"If all knowledge is experience, all wisdom is framework" - Laura Gassner Otting - How Stories Happen #12
What is a super-story? And how can you flex yours to fit different audiences, mediums, or conclusions? That’s what we dive into today with powerhouse storyteller, Laura Gassner Otting.
Laura takes us into a small story about her first time decorating a Christmas tree with her husband’s family. Initially horrified by the chipped ornaments and tattered boxes, she grew to love these mismatched decorations. It’s a story about finding meaning in often unexpected, imperfect places—and it's full of callbacks and insights helping LGO serve thousands of attendees at events across the globe where she speaks.
Laura is a bestselling author, keynote speaker, and executive coach. She’s a regular contributor to Good Morning America, the TODAY Show, Harvard Business Review, and Oprah Daily. She also served as a Presidential Appointee in Bill Clinton’s White House, founded an international search firm, and has a superpower in seeing others’ greatness and reflecting it back to them.
Together, Jay and Laura discuss her effective use of "the specific," finding wisdom in frameworks, and how LGO draws from her time in politics to imbue her speaking with musicality. Plus, they talk about the importance of having rounded edges to end in stories, how to immediately become relatable to your audience, and the art of using callbacks.
Whether you’re an aspiring author or keynote speaker, executive coach or entrepreneur who teaches through content, this episode will motivate you to resonate more deeply with your stories as you show up to any audience, in any medium.
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Episode Resources:
⚫ Learn more about Laura at her website and watch her viral TED Talk
⚫ Follow Laura on TikTok or Linkedin
⚫ Buy Laura’s books, Wonderhell, Limitless, and Mission Driven
🔵 Subscribe to Jay Acunzo's fortnightly newsletter at jayacunzo.com
🔵 Join Jay's membership program for business storytellers and service providers, the Creator Kitchen
🔵 Follow Jay on LinkedIn, Instagram, or Threads
🟢 Produced by Ilana Nevins
🟢 Cover art designed by Blake Ink
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ABOUT JAY:
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Jay Acunzo is an author, speaker, and differentiation-and-thought leadership consultant on a mission to help you make what matters to your career, company, and community. He's an advisor to experts, execs, and entrepreneurs who want to resonate deeper with others, not just reach them. To do so, he helps you turn your expertise into IP and your IP into differentiated messaging, exceptional speeches, and celebrated creative projects, equipping you with the communication techniques and power of today’s top thought leaders—because he believes in standing out through substance and stories, not hollow hype.
A leading voice in B2B content marketing for many years thanks to his roles at brands like Google and HubSpot, companies like Mailchimp, Salesforce, Wistia, and GoDaddy have turned to Jay to strengthen their storytelling, while dozens of individual authors, speakers, consultants, and service providers hire Jay as their dedicated thought partner and exec. producer to help develop their premise, IP, speaking, and shows.
Jay lives in the Boston area with his family as a proud Yankees and Knicks fan. In the 60 seconds per week he's not creating stuff for work or making his kids laugh, he likes to shoot hoops, sip nice bourbons, cook with his wife, and daydream about telling stories like that of his storytelling hero, Anthony Bourdain.
Full Transcript:
(This was created using Ai and may contain some errors.)
Jay Acunzo: [00:00:00] This is how stories happen where experts and creatives dissect a signature story piece by piece. We hear how they found it and developed it, how it might improve, and how they're using it to build their business and serve their audience. The thing is, you don't really experience stories. You experience your life.
Then you turn that material into stories. AI and people both rely on LLMs. AI has large language models, but people have little life moments, and on this show, we learn how to turn those into stories. I'm your host, Jay Azo.
Laura Gassner Otting: I always saw words as a superpower and always knew that I could wield words to get the results that I wanted, and then much to my horror, they went up to the attic and they started bringing down these dusty, tattered boxes of mismatched. Shifts, trinkets. All knowledge is experience. And I think if all knowledge is experience, I think all wisdom is framework.
If there was a fire alarm in the middle of my talk, people would feel like they had complete thoughts. I think it's really important that we get it right. I. Because audiences are making decisions based on what we're saying on stage.
Jay Acunzo: One of my favorite types of stories involves a memory that you can't shake.
Maybe it keeps coming up with your friends or maybe it comes up with your family. I. In my family, we joke that my mom has a book of stories. She'll tell the same ones over and over and over again, and it's gotten to the point where people in the family hearing one of these stories will turn to each other and joke.
Page 72, page 65. Ah, that's a good one. Page four and and the answer is no. My mom does not love the joke. But there is an important lesson for us as business storytellers and leaders embedded in that, which is, we all have stories in our past, which could turn into kind of family heirlooms, or they could turn it to signature stories.
Stories that, you know, unlike with your family, don't annoy people, but inspire them. Today's guest is one of the most inspiring voices. I've ever come across and feel very privileged to have her on the show today. It's Laura Gasner ing. Laura is the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of three books, wonder Hell, limitless and Mission Driven.
She's really all about the idea of how to maximize and unleash who you are and what you're capable of doing. Her TED Talk, which has amassed two and a half million views, is about why success doesn't bring happiness. When I first talked to Laura years ago, we were talking about public speaking and she was like, yeah, I'm not really doing that many speeches or public appearances.
And then today she is on Good Morning America. The Today Show, she appears in Harvard Business Review, Oprah Daily. She's a regular contributor to morning shows across the country and a regular keynote speaker to thousands of people across the world. Every year, she's just like one of the most dynamic human beings ever and one of the most generous and big hearted that's LGO for you.
And today she shares a story which we then dissect that involves a memory that she can't shake, a story she can't escape, and an idea that since become one of the more powerful things that she shares with the world.
Laura Gassner Otting: I am Laura Gasner. I'm a keynote speaker and I'm the author of the books, wonder Hell and Limitless.
Jay Acunzo: Were you always creating things as a kid? Like can you draw a direct line to what you were doing as a child and go, huh? That's kind of like what I'm doing now.
Laura Gassner Otting: Well, I was always using words to get out of trouble, so I dunno.
Maybe it's that. Um, I went to high school. I grew up in Miami, Florida, and um, I walked through metal detectors to go to high school every day. We used to joke around that our cheerleading uniforms came in small, medium, large, and maternity. I mean, it was like dogs, the drug sniffing dogs in the, in the lockers.
It was like Miami Vice era of Miami and we used to, we had off-campus lunch and we would. Drink and smoke pot and lunch every day. And I'd be like, oh, I've got a paper due at fourth period, and I'd be writing it in the car literally on the way back to class. So I think I, I always saw words as a superpower and always knew that I could wield words to get the results that I wanted.
And so I sort of learned how to both write stories and tell stories about writing stories. Uh, probably pretty early on, but mostly to get outta trouble.
Jay Acunzo: There's like a musicality to the way that a lot of writers or speakers or motivators will condense an idea into like a one-liner. One of the things I love saying to people is like, don't be the best, be their favorite.
That's become a little recurring handle for me. Or don't market more matter more because when you matter more, you need to hustle for their attention less. They feel like turns of phrases I can reliably go to and not abuse. But what would you say is one you're really excited about in your work now? I.
Laura Gassner Otting: I'm known for saying we shouldn't give votes in our lives to people who shouldn't even have voices. But here's the thing about it. I hadn't even realized that that was a line. It was sort of a throwaway line in my last book, limitless. I wrote it, I put it in there. I kept on going because the words are fun, and I was interested in the next words and the The reason that I do Good Morning America is often as I do, is because Robin Roberts and I were speaking at the same event.
She picked up a copy of my book. And read it. And by the time she had flown from Vancouver or Toronto back to New York, she took that line and tweeted it out to 5 million followers and invited me onto Good Morning America. And then that line got retweeted and retweeted and became a line. And so it's really interesting that you say it because I come outta politics.
My first job was in the White House, and so I learned to speak very um. With a lot of cadence, a lot of musicality because political speeches are action now, right? But also you, you sometimes you have to listen to what the market says, right? So you think what you're, you've got this great line that you worked forever on, and it turns out that the one thing you threw away was actually the thing that resonated the most.
You said something before we started recording that I just can't get out of my brain that this, the show feels like the shape of you. That to me, is such an interesting concept because sometimes we throw these lines out. And the lines that we use, the stories that we tell, if they feel like the shape of us and also reflect to our audience and the where they can feel the shape of themselves in it, then, then it sort of sticks in this way that we can't on here.
Jay Acunzo: Right. And one of the major through lines throughout the show and, and a lot of my, uh, work with clients and, and, and our members is to try and help people act a little bit more like comedians. Because to your point, the way you see it, the way I see it, how I'd say it, how far back in the understanding you go to get people to see what you see?
'cause you're all the way at the end goal, right? You're at the destination, you're at the idea that's all carefully calibrated to figure out a story. You gotta tell it in lots of places to figure out your teaching and how to show people what you see. You gotta put it in front of people and then sort of step back and go, you know, the, the classic comedian thing, like, is this anything?
And I find so often that when I start trying to understand a new concept or tell a new story, I. I am interested in very different things than the audiences. Like the thing you might latch onto is not necessarily the thing I would, and the way to do that, I think, is to eat some humble pie and to put it out in front of people and sort of let them bat it around.
And so as someone who is publicly visible, you're on tv, you've written bestsellers, I can imagine now you have so many people that you have a testing ground of ideas. Perhaps talk to me about whether or not that's a gift or a curse.
Laura Gassner Otting: It's a gift. If you put your ego aside and you listen to people, when my last book Wonder Hell Came out, I used that tool, help this book, you know, I, I put the whole manuscript in.
And then for people who aren't familiar, people can read it like as if it's a Google doc and they can do one of four things. They can either say, this was interesting, this was slow, uh, this was confusing. Or like, aha, I loved it. Right? They give you one of four little color codes and then they can put a comment in.
And so I sent it out to a hundred different just random readers of my newsletter, like. To know what they cared about was very interesting for me because you sell to the closest money, right? That's the closest money to me are the people who have volunteered to, to read my stuff. So that was useful, but then I took what they sent to me and I started to notice that there were some people who.
Were telling me that I was wrong because they believed A, B, C. And then there were some people who were telling me that they, I was right because they believed X, Y, Z. And if I didn't believe A, B, C, or X, Y, Z, then that maybe wasn't necessarily in my target market. So it's a gift to have a community of people who can give you responses.
But I think you also, as I say, you don't give votes to people who shouldn't even have voices, right? Like. Right. That's
Jay Acunzo: the reason I brought this up. It's confounding. Who do you listen to? Do you listen to them?
Laura Gassner Otting: Yeah. So who do you listen to? Who do you not? And again, I come from politics. So everything in politics is focus grouped, but you can be so focus grouped that you end up being inauthentic.
You end up being too polished. You end up not really seeming like you're for anybody. 'cause you're trying to be for everybody. And so I think it's really important. To figure out who your target market is and then really write to them, really like have them in your mind the entire time and your target market might change.
I mean, I do a lot of motivational speaking. I do a lot of business speaking. It's great to have range, but it's also hard because like who are you and who are we selling to? And it's. You know, tough to figure out. So when I tell my stories, I, I know that I can tell them in multiple different ways, but I always have to remember if, for example, my speaking bureau calls me and they're like, look, you're on a shortlist for an event for real estate brokers.
I'm gonna do some micro-targeting of what I put on social over the. Course of the next week that real estate broker are gonna pick up. I'm not gonna put stuff up there that network marketers are gonna pick up because that's a different audience and the real estate people will look at my social and be like, oh, she's not [00:10:00] for us.
Like as we're thinking about who we're getting feedback from, we also just have to remember that everything we're putting out there is being judged by people, whether we're asking them for that feedback or not.
Jay Acunzo: Yeah. And then the other follow up, a little more existential, or let's say foundational, which is.
Who do you listen to, who you do not? I find that a lot of people, they develop their thinking, their stories, their big ideas, how they show up in the world, they develop it. What I'd say is outside, in what works, what will the market bear, what do they want me to say versus what do I genuinely have to say about this?
Taking much more of an inside out approach, and I think we need way more thinkers and communicators and storytellers that bring conviction about their ideas. To the public eye, but then their hard work is not hyping harder, what is ultimately a commodified idea, but finding the right language stories, almost like the right way in to the idea.
You have to find the right language or the way into your thinking, or go out further to earlier in their understanding to march them all the way to where they need to be. So I don't know if that's been true to, to you and your experience, but that's something that I've been trying to grapple with for a long time.
Laura Gassner Otting: It's so true. You know, when I first started speaking, I would get on stage and I would talk about the idea, right? Here's the change you need to make in your life. It's very clear to me. Take Limitless, for example. We all want success to feel good. Uh, it. Doesn't, and here's why. Because we're chasing somebody else's definition of success.
So the boxes are all full, but we still feel empty. So what do we need? Instead of chasing success? We should chase consonants. Consonants is made up of these four things, and once you have these four things, here's how to change your career, change your workplace, or change your life in order to get them great, very easy, very linear.
And what I started to realize when I would get on stage and I would start to explain, here's consonants and here's what we need to get, I would realize that my audience would not. Believe that this idea was for them, that they were capable of making the change, switching their career, switching their workplace, switching their life because they didn't have the confidence to believe that it was something they could do.
And it took actually talking to Mike Nino, who also, you know, works with speakers and he is like, you need to give them almost. The, the preamble, right? Like they have to have the course before the course. Ah, yeah. Your keynote is about giving them the confidence, believe that they can make the shift that you're about to teach them, but you have to spend a lot of the keynote actually helping them understand and be empowered to do the thing that is the change.
Because once you show them that the problem that's in front of them isn't actually the problem they think it is, it's actually this. Other problem. They need to have courage and bravery and conviction to be able to make that leap. But if they don't think they can, then they're like, oh, great, I'm glad somebody else can do it.
Now I understand that I can never do it 'cause I've been trying to solve the wrong problem. So, so much of the of the keynote is helping the person in the audience see themselves in the story so that they can then see themselves in the solution.
Jay Acunzo: It is, I think, paramount for any keynote speaker, but also any big thinker communicating anywhere that the audience is almost at the conclusion before you get there.
Right. I think that's why there's like these head smack reactions of like. Of course wonder how it makes so much sense or so you get that irresistible feeling if you're the recipient of like, not only did I, like, I stuck the landing before she did, but it's inescapable, it's obvious. Like I, I completely agree.
Where do I sign up?
Laura Gassner Otting: It's, it's almost like it's a magic trick, right? Like when you see someone do a magic trick, it is literally a magic trick. It seems amazing. It seems, it seems magic. And then when they show you how to do it, you're like, oh, I get it now. I can do that every time. It's so obvious. Like I feel like speaking is the same thing, like once you break down.
You know the checkoffs gun thing, right? If someone's gonna get shot. In the third, uh, act, you're gonna talk about the decor of the, uh, living room and the first act. And one of the things you're gonna mention in addition to grandfather's, the grandfather's clock and the wing chairs and whatever is the gun above the mantle.
So it becomes very obvious when you. Sort of work in reverse in that way. And I'm thinking through the next book that I'm gonna write, and it's going to be about this idea of greatness and how, how I see greatness. I always tell people that my superpower is that I'm able to see greatness in somebody else and like.
Pull it out and show it to them in pretty short order, in ways that they can maybe for once actually see it and finally have enough confidence to act upon it. And people think it's a magic trick. And then when I say it's not, I spent 20 years in executive search and in executive search, people don't always have 100% of the job spec.
So how do you know that the person who you're gonna hire is actually gonna be able to be great in that job if they don't have a hundred percent of having done this before? And the way that you do it are that, you know, there's you, we look for tenacity and hunger and weight and I mean, there's certain, there's certain traits and the next book is gonna be breaking these things down.
And as I've been describing this next book to people to like kind of be like, is this a good idea? People have said to me like, oh yes, that makes so much sense. I need this book right now. It's just, it's so clear because they can immediately see somebody, I'll say, has there ever been anybody who you've hired who didn't have a hundred percent of what was in the job spec, who turned out to be great?
And then they start saying, oh, right. And then they showed me greatness with tenacity here and grit there, and speed there and hunger there. And you're like, yes. And it's so clear and it's so obvious once you just give them a framework. I think it was Albert Einstein who said that all knowledge is experience.
And I think if all knowledge is experience, I think all wisdom is framework, right? So if all knowledge is experience, I know something 'cause I've experienced it, then. If I am teaching it to you in a way that's not just wall of smarts, but actually wisdom, something you can use, you can employ, you can engage with and change your life with.
Then it's gotta be in a framework where you're like, oh, I get it. I see step one, I see step two, I see step three, and I even know what I need to do before I get to step one in order to get started.
Jay Acunzo: I love that so much. I agree completely and I think complimenting those frameworks, or even illuminating them more than complimenting them 'cause they go hand in hand, are those signature stories.
I. So first, thanks for giving us a book to look forward to. I'm really excited about a book on greatness from you. I'm also very honored that I'm the main example that you're using throughout the book. That's fairly nice. And uh, so I just wanna make sure we dropped half the listenership before we got to your story, and you have a great story for us today.
It's a story that you've told in your keynotes to help illuminate something. Before we go and hear your story, before you share it with us today on the mic, I'm just curious about. What does this, in the thinking you have, in the wisdom you're sharing, what does this specific Christmas story seek to illuminate for people that maybe just sharing something instructional or in plain language wouldn't be as effective?
I.
Laura Gassner Otting: So I'd share this story for a number of reasons. Uh, the first is that it's a little bit of a callback to earlier in the talk where I talk about dating the world's worst boyfriend and then meeting a guy who on paper was great, but really I didn't have any spark with, and he fit my grandmother's definition of success.
And nice Jewish boy and nice doctor, right? Medical school. But it didn't work for me. So I'm sort of lining up in the beginning of the talk, how I'm filling in everybody else's boxes on everyone else's path to everyone else's version of success. And on paper it's great, but I'm empty. It's probably about 30 minutes into a 45 minute keynote, but it cl it, it is closing one of the first halves of the first stories in the beginning.
I also share it because it's a personal story and it makes me immediately relatable to everybody in the audience. Everyone can see themselves both at the point. Of my life that I'm in right now, which is older and further along, but also it's a callback to when I was, when I was younger. So people also see themselves there.
But then I also make the bridge to a business case for it as well. So if I'm speaking to A SKO, A sales kickoff meeting, or if I'm speaking to managers or whatever, whoever I'm speaking to, I call back, um, the business. Part of the story and the whole idea of it is that it's not about the metrics by which we've been rating our lives, right?
We're told what makes a good job good? Are these, you know, what's the mission of the organization? Am I inspired by the leader? How much am I gonna earn? Like all those metrics, it's the meaning of the metrics to us, the prioritization of how we decide whether it's like not just a good job, but a good job for us.
Whether the work is meaningful. To us. So the whole idea of it is that meaning matters and it lands the plane with the idea that meaning matters both personally and for either our companies, for ourselves and our careers, for our families, et cetera. And so I can flex the story in either direction depending on who the audience is.
Jay Acunzo: That is such a crucial part of the way we show up to illuminate important ideas and frameworks to people is I can change, I can flex it to fit this audience, to fit this runtime, to shape it to this medium. I love, I call those super stories, right? It's like I can do so much with them and they go with me everywhere.
Yes, there's signature story, but I can also change them, which for me anyway, not all of my signature stories are that flexible. So how do you flex this story whenever you're ready? For this particular medium, your Christmas story.
Laura Gassner Otting: So I grew up a nice Jewish girl in Miami, and when I was growing up, I thought this was what?
Christmas looked like, and I have a picture of Mall Santa, right? The perfect mall Santa, the perfect Christmas trees. This one is white. This one is gold. This one is silver. I couldn't wait to grow up and maybe one day get a Christmas tree of my own. I, I mean, what? How would I decorate it? It would be amazing.
And then I met lots of spark, John. I met my husband from Cincinnati, Ohio, and I went home with him to my very first Christmas, and I couldn't wait. I mean, what would they decorate? Their tree? Would it be gold, silver? I don't know. I couldn't wait. And then much to my horror, they went up to the attic and they started bringing down these dusty tattered boxes of mismatched.
Chipped trinkets. This one was gold. That one was green. This one was, I don't know, plaid. Did that one have sequins one time and maybe they all chipped off. [00:20:00] I don't know. I couldn't understand. I mean, all these years they could have had perfection, and all these years they chose this. Then they sat down and they started to open up the uh, butterfly thin tissue paper that wrapped each of these ornaments, hundreds of ornaments, and they were telling the story of each one.
This one they picked on the family trip to Niagara Falls, and this one was made by Great Aunt Judy and this one, do you remember Sally or Babysitter who used to love eating herring? And they would tell the stories, these crazy stories of each individual ornament. And ornament by ornament. I fell in love and it's been 25 years and 25 Christmas trees later, and I'm proud to say that every year our Christmas tree becomes more and more eclectic.
These ornaments that write the stories of our lives, these imperfect ornaments, these personalized myth smashed ornaments that are are not perfect mall Christmas, but our storybook Christmas. And it's not just me. There's actually a store in Michigan called Bronner's. It's on like two and a half acres. It has a parking lot that parks 2000 coaches.
The electric bill is $1,250 a day. There's a 17 foot Santa in front and a 15 foot snowman in the back. And I think that if the younger me had seen the story, I think her, her head would've exploded. But I, my sense is that it's so chaotic in that story that nobody even would've noticed. Broner sells 2 million ornaments every single year, and 400,000 of them are these horrible.
Ugly mismatched, personalized storybook Christmas ornaments, because meaning matters. It turns out that it's not our perfect, but actually the imperfections that tell the stories of our lives, the all of the motley stories of who we were and where we've been, and each year, every year, that Christmas. Tree that we have becomes more and more eclectic, telling those stories of our lives, including this one.
And then I show a photo of of Christmas tree with our me and my husband, and we're babies. I'm like, look at this photo. This is my favorite ornament. This ornament that we got one year in a corporate swag bag when we couldn't even afford an ornament of our own. And we stuck a little Polaroid in it and we've never changed.
And every year we talk about that ornament and how far we've come since that very first tree, because it turns out that meaning. Matters. And so that's the story that I tell, and I tell it sort of in longer version or in shorter version, but it sort of takes the, it sort of goes through the arc of bringing it back to me, making it a personalized story, talking about, you know, how I learned the lesson, calling back the, the importance of it being personal to us.
It then talks, I can talk a lot more about the business of Broun if I really want to, and then I show the personal story of the two of us, you know, on the tree in a little janky little ornament.
Jay Acunzo: Which of those things do you find yourself playing with and changing the most? Is it the description of the ornaments?
Like the, one of the things I loved about that story is there were so many moments I. Where you were getting really specific and detailed, which only helped me not just visualize what you were telling me, but sort of kind of paint my own, right? Like it's very relatable. I'm in the story not 'cause you gave me a lot of generic descriptions and then said fill it in yourself.
But because you went really specific and that old adage applied in the specific, we find the universal. So, but I'm curious of all those details, like where do you find yourself just feeling yourself on a stage or on a podcast and. Playing with it the most, having the most fun with it.
Laura Gassner Otting: So it's funny, I actually haven't done it in a keynote for like three or four months.
So that was a little, it was a little rusty. Um, but even just now, I like, I never say like, great Aunt Sally who used to eat herring. I just made that up on the spot. Right? Like, I don't know, I just,
Jay Acunzo: I wrote that down. Great Aunt Sally. 'cause how do others say that, you know? Oh, that old relative that you used to know
Laura Gassner Otting: exactly The one who ate that.
Smelly weird foods, like everyone's got that weird relative, you know, there's a couple things I do, so I'll say like, and then I met lots of Spar John from Cincinnati. And if it's like a 5,000 person event from all over the country, someone's going to yell and I'll be like, oh, I got a who day. I was like, I gotta find you later and ask you about your favorite grad's ice cream, right?
And then later, when I say there's a store in Michigan called Broner, somebody will scream and I'll be like, I got some Michigan. There's in the house. Come on Ohio, you can do better than that, right? So I'll like play with the audience 'cause I got like a little Midwest rev rivalry growing going on there.
Um, so I'll do that. And then I always play around with the specifics of the ornaments. So depending on where I am, you know, remember re remember when we did that trip and we went to six different ballparks, including candle stick. Stick park down the street. Like if I'm in San Francisco, like I'll like kind of localize it a little bit.
Yeah. Uh, with, when I talk about Broers, I'll talk about, and they have this kind of ornament and that kind of ornament. I'll, I'll sort of throw in some details there as well. So I think those are the two places I mostly play around.
Jay Acunzo: When you arrive at lots of Spark. John, at first I was like, is that a brand? Is that. Uh, character represented, you know, a logo or a mascot by a brand. Oh, no. John is your husband.
Laura Gassner Otting: Yes. Yes. So earlier I'm, I'm talking about how like. I went to law school and it was miserable. I was the student who got called on the very first day.
I asked God question after question after question after question until she fell apart in a pile of tears. So I did what any young woman would do in that situation when we're absolutely miserable. I dated the world's worst boyfriend, boom. Picture behind me of a guy in an eye rock, z. And a giant mullet and a goatee, which was not exactly this guy, but not that far off.
And he did have a red IRZ. So I sort of tell the story about the guy in the red IRZ and how that got me to ending up volunteering on a presidential campaign. And on that presidential campaign, I met and began to date the man of my grandmother's dreams. Photo of like the grandmother's from the nanny. And then I talk about, and I started to date Alan, and Alan was a six foot two nice Jewish boy and medical student.
Perfect family. Oh, he was perfect. Mazel tough. The only problem with Alan is that I had no spark with him. Every time I kissed him, all I could think of was milk, butter, cheese, eggs. I gotta get the groceries. Oh hey, that dog needs to be groomed. I gotta start working on that report. And I would tell my and my tail of me and no spark, Alan.
And all she would do is she'd look at me seeing her own definition of success disappearing. And she'd be like, Laura, you just gotta concentrate. But concentrated as I might know, spark. So by the time I get to lots of Spark, John, it's very clear to the audience and I'm like, and then I met lots of Spark, John and there, and people cheer.
So it's like, so it's, there's lots of little callbacks and lots of, um, intentional word choices throughout that get me to that point where lots of sparked. John is a, is a moment.
Jay Acunzo: I love things that lead into the story that that sort of purchase the attention of the audience. So you can carry that all the way to the end of the story.
Like there's this example I use in a speech where I'm talking about how a lot of experts communicate very flat, like you said, a cascade or a wall of smarts, just sort of at you. There's no musicality. There's no memorability, there's no storytelling. And so I'm sort of making a similar point in a point of my speech where I'm like, you know, there's a commodified.
Everyone does it this way, way of teaching, and I pluck out from thin air teach someone how to try new things. What's the generic expert gonna say? In general, studies show that you're not afraid as a human of the task in front of you. You're afraid of the unknown. So now I say you're like the Nike slogan up there in front of your audience.
Just do it. Ah, that's ineffectual. That's commodified. Anybody can do it that way. But what if I said it like this instead? And so I use that one line to be and to hopefully they, their ears perk up and go, oh, change in momentum. Something's coming. And then I'd give a little story about how I would teach the same insight, but using a quick allegory or story, right?
And they feel in on the joke. Yes. Oh, that's huge. They're in on it. They're with me. 'cause we all know what's going on. You are on a stage with a microphone. We are sitting together now with cameras, lights, and mics. Like, I think we'd like to pretend like I'm just up there to have a conversation with the audience, or I'm just chatting with friends on my podcast and I'm like, well, that ignores the very real.
Contextual shaping and molding And maximizing. You can do.
Laura Gassner Otting: Yeah. Yeah. And you know, and there's a paradynamic that's there too. And I think especially with women at some of these events, which I, I would like to call out that, you know, a woman struts out on stage and. Not everybody in the audience is thinking, what's she gonna teach me?
Um, when I first started speaking, I would go out and I would do this like tazzy open thing. And it was weird and it was, I thought that's how you had to like chalk in front of a big crowd. And then, uh, Scott Stratton looked at a video of me speaking and he, I was like, I want some feedback. And he was like, do you want feedback or do you want praise?
'cause they're two very different things. And I was like. Um, well I want feedback, but now I'm scared. And he basically was like, I don't know who that was for the first three minutes, but I hated her. He is like, what was that? And I'm like, I don't know. I just thought that's what I was supposed to do. And he said, and then you started telling the story about how your kids were jerks.
And he was like, there's the LGOI know in love. He's like, just walk out on stage and do that. And so when I go out on stage in certain stages, like take network marketing for example, I'm gonna walk out on stage and I'm introduced as like White House appointee. And she's ran seven marathons and she's on GMA all the time.
And they're like, oh God, I'm totally like intimidated. I don't like her. She's smarter than me. She's better dressed than me. I'm, they don't see me as one of them, right? So I have to immediately make myself not just aspirational, but also relatable. Right. It's like inspirational, relatable. You have to walk that line.
And so I walk out and I tell a story about how I was, you know, my book is limitless. I'm talking about being limitless, but I was pretty limited in the last year, right? And I immediately start telling a story about how I almost died and I was sick, and chemo IV goes in the arm and all that stuff. And I tell 'em I'm okay now.
They don't know it yet. I talk about how like in that moment I had to decide that I was gonna be better than my limitations. And when the chemo biologic went into my arm, I signed up for a marathon. They think that's the end of the story, that the very, very end of the talk is like, and that brings me back to mile 25 of the [00:30:00] marathon, and they don't even know that the story's unfinished.
So I think that that's a really interesting piece is that like you have to make yourself immediately relatable by showing that you've struggled, that it's been hard, that you've learned. But you can't leave them in a, how did he get out of it? Is everything okay? Because then they sit there with this like hanging chat in their brain and they, they, they can't focus on what you're saying.
So I sort of, I kind of tell the first half of stories in a way that they think the story's over, but it's not like the, the, my kids are jerk story is all about how I couldn't get that perfect photo of them on the. First day of school to show the world that I'm the world's best mother, right? And then I talk about dropping 'em off.
And I drove home and I drove home, and I was holding, choking back tears, like in this prison of my own creation, all because I had this idea of what perfection would look like. And what I realized is that we all have this definition of success, this definition of perfection. They think the story's over and they don't realize.
10 minutes later, I'm gonna say. So then I got back to school pickup and I had my 17 point speech ready and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then I got the photo and I posted it. Happy second day of school. I sort of tell this whole story about how I learned that, you know, our definition of grace was having the kind of family who could show up for each other when things were bad.
And then at the very end of the talk, 30 minutes later, I'm like, I've been Laura Gastro, have a happy second day of school, right? So it's like, there's like a couple of points where I can like bring it back in. But I think it's really important as we think about stories. That stories have to be complete, but even the parts of the stories have to be complete so that people don't think that you're just like leaving them hanging.
Jay Acunzo: Yeah. There's like, um, a blunt instrument approach of like, I've seen some people do this too. I. And I, I don't appreciate it. And if I was working with them, I'd be like, look, can we come to what seems like a rounded edge conclusion? Even if you bring it back later, which is, they'll, they'll start telling a story and they'll, they'll leave a cliffhanger open.
Now, this could be in a speech, this could be in writing. This could be anything. I think in writing it's a little easier to pull it off. I'm thinking about like a prologue of a book, for example, is a great place to do that. But people would go overtly like on a stage. I just wanna leave that for a moment.
Can you just imply something was final there, even though it's not, because now it'd be a, it'd be the equivalent of we've all heard, or many of us have heard the public radio approach to introducing voices on their say podcast is I would hear a little clip from Laura, and then I'd hear your name if I let you keep speaking for seven more minutes.
You, the listener, would be out of your flow. 'cause you'd be like, who is this person? Right? So you only get a little single line. Then I have to introduce the name. And so it's similar with that story construct. It just doesn't work for me. 'cause I'm like thinking of too many questions relating to what you just said and now I'm not listening to what you are saying.
Laura Gassner Otting: Right. And you know what's interesting about the Christmas ornament story is that I can completely take outta the talk and not use it at all. Or I can use it as, it's almost becomes the like second half of the no Spark Allen story right. In the way that I. Bring it up as the, and then I met lots of spark, John, because I'm setting up.
Uh, I went to law school 'cause a teacher told me I should be a lawyer, but I didn't hit for her def fit, her definition of success. I dated, you know, no Spark Allen, and it didn't work. I didn't fit my grandmother's definition of success. Fast forward 10 years later, I was the youngest vice president of executive search firm.
My boss wanted to do profits, then purpose. I wanted purpose that brought, I didn't fit his definition of success. I had this definition, I had the scorecard in my back pocket. You might have it too. So in a way, the Christmas ornament story is like the finish of all of what was leading up to, but I also don't need to use it because each of the mini stories have rounded edges on them.
So even if I never went back to like if there was a fire alarm in the middle of my talk, people would feel like they had complete thoughts. I'm often thinking not just about the story itself, but like what are all the callbacks and what are the sort of checkoffs guns? Like I tell the story. About meeting Malala in the green room at an event.
And the, the, the joke and the story is that I'm like, and then when I got up to her to talk to her, I was like, you've got nice shoes. 'cause I was so nervous. And then I'm walking across the green room and I'm saying like, oh my God, you're an idol. You're amazing. Thank you for all the things you're doing.
And I'm like rehearsing as I'm like whispering to myself, walking across the stage. And then I get to her and I notice that she's got the most beautiful pair of red velvet pumps. Oh,
and all that comes outta my mouth is you've got nice shoes. And then Malala, because she's Malala, offers to take a selfie and Malala looks like this. And I have like a very dignified face. And then I look like this, and I'm like, you know, like a. Gargoyle, right? And then throughout the rest of the talk, whenever there's like a funny, awkward moment, I'll either like, make the gargoyle face, I'll be like, you've got nice shoes.
And so there's like parts of the story that I plug into describing it that I can then call back to and just get the easy win and get the easy laugh and bring people right back into engagement in the, in the keynote.
Jay Acunzo: I've actually been thinking about this a lot. I have this story of Myrtle, the turtle, which is in our neck of the woods down at the New England Aquarium.
She's the oldest turtle at the tank of the New England Aquaquarium. And I have this story of going there with my daughter and it's, it's kind of become a signature story of mine and it's at the end of my speech. And I, I realize I've introduced such a viscerally visible and relatable character in, in Myrtle, and people seem to really like that story that.
Because it's at the end. I don't get to play with the character or bring her back at all. But you're introducing, you know, even if it was impromptu today. Great. Aunt Judy, you are introducing No spark versus lots of Spark. You, you're introducing a lot of characters that do serve as callbacks and I am sure there's science on this and as a host of a show called How Stories Happen, maybe I should know that science, although I think I'm walking, talking proof that you don't need the academic understanding of something to be good at that something.
But like, there's something so satisfying. Maybe it's just being part of the joke yourself as a, as a, an audience member. About callbacks, and if we were just using them a little more, I think we would really endear ourselves and connect deeper to the audience so that on the back end they hear what we're trying to say more clearly.
Laura Gassner Otting: Yeah, so I would argue that you could plant so many, you could make myrtle, the turtle, the, the, the callback of all callbacks. Because when, when, when we sit back and we look at this Christmas tree filled with all of the imper, like perfectly imperfect stories of our lives. I am going back to like in the conversation about the first day of school photo.
How did I get, how can I get that perfect photo that shows everybody? I'm the perfect parent with the perfect children, and all I had was the imperfection of my children yelling at each other. I. How is that gonna work? So when I say this is the perfectly imperfect stories of our lives, you feel that as a callback to, to the first day of school story.
So I think that there are things in the Myrtle of Turtle that you concede earlier. So that Myrtle of Turtle isn't just the example. It's like the tying the bow. On all the things you've already said, and that's just like playing with words and phrases.
Jay Acunzo: One of the things you mentioned earlier was about flexing stories. I think there's also flexing the way you communicate your pacing, how many details you can include. We're always trying to modify to different audiences, different mediums, different runtimes. You appear quite a bit on tv. Um, you mentioned Good Morning America several times.
What is different? Showing up in a TV spot, like I'll give you something I have noticed from you, from being a fan and a friend and, and a, and an admirer of yours, the pacing and the crispness. It's such a compressed place to show up that you speed up a little bit and you go right for the best stuff.
First of all, is that true? And second, are there other ways you find yourself having to fit or learn to fit? The TV medium that's different than elsewhere. I
Laura Gassner Otting: mean, it is a completely different animal. I've just recently had the horrifying experience of having to put together a sizzle reel 'cause I'm trying to like go for like a big thing.
And I watched TV that I've done since 2018, all the way to what I've done, like, you know, three days ago on, on GMA and. I mean, I'm like a different human on television. So what I've, what I've come to learn is that like, it sort, it's all scripted ahead of time, right? So the whole thing is scripted ahead of time.
And the questions they ask, the answers you're gonna give, what gra what the words that are gonna show up on the graphics, right? That's all already pre-done. So you're standing there about to go on and the producer will say something to you like, remember it's live national television. The segment is four minutes, not three 50, not four 10, it's four minutes.
And Robin Roberts, Robin's gonna Robin, good luck. And then they just send you out there and then the cameras roll and maybe she asks the questions that are in the teleprompter. Maybe she just goes totally off script. You don't know. So when I was on there for the launch of Wonder Hell, I brought my, my younger son with me, who's 20, and I came off set afterwards and I was like.
I kind of blacked out during that whole thing. I think Robin said she loved my writing and he said she did. And I said, and I think Robin said she loved me and he said she did. And I said, and I think I said, I love you too. And he said, yeah, you did. So. For that four minute segment on my book, she spent the first 20 seconds, like completely off script, but I knew that as soon as she hit the first question, even if we had less time, there were three lines in the graphics that were gonna come up on the screen that I had to make sure to hit.
So the similarity to speaking is that I know that in the Christmas. Ornament story. I have to talk about the perfectly imperfect stories of our lives. I know that I have to talk about, uh, that meaning matters. I know that I have to hit lots of spark, John, like there's certain words that, that, that are the callbacks, that are like the money lines throughout.
And as long as I hit those, it doesn't actually matter how I get there. So with TV it's the same way. Like I know that I have to hit like these are the three points I have to make. And the second question, these are the four points I have to make by the last question. 'cause I know that's the timing [00:40:00] and just however you get there, you have to get there.
And I think that's part of the bonus of growing up in politics is that everything is a soundbite. So you, you go in, you find the emotional resonance and you land the plane like as fast as you possibly can because that's all that you're gonna get as the clip. And so I think I just, I. Grew up with that in the way that I speak and the, the cadence that I do, and, and that works much better in media than it does necessarily on stage.
So on stage I had to, I had to do more work to expand the story and to stay in the moment and walk across the stage and whisper for myself about Malala, and then make the joke and wait for the audience to laugh. Because on tv, the person you're talking to. You're talking, they're responding. You're having a conversation.
But when you're telling the story on stage, you're still having a conversation with the audience. They're just not saying their part. And so you have to wait. And I've seen so many incredibly accomplished people. Get on stage and just talk over the laughter, just talk over the joke, not wait for the audience to get the aha moment and come along with them.
And so even though they're super accomplished in their life, presenting the idea on stage is very different.
Jay Acunzo: Well, I mean, Laura, you are incredibly accomplished, amazing books. You're appearing on television, I guess I'm trying to say. You have really nice shoes.
Laura Gassner Otting: Well, now that's a callback.
Jay Acunzo: There you go. We did it.
One of the things that I admire about you is you're translating your ideas, wisdom, and storytelling across all these different places where you could show up. Why is that your focal point?
Laura Gassner Otting: I think it's really important to tell our stories. Well, I think it's really important to make sure that they get the emotional resonance and they get the, uh, the standing ovation and they get the spin to the next gig.
But more important than that, I think it's really important that we get it right. Because audiences are making decisions based on what we're saying on stage. Not all of 'em. I don't believe in the, like, I served 5,000 people today. I changed 5,000 lives. No, you didn't. Maybe five people are paying attention, right?
Like, let's be real. Um, but the ones who were paying attention are going to make decisions. I had somebody, uh, meet me, uh, in the, in the book signing line after I spoke and she's like, I wrote the first half of your book and I quit my job and I wanna be like, read the second half. So why do you know what you know?
Is it based in experience? Is it based in research? Is it based in fact? Why do you know it? How do you know it and is it right? So for me, the reason I do what I do is because I have 30 years of experience, I. That have led me to the opinions and the convictions that I have today, and I have seen them both anecdotally and now have substantiated with research, and I understand that they're right.
Jay Acunzo: How stories happen was created by me. Jay Acunzo, and it's produced by Alana Evans, cover Art by Blake, Inc. If you'd like to work with me as your dedicated thought partner and advisor, I help experts and entrepreneurs develop their premise, their ip, their thought leadership projects, like speeches, shows, and more.
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