Episode 83: Neal Foard

Jack Hubbard: I've had the privilege of being in and around banking for more than 50 years. Lots of changes during that time. We've gone from ledgers to laptops, typewriters to technology. One thing, however, remains the same. Banking is a people business. And I'll be talking with those people that make banking great here on, Jack Rants with Modern Bankers. Welcome to Jack Rants with Modern Bankers. It's brought to you every single week by RelPro and vertical IQ. Each week, I feature top voices in financial services, bankers, consultants, best selling authors, and even storytellers. The goal of this program is to provide insights, success practices, and to help you by bringing new ideas to the table that you can use to maximize your results in 2024. 

You're never going to kill storytelling because it's built into the human plan. We come with it. That quote from Margaret Atwood is not written about my guest today, Neal Foard, but it very well could have been. Neal is America's social storyteller. And today you'll learn how he got to the top of that mountain and what it takes for you to tell a great story of your own. Neal Foard earned a B's from Menlo College. He was a creative director, or senior creative director at several of the world's most prominent advertising agencies. He launched his own firm, Story Fire, in 2022. Neal has 11,000 YouTube followers. Well, that's impressive, but he's got 110,000 followers on TikTok. Neal's new training Story Fire is a masterclass on how to weave your own tale, whether you're in sales or the c suite. It's Neal Foard on Jack Rants with Modern Bankers.

Here we go. So, as I mentioned in the introduction, I met Neal Foard through LinkedIn. His posts are amazing. His stories are amazing, they're captivating, and we're going to talk a lot about stories today. Neal Foard, welcome. Glad to have you.

Neal Foard: Hey, thank you, Jack. It's really fun to be here with you.

Jack Hubbard: This morning I saw on LinkedIn you did a post and you talked about three wins, and this seems to be a philosophy that you have in your life. But what's interesting about it is I learned from the story. You stole it. You stole these three wins from a day where you were really not doing very well at an agency. Talk about three wins. And now you got to tell the story and the backstory about it.

Neal Foard: We had, I used to have a lot to do with our new business pitches. I was frequently on stage, so to speak, doing creative presentations. And it's a huge effort to mount a new business pitch to try to win a new client. And the stakes are quite high, so the pressure is large, and every once in a while, and, you know, this is true, the law of probabilities catches up with you, and nothing you touch manages to work out. It's just. Some things are just snake bit. And this was one of those pitches where we could, everything we touched turned to sand. And naturally, we all got a little pissy at first, and then we got as, as more problems accumulated, then we got sort of, you know, angry. And then it was in full vibration and weasel. That was my setting, you know, ready for medication. And I'm quite sad to say, of all the team, I was the last one to see the humor in it. People, eventually, when the wheels fully come off, there's nothing you can do but laugh. It's just so absurd. It was one of those things. I mean, equipment failure was only the beginning, and forgotten scripts, literally slides that didn't even apply to that pitch. It was so comical that the clients were having difficulty keeping a straight face. 

Well, as I say, I was the last to finally give it up and just go back to being a human being again. And a young colleague pulled me aside because he said, I hate to see you suffering like this. Don't do this to yourself. Let me give you the benefit of something that I learned from my own father, which is every day, because there are going to be potholes and paper cuts, and, you just know there's going to be setbacks. Just give yourself, start the day knowing you're going to have three wins. Here's the first. Do something physical. Go to the gym. Do it in the morning. Get the gym under your belt first thing, and then you've already started the day with a win. 

Then the second thing. And by the way, it doesn't have to be the gym. It can be a long walk. It can be swimming, it can be. But do something physical to put your body under physical stress so that you've done the right thing. You've set yourself up as an example and a discipline and so forth. I go, okay. He goes, second thing, make sure that you get a win spiritually. And maybe it is praying, or maybe it's meditating, or maybe it's getting out into nature long enough so that you can detach from the digital devices and stop just being completely frantically going through the motions, or create something, paint something, or write something, or just clean up your space. But do it in such a way that it restores your soul. Okay. Get a spiritual win. 

And then the last one. And maybe this is the most important. I consider it the most important. Get a human win. Reach out to someone, call someone or meet up with someone or write to someone. I love that one. I love writing letters to people because they're so unexpected when they arrive in the mail. But, what'll happen is, don't do it for yourself. Get the win in the sense that you've gone out and you've tried to improve somebody else's day with some human contact, and that will wind up being the one you are happiest about because you've spread a little sunshine and eliminated some of the shadows. Okay? So I have taken this cat up on that advice, and you know what? It turns out he was 100% right about all of it. If you notch these wins, if you know you're going to do these things during the day, then the stuff that bothers you almost makes you laugh, because you're thinking to yourself, ah, I see what you try to do. You know, like you're trying to screw me up, but I'm. I'm. I'm gonna beat you because I'm going to. I'm gonna do something nice for somebody else as a way to restore myself. So have you ever heard of it, Jack? Have you ever heard of this term, the dopamine cartel?

Jack Hubbard: No.

Neal Foard: Okay. The term comes from all of the various sites like TikTok and YouTube and, especially Facebook, ah. Where they are trying to monopolize your time. We're in the attention economy. They want your economy. So very, very cleverly, and with the use of algorithms and a b testing and everything else, they're trying to grab you and hold on to you and never let you go. And they're able to do it because we, as human beings, we're addicted to the dopamine hit of, you know, it's. Some people it's gambling, some people it's drinking. Some people, it's sex. But, you know, it's very easy to manipulate someone's attention. Well, those three things that I just mentioned, exercise, getting into nature, doing something nice for somebody, creating something instead of consuming it. All of those things tend to be overcome. Excuse me. Those. Those things tend to help you break free of the dopamine addiction. And I didn't set out to do those things, but I am discovering that that's what they're good for. And they help you overcome the dopamine cartel of people trying to monopolize your time.

Jack Hubbard: Yeah, that's interesting. And the electronic devices, too. We were going out for dinner recently, and I got to the restaurant, and I said to my wife, I forgot my phone, and it was one of the best dinners I've ever had. You normally will just set your phone down on the table, and you'll be watching it as things happen.

Well, you mentioned YouTube and Facebook and TikTok. Now, Neal Foard has 11,000 followers on YouTube. That's impressive. Here's what's even more impressive. 377,000 followers on TikTok. And some of your stories have had millions of views. So I'm curious. It took you a while to, build this up. So I want to go back to your early days. One of my grandsons, at a very early age would say to me, papa, come here. I want to tell you a story. So I'm curious, when did you start to say, I'm a storyteller?

Neal Foard: Very, early. So, Jack, you probably remember, like I do, back when Saturday Night Live was, you know, 1970, 519 76. It was just getting started back in that first cast, and we didn't have a VCR in our family, and there was no streaming. You couldn't, ah, it was destination tv. If you were going to see it, you had to see it that night. And because it was on so late, I was the only one staying up to watch it as a kid. And every, every Sunday morning, because nobody had stayed up to watch it, they wanted to hear what had happened on Saturday Night Live. And I would do the skits. And so, you know, it's crazy, but I remember being able to do the whole show that goes to show you how, like, when you're a kid, your memory is amazing. You can. Oh, my God, recall. And so what I found out was, there is no greater thrill in the world than watching your father laugh. this very tense, angry guy that you're accustomed to, always telling you what's wrong, and then you're making him laugh, and your life changes. And so I got addicted to doing the Saturday Night Live routines every week for the family at the breakfast table. And that got me sort of started. 

My sister Lily, though, man, she can spin a yarn. Holy mackerel, she's good. And, so that was sort of, that was where it all began. And then, what happened was that when I went into advertising as a career, it turns out it's a very, very valuable thing to be able to explain a concept with a certain pace. And a certain mystery and, you know, leaving the punchline for just the right moment. You know, it's true about comedy. comedy is timing. Like, things can be funny if you just, you know how some people are just funny. Like, they don't even have to tell you a joke, they're just funny. I think it's because they have an instinct for timing. And there's that great, very, very old Jack Benny joke, where a mugger comes up to him and says, you know, your money or your life, and he doesn't say anything. And the mugger says, well. And Jack Benny says, I'm thinking and I'm not doing it justice, because from thousands of vaudeville appearances, he just had a knack for knowing when it was going to land, when it was going to maximize. Forgive me for all of your listeners, for taking him down that kind of a memory lane. I mean, that's a long time ago, but the rules of comedy are timeless.

Jack Hubbard: And, well, they are, and some people haven't and some people don't. But as we're going to talk about today with your new training program, you can teach people. I'm curious. So as I mentioned, one of my grandsons kind of has this natural thing. Seems like you did, too. Why isn't more of this taught in school? It seems like it's a really important skill.

Neal Foard: it has turned out to be more important as time has gone on. because the most important thing in business is trust. The ability to convey that you will stand by your promises is. The reason it's more important now is because we're all so accustomed to having our promises broken, and companies give you these long riders, and you must accept the terms and so forth. And trust is in such short supply. In business, the number one way to cultivate trust is to be a trustworthy person by your behavior. But also you have to communicate that you are a human being on the other end of a transaction. And it's our humanity that tends to bend the rules when that's the appropriate thing to do. And overlook problems that were committed in good faith. And storytelling is a way to establish that you are a human being. It's a way of saying, this is my human experience. 

This is the journey I've been on. You've probably experienced something like this. The videos that I've done on TikTok and YouTube and LinkedIn, I'm not up to now. I haven't been doing them for business. I've just been doing them because I wanted to improve the commons. I get so exhausted on LinkedIn, especially of people posting how great they are, when they'll put up some, they'll put up some photo of themselves and then it'll say, so proud of my team for having won flange maker of the year award, and it's a picture of them and you just go, oh, God, you're going to sing your own praises. Okay, fine. I found that exhausting. And in its place, what I wanted to do was say, look, the only thing I'm going to put on LinkedIn is I'm just going to put on something here that kind of tries to help you make your day better. I'm not trying to push myself on you. I'm trying to be friendly and be helpful. And it has turned out that I didn't know this was going on, but it has turned out to attract people like you, Jack, who are on the lookout for interesting new things that you can bring to benefit your listeners and your viewers. Like you're doing it to benefit your listeners and viewers. 

That's how you get a following, is by being helpful. And I underestimated the power of that. Have you noticed this, Jack, about great, great brands? The great brands rarely talk about themselves. They don't thump their chests about how great they are. Crap brands do, and too many of them. But the great brands talk about things that inspire them and they have an artistry about them that's very understated, even if they're Apple, will display their products, but they often do it in the lifestyle of the user. In other words, it's really a love letter to creators and people who are interested in putting something beautiful into the world. And Nike especially, you'll notice that what they celebrate is not themselves. 

Nike celebrates the benefits and the glory of sport. And not. It doesn't mean that they're always showing some champion on the screen. It means that they are showing someone who is using sport to be a better person, to get better, to achieve something. It's really magnificent to watch them. They're not a perfect company. No company is. And they do make mistakes. But in their messaging, I think they improve the commons. They make it better that we've seen their stuff as opposed to, oh, my God, 90, percent of advertising. They're too self interested. And, I believe that the benefit of storytelling is that when you just express your human journey and you talk about your own struggles or you talk about the things that inspire you, it makes people smile and laugh and there's a chord of recognition. When they watch it, they go, yeah, like, for example, the things that I posted this morning about the three wins, I'm not doing that to gain anything on anybody. I'm just trying to say, look, this was something that I picked up too late in life, and I'd like to benefit you by hearing it earlier than I heard it. And in doing so, you know, I'm the big winner. The same way that I say, like, on the third thing, the third win is to do something nice for somebody else, reach out, make a human connection. That's what I'm trying to do all the time with the stories I tell.

Jack Hubbard: Because you love letter writing, you'll love heart. Spoken by Elizabeth Cottrell, who I, who I interviewed, earlier. And one of the things she talked about as well is about the other, it's about being selfless. And as I was preparing for this, because you talked about Nike, I was trying to think back on some of the really great commercials. There's an Apple commercial where there's some kids coming to grandpa's house and grandma has died, and they used their apple iPads to put together some old videos and showed it at Christmas. And then I think of the Super Bowl and all the money that's spent on some of these ads. The ones that are really memorable to me are the Budweiser ads. And they don't talk much about the beer, it's about the horses. And you talk about, in one of the things I saw, one of the Nike commercials was about Michael Jordan, but it wasn't about all his successes, Neal, what was it about?

Neal Foard: Yeah, it was about the number of times he didn't win the game. He didn't sink the last basket. Apparently, the star was that Michael Jordan, who was famous for that last minute buzzer beater, playoff winning shot, he failed more times than he succeeded on that. So he'd thrown up quite a number. And there's kind of a glorious thing about Michael Jordan, which is that he glows with the confidence that, I know I'm going to beat you. and he is a, he's such a ferocious competitor that it can actually be. There are moments when it's quite unpleasant. But Nike chose to talk about the number of times he failed as a way of saying, look, even the greatest of all time fails. You cannot let that stop you. And what I love so much about that is when they use that phrase, just do it. 

What they're, it's not a hectoring whip crack of get up off your a**. It's. Come on, just do it. It is a sweet encouragement to try to help you. And I believe that, all of our brands, our personal brands, because we all walk around with a brand, a reputation. They used to call it a reputation, but we all walk around with brands. And what would be nice is if our personal brand was equivalent to, I'm here to be a good part of your life. I want to be the best part of your day. We would frequently say that at the ad agency when that certainly I would teach that in my management training program, was to say, look, when you roll into a meeting, that meeting has to be the one thing they remember from the entire day, and it has to be the best part of the day. Be entertaining, be sassy and funny. 

Make sure the room is cool. Make it smell like something. Make it, give, give them a show. And make it so that even if you didn't sell what you came there to sell, they're still happy they showed up. And make sure that you leave happy that they're happy. You know, like I was saying before about, we had this occasion where just the wheels came off. There is a point at which it's so bad, it's good, it's so laughably awful that if you just demonstrate that it doesn't destroy you, the client that watched this train wreck can actually leave entertained. In other words, you probably know this from personal experience. If you go see a stand up comedian and they bomb, it's just as painful for the audience as it is for the entertainer. It's just awful, because if you have any empathy at all, it destroys you. 

To see a comedian just get wrecked. And nobody wants to see you fail. Do you remember, Jack? You probably do. When Johnny Carson was host of the Tonight show, frequently, the jokes would bomb, and he had more fun with the jokes that didn't land because it gave him a chance to be humble in the face of the audience, and he was not a humble person. Johnny Carson was not humble, but it gave him a chance to humanize himself in front of them. It's a marvelous thing to have a kind of contract with the audience, a sort of agreement, which is, they're not all gems, ladies and gentlemen, but we're here to enjoy ourselves. So don't panic. I'm going to be okay. That's true.

Jack Hubbard: And when I watch your stories on LinkedIn, they're just so flawless and so easy. But, Neal, there are some elements of a story, and every story is different, but every story has kind of a template around it. Talk about some of the key elements of a great story.

Neal Foard: I will usually begin knowing what the moral of the story is.

Jack Hubbard: Like.

Neal Foard: I don't tell a story unless there is something you can walk away with and say, oh, yes, I see what he's saying. The reason I do that is because any great story should. You should have told it for a reason. Like, why am I telling you this? You know, sometimes when somebody isn't an adept storyteller, it will tend to ramble into this kind of Cul de sac, and you're not sure. Okay, thank you. I'm not sure why you told me that. It's really essential that you have a reason for telling it, and that. That. And that the reason will benefit the listeners. That's one thing. 

There's another thing, which is that, in my case, seldom will I make myself the hero of the story. I'm the one who learned something because of some mistake that I made. And I highly recommend that when you are telling a story, do not make yourself the hero. It's important because you need to give the listener permission to stand next to you and watch the events, not put yourself up on a soapbox with a medal that you made for yourself on your chest and ask people to look up at you with adoration and admiration. Don't do that. First of all, they're not. 

That's not the reaction they're going to have when you tell a story and you are the centerpiece. When you're the hero of the story and you're great and you did something fantastic, they don't believe you, and, because they don't want to believe you, this is. You're going to cultivate skepticism and disbelief and what's more, jealousy. So you will frequently see Jack, when people post things. It's my fancy vacation, my fancy new car. Aren't I great? Look at me. How much money I have and all of my achievements. And, Jack, you and I both know that isn't going to get the reaction you want, unless you're trying desperately to make people hate you, in which case, congratulations. You win. No. A story really ought to be about some lesson you learned, and it should be about the things that inspire you in the hope that those same things inspire others. I did a story about a restaurant in Japan called the restaurant of mistaken orders. And it was one of the biggest sort of. They got multi, multi millions of views. And it was, It bounced around social media. It leapt out of TikTok and went to Facebook without me putting it there. 

And what it was about is, this wonderful man, Shiro Oguni in Japan, who went to a little place where it was a home for people suffering from Alzheimer's. And he was just absolutely crestfallen at how these people had been isolated from society, because he knew that wasn't good for them, and he thought there ought to be a place for them in society. So he created this restaurant. And you know how hard it is to be a server in a restaurant. You have to have a memory like a steel trap. And he knew, deliberately, he knew that what was going to happen was these people were going to be in society. They're going to try and do this job of a waiter. And he knew they would fail, that there was going to be a certain proportion of orders that weren't going to be right. But he also knew that people would not care, because they want, just like he, they wanted these people to be out there in the world and to be supported and to feel needed and loved and appreciated. 

And it was the most lovely thing for them to get the order wrong almost 40% of the time, and yet the guests left happy 99% of the time. And I want to meet the person who wasn't happy and just kind of punched them in the neck, because. What the h***'s the matter with you, man? Don't you see the benefit of this for everyone? It was just such a lovely thing that I told the story of this place, and what happens, I'm the big winner. Even though I didn't create the restaurant, I'm the big winner because I got to share something so wonderful, an encouragement, that maybe human beings aren't. Maybe human beings aren't awful all the time. Maybe there's a bunch of us out there who are actually shedding a tear at that story, because in our hearts, we're actually good people, and we appreciate it when somebody else does something nice. It turns out the vast, vast majority of people are pretty cool. And that turns out to be the thing that I'm happiest to report on, is that people are okay.

Jack Hubbard: So, as the first story I shared on LinkedIn about you, it is heart. It's just heartwarming to see this. Now, I'm curious about that, because some of your stories, most of your stories are under three minutes. This was a little longer because you actually interwoven video of the restaurant and of the people in the story. How did you get the video?

Neal Foard: Well, fortunately, it was public domain, they wanted to share it. So the creator of the film, which, it's a short documentary about this restaurant of mistaken orders, I came across it. The crazy thing, Jack, was I didn't even see it as a story. I had just seen the little video and then posted it on LinkedIn as a, hey, check this out. Truly, I wish I had conceived of this. That was all I had said about it was, this is one of those things where you just really wish you'd invented it. And only months later did I look back at it and think, you know, there's enormous power in telling a story rather than just. Rather than just post text, but to literally tell it as a tale. And in fact, even though I had posted it as a kind of, you know, hey, check this out. Here's my link to this. That didn't get nearly the traction that telling the story did. I mean, the difference was it was an atomic reaction versus just a conventional firecracker.

Jack Hubbard: And you do these all the time, Neal?

Neal Foard: Yeah, yeah, I mean, all the time.

Jack Hubbard: Do you remember your very first story that you put up?

Neal Foard: Yeah, I do. And it was, I remember the first story that I put up, but I also remember the one that really sort of took off and all of a sudden it was like, what? You know, okay, apparently people like this stuff. The very first one that I told was on behalf of a company. It was a startup that I was involved in. And it was about, it was essentially about how AI was going to eat the world, because it is. And the story I was basically telling was, yes, but we have to appreciate that human beings, as flawed as we are, it's part of our charm. The silliness of human beings is part of our wonderfulness. And, if you look back, you can find Jack, you can find pictures from the 1860s and seventies of feudal Japan. And in it there will be some samurai or some geisha. 

And of course, they have a very stern expression on their face. But they have found, among the photographic plates, pictures where, like, a samurai will have this goofball face on, like. And you're thinking, you know what? Whether it's 1870s Russia, the time of Dostoevsky, or it's feudal Japan, people have not changed in 30,000 years. It's the same species. And we can't forget that because we are an unchanged species. Unchanged. We will be unchanged, for the foreseeable future, and therefore, just embrace your human flaws. Just hug them tight and say to yourself, do I really have to go out in the world and present a sanitized version of myself, where everything is perfect and this is my wonderful vacation, and look at my beautiful new car. Or let me take a moment to tell you what an idiot I was last week and what I've learned from it. and let me benefit you by my tale of being the last one to, you know, the last one to abandon my fury.

Jack Hubbard: You think that's a function of age.

Neal Foard: Where we get to a point in.

Jack Hubbard: Life where we say, what the h***?

Neal Foard: Yeah, you've probably heard the phrase. It's one of my favorite phrases, comfortable in your own skin. there was a wonderful, marvelous, documentary called seven up, and then that became 14 up and then 21 up. And what they would do is this English anthropologist was studying children at seven, and then came back to them seven years later, interviewed the same cohort of children, and then seven years after that, interviewed the same cohort of children. And, this went for decades. Seven years old, 14 years old, 21 years old, 28 years old, you know, 32 years old, or whatever it is, lost track. And what he discovered was that the women, especially in their fifties, became more comfortable being themselves. They stopped trying to pose for life, and it was a wonderful thing to see. Perhaps this is embarrassing for me to admit, but let me go ahead and just tell it like it was. I remember seeing the one about, I was 54, or whatever age they were at, and I noticed that people had gone through a sort of period where, you know, they look awkward because of the fashions and the hairstyles and so forth, but these women in their fifties were prettier to my eye than they had been in their thirties. 

And I think it was because they were comfortable in their own skin. And the smiles that crossed their faces were not affected. Smiles. They were that subtle upturn of the, you know how some people will smile with their eyes, and a genuine smile usually involves the eyes. I think that was what happened, was that the smiles started to involve their eyes. And I make no judgments about the men because I wasn't looking. I wasn't thinking of them as good looking or not good looking. And as sexist as it sounds, I think there was something very instructive about, when a woman, to my eyes, was comfortable with herself. She became magnetic to me.

So to go back to your original point, which is, do you think it's a function of age to have sort of developed a kind of humility about being who you are and not being afraid to reflect it to the world? Maybe there are still angry men in business in their fifties and sixties and seventies, and leaning with death grip in their eighties to their company, thinking that that's somehow going to make them immortal, not leaving room for capable younger people to have a place to go. And, I think a little humility is natural, to fight the impulse to try to pass on lessons to the younger people and let them grab the reins. To fight that instinct, I think, is to only hurt yourself.

Jack Hubbard: It's so interesting you talk about age. I've been playing golf with these guys, eight of us. We're fortunate to still be here for 60 years. And so every year we go on a golf trip. Now, we see each other during the year and such, but we go on this golf trip and the stories we tell are amazing. And every year they get to be a little different. They're similar, but the stories are a little different.

Neal Foard: Interesting.

Jack Hubbard: And I'll tell you one of the things we noticed this year. Three of us, had prostate cancer. Three of the eight. And which is statistically about relevant. And me, I was diagnosed, and was stage four. And I had a 30% chance to live.

Neal Foard: Oh, boy.

Jack Hubbard: One of the things we noticed as we were driving back in the car is our attitude toward the game and each other, because we thought we weren't, maybe not be here the next year. And it caused us to kind of think differently about golf. I think males, you know, they got all this testosterone and we want to hit the ball as far as we can. I said to my partner and my cart, who I've known since I was in kindergarten, we were driving, he was mad because he hit the ball like, you know, 38 yards. And I said, did you notice the eagle? I didn't see the dame eagle. I didn't even see my ball. And so it's so different. You have the capability to be yourself. and, I'm proud of that. I'm not proud that I have cancer, but I'm proud of that.

Let's go back to your agency days. One of the things that bank marketing professionals do well is to tell stories. And you would expect that they would do that. But in today's business world, CEO's, CFO's, CEO's, and other senior executives have got to tell stories as well. In your experience with your clients, what do you find that, around CEOs and senior executives being able to tell good stories?

Neal Foard: It is an enormous unfair advantage when a CEO, CFO's, in particular, I think, really underestimate the power of storytelling. I think what happens is the term storytelling is what's throwing everybody off. What it really is is the ability to communicate, through metaphor and example, the meaning of data and or discoveries, insights. Your ability to communicate an insight is often. It is so much easier to remember if it's told in the form of a fable or, you know, a parable. When people discuss the Bible, they will often talk about the parables from the Bible. Those are the things they remember. 

The good Samaritan and so on. And it's quiet. I can give you a bunch of data, Jack. I could give you three bullet points to remember for tomorrow, and you will have forgotten the number one point by the time I get to the number three point. And yet, if I asked you right now to tell me the story of the tortoise and the hare or David and Goliath, you would have absolutely no problem citing its chapter and verse. Why stories are the. They are the operating system of human beings. It's how we frame everything. It's how we understand our own identity by being able to remember the things that happen to us in a certain order and then put a certain spin on it, to look back at unpleasant events and think, yes, but I learned that. I learned this lesson from that. 

Therefore, I would not go back and not live through that. My struggles are positive in the sense that it made me have more resilience or it made me kinder to other people to have suffered like that, because now I see what it's like to live like that. Okay? Therefore, let's not call it storytelling. Let's just call it a certain type of communication that is the optimum for getting people to remember what you said and in the way that you intended for them to receive it. Okay? If you're a CFO, it's not enough to add the numbers correctly or to have to know how to run a team of people that can add numbers correctly. It's not enough for you to even know what the numbers mean. Any CFO that has the ability to explain through a story where the numbers are headed, they are worth their weight in gold, because that people go, oh, every time I speak to Jack and he tells me what this data means, I understand in a way that I can explain it to someone else. It gives them the chance to not only make a decision, but to justify the decision. And everybody, look, when we make decisions, we think we're being objective, and we think we're being so systematic. We're weighing options. 

No, man. No. We make emoticons. We make decisions emotionally. It's just a fact that you learn from 30 years in advertising, watching consumer behavior is that people make their decisions on emotions. I'm not saying it's a bad thing or a good thing. I'm just telling you how it is. People make decisions emotionally. Therefore it becomes really important that they want to make the decision that you would like for them to make. Nobody. Have you noticed how difficult it is in today's political climate to change somebody's mind? It's impossible to change someone's mind. You can cite facts at them all day long, but they will not listen because they don't want to change their minds. 

You can't sell something to somebody if they don't want to buy it. But it's effortless when they do. And what CEO's and CFO's and coos than anybody else and certainly cmos, okay, but everybody in the c suite, you will gain enormous, you will gain enormous advantage if when you speak, they want to believe you. Well, how do you get them to want to believe you? You establish that there is a human being there, that there is somebody who cares enough about them that they act out of friendship. You know, Jack, we could go on for hours. Trust me, if you and I just went for a second cup of coffee, I could talk to you for hours because it is my favorite subject in the world, this discovery. Here it is. 

This is the entire distilled philosophy of my life. Life gets so much easier when people like you now, you have to earn it. You have to be likable. How do you do that? By being the kind of person that wants to help, that gets a kick out of helping somebody else. That when they see somebody at the side of the road with a flat tire, their first impulse is to, oh, let me see if I can help you along your way. And, not because it's just a pretty girl, and not just because, you know, it's, you think you're going to get something out of it. It's because it's human. It's your human impulse to be friendly and to make friends. Our superpower as a species is teamwork. 

We are furiously dangerous as a species, not because we have claws or teeth or that we are physically strong. As a species. We are really weak and unarmed. But we're clever af and we are dangerous because we cooperate. Our, ability to get each other, to help one another. Wow. Oh, my God. There isn't another species on earth, save for maybe the hive mind of a group of red ants in the. The Amazon. But human beings. Can you imagine what it would have been like? You're some apex predator on the veldt in Africa, and all of a sudden, there are 65 human beings carrying weird tools and seemingly not afraid of you. I don't care if you're a lion. This ain't good. I don't like the looks of this. You know, you're a giant bison. Yeah, they're puny, but there's a ton of them, and they don't seem frightened of me. It's creepy. Imagine what that must have felt like. You know, you're a giant bear, and you're thinking, I'm the. I'm the badass of the year. What the h***? They're coming at me. I'm not used to this, okay? This is the superpower of human beings. Therefore, a CEO's power is not the ideas. It's their ideals. Have you read that book by Simon Sinek called leaders eat last?

Jack Hubbard: Yes.

Neal Foard: I devoured that book with an emotional glee. I'm jealous of Simon Sinek. And even though I acknowledge how jealous I am of Simon Sinek, I love the guy that just demonstrates his power to encapsulate and to communicate, and he does tell stories all the time about meeting with Navy seals and business leaders. He's a marvelous storyteller, an insightful person. But you know why I love him so much? So much that it overcomes my jealousy? Because he just wants to help. He's just trying to improve the commons. A CEO that operates out of a desire to help the people that work for her or him. A CFO says, I'm going to tell you about what these numbers mean, and I think you're going to want to hear it, because to know where the numbers are headed will benefit us all, I think. 

How much more fun it is to work for a company that's winning, a company whose profitability makes opportunities happen, means there's room for growth. A great CEO is able to say, listen, I'd like to tell you my plans for where we're headed and why I think you're going to benefit from this and why I think you're going to want to be part of it. It's exciting, you know, when a CEO can communicate. In a way that's. That's received so that you can picture it. That's what storytelling really is. It's just communicating something so that you can imagine it, too, so that you can see it. You can see the future that does not yet exist. And it's a pleasant future filled with sunshine and chances. And, when somebody communicates in a way that you can picture it and want to be part of it, they're not asking you to worship them. They're asking you to join them. And that is incredibly compelling. And what it results in. I'm, sorry, just, just to put the punchline on it, what it means is I have a preference for being around you. I have a preference for you. Therefore, I want to believe you. Therefore, I want to buy what you're selling.

Jack Hubbard: I wanted to mention to you, because it's so cool, CEO's, CFO's, marketing people. And then as it gets into the sales realm. So I watched the sales manager, the best one I ever saw. and he said, let me tell you a story. Salesmen. Let me tell you a story. And so he told his story. Really engaged people, typically salespeople, they're looking at their phone, very engaged. Now, based on that, let me tell you a little bit about our numbers and where we are. So at the end of the meeting, I said, well, that was very unique. He said, well, I do it every time. And what I try to do is find a story from my past or from experience, and then I relate it to the numbers. And he said, people tend to, he said, I never used to do that. I used to just dive into the numbers and nobody cared anyway. So I don't care anyway. Why don't I just tell a story and maybe they'll get it and then I'll go into the numbers. That's pretty powerful. Sunday for me is Neal Foard day. I try to post something every Sunday from something that you have posted, or I find something. And I love the wedding toast, one of my favorite stories, the perfect game. The best bartender in Chicago. I could go on.

Neal Foard: Oh, I love the best bartender. I love that story.

Jack Hubbard: But here's the thing. As I was watching these, I thought, how can I learn from Neal Foard? Well, you can, because you've got a brand new course that you launched called story fire. Three levels of learning. There you go.

Neal Foard: Uh-huh.

Jack Hubbard: Talk about story fire and these three tiers, because I've looked at it and I'm jealous that I can't be experiencing it. It looks awesome.

Neal Foard: The story fire course is basically, it's my distilled lessons of storytelling from 30 years in advertising. And, I mean, I'm, I have thousands and thousands of presentations under my belt, from having sold creative concepts to skeptical clients. And here's why I am such a big believer in this program, is that it does definitely have techniques in it, tips and tricks, as you would expect, because you want to get value out of it. What it really is about in the end is it's a meditation on your motives about the kind of stories you choose to tell. It's not just about how to tell a story. It's, let's really dig deep into what stories you decide to tell. Are your stories uplifting? Are they generous? Do they communicate your humanity? Do they benefit the listener? Can you walk away after having told the story and genuinely know that the listener is better off for having heard it? I do have three levels of it. 

The first level is just a really nice package of fundamental videos, and it talks about sort of the pillars of great storytelling and the benefits of storytelling and how you go and find stories. And we'll talk a little bit about that in a second. Then the next level of it is what I call the complete level, which is, it's pretty much everything that I learned in the business. But, and so, and not only is it, it's videos, it's. It's like a masterclass, but it also contains exercises and the beauty of the exercises. And then that way it personalizes it to your experience, and you can apply these things right away. And, a quick note about applying these things. Not everything I say is revealed genius. But oftentimes people take away different things with different emphases. That is, they find different parts of the program beneficial to them. Not everybody thinks it's the same things that are great, and that's a wonderful thing. You take what you can from it. And I'm happy to say that I guarantee you there's going to be a bunch of stuff in there that you're going to go, oh, that's good, that's good. Yeah, it ought to be. From 30 years of mistakes, you find out what not to do. And then the final tier, which is the story fire pro, that involves not only a bunch of extra content that you can't get on the other levels, but, every month I'm going to be doing a live event during which we take questions and I talk about new, new things that I'm discovering. I'm going to be doing one actually coming up next week. And, that is a huge thrill because there's nothing more fun than sort of doing one on ones with people, because then they're unafraid about sharing difficulties they're having. And so on. But I really do think that the greatest of all of the lessons is that when you treat life like a team sport, when you treat business like it's a team sport, it's not just about you. You find out how willing people are to help you, and that's when we are really dangerous. Stories are a terrific way to cultivate the desire of other people to help you out and for you to help them.

Jack Hubbard: This time has gone by like nobody's business. And I think we could sit here and chat about stories all day long, but,

Neal Foard: I'm all yours. I'm all yours, Jack. You just keep this going as long as you want.

Jack Hubbard: I got to ask you, though. So, since my audience is bankers, and it's commercial bankers that call, on business owners, so what advice would you have for bankers to be able to create stories that are relatable and that they can just get out of their mind and say, in a short period of time when they're on, a sales call.

Neal Foard: The best stories tend to be the things that really happened to you. And the reason those are the best stories is because all of the details of the learning process and so forth are there for you. When you're telling a story of something that didn't happen to you, it's often incorrect in peculiar ways. Little things that you don't realize are inconsistent or don't ring true. And if, what I would recommend for any of your banker listeners, if you're looking for some story in order to illustrate a point or create a metaphor that will make it easier for somebody to understand, you don't have to go back any further than in what way did you help a customer or a client? 

Just think about the number of times and the ways that you were helpful to some client of yours. There has to be a story there. And by the way, it doesn't mean that you were the hero of the story. Instead, it can be a little bit like this. Oh, I was so happy that I was able to provide this product to this customer because they were really struggling. Let me tell you what was happening to them. They had this happen to them, and then they couldn't afford that, and they, were quite desperate. They were about on the brink of losing something. But I was able to use this to. And in doing so, that client then went on to succeed in some way. People need to hear the success stories of others so that they can imagine their own possible thriving. It doesn't mean that you were the great that you came on and were the hero of the story. What it does mean is that it was your pleasure to know that you had that product to offer. It was that the joy that you get from life is to help people achieve things and acquire things that are meaningful and the best. Of course, the image that much of banking has is that because it is strictly financial, it tends to be motivated by greed. People just want to acquire and amass. 

One of the seven deadly sins is acquisitiveness. But let's face it, that's not why banking has survived and thrived all these years. It's not from greed, it's from people having the ambition to achieve things and protect each other and be secure and so forth. Banking turned out to be an enormously efficient, effective way of doing that well, therefore, when you tell stories about the better side of it, it turns out that it can actually affect how you yourself do business. It's, you know, Jack, a kind of dividend that I didn't see coming to. 

The fact that I've been telling stories about the better side of human beings and the things that, the nice things they've done for one another is that it's become a kind of brand inside my head that, when you tell stories like this, it frames life for you not to be so suspicious all the time and to be able to see when people do nice things, to see them for what they are. And it's improved my life to go out and try to bring a smile to people's faces. It radiates energy that gets reflected back at me. It was an unexpected, incredibly pleasant thing. You and I would not have met, nor had this conversation were it not for the fact that I'm putting these messages out in the world. Does it mean I'm a great human being? No, it is. It means that the more I find evidence of how cool people are, the more cool people come back to me. It's real. Isn't that great? Yeah. Yeah.

Jack Hubbard: And let's go to your golf buddies. What you are reflecting now is a certain perspective. My father used to say that the great tragedy of the human species is that we're incredibly clever but not wise. And yet here are you, who has now gained a certain perspective. It's wisdom. What you've gained is wisdom. And now you're reflecting that wisdom into the world. And what's happening. You're seeing the eagle instead of the fact that you shanked the drive. You tell me, what's a more pleasant way to live, right? This is what you gain from experience. This is why? When I see a video where somebody's bagging on Jim Z or complaining about millennials, I go, brother, you think you're complaining about millennials, but what's really happening is you're hamstringing yourself, man. You're not seeing how awesome millennials are. You're farting your grievances into the world. It's not going to make your life better. 

No, no. See the eagle, not the slice on your golf, okay? Just trust me. It's going to come back at you. Jack, the number of Gen Z and millennials that I've seen that are really impressive. My sons and daughter's friends are amazing. They're way smarter than you think they are. Their media savvy is like, oh, man, they're starting with a. They're on a running start and understanding the new world we're in. That's really true. They're so savvy. So that's just my way of saying that, a banker, a CFO, a CMO, okay, you've reached the c suite. The benefits to others that you can bring to bear are amazing. The best way to communicate them is by telling people a story of your own experience. Not to aggrandize yourself, but to help them and bring them along. And they will love you for it. And when they love you, magic starts to happen. It does.

Jack Hubbard: And I'm sure you love to read. I'm sure we talked about Simon Sinek. I'm sure you listened to the podcast. How do you sharpen your saw? Who are some folks that you listen to or read?

Neal Foard: Well, there was a patch there where I was reading nothing but nonfiction, starting with Tom Peters in search of excellence, and certainly Simon Sinek. but what has happened is now I alternate between fiction and nonfiction because, what I discover especially is if you read old authors, if you read old books, there's a certain. There you are. You find it humorous how little anything has changed in that time, from the time of Mark Twain to now. I don't mean that events haven't changed, and I don't mean that society hasn't evolved. I mean that human beings don't change. And it's comedic. Even when you're reading something that's desperately, you know, awful to read about the way that people used to be and the suffering they're capable of inflicting on each other, there's a sort of dark humor in it. You just shake your head and you go, oh, my lord. You'd think we would have learned this by now, no, people are still afraid of death. People are still competing for mates. people are still trying to put on airs. But I do find that when I read fiction, my latest favorite, his, Haruki Murakami, he's a japanese author who, his English is not particularly great, but he will frequently write in English to keep his prose simple. And in doing so, the simplicity is quite artful. And he does what they, he will write in a style they call magical realism, which is, everything about the story seems utterly plausible. And then there will be one element that's off. And in doing so, it's revealing because it's almost like you were able to do an experiment with human beings where you say, I have my own little society here. Now I'm going to introduce one tweak and see what people do with it. I love that, I love to, I can't recommend enough, Dostoevsky's brothers Karamazov. it's an astonishingly revealing book written in approximately 1870 in a society that even though it doesn't resemble our own, it's just, you can't stop laughing at the silliness men get up to when you're going like older guys trying to bag younger women. Oh, lord. Oh, my God, Jack. They've been doing it since time began. For sure.

Jack Hubbard: For sure. Well, I think we could have gone on for several pots of coffee. Tell us how people can reach you. What about getting a hold of you around the story? Fire your stories, your YouTube. How do people reach you, Neal?

Neal Foard: Yeah, I have a peculiarly spelled name. It's easy to say Neal Foard, but it's n e a l f o a r d foward. And you can, you can reach me at [email protected] or [email protected]. but you can also reach me https://www.storyfire.net/. And I wish I had paid the money to get thestoryfire.com. But anyway, storyfire.net is where you can find my course and you can reach me neilttoryfire.net. Dot. I wish you would too. I'm astonished at how amazing it is, Jack, to meet you. And I just meet for the first time today. And yet, doesn't it feel a little bit like we've been friends for a long time? Absolutely it does, doesn't it?

Jack Hubbard: And it happens with, and that's so fun when it happens like that.

Neal Foard: Yeah, I think that the, I think it's because what I've learned from, the process of putting stories into the universe is when people feel like they know you, they kind of do know you. They react to you like they know you. And it makes it really easy for me to go. Well, I'll return the favor, because we're all part of the same laughable journey.

Jack Hubbard: It's not what you say that matters. It's what people hear.

Neal Foard: Yeah.

Jack Hubbard: A great man once said that. His name is Neal Foard. Neal, you are too kind, and this was just amazing. I hope people go to story fire. and sign up for your course. I know I'm gonna. Thanks for your time today, Neal. I really appreciate it.

Neal Foard: Thank you, Jack. And may I say that I'm really quite grateful at the way you're punching the course. Thank you for that. The support helps a lot, but I do. it's nice to meet you. It really is. It's a pleasure to talk to you.

Jack Hubbard: Thanks so much for listening to this episode of Jack Rants with Modern Bankers with my great guest, Neal Foard. This and every program is brought to you by our friends at RelPro on Vertical IQ. Join us next time for more special guests, bringing you marketing, sales, and leadership insights, as well as ideas that will provide your banker credit union with the competitive edge you need to succeed. This LinkedIn Live show is also a, ah, podcast. Subscribe to get the latest editions of Jack Rants with Modern Bankers. And please, please leave us a review or on things like Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play, iHeartRadio, and others. Visit our website, too. It's a brand new website, themodernbanker.com, for more information. And don't forget to sign up for our free public [email protected]. Public library and remember, whether you're telling stories, having a sales conversation, or doing some coaching, make today and every day a great client day.