How Stories Happen
By: Jay Acunzo
Language: en
Categories: Business, Marketing, Entrepreneurship
Inside the process of exceptional business storytellers and how they craft their work to resonate, plus practical frameworks and techniques you can use everywhere you communicate. Hosted by Jay Acunzo, speaking and storytelling advisor to some of the business world’s biggest thinkers and strongest storytellers.
Episodes
Improving the signature speech of a marketing entrepreneur
Jan 09, 2026Go inside inside my public speaking accelerator, Design My Signature Talk, with this clip from our final group call.
Watch the full video of this episode→
Join the next cohort of Design My Signature Talk (starts Feb. 23, 2026)→
In this episode, hear Brian Piper deliver his brand new signature story as a reliable opener of his brand new signature talk that we developed in the cohort. He used this material to get 3 brand new client leads from his first attempt.
Brian is a marketing consultant and an author who works with people in h...
Duration: 00:36:19My process for booking keynotes (the engine most overlook)
Dec 19, 2025If you want to book more and better speaking opportunities, this is the episode for you.
I take a closer look at the process most speakers miss, not because they haven't had any success selling their offerings, but precisely because they have. Speaking works in the opposite way to almost everything else. It's an inverted commercial model. We need to embrace this fact and invest our time, energy, and budget accordingly, if we want to book more and better stages, charge or raise our speaker fees, and develop a sustainable pipeline of keynotes and speaking engagements.
<... Duration: 00:25:00Scott Stratten: Keynotes say, "I dare you to look away"
Dec 11, 2025There’s this THING that happens to a public speaker and storyteller that feels addicting. It happens after you’ve internalized your content and put in the reps. You’re no longer consciously thinking about what to say next or how to say it. Instead, you can just walk up on stage, or fire up the camera, or switch on the mic, and just BE.
Few speakers and storytellers have achieved that level of internalized, authentic performance like Scott Stratten (LinkedIn).
Scott is a Hall of Fame public speaker and the founder of UnM...
Duration: 00:42:05David Burkus: Stories about others should still say something about YOU
Nov 08, 2025The more experienced and accomplished my guests are, the more they tend to care deeply about the little things. They're the ones who could "wing it" and actually get away with it, and yet, they don't. In their speeches, stories, messages, and everywhere they show up, they focus on the tiny details that make their words resonate.
My guest in this episode is the perfect picture of this phenomenon. It's David Burkus.
David is the bestselling author of 5 books, including his latest, a national bestseller: Best Team Ever: The Surprising Science of High-Performing Teams. David's...
Duration: 00:37:21David C. Baker: Clarity comes *in* the articulation, not before it
Oct 30, 2025When you’re an expert in something, it’s tempting to assume the role of your communication is to deliver something in an academic way. Instruct, advise, and teach. Sometimes, this devolves into shoving a wall of smarts *at* the world. But you need to translate what you know into language that causes others to care. That's something today's guest embraced 10 years ago, and the combination of his ideas and his influence have put him in rare company.
Today's guest is David C. Baker, a 7-time author which the New York Times once called "the expert's expert." His...
Duration: 00:39:12Coaching call: Jay develops the premise of an entrepreneur and coach
Oct 02, 2025Very excited for this one, my friend: I'm releasing a recording of a coaching call I had with entrepreneur Michelle Florendo, who runs a business called Powered by Decisions. You'll hear us walk through frameworks you can use to turn messy or scattered thinking into a clear and differentiated premise Michelle can use to strengthen her messaging and thought leadership.
First, I share a primer on premise development. What's a premise, and what makes a premise effective?
Then, you'll hear the full call with me and Michelle.
Michelle is a decision engineer, which...
Duration: 00:41:59Jordan Geary: Lessons from Sesame Workshop and an Emmy-Award Winning Producer
Sep 26, 2025It's one thing for a solopreneur with a microphone to tell you to trust your own lived experiences to differentiate, resonate, and tell stronger stories. But what happens when there are millions of dollars at stake and millions of viewers consuming your work?
Meet Jordan Geary, an Emmy Award-winning producer and storytelling expert. As the Senior Creative Producer of Current Series at Sesame Workshop, he helped shape iconic live-action and animated shows, including Ghostwriter and Helpsters for Apple TV+, Sesame Street Mecha Builders and Bea’s Block for HBO Max, and over 300 Sesame Studios shorts for YouTube.
<... Duration: 00:37:25Neen James: how to create visual frameworks to elevate your business
Sep 10, 2025If you’re an expert in something, chances are, you share content about that something. But so does everyone around you. Merely sharing your expertise makes you a commodity. I can get it anywhere, and I guess you’re anywhere. That’s why I routinely say, you need to stop creating content and start creating IP.
Your IP is built on top of your premise, the core idea informing the rest, but more experts should also develop their signature frameworks, or what our guest today calls "contextual models." Your contextual models help turn complexity into simplicity, so people...
Duration: 00:37:32Chris Ducker: why you need a catalyst story to increase influence
Sep 04, 2025One of the hallmarks of great business storytellers is something called the catalyst story. They don't just shove their expertise at you like a wall of smarts. They take you on a journey.
Often, in a speech, a book, or even just a single piece or post, they can retrace their own journey of discovery to ensure the audience cares and understands. Because you might be at letter Z of your understanding of something, but others start at A. You need to meet them in that reality, then move them to something better, beat by beat. That...
Duration: 00:34:45Jessica Abel: Author of my favorite book on storytelling ever
Aug 19, 2025There are 2 books I recommend most often to others who say they want to be a stronger storyteller: one is from a world-famous legend, and the other is from our guest today. It's Jessica Abel, author of Out on the Wire: The Storytelling Secrets of the New Masters of Radio. This exceptional book just celebrated its ten-year anniversary.
This book takes you inside the storytelling processes of the makers of This American Life, Serial, Radiolab, The Moth, Planet Money, and Snap Judgment, and the two voices taking you through the book (in cartoon narrator forms) are Jessica...
Duration: 00:32:18Why some people earn passionate fans and others don't
Aug 13, 2025Advice from experts feels like it's getting aggressive. This is why, and also what we can do to show up better.
Happily, this is the difference between constantly pushing and hyping and, instead, actually communicating in ways that get a positive, passionate response despite the noise.
MY MESSAGE TO YOU:
Don't market more. Matter more. ( Duration: 00:21:10Tom Webster: podcasting's top researcher on how to tell the story of numbers
Aug 05, 2025We're presented with a lot of false choices in our work: Quantity or quality? Revenue or social impact? Sweet or savory? But few false choices are more worth challenging than this: Are you more emotional storyteller or data-driven communicator?
Our guest today is the perfect person to challenge this assumption. It's Tom Webster!
Tom is a legend in the podcast space. He’s a partner at Sounds Profitable, an organization which researches and seeks to grow the audio business. For nearly three decades, Tom’s insights and advice have helped steer this entire industry forward, and...
Duration: 00:32:30Mark Schaefer: How to create urgency in an audience through your stories
Jul 24, 2025What ideas haunt you? What can't you stop thinking about, you care about it that much? As public voices and experts, we all have those ideas that chase us around and color how we see everything. The thing is, our audience might not "get it" the way we do, nor care. So we have to work overtime to show them why they would. This in turn creates a sense of urgency in the audience: to care, share, subscribe, buy, or take action of some kind.
That kind of urgency is the role of the...
Duration: 00:32:17Erin Halper: What consultants who share content need to realize
Jul 15, 2025Today, experts, consultants, and others who share advice content and thought leadership concepts need to embrace a tough truth. Our guest is the perfect person to help me deliver it.
Erin Halper is the founder of the community business for independent consultants, The Upside. In our episode, we talk about vulnerability in storytelling and how to navigate it well, and we look at a signature story of hers that she uses everywhere but which she debated NOT using for a long time. You'll hear why, and you'll walk away with some ideas to apply to your own c...
Duration: 00:30:20Six-Way Stories: a method for you to become a stronger storyteller
Jun 27, 2025Looking back on my own career as a speaker, storyteller, and communicator across projects and mediums, I realize: every time I developed a signature story capable of resonating with others, I went through the same process. It wasn't intentional, but it worked. Today, I want to codify that process into a more conscious process you can follow. I'm calling it Six-Way Stories:
1. Make a messy draft.
2. Find the 4 building blocks of the story.
3. Build up the story from the building blocks.
4. Arrive at an insight using a particular phrase.
5. Tell it again, but...
How to resonate with experienced pros (stop being tricked by the internet)
Jun 04, 2025How to resonate with better clients and buyers—people with experience and taste who hire you for everything that makes you unique.
This is different than almost everything the owners of search engines, social networks, and AI tools have taught us. So we first need to unlearn a lot of what's popular on the internet today.
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ABOUT ME, JAY ACUNZO:
Strategic Storytelling & Speaking Advisor to Experienced Pros
I help my clients package and communicate their expertise to differentiate & resonate as stronger stories, speeches, and messaging, so it’...
Duration: 00:22:48Steve Pratt: Storytelling lessons from the MTV of Canada and #1-ranked podcasts
May 29, 2025Steve Pratt has spent a lifetime earning attention, from his time working for "the MTV of Canada" (Much Music) and as the co-creator of the most popular podcast in Canada, then as the cofounder of Pacific Content, which created podcasts for DELL, Charles Schwab, Zendesk, Slack, Atlassian and more.
Steve is a past client of mine, as I helped him develop his keynote speech associated with his book, Earn It: Unconventional Strategies for Brave Marketers. When he's not traveling the world speaking, Steve is consulting his clients on how to differentiate through their creative bravery.
<...
Duration: 00:38:56BEST OF HSH: Andrew Davis on figuring out your story
May 21, 2025I know a ton of storytellers and creators and entrepreneurs, but I know exactly zero other people who have learned how to do what they do from both legendary news broadcasters and Kermit the Frog.
Meet Andrew Davis. He is a powerhouse business speaker who’s given speeches in 35 different countries, at more than 50 events every year. He speaks to audiences ranging from marketers and entrepreneurs to plumbers and physicians — and there may not be a storyteller who is this craft-driven and obsessed with telling amazing stories in the worlds of business, marketing, and customer experience.
Make me care: Lessons from Roy Kent and Seth Godin
May 07, 2025There's a big difference between people hearing your words and understanding you. There's an even bigger gap between understanding and caring. How can we communicate in ways that ensure others care about our ideas, our messages, our businesses?
In this solo episode, a look at two moments involving two very different communicators: Roy Kent, the character from Ted Lasso, and author and speaker Seth Godin.
We'll dissect both moments and make sense of what they do differently. It's a stark reminder that communicating in ways that resonate is available to us all, if only we'd m...
Duration: 00:15:50Dorie Clark: How to turn expertise into breakthrough ideas
Apr 30, 2025This episode is a total blast and tour de force from one of the world's foremost business communicators, Dorie Clark! Dorie is a Wall Street Journal bestselling author, a contributor to the Harvard Business Review, a communication coach and mentor for world-class leaders, and a keynote speaker who has consulted with or spoken for Google, Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, Yale University, and the World Bank.
In this episode, you'll hear a signature story Dorie uses in support of her premise and her book, The Long Game: How to Be a Long-Term Thinker in a Short-Term World. Together, we...
Duration: 00:38:37Justin Moore: How he altered his storytelling to resonate with more people
Apr 18, 2025"Reworking in Realtime." That’s a phrase I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. How often do you get to sit with a peer, a colleague, a mentor, a coach, and go through something to improve in realtime? Why don't we? Athletes do it. Comedians. Musicians. Filmmakers.
We should too, and lately, on my YouTube channel, I've been building a playlist of publicly available coaching calls to put the process on display of developing stronger speeches and stories. Justin Moore was the first to kick things off about a year ago, and I invi...
Duration: 00:45:41My recipe for great stories
Apr 11, 2025Lessons from 20 years of storytelling through my writing, speaking, podcasting, videos, and most of all, from my Grandma.
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IMPROVE YOUR SPEAKING + STORYTELLING:
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Explore my services: jayacunzo.com/services
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***
CONNECT:
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This episode was produced b...
Duration: 00:20:07Neal Foard: How to tell small stories with big meaning to persuade and inspire
Mar 27, 2025AI and people both run on LLMs. AI has large language models. People have little life moments. But mostly, we don't draw on our LLMs confidently or consistently enough.
Neal Foard does, and that's made him one of the most exceptional (and viral) storytellers in the business world.
Neal joins me today to lay it all out: we talk about constructing stories, practicing and rehearsal, and how to shape a true story into something entertaining. Together, we hear his famous story of "the best bartender in Chicago" and talk about the little m...
Duration: 00:40:12Jay Answers Your Questions about Public Speaking as Marketing Approach, Revenue Engine, and Creative Craft
Mar 19, 2025In this special bonus episode, I take your questions about public speaking. We talk about the craft, but also the way we can better approach our speaking as a marketing strategy and approach, how to think about whether to charge for public speaking (and how much), and a lot more!
Whether you've got a speaking engagement coming up, give tons of talks each year, or you're just thinking about becoming a stronger and more strategic speaker to support your business and message, this episode will help you rethink some important pieces to the puzzle.
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The elements of stronger messages & how to say what they can’t unhear, with Tamsen Webster, message designer
Mar 14, 2025This episode, we do something a bit different. I’m joined by the brilliant messaging strategist and pioneer of the message design industry, Tamsen Webster! We fully nerd out on crafting messaging and the elements that help you create stronger speeches, better stories, and a more effective message for your entire platform.
Tamsen in not only a leader in the field of message design, she’s also the author of two revolutionary books: Find Your Red Thread and Say What They Can’t Unhear. She’s been named to the Thinkers50 Radar, spent over 10 years as...
Duration: 00:47:36A trick from John Mulaney to create better content
Mar 07, 2025A technique for our work found in an incredible moment between John Mulaney and David Letterman. This is a solo episode from me to share something you can apply to your work right away to become a stronger storyteller, to differentiate your message, and to generally compete on the impact of your ideas NOT the volume of your marketing.
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IMPROVE YOUR SPEAKING + STORYTELLING:
Subscribe to my newsletter and learn more about me at jayacunzo.com
Explore my services: jayacunzo.com/services
Duration: 00:18:34
"Stories that inspire more stories: that's what I'm after" - Brad Montague, children's author and keynote speaker
Feb 28, 2025It's hard to show up publicly at times, sharing your work, giving of yourself to others. It can be even harder given the places we mostly show up online today. But Brad Montague is here to lead a joyful rebellion—one for creatives, artists, and humans of all kinds, both kids and (in Brad's terms) former kids. And here's here to show us that celebrating failure is part of the process of doing meaningful things.
Brad is a New York Times bestselling author of books for kids and former kids alike. He’s also a sp...
Duration: 00:40:16If growth is hard, you might need your "idea before the idea"
Feb 21, 2025In this solo episode, I share a storytelling concept I'm calling "the idea before the idea," which helps solve issues of growth and audience traction.
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REGISTER FOR MY NEXT BOOTCAMP:
Design My Signature Talk is a virtual intensive where I help you develop and nail your next talk and elevate your speaking all year long.
Register now at jayacunzo.com/signaturetalk
***
IMPROVE YOUR SPEAKING + STORYTELLING:
Subscribe to my newsletter and learn more about me at j...
Duration: 00:15:39“Is this ANNything?” Ann Handley Returns to Work Out New Drafts
Feb 14, 2025This week, I’m joined by my favorite recurring guest and the star of our “Is this ANNything” mini-series, the brilliant Ann Handley.
Throughout this mini-series (usually called “Is This Anything?”), close friends and collaborators join me to work out new ideas and unproven drafts to see if it is, in fact, anything.
Today, Ann and I start by discussing the first time we were paid to speak, then we touch on my white whale of public speaking, the big no-nos when opening speeches, and how we have evolved our on-sta...
Duration: 00:52:20“You can’t make pottery without clay” | Elise Hu dissects her TED Talk
Feb 07, 2025In this episode, we go inside the delivery and construction of a popular TED Talk! Elise Hu gets real with us about the preparation and challenges that go into taking complex ideas and molding them to fit a tightly delivered speech.
Elise is an award-winning journalist, podcaster, and author based in Los Angeles. She’s the host of TED Talks Daily, Accenture’s Built for Change, and a co-host of Forever 35. And if that’s not enough, she also co-founded the LA-based podcast production company, Reasonable Volume to work with brands and companies tell their st...
Duration: 00:42:25How to find powerful stories everywhere | Jay Baer, hall-of-fame speaker & NY Times bestselling business author
Jan 31, 2025Inspiration is everywhere -- if you're paying attention.
Today we’re resharing a slightly modified version of an episode I used to help pilot How Stories Happen, back inside my old show called Unthinkable. (You’ll hear me reference the “miniseries,” which is what I used to craft this show and test various elements.)
In this episode, bestselling author and Hall of Fame keynote speaker Jay Baer brings one of his oldest, most proven stories to the show -- and we learn the two psychological concepts we can embrace to craft...
Duration: 00:46:11"It's not effortless, it's intentional" | Mike Ganino, keynote director & author
Jan 24, 2025We’re told to steal from those we admire, but so often, we mimic the wrong things. It’s not WHAT someone does but WHY they do it (and why it works for them) which we ought to model in our own creative work and storytelling. Once we find that, we can intentionally master the craft. And this work is about exactly that: intentionality. It’s practiced. Until it looks effortless (even if, for a long while, it wasn’t).
In this episode, Mike Ganino shares a story about his childhood and falling in love wit...
Duration: 00:41:51“Little nuggets take your story furthest” I Veronica Romney - Author, Entrepreneur, and Marketing Leader
Jan 17, 2025What does the psychology of family systems have to do with being a good storyteller? Well, according to Veronica Romney, a lot. Understanding identity and how people define theirs can make or break your ability to stand out, resonate, and earn passionate fans.
In this episode, V shares the story about a funeral unlike any other. In fact, it’s 18 years in the making. It even made the news, and it reveals a major lesson about modern marketing. Throw in a Harley-Davison superfan riding his motorcycle to the afterlife, and you’ve got the maki...
Duration: 00:45:31“Great stories are ownable” | Ron Tite, keynote speaker and agency exec
Jan 10, 2025How do you make a story truly come alive? You pace things down and focus on the small details. Everyone else might want the big, flashy story, but your most effective (and ownable) stories are from noteworthy moments, not newsworthy events.
In this episode, Ron Tite puts on display his otherworldly mastery of public speaking and performance. He takes a (relatively average) hotel and uses a series of interactions with the brand to make you laugh, feel inspired, and transform how you think about customer experience, social media, and even story structure.
Whisper
Dec 27, 2024A special bonus story and a crucial question to guide your 2025. This episode was handcrafted for you by Jason, with love.
Duration: 00:22:49"Specific moments make it feel real" | Natalie Taylor, B2B marketing leader
Dec 23, 2024When we communicate with business results in mind, whether we work in-house on a team or we ARE the business, it's so common that we omit specific details. We want to rush to stuff things full of our ideas and make our value clear instantly. The thing is, only when we slow our stories down, include specific details, and describe one or two tiny moments, do others start to care.
Because the goal isn't to say everything all at once. The goal is to find the touchstones of the story that bring it all to life, allowing...
Duration: 00:41:56"The personal is more universal than we think it is" | Sarah Stockdale, CEO of Growclass
Dec 16, 2024Welcome to one of the more inspiring episodes of the show! Entrepreneur and growth marketing expert Sarah Stockdale is one of the most nuanced, capable, and generous voices in the industry. When she shows up, she resonates, no matter what she's creating or where she's appearing.
Today, both of us commiserate over being dedicated parents learning to be parents, informed citizens struggling with so many things in society, and being public voices with pressure to deliver ... all at the same time.
This frames our conversation into the subtleties of storytelling. How do we show up...
Duration: 00:39:55“Now is the time to double down on your story” I Shez Mehra, creative entrepreneur and DJ
Dec 09, 2024This is a special episode of the show. I’ve partnered with Intuit Mailchimp as part of a limited series called B2B Storytelling Stars. You can watch as I coach 3 marketers and experts on group calls and 1:1s, helping them craft their premises, messages, and stories. Get all 6 videos plus a storytelling template, free and ungated, at https://jayacunzo.com/stars
To cap off the series, each storyteller will appear on How Stories Happen for their very own episode, featuring the story we began developing behind the scenes together.
K...
Duration: 00:37:41The 2 questions (and a quote) that helped me most in 2024
Dec 02, 2024As another year comes to an end, we often reflect backwards, because hindsight is 20/20. But what we don’t often realize is that sometimes when you have that clarity of sight, you'll want to close your eyes, rub your temples, maybe let your head fall to the table. Because you’re amazed at how you just… couldn’t… see it.
That was me, all year long, but I finally see clearly again, and I want you to avoid the same frustrating slog I endured between 2020-2023.
That’s why in this solo...
Duration: 00:18:00"Your brain is a straight line machine" I Melanie Deziel, author and speaker
Nov 25, 2024Signature stories aren’t just stories you tell a lot. They’re stories you’d sign your name to. In this episode, author and speaker Melanie Deziel shares a story that went from nerve-wracking to heart-wrenching the more she told it, as she found ways to tell it her own way (and as new details emerged from the story).
Mel is my cofounder in our Creator Kitchen membership, and this interview was part of the miniseries that helped me pilot How Stories Happen. The thing is, when you pilot something, you’re often piloting THREE so...
Duration: 00:41:43A repeatable system for stronger ideas and stories
Nov 04, 2024"You have a real gift," we say to our storytelling heroes. But do they? Storytelling is a skill. Communicating with greater impact is a craft. It’s not something anyone is gifted. It’s something we all can master.
Today, it’s just me, Jay. Hello! I’m trying a solo episode, sharing my favorite trick for stronger ideas and stories.
Be forewarned: this trick involves sharing your thinking publicly. Not “building in public,” as many like to talk about doing, but by aerating your thinking to sharpen it.
Duration: 00:23:36
Designing a New Signature Talk Beat by Beat with Justin Moore (Founder of Creator Wizard, Author of Sponsor Magnet)
Oct 28, 2024It's time for a new edition of "Is This Anything?", the miniseries where friends and clients join me to work out new drafts and ideas for upcoming pieces and projects. In this episode, I help Justin Moore design his signature talk, beat by beat.
Justin is the founder of Creator Wizard, which helps creators secure more and better brand deals to grow their businesses. Through trainings, coaching, and his signature course, Justin has made a name for himself in the creator economy.
For both his book and for the next wave of growth that he...
Duration: 00:43:33Seth Godin Dissects a Signature Story
Oct 21, 2024Today, it's a total treat as the one and only Seth Godin takes us into how he thinks about storytelling and the intersection of strategy and story, and then we hear him dissect a signature story. Plus, Seth and I trade stories in the back half of the episode—business storytelling nerdery on full display.
Seth is a world-renowned storyteller and thought leader, a legendary keynote speaker who helped disrupt the format, and the bestselling author of more than 20 books, including Purple Cow, The Practice, and This Is Marketing. His brand new book, This is Strategy, is av...
Duration: 00:43:20“Is this ANNything?” Ann Handley and Jay Acunzo Work Out New Drafts
Oct 14, 2024This week, we’re joined by our first-ever recurring guest. The brilliant Ann Handley (WSJ bestselling author of Everybody Writes and globally touring keynote speaker) joins us for a very special episode of “Is This Anything?”, the mini-series, where friends and collaborators join me to work out new ideas, unproven drafts, and hidden ideas to see if it is, in fact, anything.
But because it’s Ann, we’re renaming it Is This ANNything. Get it? Do you get it? (If you didn’t like that, you’re really not gonna like this episode…)
...
Duration: 00:48:14“We’re both the heroes and the villains in our own stories” | Chase Jarvis, Photographer + Entrepreneur + Author of Never Play It Safe
Oct 07, 2024Why is candor essential for a good story? How brutally honest should you actually be in sharing a story with the world?
The great Chase Jarvis brings us into his story of self-discovery, with the many twists and turns his professional career has taken, as he works through how to best tell that story ahead of his next book tour.
Starting in second grade when his entrepreneurial spirit was snuffed by his teacher, Chase works to find acceptance by pursuing the “best” path forward, before realizing that maybe it’s not the best pat...
Duration: 00:38:22"If all knowledge is experience, all wisdom is framework" | Laura Gassner Otting, Keynote Speaker & Author
Sep 30, 2024What 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 glob...
Duration: 00:43:11Working out a new TED Talk with Simone Stolzoff, Author & Journalist
Sep 25, 2024Go inside the development of a brand new TED Talk, as Jay offers notes to friend Simone Stolzoff on his v1 draft. Simone is the author of The Good Enough Job and a journalist whose writing has been featured in The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, and more.
This is the first episode of a new bonus episode of How Stories Happen called "Is This Anything?" which we'll occasionally run in our off weeks. During this miniseries, you'll hear Jay and friends actively develop and work through new material for stories, speeches...
Duration: 00:49:56“A perfectly competent character is boring” | Nat Eliason, Author & Essayist
Sep 16, 2024Telling stories about your life feels fraught. How do you weave together a story that is deeply personal to you and others, contains the right amount of tension without being too dramatic, and feels both gripping and accessible for your audience?
In the case of our guest today, Nat Eliason, his story is about the moment he went from investing hundreds of dollars to having $10 million of his own money on the line, plus more than $100 million of others under his purview, when the whole system was hacked.
Nat r...
Duration: 00:42:27Is This Anything? with Simone Stolzoff, Author & Designer
Aug 26, 2024You know how a comedian will test out new material, and turn to their colleagues and ask, “Is this anything?”
Welcome to a new bonus episode series—aptly named just that (Is This Anything), that will run on our off weeks from the traditional show, where a guest and I will take their ideas, put it under a storytelling microscope, and find out if these ideas have legs. So what do you get? A front row seat on how the pro’s develop and evolve their stories.
So for this episode, meet my friend...
Duration: 00:56:03What it takes to craft a signature story | Susan Boles, CFO, Business Strategist & Podcaster
Aug 19, 2024
What should you include or omit to ensure your stories carry your message, resonate with others, and deliver something that could only come from you? That’s the challenge we encounter today.
In this special episode, Jay is joined by a favorite client, Susan Boles, to work through a draft of a signature story, which emerged on the back of their months-long work together developing Susan’s premise of “calm is the new KPI.” They apply Jay’s Align-Agitate-Assert structure, and they find the two biggest opportunities to improve the story.
Susan is the founder of...
Duration: 00:53:15To tell stronger stories, understand yourself first | Ryan Hawk & Brook Cups, Coauthors of The Score That Matters
Aug 05, 2024Storytellers often face a paradox: to connect deeper externally, you have to turn deeper internally. You have to know yourself and get more honest with how you think and feel than others might be comfortable doing themselves. That often means we have to stop caring what people think of us quite as much.
In this episode, we meet Brook Cupps and Ryan Hawk, coauthors of the book The Score That Matters. We talk about how they collaborated on their book together and how they use stories to inspire and lead others. Brook is the head boys basketball...
Duration: 00:42:44“You have to work against people assuming they know how this goes” | Danielle Bayard Jackson, Author of Fighting for Our Friendships
Jul 22, 2024How do we compress our lifetime into their runtime? When we’re asked to explain our backgrounds and bios, we need a structure, some practice, and a few anecdotes at the ready. Because our story has to pull triple-duty: clarify who we are, build credibility, and teach whatever it is we’re there to teach.
In this episode, author, PR agency founder, and friendship expert Danielle Bayard Jackson reveals the simple way she responds to that simple question: “How’d you get here?” Together, we break it apart into component pieces and re-build certain aspects, spotting ways to customi...
Duration: 00:50:20“I could tell this story in 1950 or 2024” | Scott Monty, Exec. Coach and Speaker
Jul 08, 2024While everyone scrambles to learn the new trends and act like a futurist, it’s the folks who understand what parts of this work are timeless – because they’re based on human nature – that are most powerful of all.
Storytelling is one such thing. It’s been a constant throughout the history of humanity. Why? Because although the world changes in many ways, human nature is one thing that doesn’t change much at all.
So says our guest today, Scott Monty, and it’s part of what makes Scott such an inspiring storyteller – and a leadership advi...
Duration: 00:53:20“Words can do WHAT?! Are we serious right now?!” | Tucker Bryant, Poet & Keynote Speaker
Jun 24, 2024How do we craft a metaphor that works? More importantly, perhaps, how do we ensure the metaphors we use pivot to the audience to teach them something in their lives or work, without them getting lost? Do we overtly explain the lesson? Imply it? Some combination? It’s a delicate dance, and few do it like Tucker Bryant.
Tucker isn't just a keynote speaker; he's a poet who has taken the stage everywhere from corporate boardrooms to major conferences, importing what he knows from the world of verse to the world of business innovation. After working at Go...
Duration: 00:47:28“We congregate around emotional stories” | Rand Fishkin, CEO of SparkToro
Jun 10, 2024The hardest question to answer when we show up publicly might be the simplest question we receive: “Tell me about yourself.” Who are you? How’d you get here? What’s your story?
We then face a choice: we can make the story about us, or we can make it about the thing we’re there to say. We can make our own stories about the audiences we wish to serve, and we can do so without feeling like we’re bragging and even without any newsworthy moments in our past.
Meet Rand Fishkin, cofounder and CEO of t...
Duration: 00:35:16“How do we all sign our work?” | Ann Handley, Author & Keynote Speaker
May 27, 2024When so many people are excited to create a higher volume of content, shouldn’t we think more about what gives our work greater power? That’s what our guest today understands better than most, and she draws that power from everyday moments she hunts out, like a squirrel finding nuts in the yard.
Meet Ann Handley—she’s a best-selling author, a pioneer in content marketing, and a popular B2B speaker with a knack for imbuing ordinary moments with extraordinary meaning.
Ann reveals her morning routine, her idea capture system, and most imp...
“A story needs a job to do” | Michelle Warner, Business Designer & Strategist
May 13, 2024Our guest for this episode is rarely online. But when she is, she’s telling small stories with big meaning.
Meet Michelle Warner—she’s a business strategist and consultant who architects business models and marketing strategies for clients who sell high-priced services. She also hosts the podcast Sequence Over Strategy—an idea that represents her entire platform’s differentiated premise, and one the story she brings to us today reflects.
Michelle has founded multi-million dollar startups, raised capital the traditional way, and generally followed “the blueprint” for business growth before burning out and finding a new path for...
Duration: 00:52:12“The only way to figure out a story is to tell it” | Andrew Davis, Keynote Speaker
Apr 29, 2024I know a ton of storytellers and creators and entrepreneurs, but I know exactly zero other people who have learned how to do what they do from both legendary news broadcasters and Kermit the Frog.
Meet Andrew Davis. He is a powerhouse business speaker who’s given speeches in 35 different countries, at more than 50 events every year. He speaks to audiences ranging from marketers and entrepreneurs to plumbers and physicians — and there may not be a storyteller who is this craft-driven and obsessed with telling amazing stories in the worlds of business, marketing, and customer experience.
Introducing How Stories Happen: Business Builders Dissect Their Signature Stories Piece by Piece
Mar 18, 2024Welcome to How Stories Happen, a show for business storytellers focused on standing out easier and resonating deeper through substance and stories, not hollow stunts. Each episode, an expert, entrepreneur, or world-class communicator breaks apart a single story piece by piece, sharing how they developed it and how they're using it to grow their brand and leave their legacy. Hosted by Jay Acunzo
As Ira Glass said, “Great stories happen to those who can tell them.” He doesn’t mean worthy things only appear to those who are already masters of the craft. He means, this is in fac...
Duration: 00:09:21