Is it enough to tell your story or should you be embodying your story?
Katie talks to somatic speaking coach Stacia Keogh about how she helps business professionals connect with their bodies and emotions so they can make a greater impact with their storytelling.
The pair discuss the power of emotion in storytelling and the importance of getting the basics right – and by basics Stacia means standing and breathing!
Stacia emphasises the difference between a mission statement and a story, and highlights the three most important stories a business can tell: the story of origin, the purpose story, and the client’s story.
Key Takeaways
- Connect with your body and emotions to make a greater impact with your storytelling.
- A story needs a character, an event, and a transformation.
- The three most important stories a business can tell are the story of origin, the purpose story, and the client’s story.
- Use metaphors to tell stories with numbers and data.
Guest Information
STACIA KEOGH – Embodied Speaking & Story Coach
Email story@staciakeogh.co.uk
Website: https://staciakeogh.co.uk
PODCAST: FINDING MY VOICE GIVE IT A LISTEN!
Resources and people Stacia mentions:
Tony Robbins: https://www.tonyrobbins.com/biography/
Seth Godin: https://www.sethgodin.com
Seth Godin, “Purple Cow: Transform your Business by Being Remarkable” https://amzn.eu/d/90DIxYq
Phil Knight: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Knight
Phil Knight, “Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of NIKE” https://amzn.eu/d/a6tavfK
Daniel H Pink: https://www.danpink.com/
Daniel H Pink, “Drive: The Surprising Truth about what Motivates us” https://amzn.eu/d/gSechAK
Coldwell Banker Real Estate: https://www.youtube.com/@coldwellbanker
Dove: Change One Thing Campaign: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c96SNJihPjQ
Always: #LikeAGirl Campaign: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joRjb5WOmbM
Your host:
KATIE FLAMMAN (she/her) – Voiceover Artist, Presenter, Announcer, Podcaster, Founder of Storyteller Media.
Website: www.katieflamman.co.uk
Podcast: https://katieflamman.co.uk/the-storytelling-for-business-podcast/
Voiceover services: https://katieflamman.co.uk/voiceover-services/explainer-videos/
Presenting services: https://katieflamman.co.uk/presenting/
Get in touch for a FREE demo read of your script:
Email: katie@katieflamman.co.uk
Phone: +44 (0)1892 249 001
Follow Katie on Socials (do mention the podcast!):
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katie-flamman/
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X / Twitter: https://twitter.com/KatieFlamman
Transcript
“Hello, and welcome to Storytelling For Business, the podcast that helps you build better customer relationships by telling stories your clients want to hear. I’m Katie Flamman. I’m a voiceover artist specializing in corporate storytelling.
I’ve worked with clients from local councils to the Council of Europe, helping them to share brand stories and business developments. But why is business storytelling important? Are there different types of stories?
And how can all this create leads for your business and help to build lasting relationships with your clients? We’ve almost finished season two of the podcast and I’m convinced there’s still loads more to learn about this. Today’s guest is, sometimes, a voiceover artist like me.
I first met her on a training course for video game actors, but now she’s blasting her way into the world of business. Stacia Keogh is a story coach. With a background as an actor and performance storyteller, she’s pivoted her storytelling skills into the world of business.
First, she wrote and produced corporate videos. Then she started getting involved with pitches and presentations. Stacia realized the people delivering those messages, managers, leaders and entrepreneurs often needed a bit of help.
Stacia is now a somatic speaking coach, helping business professionals to make an impact with their corporate storytelling. Stacia, welcome to the podcast.
That is the loveliest introduction. I loved that. That distilled everything perfectly.
Well, let’s start with the basics. What is a somatic speaking coach? What does that mean?
I’m really glad you asked that because it’s been a journey that went in a circle, which most stories do. Somatics is everything to do with the body. You have a lot of speaking coaches out there and they either focus on your content or they focus on maybe getting your voice out there.
But the thing that I do is I work with really smart people and get them out of their head and into their body because one of the main things that I found that people said that they were afraid of when they spoke was forgetting what they were going to say. So if it’s in your body, if it’s in you, if it’s really a thought and a feeling but the feeling is attached to it, you won’t forget how you feel. You won’t forget that.
People that stand up and speak that have never spoken before, they’re driven by emotion. They must speak. The need is so great.
So somatics are using lots of different modalities. They get you into the physical body to get you connected with what you’re feeling, to get you connected with allowing those feelings to run through you because emotions are energy in motion. So they need to have a place to go.
So a lot of those nerves that people have is just them trying to hang on to something instead of let it go. So first thing that I tell people is when in doubt, breathe out. Because nine times out of ten, what’s happening is people are holding their breath.
Yeah.
It’s so interesting what you said about how people feel when they’re giving a speech or that feeling, that emotion. It’s something that we’ve touched on in the podcast before about what the audience is going to feel. They will maybe forget the numbers and the facts and figures, but they’ll remember how you made them feel.
But I haven’t heard it put from the point of view of the storyteller, how they feel. And of course, a passionate speaker is speaking with passion, with emotion. So you’re so right.
So you tell people to breathe. Any other real, real basics that you kind of look at somebody and go, whoa, okay.
Yeah. When I was a Lambda teacher for like 18 years and sat on their examining panel. So that’s acting coaches, London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts.
So they’d be taking their exams for acting and verse and prose and public speaking. And they would say, am I going to pass the exam? And I said, well, there’s two things you need to do to pass the exam.
You need to be able to stand up and you need to be able to breathe. And they’re like, oh, I do that already, miss. I’m like, but do you?
Because you have people standing like this and that and, you know, one leg and then the other and twisting and turning and faffing and about all that physical noise, which we know as voice artists in the booth, it can help or it can hinder. So if you’ve got, say, you know, you’re doing a video game or some really animated character, it really helps to like move around and really get into that feeling of what you’d be like if you were a busy mom on the go. And that’s again, when you were saying about how your audience feels, where your audience mirrors you.
When you breathe, they breathe. They breathe. When you are showing some emotion, they’re feeling that emotion, but they can’t feel it if it doesn’t come from somewhere.
So it has to start with you. And then that’s the empathy that you build when you tell a story with your audience, because you take them through it with you. It’s not so much of a journey.
It’s much more of an ordeal. Because another thing that I work with people on is just identifying what a story is. So you go into a company and they go, yes, we have our story, and they show you their mission statement.
And it’s like, hmm. And I’m sure we’ve all gotten corporate copy where we go, uh-huh, there’s just not really a sentence here with a verb and a subject in it.
So what is the difference between a mission statement and a story? Right.
So what is a story? First of all, the story has to have some very basic ingredients. Number one, it needs to have a character and it needs to have an event.
So something actually needs to happen and it needs to happen to not even people. It can be inanimate objects, you know, it can be, it can be animals, it can be anything, but it has, you have to have a character, somebody that we can root for, hate, identify with, that we recognize ourselves or others in. So we have to have a character, we have to have an event, a specific event, something that’s got some details in it that we can locate and say, yep, that that is credible.
Or even if it’s fantasy, that we can actually build out that world in our head. And then it needs to have real emotion and transformation. Things can’t go back to being the same, otherwise, why would you bother telling it?
And there’s only two transformations in a story. There’s either life or death. You either become more fully alive or you become the living dead.
Nobody wants that, right? You know, nobody, they say they don’t, but they keep doing it. I don’t understand.
Is that death by PowerPoint, the living dead?
It could certainly be, but in a business sense, how this breaks down, and I tell my business people all the time, don’t be negaphobic because your story starts when life blows up. It’s called the inciting incident. Something happens that knocks it all out of whack, or that’s missing, or that you are, you know, that we don’t know, that we have to go find.
So when your life blows up, or when things go awry, then you need to figure out, okay, is it stories of warning? Is this the way we don’t want to go? Or is it stories of motivation?
Yes, we’re on the, we’re all in on this. Because you get people that, you know, you listen to their language. So the other half of story telling is story listening.
So ask yourself, what’s the story your clients are telling? And then you can see, do they, are they going, you know, I think I’ll wait and see how it pans out. Or, yeah, well, we’ll wait for the tech to develop a little bit more.
We’ll think about it. Or, you know, they’re sitting on the fence. If you don’t get going, this is what’s going to happen.
Yeah, I saw somebody else do that, and this is where they are today. Or, you know, the bus is going, whether you’re on it or not.
So drive a bit of urgency with the story that you’re telling.
Yeah, make him know that, you know, not so much FOMO, although that’s used a lot. But just, you know, what’s the outcome if they don’t do it? What’s the outcome if they do do it?
One of the most persuasive storytelling structures, I call it spark lines, and it’s used in a It’s used in every everybody that’s a motivational speaker that that’s a like world political leader from history down to Tony Robbins. You know, they go, this is where you could be. But this is where you are.
And then in that gap, which is magical, that’s where you can drop the information. And when people are going, what, what, what? You tell them the steps that it takes to get that thing.
And then when you build it like that, they have, they have participation power. They go, oh, yeah, I can do that. Oh, oh yeah, you know what else we could do to get there?
Oh, so that’s your engagement, because you’ve got people that are, you know, on board and in, and just thinking, they’re discovering, they’re, they’re curious, they’re surprised. You know, it goes back to Seth Godin and his Purple Cow in his marketing book, which is about how to stand out in the market, because you see a black cow, you see a white cow, you see a spotty cow, but then you see a purple cow, and you go, oh, wait a minute, what’s going on there?
The same but different.
Yeah. You know, the ABC of selling, C is contrast.
So I saw on your website, the three most important stories a business can tell. So what are they, or are we giving away trade secrets here by talking about it?
The three stories that they can tell are the story of origin. How did your business start? What’s the founder story?
How did this come together? Because a lot of times that story reveals your genius, what really worked and what really didn’t. You know, I think there’s a couple of founder stories that I love.
One is Dice and the other is Phil Knight, who wrote a book called Shoe Dog. He was the chairman of Nike. And that’s that is a fabulous book.
I highly recommend it to anybody in your audience out there. And it’s it reads like a thrilling novel because he talks about how the company, you know, almost lost it millions of times, how they were thrown out of banks, how they couldn’t make their payroll. This is Nike.
You know, he sold it for like, I think, 30 billion or something. But it’s talks about all the things that went wrong. So don’t be negaphobic, because if you don’t have the negative, you don’t have any tension in that story.
There’s no good or bad. It’s only positive and negative. And it’s just like with a video game, either you go this way and get those choices or you go that way and get these choices.
So that story of origin is amazing. And it’s helpful for your other people in your company to know it, because then they know who they are. They know that what is the culture.
They know what’s going on.
So Stacia, you said there were three stories. So you’ve had the origin story. What are the other two?
Well, the other one is the purpose story. And the purpose story is really important in that that is what’s going to bond your community together. And that’s what’s going to help you play that infinite game.
It’s like, what do we stand for? That’s really should be something in your branding values. Purpose is a big story.
And when people know their purpose, that’s when your people will stick with you, because they buy into their purpose. It’s not for the money. It’s for the purpose.
In fact, that’s one of the three drivers that Dan Pink’s talks about in his book, Driven, is people don’t do it for the money. They do it because of autonomy, mastery and purpose.
And so what’s the third type of story?
The third is really your client story is one to tell. And that’s again, listening to what they say. A lot of times, it’s more than just testimonials.
Because if you get them to tell you in their own words, then you’ve also got the kind of language that they speak. So you can actually speak right to your client. And you actually know what it is that they want instead of what you’re trying to sell them.
And that helps. And the biggest way to get a client story is just to simply ask for it, ask them, ask them what they want, ask them what they think. If you ask, they’ll tell you.
Coldwell Banker is a firm in the States. They are state agents is what they’d call them in this country. And it’s a family owned firm.
But how many times do you buy a house? Not very often. And how do you keep relevant and top of mind?
So, they did a Twitter campaign a while back and it was called Tell Us What’s Awesome About Your House. And so, people wrote in all this stuff, you know, that’s where I marked my kid’s height on the wall. This is where my husband came home from the army.
This is where my daughter got married. I got carried over the threshold here. We had a retirement party, et cetera, et cetera.
So much more than just a house.
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.
But you also got negative stories too. So they did this really great commercial and it was just this fun music playing over the top, no dialogue and just seeing all these moments. But then, what happens when there’s a divorce?
What happens to that asset? So they told the story of what happens to the asset from the point of view of the dog. Because when you divorce, it’s like who gets the house, who gets the records or the CD collection or whatever you’ve got.
Who gets the dog?
Who gets the dog? And so he’s like, who should I go with him or her? She’s getting the house.
So, yeah, so you can get a lot of interesting stuff from there. And that’s also where Dove got their, you know, Be Your Beautiful Self campaign. And this is another thing with stories and companies.
It’s not just one. It’s that drip feed, that episodic storytelling, building a culture of storytelling. And that’s what you see companies like always doing.
And telling, wrapping it around with, you know, you’ve got that kind of story hook. And then you got that little bit of teaching and that context. And then you’ve got that call to action.
But they’re not even talking about the product. They’re giving you valuable information. They tell a purpose story as well because their market is teenage girls.
Well, what is it that happens to teenage girls when they reach puberty? Not only do they get their period, but they also lose their confidence. They lose their voice.
So they started their Like a Girl campaign. They don’t talk about feminine products. They talk about how to empower women.
And that’s going kind of above and beyond, isn’t it? And that is all about the audience. You’re right.
You’re right. A brilliant example. So I’ve got one more question about the coaching work you do.
I’m really interested in the work you do with kind of the techie side of people, the research and development teams, the analysts, the auditors, those people who have to look at stats and data and then present reports on what they see. How can those kind of people find stories in those numbers?
Oh, telling a story with numbers is great. And that’s what we need more of. And I love working with those people because they’re the most overlooked and hardest working people in your organization.
They are the guys and the gals that come in and dig the ditches and build the stuff so that you can stand up in your board meeting and go, what do you think? Pretty good, huh? The thing about these guys is that they get turned into report givers and order takers.
And they actually should be your trusted advisors. And so to empower them to telling the story, I hold court literally and space for them and listen to what they have to say because nobody’s really listening to them. And a lot of times what we’re doing is listening to what they are and who they are, what their life is.
And this goes to being an embodied storyteller as well. You don’t leave yourself out of the picture. You are telling the story from your experience and what you know widely.
So that’s using metaphor, lots of metaphor, which is the spine of any story. So the magic of metaphor is finding the thing that builds that bridge to understanding the thing that we don’t understand. We understand this, but we don’t understand that.
So a great example of that is somebody who does governance and like a firewall manager and they’re all about that kind of safety and things like that. Well, we got to talking and he used to do open water swimming and I’m a wild swimmer. And so we got to talking about, well, there’s risks with that.
And yes, there are always risks with swimming, but what we do is we manage those risks. So it’s managed risks. It’s really looking at how you can take risks in a way that we can still manage.
And so he did his whole talk on governance of data protection using the metaphors of open water swimming and of swimming and of giving people swimming medals. And just any kind of danger, you could kind of match it to, oh, it’s kind of like cold shock. Oh, it’s kind of like knowing where the current is.
It’s kind of like this, it’s kind of like that. And then I talked to somebody else in the team who’s a data manager. And I mean, everything was in disarray when he got there.
And I said, oh, so everybody was speaking a different language. So was it like a Tower of Babel? And he said, no, I’m not Christian.
I’m like, oh, okay. So was it like a bowl of spaghetti, all different things all around? No.
Then I kind of got to talking to him and he’s really keen on crime novels. And I said, was it like a crime scene? He goes, oh, yes, blood spatter everywhere.
So he could take everything that he was talking about that would sound like jargon and gobbledygook and give it this whole crime scene thing.
Which was fully him, fully his interest and coming then from a place of passion, like you said before.
So he knew about both things and he could speak quite easily. And because he loved it, it wasn’t some dry thing where he had to worry if they liked it because he was so invested in telling the story. And they were like, oh my God.
I bet both of those audiences remembered the crime scene guy and the swimming guy for a long time more than maybe they would have just remembered the firewall talk and the rest of it, data protection stuff. Brilliant. Love it.
I mean, the outcomes of these things are things like that guy came back to me because I’m retained by that company now, go figure, and he said, I said, so how’s it going? Because he had to give that same talk at board level and he goes, they okayed my budget. No problem.
Well, and that’s it. That’s a tangible result from switching your system from being a deliverer of numbers to a teller of stories. Fabulous.
Fabulous.
It also helps them as well because a lot of times while they’re telling this story and they’re going through the problem in this storied way, they figure out all these other things.
Well, we’ve nearly run out of time. We’ve had we’ve covered so much amazing ground. But I just have one more question, which is what is your story look like for maybe the next five years or going forward?
What does it look like? I am really looking at that. And what I have is like lots of lots of cups full and pouring into each other.
So I do voice work and as well, animation, games, audiobooks, that sort of thing. And I also do this embodied speaking and coaching and I performance storyteller that actually goes and looks at traditional tales in that. So all of it together actually feeds each other.
So my story at the moment has been with this embodied thing in the somatic coaching that I did in the last year. And I’m just getting my ICF, ACC, alphabet suit qualification has been really re-listening to myself and finding, oh, yeah, you know, when we’re chasing that success all the time, which I did all my life. Finally, it’s like, what does it look like when you’re really successful?
And I realized, oh, it means I wouldn’t compare myself to anyone else. So my story is about rewriting some of these old myths and fallacies, you know, the, like they said, the wounded healer, the starving artist, the lone wolf, and realizing that the mind that has the question also has the answer. So how we get more in touch with our own wisdom is to really get in touch with our story.
Lovely. What a place to end. Well, Stacia, it’s been an absolute pleasure having you on the podcast.
I would of course put all the links to contact you in our show notes. So if anyone wants to work with Stacia, please reach out to her and get in touch. Thank you so much for being here, Stacia Keogh.
Thanks for having me on. It’s been a pleasure, Katie Flamman.
So there’s your homework. Get in touch with your own story. Stacia mentioned quite a few books during our chat.
Don’t worry if you didn’t jot them down. They’re all in the show notes. So what did we learn from Stacia?
Here are my key takeaways.
One, if you’re giving a speech or presentation, there are two golden rules. Plant your feet firmly on the ground and breathe.
Two, to be a successful speaker, you should get out of your head and focus on your body. Feel your story and you won’t forget what you want to say. Three, you are a huge part of your story, so don’t leave yourself out of it.
What does that mean? Well, tell it in a way that’s authentic to you. Remember the firewall guy who loved cold water swimming and the data analyst who was obsessed with crime novels?
Their presentations reflected their interests, and their audiences felt that passion and remembered the message. Could you do something similar? Four, every story needs three ingredients, a character, an event and a transformation.
Five, the three most important stories a business can tell are the origin or founder story, including the setbacks you’ve overcome, the purpose story, sharing what you stand for to bring your community together, and the value story. This is really your customer’s story, but it emphasizes the value you bring to that working relationship.
Once again, huge thanks to today’s guest, Stacia Keogh. If you’d like to work with her, do get in touch and tell her I sent you. The contact details are in the show notes.
And that’s it! I can’t believe we’ve reached the end of season two! Did you like it?
I’d love to know! Please do reach out on LinkedIn or email me with your feedback. My contact details, of course, in the show notes too.
I’m a bit sad it’s over. Will you miss me? Oh, you don’t need to!
You can just go back to the beginning! Remember, there’s all of season one as well as season two, plus the rather splendid Christmas episode where my special guest, Philip Banks, brings to life that most famous small business owner, Ebenezer Scrooge. So there’s loads of Storytelling For Business advice and inspiration across 19 episodes for you to dip into when you need it.
And you never know, I might be back with more before too long. Well, I can’t leave it on episode 19, can I? Oh, and if you’d like my help to tell your story with voiceover, presenting or podcasting, please give me a shout.
I’d be really happy to help. I’m Katie Flamman and this is Storytelling For Business. Until next time, goodbye.”
From Storytelling For Business: Physical: Body & Soul, 29 Feb 2024
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