There Are Stories And Then There Are Stories!
By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter
Everyone understands the importance of story time on interviews but my guest, Justin Sternberg, brings a professional’s eye and touch to storytelling. I’ve had good guests around storytelling and others to come you also are good. But Justin is great. All you need to know are his credentials to understand how he approaches it.
00:00
So my guest today is Justin Sternberg. He’s best known as a Hollywood TV writer having written develop and creative projects for it’s a good list folks, Universal, Disney, ABC, NBC, Fox, MTV, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, to name a few and he’s here today because he doesn’t just do that because since the beginning of the pandemic, what he’s been doing is giving back and using these skills to help businesses, startups, and larger companies, government agencies raging from like White House fellows and startups, and a lot of people in the middle to understand how to create messaging and strategy. So leaders and businesses can scale pivot succeed, and Job Hunters be more effective. Justin. How are you? Welcome.
00:57
Good. I only wish I had half of your energy. I need to drink three more cups of tea. But I’ll get there. I promise.
01:03
You just be as you want to be. It’s going to be perfect just the way you are.
01:09
Spoken like a perfect coach. I appreciate that.
01:12
I thank you. You got the hat on for this and everything. So how the heck did you get into this Hollywood stuff and the other things that you’ve been doing since the pandemic start?
01:23
Yeah, I mean, the truth is, I wanted to be a professional baseball player. That was my dream and my goal and my desire. I was lucky. I had two parents who gave up their own personal sacrifice, and then going to Europe, and wherever else on vacation to send me to a prep school in a small town in Florida and so it was great academic school, a surprising twist for most people it was an amazing athletic school. So my eighth grade year at this prep school, we actually played for the state championship, and we played against a guy maybe you’ve heard of called Alex Rodriguez and so it was an amazing experience and I learned more about myself and my life and everything through this process. But my senior year in high school, the parents got mad and they realized that we were spending way too much time on our athletic accomplishments and dreams and not enough on our academic and so they forced us to take an additional class and I remember literally being an 18 year old kid and flipping through the course catalog and I saw playwriting and I had no desire to be a writer.
I had no want to be a writer. Actually, at that point, I knew I was a terrible writer. But all I wanted to do was play baseball and I thought, as long as I turn in the work, as long as I just completed, he might hate it, the teacher, but he’s got to pass me and as long as I get past, I get to go to batting practice and if I get to go to batting practice, I get to play and if I get to play, I get to go play ball in college and little did I know this one crazy decision changed my entire life. It was a Broadway playwright who was teaching this class. He had graduated my high school 10 years before. They were having the first child. They didn’t want to have it in New York, and he decided to give one year back to our school and he got up there like week six or something and he said, I’m going to teach you something as a writer that you’ll never hear anywhere else. But you have to not only hear it, you have to understand it, and you have to go through with it. A writer does not write what they know. A writer has to only write what they feel and his point was, if you go through the Civil War, you have a much more emotional connection to it than you do if you just read every book about the Civil War.
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So he gave us an assignment that Friday night, go home this weekend, find a feeling, find an emotion and write a play about it. So again, I was 17 18 one in one year went out the other. I went on with my life. Friday night football from the south massive aspect of our life and we go to the state champ whatever it was district championship football game. My best friend’s the wide receiver for our football team. He does an out pattern in the end zone. Game winning touchdown in his hands out of his hands and we lose and when I say the town went silent, I literally mean the lights went sort of flickering, like the electricity went off. Like there was not a sound to be heard in a four mile radius and I went back that night to my friend Chris, who had dropped the past his house and we were playing to tendo or whatever we did in the 90s and there was a knock at the door and I turned around and I saw his father and he said Justin, can I have a minute with my son? I’m like, absolutely, sir. No problem and as I got up, the belt came off and as the door shut, I listened to my friend Chris get beaten with a path. A belt for dropping a pass in a football game and I stood out there not knowing what to do not knowing what to say and then the door opened and his father put the belt back on and he said thank you which still to this day since you know shivers down my spine.
And again, 17 18 year old boys, we go back to playing the tendo no one talked about it and that Sunday, I remembered I have a project, an assignment to write what you feel. Well, all I felt was for my best friend, like what he was going through what he was internalizing and so I sat down not knowing what else to do and I just literally cut myself figuratively and just bled onto the page of what I was feeling and I wrote a play about it called severe beating and it not only got a bunch of attention and it got made. The best part was is it embarrassed the father even though no name was used. He stopped hitting his kid, thank God. But it also changed my life because I saw not only the power of words, but it got me into the Eugene O’Neill theatre center in Waterford, Connecticut. So it’s actually auto Neil’s property. It’s where the best new plays go to be workshop for four days before going to Broadway. Its Dinero Meryl, Streep Redford, August Wilson the biggest names in the world are there and they take 13 interns from across the world. I was one of 13. I was paired up with the playwrights and my exact mentor was a guy named Lee blessing, which has been nominated for Tony, the year before and he had an amazing play that summer called going to St Ives.
So imagine a fictional version of idiom means mom or Hitler’s mom during the genocide. The mom started to lose it. You love your kid. But obviously, you understand your kids doing some pretty messed up stuff and it’s a two person play between the mom and the nurse, and then leave the writers favorite scene the most powerful moment of the entire play. The entire audience laughs and Lee was best. He was beyond this. This was not the reaction he expected and we stayed up all night, and we change seven words and the next night the entire audience cried and I was so I walked up to Lee and I said, I don’t know how you did it. I don’t know what we just did. But you took an audience from set with seven words from literally laughter to tears. This is why I want to go do with the rest of my life. He was like, that’s amazing. That’s so great. If you ever need anything, Justin anything please call August Wilson. Don’t call me.
06:42
The story of your friend you know, I think that’s the movie Hoosiers and the same as shooter that character that misses the shot takes the guilt of the town and becomes an alcoholic in his case. You know, and thus, when I think about in the context of interviewing, they’re powerful ways to communicate feelings in interviews and I’m wondering like when someone’s looking for a job, and employer wants to find out whether you can do the job so there’s certain objective criteria that needs to be met and I’m curious if you are applying this idea of communicating the feeling into a job interview, and telling a story there how someone might go about doing?
07:36
Yeah, it’s interesting. Like if you’d asked me this question a year ago, I would have been like, I just tell a story. But what actually happened was, during the pandemic, a bunch of friends lost their jobs. Their companies lost VC funding or their companies needed to reposition themselves and tell a new story and so they all called me for this exact question. Like, I need to connect with people in this new zoom world in ways I’ve never known before. You know how to tell stories. Will you help me? And I started going like, well, yeah, yes and I literally just would write stories for them. But then I started to realize, as a parent, as I’m sure you can see, if I just tell them what to do, or just do it, they’re gonna keep coming back for more. I needed to show them how to actually do it and so I sat down on my whiteboard, and I said, a movie usually has what we call 15 beats, these 15 moments, these goalposts like building blocks of a story and every story, whether it’s Hoosiers or whether it’s your favorite comedy, are all built on the exact same 15 beats. Why don’t we whittle that down really, to the most essential beats, which are four, and the four beats are.
08:36
Number one
08:38
If you’re talking about yourself, if I was somebody, something happened to me. I struggled like hell, but I’m better now because of it and that’s an interview. You walk into an interview and people like, tell me about yourself. You’re like, well, I was born here. I’m dead. I’m lost. I’m out of it. The minute you go, well, it’s funny like I’m here for a sustainability job. It’s like I was never supposed to do that. Actually, I used to literally I was the kid that would turn all the faucets on in my house and water would just come pouring out. My dad would turn lights off, and I would turn them on. It was a fight. Like the interviews leaning forward going, wait, what? Like, and then you go, yeah, and then crazy. What happened was is and you tell a story. So storytelling is everything and I originally thought, oh, it’s just Hollywood and I’m used to it. I became friends with a guy named Dr. Paul Zak, who’s probably the top neuroscientists in the world, who studies the effects stories have on the brain and he’s done studies where if I tell you the four things that every interviewer wants to hear, right, like on this on that I’ve done that. It goes in one ear out the other.
But when you tell the exact same four things, but put it into a powerful emotional story that is created and crafted correctly, the brain actually responds to those exact same four things entirely differently and because of that, you become more willing to listen more willing to engage, and at the end actually more willing to be activated on exactly what you just heard. So if you’re in an interview, and you’re telling someone about yourself and why they should hire you, wouldn’t you want at the end of the person to be activated on exactly what you’ve just told them? Of course and so you have to open with the story, and you have to open with what I’m calling your Olympic story, which is why you, and what about you is so perfect for this role and it’s changed people’s lives. It’s been one of the greatest gifts I’ve ever that came out of COVID. I can’t believe how many people I’ve been able to help and watching be a little part of their success has been amazing.
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10:35
And one of the things I see about you and telling stories, is the amount of energy you bring to what you’re talking about and that jives with my thinking about the theater of interviewing and it’s not just a blank recitation of words. It’s about selling the message. It’s about communicating in a way that the audience gets you. Am I reading that correctly?
11:01
Yeah, look, I only do things that I’m passionate about, like I was never a writer that was like, oh, sure. I’ll just take x. It’s gonna pay for whatever. I had to passionately be excited about and so there’s a passion behind what I do. There’s a passion about storytelling and yeah, I think with anything. Look, what I think most people don’t realize is this didn’t come out of thin air in the sense that when I go sell a TV show, I don’t hand it a script. You would think, oh, you’re a writer. Here’s a script, you turn it in, the network goes, yes or no. You actually have to pitch the head of the studio and idea one liner, like an elevator pitch like I think the show should be this and then they go okay, cool. We’ll set a meeting and then you have to go in and give a 45 minute presentation about the world, the character, the story, the season arc. You’ve got to base and it’s got to be personal and so I learned that if I open with, here’s an idea about two girls and a guy in a pizza shop. They’re like, whatever. But if I opened with a true story, I’m like let me tell you about my uncle, who with his two girlfriends opened a pizza shop. People like, oh, wow, that’s interesting.
And suddenly, just by telling a true story, people are much more engaged. It goes back to the Ethan and Joel Cohen theory, which I don’t know if you remember the movie Fargo. But the opening thing in Fargo is based on a true story. Well, spoiler alert, it’s not based on a true story. It’s completely made up. But they realized his kids when their grandmother would put them to bed at night, when she would say, hey, guys, I’m going to tell you his true story. It scared them to death and when they just said, hey, I’m going to tell you a nighttime story. They were like let me prove that and it’s the most powerful thing. So yeah, I think it’s mixing this art of excitement and passion because if you don’t believe in yourself why should anyone believe in you, but it’s got to be authentic. Like none of this is fake. This is how I talk to my kids. It’s how I talk to my wife. But it’s obviously how I sell a TV show, because I’m excited about and if I’m gonna bring it, or I’m expect you to if you’re going to show up, I’m going to bring it because that’s what I would want you to do to me.
11:28
Now you’re talking about the Olympic story and could you talk about that a little bit more and what made you use the term Olympic? I tend to think of that as a hero story. Is it the same thing?
13:11
Yeah, I mean, the truth is, as a six year old boy, I was with my family. We were watching the 1984 Olympics here in Los Angeles, and we were rooting for a famous racer by the nickname of Flo Jo and right before the gun went off in the race started, NBC or I think was NBC as I’m cut to a little promo about another racer, who grew up like two miles from where the track that they were actually going on and she was a girl who didn’t have much direction. She didn’t know what she was really going to do with her life. Her brother was a massive athlete. He was on a college scholarship and one day he was on the track practicing, got hit by a stray vote and died and she didn’t know what to do and one day she saw his shoes, and she decided to lace up his shoes and start running in his shoes in his honor and she couldn’t run. She couldn’t run a block. She could barely run you know four steps. But one block became two which became three which became four and suddenly start running and races always finishing last. She was ripping through her shoes, getting blisters. She was in pain, she was failing. People were telling you should stop. What are you doing, and it just drove her and she went harder and faster and longer and just kept accomplishing it and now here she was X number of years later, two miles from the track that her brother had been killed on racing for an Olympic medal.
And I remember like they were like cut from that to like gunshot race and I went from earning from this one person to rooting for her and when she crossed the finish line as a six year old boy and she had won the gold medal. I was crying, literally in tears for someone I’d never even heard of two minutes ago, let alone was rooting for even net and I realized the power of a story. Stories changed me from moving from one person to another simply because it encouraged me to find a feeling in me that had to be part of something she was part of and I think everyone needs that in their own story, and doesn’t have to be as dramatic, but they need their Olympic story. They need that story that would run on NBC before your interview that would literally make the interviewer go, oh, I’m gonna hire Steve and then you walk in, you tell your Olympic story and they go, screw Steve, I’m hiring you. You’ve got to get people to roofie you. It’s everything in life and Olympic story. At the end can make people not understand why you’re great for this job, but why they have to hire you for this job.
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15:32
I got to pause here for a second and folks, you know, number one, if there’s anything you’ve picked up on right now, it’s that this man has a way of connecting with our emotions, right and if there’s a way, as you tell your story that’s gonna have some contextual data to it, and some facts to it to give people perspective on where you started off with and how you got to the end and there are different frameworks for that, that I’ve covered many other videos that bring in the emotional components and don’t just recite facts, but talk about some of the challenges that you face and some of the hell you went through, and how you persevered and got to the other side, and everyone lived happily ever after. You know, that’s the theme of most stories that we watched as kids and it works for us as adults too. So don’t neglect the emotional component, because he’s hammering this thing and making sure that we get this point across for ourselves.
16:34
Because we’ve all hit rock bottom, first off, it’s too easy in an interview to go in and talk about all the things you’ve done great. But everyone talks about what you’ve done great. Well, we respond to those people that hit a road block and overcame it. Because what’s a job? Like a job is not hey, here’s all the success make it better. A job is exactly, it’s the ups and downs and so if you can ride that up and down, if you can find positive from the negativity in your own personal life, in a previous job, in a marriage, but with raising kids, whatever it is, for authentic to your story. Imagine what you could do at the job that I’m gonna hire you for. You can ride that wave. You can overcome. You’ll do it here. If all I hear is success, I don’t want people everyone to succeed because you know what, you’re ready for a failure and what’s going to happen if you fail under my watch and how are you going to react to that failure and I don’t want to be part of that.
17:19
And this is the emotional intelligence that you’re displaying on an interview folks?
17:24
I always say to people, what are the three, you read people’s stories, because I always have them tell me their story beforehand, and it’s meandering and they always have like three of the catch phrases like I persevere or, you know, I’m a problem solver and I’m like, the three things you want to say. You should not say it, because your story should make me feel it. I should understand it. Like in the story about the girl who won the gold medal, you never have to say she persevered, because that story just spoke volumes about persevering, but she would never in a million years have to be like I’m persevered. But I felt it and that’s 100 times more powerful than at the end being like, let me tell you the three adjectives about me.
18:07
Problem Solver, God, folks, and the language I’ve used before with some of you whose show don’t tell. It’s get the story to illustrate the points so that they get it and in this way, it’s much more powerful than using the three words. Problem solver. There’s another one, visionary. I love the visionary people and then I always ask them, tell me about something visionary, that you come to the most ordinary thing on the planet?
18:42
So tell a story that makes people understand it, and it’s a win, win and it’s a shorter interview. It’s more powerful interview, and science has proven that the person is more willing to remember you and the brain will actually activate on what you’re saying in a more powerful way and to me, that’s a win, win.
18:57
You betcha this, I bet you’ve got some good story formulas that you could share with people and how to construct their own stories. Am I right about that?
19:08
Yeah, I mean, again, it goes back to this notion of every Hollywood movie is 15 beats and so I’ve narrowed it down to I mean, the truth is every movie would only need to be three minutes long, but you wouldn’t be willing to pay $40 for that so they needed to extend it.
19:24
He’s in California hence the price $40 by the way.
19:27
But that’s what are bad guys close it right. You ever seen this movie where it’s like the bad guys about to shoot them and then if he gets away and then they have to beg guys regroup and bad guys. You have to like redo it all again, because you know, otherwise you wouldn’t buy enough popcorn? Um, yeah, there’s again when you’re telling a story, an interview story. It is four beats literally it is four beats and I’ll say them again. I was somebody. Who were you? Tell me contextually who you were? I was the least likely person in the world to be sustainability. I was the kid that was running the water or whatever, all the time in the house or you know I worked with a college quarterback for a while who was telling a story. He wanted to get into consulting and he was like, I can’t connect the two and I’m like, are you kidding me? Your job as a college quarterback was to find holes and find receivers that would fit into that hole. As a consultants job is to find a hole on a program and find the solution for like, it’s we’re able to connect that story but the least likely thing a consultant hears is I was a college quarterback. They’re like how? What this is, what are you talking about?
So you have to open with something catchy, if 10 seconds sciences to pull them in, who were you which has to be 180 degrees different than who you were at the end because if who you are at the beginning and who you are at the end is the same. It’s not called a journey. It’s actually called standing still and standing still will bore me to death. So who were you? Something had to have happened to you? If you chose to do it I don’t care. It’s not powerful. Something had to have happen to you. What happened to you that changed everything. So for me I wanted to play baseball but then my son, my friend got beat with a belt that changed everything. What happened to you that changed you? In movies, it’s when you know the bank forecloses on the house, you lose a job, you catch your husband or wife cheating on you. Something happened to you. This is the pivotal moment in your story. Without this one moment, there’s no reason to tell your story. It is the crux of every movie is this one moment, and it is essential to your story and you as the hero of your own story cannot have done it. It has to be done to you. What you will do is later. If you chose to do it it’s not powerful. So I was somebody.
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Something happened to me and because of all this, I struggled by what happened, right. I started a new job. I didn’t know what to do. I suddenly realized I needed to go try to help my best friend who had gotten beaten with a belt. Where do you look, I’m 17 years old tell that story and it has to end with hitting rock bottom. Oh, my God, the world was colliding. It was falling apart. There was nowhere for me to go. I was on the bottom and it’s that moment where you think there’s no way out. There’s no way to overcome this and people always say why do I need that? I need it because I need to have this emotional moment when I’m hearing your story to go. You overcame this. How did you overcome this? I need to think there’s no way you can overcome and so that’s what we call your path to success. So I was somebody.
Something happened to me. Your path to success is all the struggles you’ve had and then who you are now, which is the hero rise. I’m better because I’m stronger. I’m faster. I’m more able to be a part of your organization. I am perfectly in line with what you’re doing. Because of everything I went through and what I’ve overcome. I’ve learned and I’ve accomplished this and this. That’s the part in an interview list. The three things that every company needs are what they want, or what they’re asking for. You put it there, but it’s because of what I’ve gone through and what I’ve overcome, that I can now make this job so much better for you that you’d be lucky to have me and what you’re basically saying there is this is not just a job. This is not just a career. It is what was perfectly placed in front of me that my entire life is built to get to this point that I’m sitting here with you that you were lucky to have me and you need to truly feel that.
23:24
And I think that some of the people I work with are not as passionate about what they do, as you and I are and I’m wondering, is there a way that the introvert I’m not talking about energetic introvert but the emotional introvert. The one who’s maybe profoundly shy and do that same kind of a story and if you could illustrate something along those lines, for those people, my audience that they could get?
23:56
Yeah, look, I’ve worked with a lot of engineers come to me and they say, you know, I’m up for this job and I dream in numbers and you dream in stories. We be dreaming different things. How do I do it? Passion is part of it. But obviously, look, if you’re interviewing for a coding job, and you’re going to be the cubicle, passion is not part of it. That’s fine. What I do is passionate. So you don’t have to have as much passion. But I need to understand what brought you here and that needs to be part of it and what we like to hear is that people went through a process and a struggle and something that they were tested on and I don’t care if you’re an engineer. I don’t care if you’re a baseball player. I don’t care if you fix staplers for a living. It doesn’t matter what you do. It doesn’t even matter if you don’t even like it. I want to know what the process was to get you. Why are you sitting here? I didn’t call you. You called me. You apply for this job. So why are you here? Well something brought you here. There’s some reason that you are in front of me today. Why? And tell that story.
25:00
And I’m wondering if, at the end of this, what a person is trying to communicate is why this matters? Why they care and that has to be I know you know the answer. But I’m making sure the audience that this matters to you, so that this way, you’re able to be effective. You’re able to be powerful. You’re able to connect with the audience in a way that they feel you. Even if you’re an introvert, even if you’re someone who’s very shy and afraid to connect with people, for whatever the reason might be
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25:40
Connecting with people and speaking, if there’s a reason why, and I say this is as a son of an endodontist. But there’s like two things that most people don’t want, right? They don’t want a root canal, which is my father did, and they don’t want public speaking. Those are like the two nightmares of most people. So it’s ironic that someone as a son of an endodontist, who does root canals. I now do public speaking. You know, it becomes the confidence of why you and you know, why should you get this job is really important. But if they’re interviewing you there’s a bunch of candidates that all can do the job. So it’s not that I can do this job better. It’s that what I’ve done in my past has positioned me to a time and a place that I’m perfect for this job now in ways that others are not. Because it’s not necessarily always I want the best candidate, or the person who’s best at it, and want the best overall package.
I want the person that doesn’t pretend like they know always the answer, right? Like I’ve interviewed hundreds of leaders and the thing that you say the most is, they don’t need the one that always knows all the answers. They want the one that will work the hardest. That’ll ask when they don’t understand something and that will take ownership of the problem. So that they’re not knocking on the door and saying, what do I do, but they’re knocking on the door and say, here, I completed it. So what from your past can you explain in a way that shows that you’ve overcome adversity, that you take on projects, that you conquer those projects, and that you are perfectly aligned for this organization in this company, and that it means something like you said to me, personally, to work here, because this is more than just a job.
27:15
I think of the acting that goes along with this, and the eye contact that’s necessary for. So I remind your folks, if this is over video, make sure your cameras aligned in a way where you’re looking at your audience in the eye, and not having people side by side, on your screen so that this way, they’re looking over, you’re looking over to them, and you’ve broken eye contact. You have to be sincere and to convey that sincerity and as I love to say, risk everything. If you hold back, you’re not going to make that connection. You’re not going to convey why it’s important to you why this matters to you and that’s really what we’re trying to get across. This matters this job, this career, what you’re going to be doing. It’s important to you, and you went through hell to get to this point. You went through failure. You had to deal with you had to get rescued by the cavalry at one point and from that you’ll learn and now you’re here. You want to take those lessons and bring it to the next organization.
27:29
I want to add to that is really key important. If you take nothing else away from this, you need to understand that not every great story is an effective story. So stories need to have a call to action at the end and let me tell you the story from my own life. My father, like I said, was a dentist. He was actually dentist in military and he was stationed in Korea during the war and he was on a puddle jumper and they were flying from one area to another and suddenly the pilot had a heart attack and my father being the only one on the plane that had any medical knowledge again, dental knowledge, but medical in the sense he had an MD after their DDS, which was a doctor of something ran to the cockpit to say, oh my god, how can I help? And they said, we don’t need medical help, sir, we actually need help landing the plane and so here was my father, who had never flown a plane in his entire life and truly at that point in his life, they had only been on two planes in his entire life, and was actually able with the help of the flight manual, and the tower and someone else on the plane, they were able to land that plane successfully and when I say this to people they were like, wow, that’s an amazing story. Your father’s amazing and I say it is but why?
I’ll ask you this. Why did I tell you the story? There’s really no reason to. There’s not unless I want to brag about my father, which I love to do and my father will love listening to this and hearing me brag about him. There’s no reason for it, because it doesn’t have an end and yes, it has a Hollywood ending in the sense that the plane lands safely and that’s great and thank God for myself and my family. My father landed the plane safely. But if you and I are out having a drink, this will win the best story award right. But if I’m pitching you in a business meeting, this is a complete failure because it’s not best story. It’s the story that is the most poignant that wins and so let me explain this to you in another way. Take the same exact story that I just told you and let’s apply that to my daughter two story at six. My wife and my in laws both speak Spanish fluently and they wanted to speak to her in Spanish, and she would only talk in English and so we were trying to encourage her that she needed to learn the second language, and she refused none of her friends and no matter what we said, or even bribed, worked, and I realized, wait a second, I’m a storyteller.
Let’s forget words and adjectives. Let me tell her story. So I told her the story I just told you, which is a true story about her grandfather on a plane pilot has a heart attack. Grandpa runs to the front, offers medical help, they don’t need it. We need help landing the plane but what I didn’t tell you, which I told her was the truth was when my father pulled out the flight manual, it was written in Korean and so exactly, you get it and so what I said to her that moment was is the only reason that I’m here today, which is the only reason you’re here today is that your grandfather learned a second language and she paused and she looked at me, she goes, okay, I’ll learn Spanish. It had a call to action and a clear call to action. Every story you tell has to have a need or a want or desire. My want for that story was for my daughter to take a second language. The reason I told that story was doing emotionally connect with her in a way that she wouldn’t just hear my words, which were not working, but that she would feel and understand it and make that decision for herself. That’s an effective story, not just a great story.
31:47
And it’s so true and what haven’t we covered today that we really should? Before we wind up?
31:54
I think it sounds easy. It’s not always easy. You know, writers have spent 120 years crafting the storytelling. I know it works. Science has proven that it works. It’s a process. It’s not something you can easily just do overnight. But you have to work at it and I think and I know that if done correctly, an effective story will move people in a way to hear what you’re saying, and act on what you’re asking them to act on in a way that simply just using words, verbs, nouns, adjectives simply won’t.
32:25
And I want to take one piece from that and make it even more pointed for the audience. It takes time to put this together and if you think you can walk into an interview and win a story that’s going to work for you. You’re mistaken. You got to practice. You got to think about it. You got to feel it. You got to rehearse it. This way, when it comes time that the audience is in the theater, you can deliver your lines in a way that captivates.
32:53
Exactly
32:54
Thank you. How can people find out more about you and the work that you do, Justin?
32:58
I mean, you can find me on LinkedIn. It’s . You can email me at Justin at your story rules while you our story rules are you LDS. I’m sure you can post it. Happy to talk anytime it’s become an exciting journey and a new chapter in my story in my book as well. So thank you for having me.
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