 Welcome, welcome everyone to Art of the Impact Pitch. This is part of our D-Web and Civil Society series webinar. This event is supported by an award from the Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web. And this is part of a series, a learning series, a community learning series. Today's workshop, you'll learn the storytelling and pitch techniques that are proven to raise funds, secure customers and donors. My name's Billy Bicket, and today I'll be your event host. Can't proceed without referencing the organization that's supporting this work, TechSoup, my employer. It's a global technology capacity building nonprofit, 501C3 organization based out of San Francisco with offices in London and Warsaw. We're a global network that's bridging tech solutions and services for good. We've been doing this work since 1987 and we're excited about the next generation of technology for civil society. Quick comment on the learning series, essentially where we've built this learning series to create the conditions that enable those of you who are building custom solutions and working with emerging tech to connect directly with the civil society leaders who are integrating new tools into their stacks. And our interest is in helping the sector harness these new tools for public good. We wanna do it early, we wanna do it effectively and we wanna do it responsibly. Okay, so I wanna introduce you to Andrea Sampson, our speaker tonight. She spent over 25 years working in marketing and advertising, presenting and developing strategies for Fortune 100 companies with a natural talent for developing compelling stories and persuasive content. Andrea is sought after in assisting teams and executives develop their presentations or pitches. Four years ago, Andrea's passions for ideas led her to TEDx Toronto, where she volunteered initially as a speaker coach, then as the director of programming in 2015 and the conference co-chair in 2016. The voluntary role was instrumental in the creation of TalkBoutique, a speaker management development and representation company. Andrea was the co-director of the 2017 Singularity University Canada Summit and we're so grateful to have Andrea's participation in this event today. We're also joined by Connelly, our blockchain, Web3 decentralized technology subject matter expert and has been a partner to TechSoup in designing and developing this learning series and she'll be here to facilitate questions as well if they emerge around anything related to decentralized technology, blockchain or Web3. Thank you for joining us Andrea. Welcome everyone, I'm really excited to be here with you today and I'll just draw your attention to the QR code on the screen. Go ahead and scan that, there's a workbook for you that you get to take away and keep from today's session and there's some frameworks in there that I hope will be helpful and I'm gonna take you through those. So today we're gonna talk about moving from idea to opportunity and looking specifically through the lens of how to craft your narrative for funders and not profits and this is something that's near and dear to my heart. I started off my career far too many years ago now for me to mention but I started off and this is actually a picture of me back in those days in not for profit, I was a fundraiser. I started in health charities and did a lot of work around raising funds whether that be through education like doing a lot of educating and raising money in that way but also doing events, doing proposals, doing all kinds of different ways of raising money. And I loved being in the not for profit world. The reality for me was that it made me feel good to go to work every day and to be doing something that I knew was creating some form of impact for people, for the humans who I really needed it. And so it was an important part of my life but it became from a career perspective it became more and more difficult to grow in that role and I started to realize that it was time for me to do something different and I moved on to doing other things. And but the thing that stayed common for me was that I always wanted to create impact and so I left the not for profit world moved into the advertising world. And I remember at the time thinking, wow, like coming into the not for profit world the thing that we always wanted was the top of mind awareness that we would see in the ad world. And I thought, oh, this is amazing I'm gonna be in this world and I can start to use the mechanism of advertising for good and to create impact. And it took me some years but I started to realize that was not going to be the case the reality is in the ad world it is selling goods for money and you're always looking through the lens of how do you sell more? And it became more and more difficult especially as I became more senior to be able to actually impact those strategies. I spent almost 20 years in advertising working for some of the largest brands in the world on some of the largest agency networks in the world. And what happened for me was I started to realize that I was an idealist in a capitalist world and it was time for me to make a change. And I moved over, I started to look around going what else could I do? I had started off as I said in fundraising which was really in those days direct marketing and moved into direct marketing through advertising and I did direct response to advertising then I moved into brand advertising. And I thought, where is this skill set of mine transferable? I started doing some volunteer work and went right back to my roots and I started doing volunteer work for TEDx Toronto thinking I was just gonna go and actually do something that I was gonna enjoy have some fun and make some impact. And what happened was I found my people I found my purpose and I found my calling because what I saw was that these were people who were spending their days actually creating impact in the world doing the work and forgetting to tell anyone about it. And the problem with that was that we all needed to know what the work they were doing because so many of them and I know all of you recognize this because I think many of you are these people you're doing the work that is changing our future and we as the rest of the world need to know that's happening. But the problem is you're so busy doing that work you're like me, I was behind the scenes. I kept myself behind the scenes. I never saw myself as somebody who should be out front. Even when I was a fundraiser, I was doing the work writing the grant proposals, developing the events doing the work but handing it off to others to actually take credit for it or to do it. And what that meant was my story, my impact my context was never making it up in the world. And that's important because I want you to think about for a moment who are the thought leaders in our world? Who are the people who are actually creating the future that we all want to live? I think we can all agree that they're likely heads of countries, heads of industries, heads of companies heads of educational institutions. And when you look at those people not many of them look like me and probably like many of you. The reality is what we have are a lot of sameness. And if any of you are in the science world what we all know is diversity is where we get strength. And so what I had to learn and what I'm gonna talk to you about today through so many different lenses is the fact that we all are unique and we come at the work we do through a unique lens. And that lens provides us with, sorry, suddenly my, there we go. That lens provides us with a way to create context for the things that we're doing the ideas that we're sharing. Why is that important? It's important because we need those ideas to be understood to be acted upon and to be amplified. For you acted upon and amplified equals funding. And that's important. Why? Because we're building a future and we all want to be part of building that future. And that future needs to be inclusive and sustainable. And every one of us, everyone here is a part of creating that. And if you feel like I have a really small voice in that I want you to really think about that as we go along today because what I'm gonna start talking to you about now is the power of story but not just any story, your story. You heard a little bit about my story today and the reality is my story is much larger than just me starting off in not for profit and living to advertising. I've had many unique experiences and backgrounds. A couple of years ago, I learned I was neurodiverse totally new for me. And it's changed the way that I interact the way that I tell my stories. I bring diversity to every conversation I'm in because of who I am. I'm blue haired, almost 60 years old, neurodiverse. Now, I think we need some thought leaders that look like that, but I think we need thought leaders that look differently. And when we're building thought leadership what we're really doing is we're using our stories to create connection and context where the ideas that we're sharing those very ideas are how we get funding. How do we? So stories, you've heard me talk a lot about stories. Why do we tell stories? Go ahead, drop it in the chat. I'd love to hear from you guys. Why do we tell stories? I see I've got some neurodiverse peeps here. Hey, shout out to you guys. And if you see me looking up it's just that I have a second screen I'm looking at. Yeah, so we learn from stories. We create impact, we relate to each other. It's an evolutionary need. I love that, create context. You are all right. Stories are the way in which we as humans innately communicate. In fact, if you think of the very words we use often those very words are stories in and of themselves. But when I talk about stories I like to say that stories are carriers for ideas but they're also connectors for thought leaders because when we think about stories stories help us to really connect in a way that isn't surface level. I share bits and pieces of my story. You hear that story. You're gonna in some way hear your story told through that. When we're building our thought leadership the messages that we share are key to it but we need to contextualize those messages through story. So how do you go from idea to impact to income because that's actually the meat of what we need to talk about today. So while we're gonna be talking about diversity of thought leadership to amplify and create understanding and connection with the ideas that we have we need to start with that very idea. So I want you to think about any TED Talk you've ever seen. TED Talks are all about ideas we're sharing. Ideas are important but they're abstract and hard to understand. In fact, when we think about what is an idea I'll bet none of us would even have a definition in our mind of what that is. But let's say that we do let's say we know what an idea is. We have an idea and then we wrap it in story. So again, think about a TED Talk that you've watched maybe recently or in the past you probably watched it on your computer. And when you did, you sort of walked away going, wow, that was really interesting. I really liked that idea. And if it stopped there, that TED Talk that idea would never go anywhere. But it doesn't stop there because what TED does really well and what we're gonna be talking about today and teaching you today is how to take idea and story and create engagement because that's actually the third piece of this pie. With engagement, what happens is we move from just interest to now understanding because what happens when we have an idea that has engagement, you and I start to have conversation. Oh, I saw that TED Talk. Oh, you did too. What did you take away from it? Now what we're doing is we're getting an understanding of what we each took away from that TED Talk but more importantly, what who we are as people and what's important to us. And when we have that kind of understanding what we're doing is we're creating a connection, a connection to the idea, a connection to each other and a connection to the story that holds it all. And when we have that, we're creating impact that ultimately then becomes the way in which we drive income because that impact takes all of those things and starts moving it forward. And so for you as in the not-for-profit world in a world where you're looking to fund your very ideas, I want you to be thinking about these very, three very important pieces. What is your idea? Have you wrapped story around it and have you done it in a way that is compelling enough that it creates engagement? Now I call this idea-centric storytelling and we're gonna get into that a little bit deeper in just a moment. Now we work with lots of different organizations that are out looking for funding. And so we teach pitching on a pretty regular basis. And when we think about pitching and I've sat through probably thousands of pitches now, most pitches follow a pretty standard format. It looks like this. Really, there's three key buckets that you've got to hit on. One is who's your market? Two is what's your revenue? Three is what's the value proposition you're taking? As we look at that target market, you've got to break it down into who's the team that's gonna address it and what's the solution you're taking to that market on a revenue perspective? It's what's the revenue model? What's the marketing strategy to it and who's competing with you? And then when we look at the third piece, it's what's the value proposition, what are the financials that actually drive that value proposition and what are the key milestones? And pretty much all pitches have this. And I'm sure if you are doing any amount of pitching, you've already got this down. But the problem with this model is that there's no engagement in it, right? It's pretty straight up. And so you might have some storytelling throughout this, but you've not created the connection that you need to your idea. In fact, where does your idea live in this? Maybe in the value proposition, maybe in your solution, but it's not really clear. So when you're pitching, when we teach pitching, the way that we come at it is first of all, to use story to create context and use that story to drive to a core idea that is really the problem statement and it contextualizes it. So the story and the idea come together. And through that, then you move into all of these buckets of information that are important and necessary, but they're now contextualized. And then we put a close on it that asks for what you need. And the way that you do that is by going back to your story, using that story as a way to set up your statement of purpose or your core idea and then ask for what you need. So it's always in the context of your story and your idea. And this is really powerful because this is a thought leadership move. This is how thought leaders work in the world. They don't just talk about data and facts and they don't just talk about passion and they don't just talk about the logistics. They talk about all of those things, but the way that you bring it together is through story. And thought leadership is essential, not just in creating a future, but also in getting funding. Here you're seeing, this is a recent study 2019 done by Edelman says 45% of decision makers are likely to engage with a company or organization if it's perceived as a thought leader. That's powerful. So when you're standing in front of a potential partner, sponsor or funder and you are perceived as a thought leader, the likelihood is they're gonna listen better. They're gonna consider what you're asking more seriously and you've got a higher likelihood of actually getting that funding. So stepping into being a thought leader is essential, but being a thought leader is a combination of how you perceive yourself and the mindset you bring to everything you do because your perspective drives your mindset. Now perspective is one of those things that's a little bit hard to understand. It's inner work. And you're like, hey, wait a minute. I thought we were talking about storytelling today. We are, and I'll get to it, just hold on, but we have to start with you because you are the storyteller and the storyteller is actually part of the story. I want you to think about what you have control of in terms of how you show up in front of an audience. I think we can all agree that when you're showing up at the front of the room how you show up is as important as what you say. So your perspective of yourself, what you think of yourself, and I'm sure you probably go, yeah, I think I'm pretty good and maybe I've done the work and maybe I've got a great deck and I feel pretty good about myself. But often we've got that little niggling voice in the back of our mind and we don't often tease apart what that voice is playing at. And I'm gonna poke at it a little bit and tease it apart because my perception of me is one piece of how I'm perceived. The next piece is my perception of how you perceive me. Now I'm in control of both of these and I'm gonna say that one again because it's a little bit of a, it plays with your mind. So there's my perception of me. Maybe I think I'm great. Maybe I think I've done all the work and I've put in the effort and I've got a great deck and I'm really excited about it. But I think you think that I'm an impostor. I think you think that I don't know what I'm talking about. And when I walk in front of the room with that split perception, right? Because what's happened now is I've got two things happening. What do you think happens with how now you are actually perceiving me? What I've done is I've created doubt because I'm walking on stage with a perception that is not aligned. I'm perceiving myself as one thing and I'm perceiving that you're perceiving me as something else. I'm perceiving that you're against me. I'm perceiving that I have to sell you or I have to do something. And in doing that, what happens with you is you're now looking at me going, I don't know, like her pitch was good but there's just something I can't put my finger on. I don't know what it is. That is what we don't want to happen. So when we're in front of any audience, whether it's an audience of one or an audience of 200,000, when we walk out, we need to have an aligned perspective of who we are and believe deeply in how others perceive us. Now, this is a learned behavior. It does take practice, but it can be done. So perception is the first piece of it. How I perceive myself and how I perceive that you perceive me equals how you actually perceive me. That's powerful and what you all to take that away. You are in 100% control. I always like to say it's like mathematics, right? We all know that a triangle, if you define two sides of the triangle, the third side will be defined for you. Two sides, you got control of two sides of it. Guess what? You have control of the entire triangle. Now, how does that play into thought leadership? That perspective, of course, shapes how you show up in the room because we all show up in the room with a mindset default. Now, when we are in front of an audience, especially when we're in front of an audience asking for funding in whatever way that might look, I like to look at it through two different axes. One, with the confidence in the knowledge that you're bringing to that room. And two, what's the emotional influence or connection that you're bringing with that audience? And what we find, and I have worked with now, thousands of people fall into really one of three categories but want to be in the fourth. The first category is what I call experts. Now, we all know experts, many of us are, and let me tell you throughout most of my career, I fell into this category. Experts are those who rely on data and facts who want to provide you with all the detailed information that's necessary for you to make the decision to support or to believe them. They don't like to go into the emotional side of it because that feels like maybe it's actually going to denigrate some of that good research you've done or the power that the facts that you have. But the problem with that, of course, is that you alienate your audience because by giving them so many data and facts, you lose them. They're not quite sure what you mean and that data and facts that creates a clear outcome for you is not so clear for your audience because they are not as close to it as you are. On the other side of it, we have changemakers. Now, changemakers are passionate. They love what they do. They believe in what they do. They often are trying to change the world and they're doing good work in our world. And in fact, experts and changemakers are the same people, by the way. This is a mindset and not a reality. And we flip-flop between these, right? On the changemaker side, we're leading from influence. We're leading from passion. We're leading from that place of wanting to create change, but we don't want to go into the data and facts because it's, oh, I'll lose them. Oh, what if I say something wrong? What if I don't have my information cited properly? Somebody is going to call me out. So we stay on passion and we alienate our audience because we have real facts. And like I said, we see experts and changemakers going, they go out, they do a presentation and they're an expert and that didn't work. And then the next time they vote as a changemaker, that didn't work either. And so we see them flip-flopping because it is a mindset. Now the third is the connector. And this is where in the early days of my career, I spent a lot of time here. The connector is the person who is always looking at everybody else and saying, oh, you're so much better at this than me. Oh, you've got this so much better than me. You take that opportunity. They're getting called to do the work and they're the ones behind the scenes doing diligently all that work. They don't want to be out in front. They're not the ones who are out front doing it. And whether you're a changemaker, connector or expert or all three, because the thing is we move between these three depending on what the ask is. What's happening by not fully connecting with your audience and being fully confidence in your knowledge is that you're robbing your audience of the ability to understand the ideas through the context of you. And that is so important because that is how we move into thought leadership. Thought leadership is by seamlessly blending our influence and our confidence in our knowledge so that others understand what we're saying. And when we do that using story, it feels natural. Now, so many people and even myself, I would not say, hey, I'm a thought leader. I'm gonna put a TL behind my name. That is not what I'm suggesting here. And I want to be really clear. Thought leaders don't call themselves thought leaders. Sometimes they do, but mostly they don't. It's other people who call you thought leaders. And why that's important, you saw it. When companies see or when funders see that you are perceived as a thought leader, they're more likely to work with you to give you the funds you need. So stepping into your thought leadership is essential. Again, 58% of decision makers and executives have awarded business on the perception of thought leadership. When you step into it, you become a powerful agent of change because thought leaders are recognized. They contribute to something bigger than themselves. They think critically. They challenge conventional ways of thinking or understanding. And they provide practical solutions to complex problems. And I think we sometimes forget that because it says thought leader, we think it's all about thinking. It's not thought leaders actually are decoding complex problems and finding those solutions. They don't just think they do. And in doing that, they discover new ways of doing things. All right, who here wants to step into their thought leadership? I'm just gonna take a pause because I just gave you a lot. Are there any questions? We have two great questions. The first one comes from Natalia who says, how come change makers also have low confidence in their knowledge? So change makers, the low confidence in their knowledge is that they don't wanna go into the depth of facts and data. So they shy away from it. It's, again, because it's a mindset, realize that what that means is they're not showing their confidence. They may be confident, and like I said, they could have been on the expert side, but what happens is they're flip-flopping back and forth. So the confidence in the knowledge is when they are not sharing that knowledge so openly and in a way that's understandable by their audience. And so they get perceived as not having confidence in their knowledge. That makes sense. Another one from Susan. Can an entire organization and not just an individual be perceived as a thought leader? Yes, although people see people as thought leaders, organizations like we all know there's all kinds of things tanks out there and we all follow them. And so they have thought leadership, but the think tank is created through the lens of those who are inside of it, through the thought leadership that's being created within. So the organization itself may be a thought leadership organization, but it really is dependent on those within. That's great. That's it for questions now. If others have questions, they'll see you to drop them in the Q and A at any point in time and we'll get in Andrea to answer those. Okay, so we're gonna dive in and I know that was a lot of setup, Ben, we haven't even got the story yet, but where I want to take you first is ideas. What are ideas? As I said before, do we even have a definition? But if you were to look one up, what you would find is that an idea is a mental concept or abstraction that represents a thought or a belief. Ideas are essential for human progress and development. They are the things that drive us forward. They are the driving force behind innovation and problem solving and they're essential for human progress, growth and wellbeing. Ideas push us to the boundaries of what's possible and they create, they help us to create a better world. So how do we create an idea that others can understand? Many years ago when I was working on TEDx Toronto, I worked with a speaker by the name of Drew Dudley and he had this way of saying things that I always loved and he said, don't tell me what you know, tell me why and how you know it. Don't tell me what you know, tell me why and how you know it. And what he meant by that was the what, many people know the what. What you bring to that is what makes it interesting. It's what makes others understand it because the what, and we've all read textbooks, for God's sake, we went to school and we had these textbooks. How many of us really learned from those textbooks? Very few of us, I know some did, but most of us learned through the discussion and the conversation that happened about those textbooks. I heard a comment yesterday that said, we don't learn from experience, we learn from reflecting on the experience. And that is absolutely true here. When we reflect on our own experience, the why and how we know something, not only are we learning deeper, but we're teaching, and that is how our ideas need to be structured. So when we think about an idea, it's really the, it is the combination of three things. A what, a how and a why. When I'm teaching people to create ideas, what I teach them is that we wanna create one sentence, one sentence that sums up everything you want your audience to know. Now that sounds really daunting, and it is. It's a pretty tightly packed sentence. So we have to do that in a way that makes sense first for us. So we start off with the what. Now the what is just the topic or the context, it's nouns. The what is ubiquitous. Hundreds of people could speak on the what, thousands of people, that's okay. It's the way in which we're creating an endpoint for our audience. So today, my what in this talk is diversity of thought leadership. You've started to hear me talk about that early on. I talked about the need for diverse thought leaders and why we needed it. So the what, there's lots of people out there talking about diversity, and they're talking about it through lots of different lenses because it's the how. That's the piece where we start to get interesting because it's the lens through which you look at that what. The how is your unique point of view. It's driven by the experiences, the skills, the cultures. What brings, what makes you unique? This is where your story, your own education, your skill level, the things that you believe come in. And it's how you activate the what. So for today, if my what, this diversity of thought leadership, my how is about using your own unique lens, your story to provide context and connection. So your complex ideas are understood, amplified, and acted upon. That's my what. Sorry, that's my how. And I deeply believe in this. Now, that is an idea in and of itself. But if I were to stop there and not put a why on, I would be robbing both myself and my audience of the emotional connection. And the emotions are where ideas really come off the page. Your what is the result? It's the outcome. These are the adverbs, the adjectives, the passion that makes your nouns and verbs into a sentence. So for me, my why was to create a future that's inclusive, sustainable, and reflects a collective vision. And so that is the beginning of how you create your idea. And it is a matter. It's an iterative process. You want to write some what, and some hows, and some whys, and start putting them together. But how do you put them together? We have a little framework. And again, in the tool that earlier on, I had put in the QR code, and I think we're gonna drop the link into the chat just in case you didn't download it. It gives you this framework. And it's a really simple framework. It looks like this. Today, I'm gonna talk to you about what? And I'll show you how, because why? Now, why this is so important is that when you're writing an idea, your idea needs to start off as literal and is very clear. Literal, because it is a foundational element. It's gonna be the underpinning of everything you create from this read forward. So we don't wanna have metaphor. We don't wanna have anything that is unclear. And it needs to be so clear that everybody understands it. And the problem when we are writing our own statement of purpose is we're inside our own very active and very intelligent brain. And our brain fills in the blanks of all the pieces that we already know. So in our brain, when we even say this to ourselves, it sounds perfect. The trick is take this statement, write it down on a piece of paper and give it to somebody you know, or even somebody you don't know that well and just get them to read it to you. When you hear it set outside of your own head, an interesting thing happens. Suddenly, your brain is evaluating it as something that's coming from somebody else and not from your own brain. And it's no longer filling in all the blanks. And suddenly you hear it, you go, no, that's not what I wanna talk about. And you have to go back and try it again because this is where words matter. This is where you've gotta get it right because this is the underpinning. It's the first thing you do, start writing a presentation. It's probably not the first thing you've ever done when you've written a presentation. But moving forward, I want you all to make me a promise and go ahead and drop it into the chat, say promise. You're gonna start with your idea because this is gonna make everything that you do after that point so much easier. Once you have this one sentence written, your entire presentation writes itself. Now, let me give you another example just to bring this to light a little bit more. If I had worked with Dr. King, I did not. I'm not that old, just say that. But if I had it, Dr. King's very famous, I have a dream talk might have sounded like this. His what was freedom? His how was a powerful vision, sorry, a powerful vision that all citizens believe. And his why is to come together as equals regardless of race and grow our society beyond what we think is possible. Now, those are a good what, how, why? And if we put them in the little framework I've just shown you, what would happen is it would look like this. Today, I'm gonna talk to you about freedom and I'll show you that when we have a powerful vision that all citizens believe, we can come together as equals regardless of race and grow as a society beyond what we think is possible. Again, powerful words. We hear that we go, yeah, that's powerful. But here's the thing, when we write a statement of purpose like this, that's not what we say in our presentation. You've heard me say mine in many different ways. By the way, I call a statement of purpose and a core idea, the same thing. So I just wanna, I'm realizing I'm going back and forth and I just need to align that statement of purpose and core idea, they're the exact same thing. But when I, when we write it, it's not how we say it because you can hear it, it sounds like a setup statement. But what did Dr. King actually say? What he actually said was I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal. In these beautiful poetic words of Dr. King, the son of a preacher and an educator, we hear the echoes of the statement of purpose that I had said earlier. And this is where I want you to think about it. You write it in its literal form so you can build your entire presentation on top of it. But when you're giving your presentation, bring yourself, bring whom you are because that's what's important. So when we tell our core thought leadership through that lens, we now have an idea that can be held inside of a story. Stop there and see if there are any questions. We do have a few questions for you. One of them was from a little bit earlier that says, my main concern is the biases that a funder brings and how that impacts their perception of us and our work. Again, so I'm assuming what that means. So biases being biases on how you show up in front of the room could be maybe your cultural differences or maybe like me, a woman with blue hair. Is that what we're talking about in terms of biases? Or are we talking about- I think so. Yeah, okay. So first of all, I come back to perception. My perception of me, my perception of how I perceive you perceive me. That's what's happening there. When I'm placing a biases on that audience and there may even be some very good foundation that there is a bias. But when you can make a choice because you can show up going, I believe that my audience sees me in this way. What will happen is those who have a bias will either fall away or we'll lose that bias when you no longer acknowledge it and give it energy. And it's a really important thing. I know that may sound a little esoteric. Again, having done this work a lot, it really does come back to the inner work of how you show up. And for funders who do have a bias and who are not funding because of that bias, that will start to change and you're not gonna ever change them. You're in the wrong room if that's the case. I hope that is fewer rather than more. But when you've cleaned up your own perception, you will find that more and more the people you're in rooms with don't have those biases. Great, okay, next question. Thought leader sounds like a Nobel Prize winner. That's a high standard. Can simple people be thought leaders too? I mean, the process of writing a book right now called the Everyday Thought Leader and that is exactly what it's all about. I think that we put thought leaders on pedestals and when in fact, we are all thought leaders in our own way. We can be thought leaders in our families. We can be thought leaders in our communities. We can be thought leaders within our friend groups. We need to start making this more every day because the reality is when we see ourselves as a thought leader, we create impact. I love that and so true. Sometimes I find myself feeling like imposter syndrome in a big room and I'm like, my experience is totally unique. So I'm bringing something new to the table. Last question we've got right now is can you please compare, start starting with your what compared to the big Y, aka our mission? Yeah, so the what really, the what is what you do? Let's say, and you and I work together. When we work together, your what was usually around blockchain as a social agent or as an agent of change, social change. That's a what. The why might be so that people are able to live in a more equitable manner with ease and grace or something like that. I'm just making this up on the spot. But the what is really that sort of, like I said, there's many people who can talk on your what, your why, the impact you're making, that's your passion. So those are two very, very different things where people often get caught when we're working together. The what and the how can start to feel a little bit the same. And it really is a testing of doing that. Today I'm going to talk to you about what and I'll show you how. When you put your statements in there, it starts to get clearer and clearer. Yeah, I remember you helped me a lot with that where I had blockchain knowledge. I brought that to the table, but anyone could talk about blockchain from my industry. But then it was like the why. It's because we want to make the world better. We want to create impact. And then bringing my own perspective of having done some of the nonprofit work before to weave that all into the story. Yeah, that looked up. Amazing. I think that's it for questions for the moment. So I'll hand it back over to you. Great. All right, we're in the home stretch people. Thanks for hanging on. We're going to move into storytelling now. And storytelling is such a powerful tool. And I love this quote by Ted Anderson or Chris Anderson, who is the head of Ted. He says, it's an extraordinary skill, but it's best used in the service of ideas. And that is absolutely true because the reality is, mind it, 60 to 70% of the information is retained when told as a story. Why? Because stories laid up are the courtesies, the sensory courtesies of our brain, sight, sound, touch, smell. These are ways in which our brain, the electrical activity lights up. When we tell data and facts, one area of our brain lights up. Why is this important? Because memories are held all over our brain and they're held with associations. And so when we create an association to story, we remember, but it's not just that. We also have cross-hemispheric neuro coupling. We have mirroring where my brain and your brain start to mirror because now as you hear my story, you're hearing your own story. And it's releasing neurochemicals like dopamine and serotonin. And dopamine is like a pleasure chemical that makes us feel good. So you've got people following you who our brains are electrically lit up and are so engaged with everything you're saying. So why wouldn't you use story? It's powerful. But I know that unless you went to film school or journalism, likely we're never taught how to tell a story. So how do you tell a story? I like to use, even if you did do some of those types of educations, usually the frameworks they use are highly complex. Well, we've got a five-minute pitch. How do you tell a story quickly? You use the story spine. Story spine is a really simple five-step process. Starts with the environment, moves to the characters, moves into the issue, the conflict or the opportunity, moves into a tension point. We call the raising of the stakes. And then there's an ending and an outcome. I'm gonna take you through this quickly. So the environment, we're gonna start off with that. Your environment is the sense of place. It's where the story is taking place. Specificity matters and you tell it in the first person. Take us to that moment. We're not just on a mountain. We're on a mountain in Banff where the air is crisp and cold, where it's so cold that the tears inside of our noses are freezing. It's absolutely stunning. The sound is echoing across that mountain range. Now you're there with me. You can feel the air on your face. That's the environment. So when we tell a story, we bring our audience into it. Characters. Now characters are who's in the story. Characters have names and they have backstories. We're not just talking about my friend, it's my friend Ann. And we're in the mountains together. Now Ann and I have worked together. She was my client for many years, but you know what? We've become friends and here we are on a hike in the mountains in Banff on this beautiful, cold, crisp day. Now you're there with me. Issue, conflict or opportunity. This is the reason you're telling the story. This is the point of the story. And this is where many not skilled storytellers start. Oh, this thing happened to me the other day. Resist that seduction. That's the easy way to tell a story, but what happens is you find yourself with no point and nowhere to go because you give it away too early. So you need to build to it. Environment characters issue conflict or opportunity. In the little case with Ann and I and this beautiful mountains were having a lovely Sunday brunch at a cafe in the mountains and we decided to go for a walk. There's the opportunity, beautiful. Nothing too strange happening there, but as any good storyteller tell you, this is where things take a turn. This is where we bring our audience in because what we want is to raise the stakes. We want to create a tension point that has our audience sitting on the edge of their seat. And so we bring in an and then moment and then suddenly Ann gets a call and finds out that the very next day she is going to be given an award in front of 10,000 people and she's gonna need to do an acceptance speech. Holy cow, here we are in the mountains, in bands, wondering, not easily accessible to even a pen and paper. There's your Ann then moment. Now, this is where it gets really interesting because idea-centric storytelling means that ideas live inside of the story. And as a storyteller, when you've created a moment of tension, this is the moment that you get to insert your idea. This is where I say to you, I tell you this because and now I go into whatever idea I may have had and now what happens is that story is holding that idea. Now, there is an ending and an outcome but I want you to remember the pitch canvas framework I showed you earlier. We resist the need to finish the story because we don't finish the story until we finish our presentation. In fact, if we go to that very pitch canvas, that story and that core idea are the first thing we're saying. And from that core idea, once we've delivered it, even though I still have you in the mountains in Bamp with Ann and I and suddenly she has to do this award speech the next day, I'm gonna bridge into my content and I'm gonna contextualize it because your story starts there, your idea is put here but you're now continuing your story throughout the entire pitch because you've contextualized an idea and every time you give a little bit more of that story, you're giving your audience a little bit more context but again, you resist the need to finish it. You don't go back to the place you left them until you're ready to close your presentation and that is where you bring that little thread, that little breadcrumb that you left angling and that somewhere in their psyche, your audience is still wondering about and then you bring them back and you resolve it because in the resolving of it, it sets you up to yet one more time, deliver your core idea and then to ask for what you want. And that is how you use idea-centric storytelling to be, to get funding, to build your idea, to create impact and ultimately to create the income that you need, the very ventures that you are all creating. When we think about the work that we've done over the course of the past hour, I've given you a lot to think about and in thinking about that, I do want you all to think about the unique lens that you bring to everything. When I think back to my days early on as a fundraiser where I was behind the scenes and even when I started at my company in 2016, I started it with a partner. I was always behind the scenes until one day I realized my voice was important. What I had to say was important. And the question that was already asked today even highlighted that, which is aren't thought leaders big and beyond us, they're not and that's my message because really it is the unique lens that each of us have that creates a diversity of thought leadership which is needed in our world because we are building towards a future that needs to be inclusive, sustainable and driven by the collective vision of all of us. Because guess what? We're all living in that future together. And when we look at the present we have, it wasn't created by us. And I think many of us wish that the present we have is a little different. And stepping into your thought leadership, your diverse thought leadership is what will get us to that future. I hope this has been helpful for you. I hope it has in some way inspired you to do something a little bit different and to give you what you need to create idea-centric stories that builds the funding that you need. Happy to take questions now if there's a little bit of time left. Sure. Okay. We've got two questions in the queue right now. And I know some people may have to leave but if you're able to stick around then we're happy to have you. The first question is, can a storyteller lose people with too much detail? Absolutely. So again, it is always that, and that's why the story spine is written the way it is. It narrows you into some very specific places. And err on the side of having more description but not more content. And it's a bit of, it takes some practice. You got to do it over and over again. And this is where again, say it out loud. The more you say your story is out loud the better you will actually tell them. This is, I do this all the time. I'm constantly talking to myself. But it's partly because I'm refining my own stories. Great. Okay. Last question that we've got and feel free to put others in the Q&A if anyone's got more questions. How do you tweak up your presentation with repeat funders so that they don't feel bored that they've heard this pitch again? Great question. This is where story is really important. Like when we use our own story the power of that is that all of us have really interesting lives even though we don't think we do. And so you've got a richness of content to build on. And so what you can do is you can use different aspects of your own story to make it feel new and fresh. And in fact, what that will do is it'll actually help people connect in a new way. They'll get a new understanding because the story contextualizes it just a little bit differently. And so the whole talk actually feels completely different even when we've got the same idea and the same content that's living inside of it it's the story that makes the difference. We have a great question here from Daley that I love. This is what was the triggering event for you to step to the front and be seen and become a thought leader. It's a great question. And again, for me, this is only a few years old. I bought my company from my ex-business partner in 2020 just before the pandemic hit. And for me, there's a quote that says when the pain, I can't remember exactly what it is. It's about a flower budding. It's when the pain of staying closed is greater than the pain of opening. It's time to allow that to happen. And for me, I think what I saw was that I was allowing everybody to tell this, to represent something that I believed in and yet it was never quite what I would say. And so I was always trying to correct it and I suddenly realized, wait a minute no one can say it like me. And I had to actually own that. It was, and I remember a moment where I was in a mediation session and my ex-business partner said to me you take up too much space in the room. And it hit me in that moment that I had a choice. I could either agree with him and make myself smaller or I could step forward and say, I take up the space that I need because I have something that deserves to be heard. And I made that choice and it was a hard choice. It was not easy and it has not been easy for the last three years, but I don't regret it for one moment. Hey, we have a really challenging question in the chat, some Michelle says, my story includes a murder. How do you, how to not include such traumatic details yet still get the message across? Yeah, actually I've heard stories like this. Like I've worked with people who have, in fact, I worked with one thought leader that had a story of a murder when she was a child. And so the way in which you do that, it depends. Again, they're all very individual. These are really important things. And what I always say is, you have to create a sense of safety for your audience. So you can talk about trauma as long as you're okay. For the speaker who I worked with, it was still very traumatic for her, but she was okay. She described what happened in a way that didn't traumatize the audience. It brought them into enough details and there was a moment of shock, but she was able to shift it into she was okay. The situation taught her something. So the murder itself shouldn't be the focus. The murder is simply something in the background that happened that gave you a moment of illumination. And you play with that. It is challenging, and if that's something you do wanna talk about, I would recommend you work with somebody on that, somebody who can help you go that story, because it is powerful when done right. It's incredibly powerful when done right, but it is likely something you'll need some help with. If one comments, another way to look at this might be asking your audience to help resolve the story by participating to achieve a shared happy ending. Actually, the story spine, when we do this in a workshop, that's exactly what we do. We actually take the story spine and we create a shared story. It's a really fun exercise. You just get people to give me an environment and you build it within the group. If what you're doing is you wanna use it to create that future outcome, absolutely get them involved. What could it look like? I can imagine that would be really fun. I would still suggest however, that you have your own story so that make sure you're bringing a story that you're emotionally connected to and then maybe what you do on the conclusion, you go back to where you left them at that tension point and rather than giving them the conclusion, you could at that point go, what would be the conclusion that we want? So that might be an interesting way to play with your audience if that's something that they're open to. All right, we had one more question. Let me just scroll to find it here. How do you overcome the challenge of telling a story that everyone really wants to escape from? Quite sure what the meaning is. Yeah, is it maybe because it's too long? I think the way I interpret that is that a story that maybe is either has shocking details or is very long. I think again, this comes down to the way in which you've constructed it. So remember, use the story spine. Make sure you have your idea already crafted because your story leads to that idea. It is a setup for the idea. Remember, that's a really important part of this. And next week when we do office hours, what I'd love to do with the people who attend is to actually build, we'll build an idea together and we'll build a story together. So you guys can play with this a little bit. Yeah, actually that would be amazing. And there's one question that asks me, how would I tell a story around? D-Day for their museum? I think that's probably a great one for office hours where we could actually specifically work with you, Renee, to help craft that. Renee, one of the things to think about is what's the idea you want us to know? When you're crafting a story, you need to have your idea already done so that you can craft the idea around that story. Or sorry, the story, so that you can craft the story around that idea. So remember, idea first, then build the story to lead to that idea. Natalia is saying something similar, how to get people to be able to hear a story about something lots of people feel strongly about like math education. So let's do that in office hours because I know I'm sure everybody probably asked me. So let's, and I know there's probably some things that Billy you might want to pick up on. I'll just say, look, connect in with me, I'm very active on LinkedIn. Feel free to reach out to me. And I think if you guys have downloaded that framework that I gave you, the lead behind, there's some interesting stuff there as well. Okay, thank you so much, Andrea. And for those of you who are still here, it looks like there's 125 of you who have stayed beyond the hour. Thank you so much. And please share your love bombs for Andrea via the reactions icon on the bottom of your Zoom screen. That was really powerful. And just insightful and it was structured but also emotion and all the right things. Obviously a professional storyteller among us. So thank you so much, Andrea.