor for his love. And it was just this combination of rich language with this really electrifying performance that made me realize, like, words can do what? Like, are we serious right now? And I was just hooked, and I was enticed, and I was inspired. And, yeah, after many years of trying to imitate my favorite artists and still kind of, like, steadily trying to find my voice, it just, I guess things, over time, evolved into a style of writing that I don't feel like I could live without.
Tucker Bryant [00:06:05]:
That's really dramatic, but you know what I mean.
Jay Acunzo [00:06:07]:
I get it. And also, words can do. What are we seeing? This right now is how I feel routinely running around the business world. I mean, this show is a big version of me doing that to be like, do you not see? Do you see what we're missing, people? When we turn to these tools, these hacks, these cheats, these shortcuts? We think it's stuff to churn out. At scale, we're ten x ing our content. What about ten x ing the power? Right? Like, the volume is different than the power. And this show is ultimately about what gives our work and our words power, which is one of the reasons I wanted to have you on early in the run, because from the moment I met you, I was like, oh, that guy communicates with a lot of power.
Tucker Bryant [00:06:42]:
Appreciate that.
Jay Acunzo [00:06:43]:
When you think about your work as a keynote speaker. I want to try and parse this because I know it's evolved for you. You give speeches. I know there was a version of you on stage where you were performing poetry to teach. So you were talking about poetry through poem, and then. So there's a difference, I think. I want to understand this evolution. There's a difference, I think, in what you're talking about now, where you're giving speeches about the power of poetry, and you use a methodology called the poet's keys.
Jay Acunzo [00:07:18]:
Right. You are not yourself. I want to help people plant you on stage delivering poems about, say, business or innovation or even what you can learn from their spoken word. And I know you do that well. But then you're a keynote speaker trying to bring the power of the poet's keys to the business world. Did I get that right?
Tucker Bryant [00:07:34]:
That's correct. Yeah. It previously was like poetry was the vehicle, and it was like this sort of entertaining peanut butter that we could wrap around the medicine to get folks to take down the message. But rather than being the vehicle now, it's the metaphor. It's the thing that we try to adopt the posture of, to explain to other folks how they might be able to get into that same posture, perspective, et cetera, in order to achieve the kinds of change they're trying to take advantage of in the work that they do.
Jay Acunzo [00:08:04]:
So as a speaker, I imagine you now have some back pocket stories, maybe some feel like signature stories. And I like to determine whether or not something is a signature story, not because we repeat it a lot, but because we know how to sign our names to it. One of the previous episodes of this show was with Anne Handley, and she talked about how we all sign our work in the era of writing robots and commodity content. How do we sign our own work? So a signature story is a story about anything. Could be other people, but you've put your unique signature on it somehow. So I imagine you have some stories like that and some stories that seem more like quick examples or things you cite. As somebody who is a couple of years into being a professional speaker, how have your signature stories or just the stories you've uncovered gone with you? What I don't want is for people to go, here's someone who talks about poetry on stages, two very unrelatable things to me. What I'm curious about is where have you seen your stories show up away from the stage? And how has it helped you?
Tucker Bryant [00:09:05]:
Oh, that's such a good question. Honestly, they show up for me almost every time I sit down and try to make things happen for myself. There's that cliche that we teach what we need to learn, which I feel super attached to because I want to be an artist and a creative who is consistently evolving in their work. But in order to do that, there are a lot of things I have to remind myself of to get through things like writer's block and to get through things like perfectionism and desire to imitate safe work and things of this nature. And I feel like the stories that I tell on stage have evolved in accordance with the learnings I've had just sitting at my desk trying to write new stuff or discover new frontiers in my work. And, yeah, I have to come back to them in part to remind myself, like, yo, you're telling hundreds of people this kind of stuff every week, and you gotta remind yourself that it's something you should be doing, too. And so they stay with me every time I basically sit down at the desk and try to pick up the pen.
Jay Acunzo [00:10:05]:
So that's the rattling around your brain and affecting how you show up to the work today. In other words, you're not physically repeating them everywhere, but they are informing how you view the work and how you view yourself in it.
Tucker Bryant [00:10:15]:
100%.
Jay Acunzo [00:10:16]:
Yeah, that's funny. There's all these meta level, that's not the answer I expected, which is great. But we've had other speakers. Andrew Davis, episode one, talking about, oh, these signature stories show up in his speech, but also his YouTube series, also his written content, also his guest appearances. What you were saying is the lessons they're in and the moments they're in show up in the back of your mind as you put your hands to the keyboard today, or pen to paper, which is one of those meta benefits. Like, I think a huge meta benefit of having signature stories for me is in moments where my life feels difficult, which, oh, my gosh, everybody dealt with a global crisis, right? And then you have everything happening in global politics or domestic politics. You have things happening in your life. I have two little kids, right? Like, all the things that happen with that, you show up feeling worse than your best self, which is, most times I would argue.
Jay Acunzo [00:11:04]:
And when I tell a signature story, it sort of reignites in me a sense of flow, or it's a place where I can strut a little bit, right? Like, Jay, give me an example. Or I'm on stage given the story, or I'm opening a new written piece or something like that. So they're in three places. I show up as a guest, as a speaker. As a writer and within the bounds of a story that's familiar, I can play, I can strike, I can be like, oh, I'm going to exaggerate this part for effect. I gave a talk, it was in Milwaukee at a wonderful event called experience inbound. I was very honored to speak at their ten year anniversary event, and they had it at the Harley Davidson Museum in Milwaukee. And I was up against these huge windows, and we were up several flights, and there was a big drop down to water.
Jay Acunzo [00:11:47]:
And I have this moment in the middle of my speech that I call my chaos rant, which is kind of a signature story. And at the end of it, I, like, huff and puff and wheeze and look stressed out. And I've been able to get it to the point where I can reliably get people to break into applause. So I know how to create an applause break in the middle of my speech, which is profoundly awesome, addicting for me. Right. And I'm very proud to figure that out. And I've tried it with lots of different audiences and different stages and sizes of audience. It's like, okay, this is proven.
Jay Acunzo [00:12:15]:
This is working. I know how to get and trigger the applause break. I would just keep going, or I would just, like, nod to the crowd and pant and then keep going. And this was an event where I was, like, feeling a little bit worse. Then maybe I was sad to leave my kids, or I just felt tired. I don't know. In the middle of that, I was like, oh, I gotta stick the landing differently here. So I finished.
Jay Acunzo [00:12:35]:
People applauded, I was panting, and then I turned the glass and, like, made, like I was gonna jump, and I was like, thank God there's glass. Or I do it. Like, you know, it's stuff like that. And I found it in other places, too. Like, stage curtains are places I will awkwardly try to hide behind them after the applause break. Like, there's ways you can take proven people talk about using things that are proven in your business. What they rarely talk about is when you have a story that's proven just how many places it shows up and how many ways you can benefit from it or explore it. And so, for me, I draft off the emotion of it to become a better version of myself or the best version I could be if I showed up that day feeling a little bit less them.
Jay Acunzo [00:13:16]:
Does that make sense?
Tucker Bryant [00:13:17]:
Oh, that's so cool. Yeah. So there's almost this. There's this reciprocal energy you get from being in conversation with the story, and it can almost realign what you are able to give, not only externally, but also what you're experiencing. If you get into that state of flow, which is super cool, and I can relate to that.
Jay Acunzo [00:13:34]:
It sounds kind of cheesy, I know, but if you've experienced it, you don't think so, where you're like, it's no longer the audience and me, it's just us. You know what I mean? We're in a moment together, sharing it. I just happen to be the flag bearer for the idea or the words or the joke or whatever, but we're kind of all experiencing it together, which is unlike any feeling in the creative arts that I've ever experienced. And there's something so special about that in person feeling. But I think you can manufacture and recreate this elsewhere as well. So I don't know if that resonates. As a poet, if you've felt that.
Tucker Bryant [00:14:07]:
Way on stage, it 100% does. And the experience of returning to a story, that you either remember what it felt like when you first wrote it or performed it, and it enabled you to kind of get out of yourself, in a certain sense, is something that I've always really appreciated. Like, I'm thinking back now to that experience, getting on that first stage of feeling, really, it's like, whatever that feels like does go away when you become the vehicle for the story or the poem or whatever the thing is. And I found that in those moments when I'm, like, truly in that state of flow, all that matters is that the thing that I'm trying to share gets out, and it no longer becomes this, like, egoic thing of, how do I feel in this moment? It's more just like, yo, it's gotta come out somewhere or another. I'm the vessel for it, to do that, and I think it's a special experience.
Jay Acunzo [00:14:52]:
Well, I'm gonna ask you to be the vessel for one of your stories right now. When you brought this story up as the story you wanted to tell on the show, you said a couple things. Two hit me, and I was like, oh, interesting. One is, you said, it's the backbone right now, of the main argument you make in your keynotes. And the second is, and this is like, tell me more, my friend. It's very much what I consider to be the culmination of all the conversations you and I, meaning you and me, tucker, have had about creativity, innovation, and art. I was like, okay, so we've summited the mountain here. This is the view from the summit.
Jay Acunzo [00:15:28]:
Okay, I'm really intrigued. Don't explain those things. I'll let the words and the story do the talking, but just set this up for us. Where will this story be used? Is it the first thing you present in a speech? Is it like a tipping point in the middle? Where is it used? And what have people heard that sets it up? Like, what's their current understanding as they go on a journey with you?
Tucker Bryant [00:15:53]:
Yeah, it's just about the first thing they hear, not like the first set of words. It's the first content that they will receive. And the way that it's set up is I've just acknowledged that I am a poet on stage speaking to a room full of people with real jobs. And that probably feels strange. And so we should probably address why I have the gall to be in this position, trying to impart anything of value to folks who do big people stuff every day. So that's what the tempest is.
Jay Acunzo [00:16:19]:
That's great. So you acknowledge and are seeking to relieve the tension immediately, right. Addressing the elephant in the room almost. I love that. I love that. All right, well, when you're ready. How do you do that?
Tucker Bryant [00:16:33]:
So, a couple hundred years ago, a young man named Robert was making his living as a full time poet. In other words, he's often broke, which is not funny, but. So one day, he wants to earn a little bit of extra cash, and he reads a magazine and spots an ad that says, submissions wanted. We'll pay for poems. And so he thinks, maybe this is my chance to get myself out of the red. And so Robert pens this gorgeous poem on a piece of paper. He licks and seals it an envelope, sends it off to the papers in New York City. And he waits.
Tucker Bryant [00:17:01]:
And a few months later, he gets the greatest news of his young life. The poem he'd written had been selected to be published in the New York Independent magazine, meaning that he was about to walk away with the life changing sum of $15, which, to be clear, is a lot of money to most poets today. So imagine what this felt like back in 1894. This meant Robert was rich. And so he throws inside his pen and paper, he picks up his earnings, and he starts spending like royalty. He's eating well, drinking good, until one day, he notices his quote unquote small fortune starting to run a little bit thin. So he says to himself, no problem. I think I can do this again.
Tucker Bryant [00:17:35]:
And so he reverse engineers his last poem, writes another one the exact same style, sends it off to the papers, and he gets his poem published. But this time, he gets a few rejections first, and he says, that's weird. I mean, this is a damn good poem. I'm looking at this one, looking at the last one I wrote. They're almost the same. But he says, no problem. Again, he throws out his pen and paper, picks up his earnings, and starts spending like crazy again, eating well, drinking good, until once again, his quote, unquote small fortune starts to run a little thin. So you know how this goes.
Tucker Bryant [00:18:03]:
He writes another poem with the same style, sends it off to the papers. But this time, he gets a whole pile of rejections. And this time, nobody wants to publish Robert's poem. And Robert's left wondering how it can be that a style that so recently served him so well no longer does. So if you haven't guessed by now, this is a story about poetry that has nothing to do with poetry. It's the story of Henry Ford, who revolutionized auto production with the Model T, but got so obsessed with optimizing it that he quickly fell behind competitors who were experimenting with new features. It's the story of Kodak, who developed the world's first digital camera, but were so in love with their traditional film business that they ran it into the ground. See, we all eventually learned that even the greatest victories can only deliver us temporary excellence.
Tucker Bryant [00:18:47]:
Because as time passes, our customers, our companies, our competitors, the world changes. So the things that once helped us stand out start to feel kind of ordinary. But as human beings, we often get so wrapped up in our past successes that we turn to the same tactics over and over. Just like Robert, we write the same poem again and again, until one day they fail us. And when they do, we kind of panic. We unleash a heroic burst of creative energy via stunts and trends to give ourselves another sweet hint of the feeling of excellence, not realizing that if we're only creative when we're standing on the back foot, we're walking back into the same trap we all want to escape. If I put it like this, it might make more sense. Most people treat creativity kind of like a fire extinguisher, but we don't as often use it to change the material of the house that clearly keeps burning down around us.
Tucker Bryant [00:19:36]:
And if we live like this, the things that once caused us to succeed very well could end up being the things that cause us to go obsolete. The good news is that I think there's a better way for us to do this. You see, for Robert, rejection was the perfect excuse for him to look for new reasons to play with his craft. And so he stops writing for money, and he starts just writing. He writes every day when there was no obvious need to. He writes beautiful poems and boring poems, wonderful and weird poems, poems with rich metaphors and poems you'd be ashamed to hear, because, as Robert was about to discover, when our goals shift from excellence to exploration, we often end up finding both. You see, pretty soon, all of Robert's work begins to improve. Soon the.
Tucker Bryant [00:20:15]:
The worst poems he's writing today are better than the best poems he written five years ago. Soon he has poems in the New Yorker, the Atlantic, the Yale Review, and before the world knew what had happened, Robert Frost had become the poet that we still read and teach today. Who is the author of the poem about the road less traveled? The man who wrote poems in lines so unforgettable. Lines like, what? But design of darkness to appal. If design governed in a thing so small, and if you don't understand what that means, that's how you know it's great poetry. See, once again, this is a story about poetry that has nothing to do with poetry. For years, I worked in Silicon Valley by day, while writing poems by night. And I know those two worlds sound a universe apart.
Tucker Bryant [00:20:57]:
But working in Silicon Valley as an artist showed me that for poets and professionals, the need we have to consistently reinvent our craft is literally existential. The only reason poetry has survived for thousands of years is because every day, poets like Robert wake up, whether they're succeeding or struggling, whether they're famous or invisible. And they ask themselves what one thing is they can do with their art today that they didn't do with it yesterday. And I believe that adopting that posture of proactive exploration will enable us to take our moments of excellence and turn them into a true momentum of excellence.
Jay Acunzo [00:21:30]:
Finn, how did it feel?
Tucker Bryant [00:21:34]:
It feels so different doing it in a desk chair.
Jay Acunzo [00:21:38]:
Yeah.
Tucker Bryant [00:21:38]:
With headphones on.
Jay Acunzo [00:21:39]:
It was a little rust.
Tucker Bryant [00:21:41]:
Yeah.
Jay Acunzo [00:21:42]:
But I think I can see why it's a signature story. I can see why it's the signature story. You also said you wanted to take this opportunity to tighten it. Like, I'm curious, what things about it do you feel deserve that level of focus and improvement right now? Cause it does feel like it carries your message. Right? It's all there.
Tucker Bryant [00:22:01]:
Yeah. So a couple of things come to mind there. One is, I have this constant uncertainty about whether the content I include in my stories are all in service of the message. And that's obviously a really broad question, like, does it further the argument? But some of it is just like, does it help keep the audience's attention? Like, am I creating the peaks and troughs of energy or the humorous breaks or whatever else that ensure that folks are still engaged through the experience. And at moments, I'm just not certain that the way that I've presented it is as economical as it could be. I wonder if I index too heavily on the justification. You know, as I think I've talked about with you a lot, or as I've learned from you, our goal in setting up these stories as arguments is often to kind of make the conclusion inescapable. But obviously, I also don't want to beat the dead horse if by a certain point in the story folks are already with me.
Tucker Bryant [00:23:01]:
You know what I mean? And so I wonder sometimes if I've gone too far in making the justification or trying to get the audience to see themselves in the protagonist's shoes when they might get it sooner. And we can, you know, get a little bit quicker at the conclusion. So that might be just a second guessing instinct I have, but that's something that comes up a lot.
Jay Acunzo [00:23:25]:
I want to parse this on a couple levels because there's, like, the content of it all. But then, and this is not true just with a spoken word, anything like a keynote or a poem. But I think there's the dramaturgical adaptation of life, right? Like, you are performing something that wasn't itself performed. It happened. You are squeezing into your runtime, somebody's lifetime or a moment in time, which is not apples to apples, right? I've quoted this person before, but the author, David Sedaris, when asked, are your stories true? Because he's an autobiographical storyteller, he'll respond flippantly. True enough for you?
Tucker Bryant [00:24:03]:
Oh, nice.
Jay Acunzo [00:24:04]:
Isn't that great? It's like, where do you start to ratchet up or ratchet down? The pacing, the pivots, all those things. So, like, what I would think of this story as is not. It needs tightening, but it's like you need to exert or pull back from the drama and the dramatic moments of it all for it to work. Like, I'll give you a really easy example. You have a superpower, which is you can endear yourself to the audience quite well. You have a big thousand watt smile. You acknowledge the tension, whereas some would shy from it or be self important within it. Like, I'm a poet.
Jay Acunzo [00:24:38]:
You all have real jobs. What am I doing here? Like, all of these things are actually gifts or I would say, skills you've worked on, right? And one way to use that is to. And I would go very far in this direction. Cause I don't shy away from the bad dad jokes and then groaning to myself on stage about myself, because the audience needs to know. I know too. But, you know, the pivot from. In other words, he was often broke. And then you say, as they start to chuckle, you approach one person who starts to chuckle.
Jay Acunzo [00:25:10]:
Instead of just the line delivered as content, you perform. I don't find that funny. I'm a poet, right? And it's like a little shakespearean. Like, I am a poet. How dare you laugh at my chosen profession, right? And then you move on, and you can play with that line as you go to different stages or see or watch or hear different reactions from people.
Tucker Bryant [00:25:29]:
So.
Jay Acunzo [00:25:29]:
And there's. There's a few of those moments in here, you know? Like, one of the things that I think defines this story. Is getting people to buy into the superficial premise that this is a story about a poet. And then pivoting to the metaphorical premise, like, the actual plain language in sight without undermining the metaphor. And that's like a delicate dance. So, like, here's a line. This is a story about poetry that has nothing to do with poetry. I think how you deliver that really matters.
Jay Acunzo [00:26:05]:
Cause I'm going, wait, what? I just listened to a piece of you talk about why you're justifying yourself as a poet and all that stuff. And maybe either you can imply that pivot, or if you'd use an overt line, it's more like, this story is not really about poetry, you know? And then you have to rattle off the list that follows as a true list. Cause what you said was too literal. You're like, it's the story of Henry Ford. And I was like, I thought it was the story of Robert something, right? So the performance of it is really what I'm getting to. It's the story of Henry Ford, this guy that we all revere as revolutionizing auto production with the model t. But guess what happened after that. He became so obsessed with optimizing it.
Jay Acunzo [00:26:46]:
That he quickly fell behind competitors who were experimenting with new features. It's the story of Kodak. This amazing company that was revered for a moment in time, developed the first ever digital camera. What a breakthrough. But they fell so in love with that idea and their film business that was working so well. That they turned their back on everything else. And basically rode their current business all the way to bankruptcy. Right? So once you're playing up the fact that the superficial meaning and the metaphorical meaning help each other, you're not just hard pivoting.
Jay Acunzo [00:27:17]:
Away from it. And then secondly, those mini stories are matching what the audience is going through. So you kind of agitate their pain because you're like, it was amazing. I'm not taking anything away. Ford was amazing. Right. Or this revolution was amazing. Do you know what happened after that amazing moment? Right? This terribleness.
Jay Acunzo [00:27:35]:
So those little mini examples, they mimic the whole of the story because that's what your message is. It's like you're going through an amazing moment right now. Guess what happens after that. I don't know, but it's probably gonna be like theirs. Let's avoid that.
Tucker Bryant [00:27:46]:
Yeah. Oh, I really like the mirroring of the internal experience of the audience. It is such a delicate dance, but I think you've captured it really well in making that connection between the metaphor to the real or the applicable stories. And, yeah, to your point, like, I think I do have this internal questioning at times of, because I am opening up with a story that is, in a literal sense, about a poet, is that, in essence, just, like, inherently something that folks will have a sort of a natural not repulsion from, but reluctance to take on. And so making that transition from that universe to the business universe, I agree with you. It's got to be one of the most important moments in this story. And getting it right is delicate.
Jay Acunzo [00:28:31]:
Right. You can't undermine the metaphor. The metaphor matters. Right? And so the superficial piece of it, the non literal half of it, it's not like you're saying that it doesn't matter and you want them a step ahead of you. You're probably already thinking, all right, this sounds like other stuff in our world of innovation or building businesses. Right? Yeah, I'm with you. Like Henry Ford. Like Kodak, by the way, I think you need a third.
Jay Acunzo [00:28:53]:
There was something, like, slightly missing. It was like, in the dish, I was like, a little more salt. It wasn't a huge miss, but I was like, oh, there's two. There's something in my brain. I was like, could I get a third? You know, radically different third or something. I don't know. But you use two. Use Henry Ford at N Kodak.
Jay Acunzo [00:29:09]:
I think there's, like, a macro level structure to this that each of those tiny, quick hit examples should mimic. And in the first, like, buildup with Robert, with your audience, the buildup is not. Things are going poorly. The buildup is like, you broke through. You had a moment of innovation. You had a moment of success. Right. You're in the metaphorical terminology.
Jay Acunzo [00:29:30]:
You are eating well and drinking good. I love that because you can bring that back, too. Talking about, you know, in your work, you're probably going through this, too. You know, whatever you're doing, you had a breakthrough. You're eating well and drinking good. You know, you bring it through as a little stitching that comes through. So anyways, that's the macro level. It's like on the come up, things are great.
Jay Acunzo [00:29:49]:
Moment of innovation, moment of creativity. Then you ride it too long, and then you're reacting and the whole message is, don't. It's not a fire extinguisher. Creativity is not reactive or a series of stunts. I think the phrase you use at the end was proactive exploration. Right. The secondary metaphor of don't use it as a fire extinguisher. Use it as a way to replace what it actually is as a means to replace the materials of the house so it doesn't burn down.
Tucker Bryant [00:30:18]:
I love this framing as well as this acknowledgement of, like, there being a macro structure. And that a way to get the audience to take the story on more easily, in part, lies in mirroring that macro structure at all three stages. The Robert story, the Henry Ford and Kodak, et cetera, stories and audience connection that comes thereafter.
Jay Acunzo [00:30:40]:
Yeah, right. I wonder what other pieces of this feel like we could pull this forward if we assume that there's, like, subtle little reveals happening all the while. Like, Henry Ford is an invader. Right? Amazing. But by the way, what happened after Kodak, we all know that story, right? Amazing. And then what happened after, you know, third example. Amazing. And then what happened after.
Jay Acunzo [00:31:02]:
It's almost like you get people so riled up that I felt most comfortable, almost safe. When you return to our friend Robert. And that's where there's, like, another moment of you endearing us or you endearing yourself to the audience where the good news is, I think there's a better way to do this. That's the height of the tension. You've built it up. Like, it's not enough to do the one thing. It's not enough to be Kodak or Henry Ford on the come up. You gotta worry about this as a reactive thing.
Jay Acunzo [00:31:30]:
Cause things are burning. No, we want something better than this. And I'm so eager and a little stressed out. I'm very agitated that then you moving away from the business world again, back to the metaphor head on, helps me feel soothed in a way. And so you go the way you said it was something like what gave Robert the poet permission. I think there's a need to pivot harder to that metaphor again to be like, let's just go back to our friend Robert, whose real name, by the way, is Robert Frost. So anyways, what you've done is you've basically finished off the kind of metaphor as I thought it was coming. And then you've moved me to the business world.
Jay Acunzo [00:32:10]:
And then you're asking me what else can be done here? And I'm like, I don't know. I'm panicking though, right? And you're like, okay, hold on a sec. Let's just go back to our friend Robert. And I'm like, oh, thank God. It's not about me. It's about Robert now.
Tucker Bryant [00:32:21]:
Right, right. We like open up the loop and we leave it in a state of crisis.
Jay Acunzo [00:32:26]:
Yes.
Tucker Bryant [00:32:26]:
And the connecting crisis to the audience. But then we have to kind of resolve that. And returning to Robert hopefully gives folks the sense that the better solution is coming, which I really like.
Jay Acunzo [00:32:36]:
Right, right. Which is, by the way, where your silence is actually the most important, where you're like, going to pivot back as you're moving through it. I know you did it faster here than on a stage, but you move through it really quickly, or at least very confidently on a stage or on the mic or anywhere in your writing. And then you move to essentially this power line of when we shift our goals from excellence to exploration, we often end up finding both. And I needed a little bookended silence. There's. Because it is the moment where tension is relieved. It is the moment where I need to sit with that thought as a recipient of it.
Jay Acunzo [00:33:10]:
And it's also the moment where I want to give the audience a moment to sit with their butterflies, sit with the tension, and then give them this bomb for that pain. And that one line is that. I mean, it's the handhold for a lot that comes after that. But that's the moment where you kind of have to back off and not clutter it with too many details. You sent me a written version and you're like, when we shift our goals from excellence to exploration, we often end up finding both. Soon, all of Robert's work began to improve soon. And I'm like, no, now it's about me, not about Robert. And I need a little beat and silence.
Jay Acunzo [00:33:46]:
If it's spoken to, pivot back to me.
Tucker Bryant [00:33:48]:
That's actually so helpful to hear because it almost feels like in writing this, I'm making the assumption that that line, that is the summation of the idea needs to be explained, which, like, obviously in some part we will. But as you're saying, one, it relates to the audience and it's something that they deserve to get to sit with. And two, like, if that's the idea I want them to walk away with, or one of the ideas I want them to walk away with, it should have some handles on either side, which is bookended by the silence. And so even though I rushed through it this time, I definitely don't pause when I'm delivering this on stage. I go straight from that sentence to the next one. And so hearing this as like a let that sit is really helpful.
Jay Acunzo [00:34:31]:
So if you're gonna trim it at all or tighten it, you might take out the credibility builders that follow. So essentially, Robert Frost makes this mental shift that you're asking the audience to make. He's not going to react. He's gonna be proactive. He's not gonna seek excellence. He's gonna be an explorer. And in doing so, he's gonna find excellence as well. And then you build credibility.
Jay Acunzo [00:34:50]:
Afterwards, all of his work began to improve. Poems he was writing today better than the poems he wrote yesterday. He had poems in the New Yorker, the Atlantic, all these things. It's almost like, just get rid of that stuff. Because in the preceding paragraphs, if you just reveal to us that Robert's real name is Robert Frost, everyone's gonna get it right. He's no longer a everyday writer. He's Robert Frost. And what was the shift that Robert Frost made? Oh, we can all make it too.
Tucker Bryant [00:35:15]:
And this is exactly what I need to hear. Because in what ways might I be over indexing on either the content or the engagement entertainment side of the story at the expense of, like, the velocity of the story? I think this is one area in which, like, I'm trying to just da da da da da da da da, like, build that rhythm and tension, but at the expense of the economicalness or however we want to call that word of the story? And so hearing that as a thing that can go because, like, we've already justified is really helpful. Also, side note, I like this feedback, and I appreciate this feedback because there's something to me that always felt odd about, I know it's probably often more objective how our success takes shape in a business context. But, like, I wondered when writing this story, like, is there something like a little bit disingenuous about talking about poems being objectively better and that being mediated solely through the lens of these, like, external publications? And I think they're like, broader, more ambiguous, but still real ways of folks understanding that a poet is a good poet that are justified just by, like, referencing poems that we all know of Roberts have been affected by. And I think those are probably better mechanisms for making that justification than, like, the academy has said that he's good. And so I think there's, like, a tertiary benefit of removing this line, but one that I've been trying to, like, work at or figure out why I feel odd about for a while. And so it helps that, too.
Jay Acunzo [00:36:44]:
Let's talk about the ending. How do you feel about how you stick the landing or dovetail to whatever follows this, but the last piece you gave us, how do you feel about that?
Tucker Bryant [00:36:53]:
The fact that I'm pausing, I think, tells me that I don't have a strongly positive or negative response to it, which means that I'd definitely be open to exploring other endings, I think.
Jay Acunzo [00:37:07]:
Yeah, I do kind of feel like there's. Comedians might call it a tag, but there's, like, a little extra thing where, like, you're slowing down, you're arriving at that insight. You're extracting from the metaphor. Like, when we shift our goals from excellence to exploration, we often end up finding both. And by the way, if you reveal before in a nice moment, that imparts chills, like, back to our friend Robert, whose real name is Robert Frost, and then you land on the insight, now you don't have to build his credibility afterwards. His name does that. You give us that insight that's so powerful, you almost become like Tucker the person with the audience versus Tucker the speaker to the audience, where you're like, this is a guy, by the way, that wrote lines that I adore, like this. What? But design of darkness to appal if design governed in a thing so small, which, if you're wondering what the heck does that means? That's how you know it's good poetry, right? Like, that's fine.
Jay Acunzo [00:38:00]:
That's another endearing moment. I'm not trying to strip you of the power that you uniquely bring, but you're just putting a little space before that. And then it's like you pop out of storyteller mode, almost like you can see a physical motion here. Cause it's a stage. But, like, walk towards the audience and be like, by the way, this is amazing, right?
Tucker Bryant [00:38:17]:
Yeah.
Jay Acunzo [00:38:17]:
And the audience doesn't find it. It's amazing. And it's like, that's how you know it's good poetry, by the way. Maybe translate it. That's just a little quick note. I actually was like, what? So maybe. Oh, by the way, it means this. But do we say that as poets? No, of course not.
Jay Acunzo [00:38:31]:
We don't say that as poets.
Tucker Bryant [00:38:33]:
Right.
Jay Acunzo [00:38:34]:
And then what I would do is, I would hard pivot to that line again to bring us out of the metaphor for the last time and say, like, remember, this is a story that's not really about poetry, it's about. And then instead of an example that looks like the audience, you just speak to the audience. It's about our work as. And you can customize it very nicely here. Hr professionals, business leaders, entrepreneurs, marketers, whoever you're speaking to in that piece or in that speech, right? And then you just retrace the steps. Here's what we normally do. We have a moment, and that's what was missing for the ending. You have to sort of like retrace the steps in plainer language now and then pivot to your teachings beyond it.
Jay Acunzo [00:39:16]:
Like we have a moment where we succeed. Basically, what I'm saying is, at the very end, what we need is, here's what we normally do to agitate the audience's pain, right? So you might say, like, this is what we normally do. We normally turn a moment of excellence into an eternity of optimization. We want to take brilliance and polish it. By the way, what happens when you take something shining bright and polish it, and polish it, and polish it? You scratch it, you ruin it. And what once was brilliant is now just flat matte, right? You remove the brilliance that cause you to want to pursue it more. And the problem is you're now reacting to it, incrementalizing it, operationalizing it, and you're waiting until it breaks, and then you try to go find the next moment of brilliance. Don't do that.
Jay Acunzo [00:40:02]:
Do this instead. Right. You have to build new material into the house. I used to joke that great creative work is always changing or something like that, whereas a lot of people that don't get creativity, they're like, we did the thing and it worked, and then it stopped working because we beat it to death. Now we need the new thing. And it's just a series of spikes that you're chasing. But what defines a spike is it also goes down just as quickly as it went up. And the way to arc the whole line and not just have a series of wins and then panic moments.
Jay Acunzo [00:40:31]:
The way to arch the whole line in the direction you want as a business or as a career is you have to make incremental changes all the time. You have to change what's working while it's still working. That's true creativity. That's proactive exploration and people go, oh, my God, I want that. And then the next question is, how do I do that? And then other stories, other quick examples or anecdotes come out in the speech or in your body of work.
Tucker Bryant [00:40:55]:
Oh, man. So there's some element of like, yeah. Returning to the literal and sort of being very clear about what the outcome is if we make the shift that I'm trying to get folks to take on. And that's kind of what gives folks that internal sense of like, yeah, that is something that I want and need. And now I am bought into wanting to learn how to do the thing. And I agree that that's not here. It's not going on right now. Also has that shining something until it's scratched metaphor been used.
Tucker Bryant [00:41:24]:
That's the coolest thing I've ever heard.
Jay Acunzo [00:41:26]:
Use it. That's yours now. Because that's what you talk about. You're talking about, essentially, you have a moment of brilliance, and then what do we do in the business world? And this is you kind of like using a tinier metaphor hanging off the big one. That gets us back to the literal, because a lot of business people, they think very literally, and you're trying to open them up to something brand new, using metaphor, using story. And unlike, you know, maybe a documentarian or a fiction author or other pockets of storytelling, I think as a business storyteller, sometimes we are trying to spell it out in the appropriate place and need to. And, you know, you can tip too far. But I think this is one of those.
Jay Acunzo [00:42:00]:
That it is a metaphor, but it somehow feels even more literal than talking about poetry. It's like you have a moment of brilliance, right? And then how do we approach those things? We don't, like, tinker on the technology to make it stay brilliant more sustainably, or that we think we're doing that. Typically what we're doing, though, is we're taking that beautifully shiny thing, we scrub it with, like, a sponge until it's. Or you decide the metaphor here. But it's just essentially looking at the current approach that your audience is going through and agitating the pain they experience so that they go, oh, my gosh, how do I act like Robert Frost? Which at the beginning of your speech, if you were to say to them ten minutes from now, I'm going to convince you that you want to act like Robert Frost, they'd be like, get out of here.
Tucker Bryant [00:42:44]:
Right? Oh, man. Now I want to just not tear this thing apart, but, like, make these shifts right now. Now I've got three or four ideas based on what you're sharing that are running through my head, and so I'm.
Jay Acunzo [00:42:55]:
Excited to get to work on this proactive exploration. Talk to me about any kind of conflict you see with how people typically work. I know you've identified it here, but you have set the tone now in this speech. How do you then play the speech forward so that people don't fall back to sort of reactive creativity or stunts or all the things you're attacking? Like, yes, I'm open to it now that I've heard these metaphors and this story. You're trying to now teach me the power of proactive exploration. How do you do that? What makes this story set up the rest of your teachings?
Tucker Bryant [00:43:28]:
There are a few tools or directives that I'll bring up, depending on what the context of the audience is. That will sort of make the map to the exploring a little bit clearer or give them places to jump in. And there'll be either a cadence or some sort of homework that they'll get for each tool that gives them an opportunity to jump in there.
Jay Acunzo [00:43:49]:
Do you have, like, a visual framework that follows this or six prompts or, like, what's on the back end of the story that ensures people don't go, that's a nice idea. I'm going to go back to my original behavior.
Tucker Bryant [00:43:59]:
Yeah, you know what? Honestly, we just go straight into the first module, so there isn't like a visual framework or anything like that that comes up. I say, I've identified a number of tools that poets use to make the work of proactive exploration more of a lifestyle than a last resort, and let's walk through them. So there might be an opportunity to bring that to life in a more vivid way.
Jay Acunzo [00:44:18]:
I think it's just about callbacks now, honestly. Like, you've set it up so viscerally in these almost a handful of metaphors that all kind of roll up to the main metaphor. But as you push forward and say, okay, here's one of the things that poets do, here's how you adapt it to your world. Just carry this forward. Right? Like, don't just drop it wholesale, just start interspersing language from this, whether it's the brilliance being overly polished or the fire extinguisher and building the material, the house, that was huge. That was like, oh, my gosh, that hit me where I lived. That's what creativity is. It's your strengthening what's working and tinkering on it constantly.
Jay Acunzo [00:44:52]:
So it's always better and better and better. You know, not waiting until something is terrible and burning down and then relying on creativity to fix it. I think you just said lifestyle, not last resort, right? John Cleese from Monty Python. Very famously, creativity is not a talent. It is a way of operating. You could say in this world, creativity is not a stunt. It's not a campaign. It's not a fix or cure all pill.
Jay Acunzo [00:45:15]:
It is a way of operating. And so the methodology you bring is the way poets operate and what we can all learn. So you can kind of bring in pieces of the metaphor so that you're always pointing to, remember, this is how we normally do it. We wait, we react. We're pulling stunts because it's broken. Here's how we're doing it again, and here's this piece of it. So I think all you've done, essentially, is give yourself a shared language with your audience that you can weave into the more straightforward, module by module teaching from here.
Tucker Bryant [00:45:44]:
Yeah, you're making me realize I don't really have those callbacks in there. The callbacks that I have are kind of constricted to or restricted to each module. So, like, we start talking about writing by erasing and referencing that directive again. But there isn't currently the really clear connection between the modules and the all up argument that makes it clear to folks how we're solving that initial, that.
Jay Acunzo [00:46:09]:
Big problem writing by erasing. I mean, the very straight ahead approach here is like, tell me immediately what that means, and then what the poet does, and at the end illuminate how writing by erasing is one way or a piece of the overall way you're prescribing to prevent you from using creativity as a fire extinguisher instead of for what, you know, essentially, stop pulling stunts, start proactively exploring. Either that's, I need all of them in a row, or they're distinct traits. And it's sort of a choose your own adventure, mix and match approach for the audience. But just at the end, I would call it back. I would just say, okay, so now that you understand what I mean by writing, by erasing and what it looks like through the lens of a poet and maybe something in the business world, remember the overarching thing we're trying to do? My overarching premise, the assertion I have for you is creativity, is this not that? Right? So you have to make sure that premise comes through. I think maybe just to button up each of those modules.
Tucker Bryant [00:47:12]:
Yeah, I think you're on the money with it, and I want it to feel more like a spider or a starfish, where, like, each of the legs are connected to this, like, central hub than whatever it is currently, which is more like, there's the main argument, but it's almost like on parody, with the five ways in which we're supposed to be able to move towards the argument that's being made. And I think that's a great way to do that.
Jay Acunzo [00:47:33]:
I always talk about a premise is like a lens that you have, and it's a lens you're trying to hand others. And your opening story here is the goggles. Like, you're handing them those goggles, and now they see it the way you see it. Okay, now that I see it the way you see it, I'm sitting in your audience, how do I do it? And you're going to say, well, poets write by erasing. And I'm going to see that, and you're going to help me see it. When you speak to that point through the lens of that overarching premise, right? That big money line that you gave me of, it's an assertion you're making about what creativity actually is. Shift the goal from excellence to exploration. We end up finding both.
Jay Acunzo [00:48:09]:
Don't use it reactively. Use it proactively. This is all about proactive exploration. And you're like, well, how is writing proactive exploration? Or how is erasing something? Isn't that reactive? Help me see it through that lens. So I like the starfish. Cause it's the same idea. It's from this core. The arms emerge right from the main heartbeat.
Jay Acunzo [00:48:29]:
You have the rest of the body that you're building out through the rest.
Tucker Bryant [00:48:31]:
Of the speech, but they're intimately connected to that central hub no matter what. I think that's brilliant.
Jay Acunzo [00:48:42]:
So tell me how you're feeling about the signature story now and or things that you've realized that you might want to try.
Tucker Bryant [00:48:48]:
Oh, my gosh. Honestly. So this is opening up a can of worms that I'm really excited to dive into. But if I'm being honest, there's one question that you brought up that hit me so interestingly, which was the question that you used to transition to this part of our conversation where you asked, how does this sort of, like, macro argument get sort of laid out? How do the things that you do after this help folks proactively explore? And it's making me wonder, like, are the things that I currently have in there even serving that overarching argument? Or are they just giving folks a way to explore at all in the presence of, like, assertive writer's block or an inability to make decisions. And so I'm now thinking I want to explore all the things that we talked about. And I'm also wanting to explore the question of, like, if the argument was that, that, you know, what I'm here to help folks do is to just give them a way to explore when they don't know how, as opposed to switching from reactivity to proactivity. What would that look like? And so I think I'm going to be making both, like, the micro changes that we've talked about and also blue sky thinking, asking myself what this sort of anatomy would look like if the argument were to shift. Because, yeah, you just, I think, unintentionally unlocked a totally new perspective on what I am wondering if my role is.
Jay Acunzo [00:50:10]:
Yeah, you could accuse the show of dissecting minutiae. That doesn't matter. But I find that we're always making a lawyerly logical case for something. It's just masquerading as something incredibly delightful and immersive and something that hopefully helps you snap into flow with us, the storytellers. But ultimately, we're making an argument. We are trying to get you from point a to point z, really, and hit every letter you need to hear along the way. It is not exactly what you think of when you head into telling stories as a professional. I think to do this professionally is to be much more of an arguer of some kind.
Jay Acunzo [00:50:45]:
Or I would say storytelling is all about showing. Right. You're trying to show people how you see it, and then you're saying, okay, given that we now see it the same way, what follows? How do we do it now? It sounds like that's the piece you're at now is like you're going to make incremental changes to the story that helps others see it the way you see it. And now that it's inescapable and we're both bought in, it's almost like a lawyer would say, okay, well, if we can agree this precedent, this law, okay, then necessarily we have to x, y and z. And that's the stuff you're filling in next.
Tucker Bryant [00:51:17]:
Yeah, it's so interesting, that lawyerly connection, because it is like, yeah, we make the truth inescapable, and we do that both through logos, but also through like, this presentation of the vivid anecdote or suggestion, premise, etcetera, that brings it to life in multiple ways that are logical and emotional, psychological, etcetera. And so it's a really fun anatomical journey. And I'm excited to get to dive into it after this conversation.
Jay Acunzo [00:51:45]:
All right, let's end here. Something that you wish others knew about being a professional storyteller, because you are. You get paid to be on stages. You get paid for your thinking. You get paid to shift people's perspective. And there's a million things I'm sure you're learning, but people look at that and they go, wow, that is so incredibly glamorous. I get to be on a stage or show up through any of my content and be a professional storyteller and you're like, yes, it is amazing, but you need to know this. What are you telling them?
Tucker Bryant [00:52:12]:
You need to know that it's not about you, the person on stage. It's about creating an experience for an audience that helps them shift. It's not about you getting to get up on stage and talk about all the cool things you've done. It's about finding that moment that we talked about early on. This conversation of like, you have an idea that you know the audience needs because it will help them and you are merely the vessel through which the idea is flowing. And it may have nothing to do with your past experiences, although it probably in some way will, because that's what informs our expertise. But it's all about that transformation that happens, and you're just kind of there to facilitate it.
Jay Acunzo [00:52:57]:
How stories happen was created by me, Jay Akonzo, and it's produced by share your genius cover art by Blake, Inc. Learn more about these kind and creative humans and how they can help you by checking the links in your show notes. And while you're there, please explore my sponsor link. Big thanks to everybody supporting the show as a listener, a sponsor, or a partner. For more ideas and stories from me. To help you communicate with greater power, visit jaconzo.com. and when you're there, explore my free newsletter, my books, and my consulting and coaching for experts and entrepreneurs. I help you develop a more original premise driving your work and the signature stories and pillar content to bring it to market.
Jay Acunzo [00:53:37]:
In other words, you're smart enough, you're expert enough. But maybe your ip is isn't strong enough to differentiate. And if you feel that that's you, let's chat. Thank you so much for listening. I'm back in two weeks with another episode of the show. But until then, as always, keep making what matters, because when your work matters more, you need to hustle for attention less. See ya.