****Please forgive any and all transcription errors as this was transcribed by Otter.ai.****

Jay Acunzo 0:00

Hey, I'm Jake Gonzo, and you're listening to a sharks perspective.

(Music - shark theme)

Kenneth Kinney 0:03

Well, welcome back and thank you for joining A Shark's Perspective.

Kenneth Kinney 0:22

I am Kenneth Kinney, but friends call me Shark. I'm a keynote speaker, a strategist, a shark diver, host of this show, and your Chief Shark Officer.

Kenneth Kinney 0:31

What is your focus in storytelling? Is it more on the story itself? Or as the storyteller telling a great story? Regardless, can you spark action with your stories, all while being an effective storyteller, creating resonance with stories that any audience will care about? That demonstrate clarity creates connection and moves you towards meaning? Quite simply, how do you make your story resonate?

Kenneth Kinney 0:56

Jay Acunzo is a brand storyteller, coach, author, podcast hosts, and sometimes even referred to as a creative consigliere.

Kenneth Kinney 1:04

And on this episode, we'll discuss storytelling and being a better storyteller, resonance, whether storytelling works better in B2B or B2C, channels, care, how to position yourself as a consultant, uniqueness, creativity, reach, "Breaking the Wheel, dogs acting tough with squirrels, Newyorkachusetts, Sisyphus, whether or not the hot dog is in fact a sandwich, days at Google, HubSpot, and even ESPN, especially the magazine, giving up the unthinkable, and a lot, lot more.

Kenneth Kinney 1:29

So let's tune in to a storytelling Jay with a storytelling Shark on this episode of A Shark's Perspective.

[intro music]

Kenneth Kinney 1:39

Jay, welcome to A Shark's Perspective. As a storyteller, please tell us a little bit about your own story.

Jay Acunzo 1:45

Sure. It all comes back to one mission, I wouldn't know this proactively. It's all retro actively that you find these things about yourself, I think, but I really want to help other people make what matters most, to their companies, to their careers to their community. Certainly, I think there's just a lot of, you know, a lot of commodity content, a lot of copycat thinking a lot of people who, you know, they look at their heroes and go, Oh, I could never. And so I've sort of set about to demystify the creative process and empower people to resonate deeper in this reach obsessed world. But it didn't always look that way. I started in ad sales at Google, and absolutely hated it. Thought I'd love it. Because success to me as a student was oh, you go work for the most famous company you can find. And that's supposed to be success. And I had done it with Google, here in the Boston office and, and was miserable because I wasn't being creative. I didn't feel of service to others. I didn't feel impact internally. But when I quit, I joined this tiny little startup. No one's ever heard of, again, the optics don't view that as success, I suppose. Although the the culture has changed a little bit where maybe people think, Oh, that's great. But I joined this emerging field called Content Marketing, and never looked back. I was installed as director of content at the startup didn't know what content was, I had come from sports journalism. So I was like, Well, I know what edit is. I know what editorial means. I know what creative means. I know all that stuff. You know, I'd come out of basically print journalism even. So I had that terminology. But content was new. But they told me I could write so I showed up for work. And slowly by slowly built a community on the side of that day job here in Boston called Boston content. So now I have this emerging content marketing career both at that startup and then next it was HubSpot, where I was head of content very briefly. And I had this side project community. All of us were trying to figure out how do we be more creative? How do we serve the audience better? How do we earn trust and it is earned not purchased through our stories through our creative and AI, as I branched out on my own decided I wanted to dedicate my whole career to that. So since 2016, I've been trying to teach people how to become more effective storytellers. And that's come in all kinds of shapes and sizes, writing books, giving speeches, coaching clients, helping brands figured out their brand story and bring that story to market with things like shows, podcasts and videos. So I like to say I'm kind of like a creativity consigliere. Very, or maybe a storytelling consultant for brands.

Kenneth Kinney 4:08

You worked at ESPN for a while do you remember ESPN the Magazine? I don't know what triggered that memory.

Jay Acunzo 4:13

Oh, my gosh, I grew up on sports illustrated the print edition, ESPN, which had the bigger pages is much bigger. Yeah, than si did. But, you know, I would always go to the back columns. That's where I wanted to live. You know, Rick Reilly of Si, in particular, the back home that married the human experience to the world of sports, like that's why I loved sports was it was a microcosm of humanity. And you could tell meaningful human interest stories, but use the nice neat rules of sports to kind of find them and shape them so that's that's why I like business storytelling, because of course, it's a much bigger microcosm of of all humanity. So

Kenneth Kinney 4:47

what are the few magazines I really missed? Because it was it was good journalism back then before it came all faster TV oriented. Well, we'll talk a lot about creativity and storytelling today. So the first question is obvious. The Hot Dog. Is it a sandwich? Yes or no?

Jay Acunzo 5:03

I am vehemently against this being a sandwich. But according to Merriam Webster Dictionary, several years ago, they came out publicly and said it is in fact, a sandwich, which I just disagree with.

Kenneth Kinney 5:15

Yeah, well, I remember I remember you speaking about that before then getting to see you at Content Marketing World, we did a great job. But that storytelling for real? Where do you kind of come into the conversation with people or brands that you work with? At what point in the mix? It's when they're generally beginning? Are they midstream? Are they larger? What's what's sort of the consulting model where you walk in,

Jay Acunzo 5:36

it seems to be that, you know, my clients have included companies like, you know, as big as GoDaddy, and Salesforce, and as small as, say, like a podia, which is a software company that sells tools for you to, you know, host courses and all of your sort of independent creator type business models, and challenger brands in the middle, like Wistia, and HelpScout, and drift. So it's mostly b2b. And I think the through line to all of them, there might be two. So one is, they're beyond product market fit, they have some kind of offering. In their case, it's a product for an individual who hires me as a coach, it might be a service they're offering. But there's a little bit of a signal, if not a lot of signal that the market wants, what they have to sell. And what they really need now is that deep resonance, they need to speak with impact, whether they're an executive trying to align a growing team or recruit for that team, or they are a go to market leader trying to figure out, you know, it's an efficient form of marketing, I think, to connect more deeply with each and every individual. It's just that we think in terms of reach, we think in terms of top of funnel and awareness. But all that stuff is really a proxy for what you really want, which is affinity, you know, no amount of awareness really matters unless people who are now aware of you end up liking and trusting you like that's the end game. And a lot of people forget that, because a lot of the platforms reward the awareness stuff, the optics, all that. So I think my sweet spot is really, if you are already selling something that you think is worth selling, and you're getting some signal from the market that yes, this the problem they have is being solved by whatever you're offering. Now it's time to add fuel to the fire. Now it's time to speak with a greater level of impact to grow internally or externally. How do you do that? And I think that's where the notion of resonance really, really matters. I think it always matters. Don't get me wrong, but I think people are aware of it mattering because they feel the pain of what happens when they feel like they're shouting into the void. It's like, well, we have a great product, we have a great service for me as a communicator, me as an independent creator, I have meaningful things to say, look, I have some fans, I have some subscribed subscribers. And now I feel like I'm shouting into the void to try and grow and it's not happening. And that's where I can kind of step in and try and like distill down what we really need to do as communicators to solve that problem.

Kenneth Kinney 7:51

When you're working with people, though, that need to move product. I mean, if you think about during a lot of the the last few years where we've, you know, a lot of companies, not everybody did well, in a lot of C suite executives, even small businesses don't think through the storyteller, either, you know, the longer tail, if you will, of storytelling, they may think about I gotta beat my numbers now. Or in this quarter, what do you tell them?

Jay Acunzo 8:17

I've never heard somebody come to me and say, I want to work with you. But I have to hit this number now. And the reason is because I put out enough content, and I positioned myself appropriately, where short termism has no place in my ecosystem, where the people who are getting through my content, it's a helpful filter system, because if you're like, I just need the growth hack, I just need the quick injection, I need to 10x results in 10 months with $10. You know, I'm not for you already. So the people I attract, or

Kenneth Kinney 8:45

the waste your money on Instagram with those coaching programs,

Jay Acunzo 8:49

right? Either either one of two things is happening. I think shark either people are getting through the content and evolving how they're thinking. So by the time they speak to me to hire me, they're aligned with me, or they come because they're aligned with me. But either way, I'm trying to put out enough content and storytelling through my podcast, through my newsletter, through my speaking everywhere I show up, where because I'm leading with my belief systems so forcefully, the people I am speaking to where there's a contract involved at some point, are philosophically aligned with me. And I don't need to worry about oh, they don't quite see the world the way I see it. They don't quite see that. Doing it this way. Telling a better story communicating with greater impact. Can Yes, yield results now, but it also sets you up for greater growth in the future that makes tomorrow a lot easier. They don't question that because they're already kind of having to go through like a helpful form of friction through my content. And I think we forget that when we build our brands when you do that. It helps,

Kenneth Kinney 9:51

though, I think it's fantastic. Yeah, I think it's very smart that you position yourself that way because sometimes it becomes especially for people like me that have lived in In the performance marketing world a lot, it becomes a this or that argument. And it's not, you know, becomes a little bit too much of a prisoner's dilemma. It shouldn't be that this one is better than that one or so on and so forth. It's still, I think it's, it's smartly done. So let's talk a little bit about what you also spoke about at Content Marketing World. How is marketing advice, losing the sight of the storyteller?

Jay Acunzo 10:28

I think the thing that marketing advice is losing sight of is that the goal of story is like broad category of ideas and insights in heuristics. And you know, the history of story, the science of story, story, structure, the ROI of story, all these things. It's actually not the goal to learn story, this like abstraction, the goal is for you, the actual communicator to become an effective storyteller. You know, like, I think we abstract away the notion of story. And in doing so we've turned it into a buzzword, which I love to joke is kind like marketers turning story into a buzzword is like chefs turning food into a buzzword. It's just supposed to be the job. It's just supposed to be what we do. It's the barest of essentials. It's a game where you hear someone say story,

Kenneth Kinney 11:12

yeah, you hear somebody's story. And right, by the time you hear it, it's just it's your three sheets to the wind quickly,

Jay Acunzo 11:18

totally and look like we the thing that I take hope in the thing that I'm hoping people will see when they see me speak or listen to my show, or whatever, read me. The thing I'm hoping they notice about their own lives is while the perception is to be a storyteller is to tell some big giant industry shaking, you know, innovative story. truly effective storytellers can resonate with other people and spark action. That's where our results come from, with stories of any size, found through any source, and even told to any audience. And by the way, as authors and speakers like you, and I have had to figure that out, like the thing I was shown and taught and experienced as an author and a speaker, primarily for three straight years was that your product is your idea. And a feature of that product, is the speech. Another feature is the book. Another feature is a coaching service, with the model from the book, et cetera, you know, your client, you're kind of in the IP development world, right? And to show people that paradigm shifting idea, and get people on board, you need stories, you know, so you start developing them. And with my podcast, it was my place to do that and collect them. But, you know, if you're just trying to be a scientist about it, and you're trying to be a speaker and author, you're like, Okay, I need the b2b. Giant brand story, I need a tiny b2b story, I need a giant consumer brand story, I need the small consumer brand story, I need the nonprofit story. I need the solo practitioner, independent freelancer and creator story, I need the internal executive or HR type story, like you go through this list of like, I need people to see themselves in the story, not just by job title, although that helps. But through the emotional challenges of whatever protagonist I'm sharing. So like my lead story is always a coffee business, because people can understand that. And also, the traits of this owner happen to be very relatable. So we go through that as authors. And I think more marketers, more business owners, more leaders need to think like authors, where you're going really deep into whatever your mission is, whatever your brand story is, whatever the changes you want to see in the world. But to help people get on board with it, you need to tell really effective stories that lead them there.

Kenneth Kinney 13:27

To not just hear a dog bark.

Jay Acunzo 13:29

I have a beagle mix dog that walks by the window or off him off. He's the sweetest dog to human beings. And he sees a squirrel or another dog and he goes, Yeah, I'm gonna cut you.

Kenneth Kinney 13:41

Well, so do you think that storytelling works better in b2b or b2c?

Jay Acunzo 13:49

Look at risk of sounding really trite. I think it works. I don't like the word does it work? Because it's like does does work companies or contractors don't sit around going do hammers work? Right? It's like, what are you trying to build? But I think it's it's not sector specific. It's human specific. Because it's so here's where it works. You want to show people the process of change that you want them to go through. You want them to either realize something different see something a different way understand something that's complex and a little out of reach for them or change a behavior. And that's what a storytelling approach allows you to communicate because stories inherently are revolve around tension. Like that's the pivot point of a story, right? We've been learning this since we were kids, by the way, we just forgot side of it. Like every kid's story has some kind of tension that the puppy gets lost. The itsy bitsy spider gets washed off the side of the house like these things are inherent to every story. There's really just three parts. It's the status quo, like a statement of fact, this is what is then there's the tension that threatens what could be or threatens the desire of the protagonist as they move through the status quo. Then there's the resolution to the 10 And so it's status quo tension resolution. And oh, by the way, we have a product that helps you achieve that resolution, we have a service, I have a service that helps you achieve that I am not the resolution, we are not the resolution, we are trying to help people move through the story. So, I don't know if it's b2b or b2c, I think it's more, what are you trying to have people understand or do and putting that on display. So they go, not only do I totally understand it with clarity, I feel connected to it. Like you've illuminated the commonality between that protagonist between whatever sharks story and my story. And so therefore, I'm gonna go with you, and take some kind of action, whether it's an internal mental thing that I'm changing perspective. Now, I'm part of your ideal prospect list, for example, because I see the world the way you do, or I'm actually like, clicking a button, subscribing to something, buying something. But either way, that's the goal is can you spark action, it actually starts with learning how to resonate deeper, which means we need story.

Kenneth Kinney 15:57

Well, in a lot of times to keep myself out of just necessarily the ethereal academic thinking was storytelling. I think about the mechanics, having worked on both the brand side for b2b and b2c and I think about the execution of it, sometimes storytelling, if you will, where it resonates along the customer journey becomes clunkier in the b2b world. So that's, that was part of the reason why, yeah, why I asked. I think it's hard. It's scary that over.

Jay Acunzo 16:26

It's a good observation, and I feel like but what can be more meaningful to people than their work? I mean, like b2b, you're speaking about how do we elevate your work? How do you grow your business? How do you have a more meaningful career? Which means how do you have a more meaningful life? Like, I mean, it's not I came out of sports, like I mentioned, and I don't know why sports gets a free pass as like a place where obviously, there's greater meaning than just kicking a ball throwing a ball running faster than someone these are children's games, which, by the way, I love and also have profound meaning to them. But that's what we're doing when we're telling stories that spark action is we're not just trying to share the sequence of actions of somebody doing something, we're trying to move people towards meaning, right, like, here's the lesson of that story. Sometimes we spell it out, sometimes we give people space to synthesize it on their own. But either way, your stories have to arrive at some kind of meaning for the individual. And in work, we devolve into these like really flat, hollow ways of teaching and communicating like 10 simple steps to do x and you start the paragraphs, like everybody knows it's important to do X. Well, today, we're gonna share. That's not how people feel gripped. That's not why people act. It's not why people align with you and share your message with other people. So but you're like, well, but I sell widgets for this. For HR people. I sell manufacturing pieces for industrial ceiling fans in factories. Yeah, okay, fine. They play a game over there in sports, right? Why is why are they allowed to say and here's a greater meaning of the story, or here's a greater meaning from the domain that we operate in. We all have that available. And a storyteller sniffs that out, puts it on display first threatens it with tension, big questions, and big moments of conflict and frustrations. People feel that you also feel as the recipient of those stories, and then they arrive at the resolution of the story that gives you some kind of insight or meaning. So yeah, I love that you pointed out b2b falls flat, because I think we put it at an arm's length, failing to realize how ridiculous it is that in consumer things. It's just as weird sounding or unlikely, perhaps that they tell meaningful stories. So don't disassociate just because you think you work in a boring or stuffy industry.

Kenneth Kinney 18:35

Wouldn't it be nice though, if you were in that boring or stuffy industry to lean back into the sports analogy, if there was some seasonality to when you're not performing? Well. So like for my cowboys, for example, which pretty much blow the season at the start of every you get to start over next year. And unfortunately, a bad widget maker, or bad manufacturer stays bad forever with their storytelling. It'd be nice if we could kind of reset the dial every fall. Yeah. I don't know if we could do that.

Jay Acunzo 19:04

I don't know if that's necessarily true. I think maybe internally, people might remember what we used to communicate in a boring way or fall flat or, you know, I think like, it's interesting, because I don't think there's like a rip the band aid moment. I mean, maybe a new CMO or hot gas. Yeah, the new cmo gotta update the website. We

Kenneth Kinney 19:23

two and a half years. Yeah, right, Agent

Jay Acunzo 19:25

10. Yeah, I think we underestimate how the next timeout can be a better timeout. Right? Like, it doesn't need to be what I think sunk cost is a real issue like the sunk cost fallacy. It's like we've been doing it this way or we've been on these channels. We've been running these campaigns. We've been doing it this way for a certain little while. It's getting okay results. And, you know, it seems to be what the industry accepts more broadly. It's the best practice supposedly, and so let's just keep throwing good money after bad or mediocre. And I think that's wrong. I think like the next time you show up and I teach a lot of writers. So this shows up in a lot of b2b content marketing, where they're writing for a blog. They wish they could write essays or beautiful narratives or all these things. But oh, my boss, oh, but my numbers I can't. And I'm saying, Okay, well, you know, what you do control is some of the aspects of your writing, maybe you can't change the topics you're writing about. But could you open that next piece, or the next 10 pieces with some kind of metaphor, or personal anecdote or story that you've observed, and you're teaching a lesson from it for your crowd, like you control pockets of your work all the time that no one else needs to approve down to the word, you can tell better stories, and bit by bit, you start to push that boulder up the hill doesn't happen all at once, maybe like a sports analogy would be the season ends, and then it restarts. And so you get to reset. But even then, you're talking about last season, too. So it might not happen with a clean break like that in most of our cases. But if you look, if you look at the work, we're shipping, I mean, that's where this creative stuff actually happens. It's not in the theory of it all. It's not in a boardroom or a deck. It's the creation of the work and the daily or weekly shipping of it. What do you control there? How do you nudge it forward directionally so that if you extrapolate it out over time, you look backwards, and you're like, Wow, 50 pieces ago, we sounded like that. Look at us now. Like we're such great resonance storytellers. Now,

Kenneth Kinney 21:17

nice reference to Sisyphus, by the way for pushing the boulder up the hill. Hmm. Speaking of channels, what do you think the best channels are to communicate stories?

Jay Acunzo 21:28

I don't, I genuinely don't, because I don't think everything you're communicating through. The first priority is are you saying something that matters? Then you figure out, okay, it's on tick tock Instagram, wherever else reels and stories are showing up? How do we create a, you know, the the medium starts to adapt the message? Right? So or, you know, a great example of this is, if you're writing an article, how long should your article be? I don't know. Like, I think it was Abraham Lincoln, who said, How long should someone's legs be as until they touch the ground? Something like that? I'm butchering the quote. What are you trying to say? What are you trying to accomplish? What story are you telling? Then you can discuss? Is it long form? Is it short form, blah, blah, blah, and people go? Well, hold on a sec, J. But people have increasingly short attention spans? No, they don't. They have an increasingly lower tolerance for mediocrity, right. So you can't just get by with Okay, stuff, you have to actually invest in craft, you actually actually do fewer things, but better appear in fewer places, but appear better. People have a lower tolerance for things that are met, because they have an infinite choice to find things that are amazing. So they don't have shorter attention spans, we'll read books, we'll binge things. We'll read essays, we'll watch lengthy videos, if it's great if it appeals to us if it's a good story. So I don't know there is a good place bad place to tell stories. I think what ends up happening, is you the storyteller, this is the abstraction I'm talking about. It doesn't matter. Like is it a good thing or a bad thing to tell stories? I don't know. Is it a good place over here or a bad place over here to show up and tell the story? I don't know. All I know is that's an abstraction. We're trying to understand story in and of itself, and you can't, what has to happen is you have to internalize the ability to tell effective stories. And there's actually a difference. And I think the most important thing we have to realize is just like I realized as an author, is when you start to go on the book tour and people interview you about your book, your book, no one says, I have this question, Jay. My audience is full of marketers, and they're trying to drive leads. And in your book, you're giving advice to marketers? So here's the question about how marketers can drive leads, what do you think? And then what they're not saying is, please respond with a story. It's on you as the storyteller to step out over the edge onto the wire without a safety net. And to go, that's a great question, shark. Let me tell you about Lisa Schneider. She's the Chief Digital Officer at Merriam Webster dictionary. And when she started out, it sounded a lot like your audience. And then this happened, then this happened, this happened. But then this moment of tension happened. And you know what happened next that, and that changed her perspective that changed her behavior that changed her results. So if you and here's the lesson, that's the thing about marketing today. If you are a marketer, here's the lesson. Here's the insight, right? It's on all of us, wherever we show up to decide, oh, I can tell a story. And so I'll do it over here, over here over here. I don't think it's on us to say that's the place where we tell stories. And that's not

Kenneth Kinney 24:31

from a storytelling, creativity perspective. What do you think is the most important tool or way or meaning to create resonance? Yes, to help create care.

Jay Acunzo 24:44

I think it's important to find resonance first, so we understand what we're talking about. Because I think we all know reach reaches, how many see it and resonances, how much they care. And specifically, it's this urge to act that people feel when a message or an experience aligns with their own life experience. To such a degree that they feel amplified. That's why you throw up your hands and go, Oh, yes, this speaking to my soul, right, I'm gonna go with you, no matter the options. So it starts with a period of alignment with somebody, and then they feel amplified emotionally. And that creates that urge to act, right. So that's what we're talking about us can you spark action with your words, when we speak, they act, that's the goal of marketing. And it rarely happens like that. But that's the goal we want, or the outcome we want. And so to understand how to do that, and the most important elements, I think we have to delineate between our heroes who tell good stories, which by the way, we can learn from and professional communicators who tell effective stories. And the difference is while the good storyteller can use things like sequences of actions, and creating and resolving tension, the effective storyteller, they use that to, but they aren't just going for clarity, they're going for connection. So they have to go one step further from those actions and descriptions and moments of tension, big questions and answers, the bones of the story, the action of the story, they have to move you towards meaning. And so I like this little technique that was popularized by folks like Ira Glass and other podcasters because audio is a very didactic medium. As Ira Glass says, you have to kind of spoon feed people, because there's no visual cues. So you have to make sure they don't lose you. This little technique is the phrase, that's the thing about, so you tell a story. And then you arrive at the end and you go, Well, that's the thing about strangers. It's like, just by virtue of seeing you, when you're not trying to perform for your friends and family, and you're not trying to impress them, by virtue of them being a stranger. We care more about their opinion of us than that of those close to us. Uh huh. I hadn't considered that. And this unlocks a world of possibility for us sharp because we can take any story at all, even the stories that we feel are told well and told commonly, and arrive at a unique, that's the thing about moment. So it's like, hey, everybody's watching this Netflix documentary, right? Well, that's the thing about whatever the topic is you're trying to teach about. And then you deliver the insight. And people might go, you know, oh, you're talking about that Formula One racing documentary on Netflix. Yeah, everybody watched that? I get it. I've heard that story before. But I've never considered that lesson before. Or I've never seen it that way. I've never seen how it applies to my world or my work. Thank you. Like that resonates with me, you've made something that seems irrelevant, or picked over a line with me, and I feel amplified. Right. So that's the thing about is this nice tipping point between a good storyteller? Who gives you the action? And an effective storyteller? Who ensures that you internalize the meaning, which is why we would act?

Kenneth Kinney 27:46

How do you approach uniqueness....

Jay Acunzo 27:49

Yes.

Kenneth Kinney 27:49

....when everybody's working on storytelling in a crowded market,

Jay Acunzo 27:54

I think that there's only two ways to do this. One is you have total self awareness, or you earn it. So the total self awareness piece sounds a little fluffy, let's grounded in reality. The two parts to that are one, we know or I know what it is, we're trying to say to the world, we have our brand story, we have our mission statement, we have the change we're seeking to make in the market, the problem we're gonna solve, and that allows you to arrive at a very clear, that's the thing about moment, right? You're like telling this story. And you're like, well, that's the thing about modern day marketing. We've become so obsessed with being visible, that we stopped being memorable. Okay, let's talk about how to be more memorable. In other words, let's shift our focus from reach to resonance, that might be a lesson I draw out as I teach this idea of resonance, right? So the number one piece of it is, you know, what you're trying to say or what you're trying to change. That's part of the self awareness. The other is much more of the personal style, personal voice tone of voice thing, right? So you already have those two things are you earn it, and they are earned through practice. That's it. Like, I can't tell you what your tone of voice should be. I can't tell you exactly the language of your mission. I can help. That's what people hire me. But I need you to commit to a creative practice. So taking two down to the atomic unit, the storyteller versus the team, let's talk about the individual, you know, set up a system for yourself, where once a week, you ship and why do you ship not because you feel good, not because that was brilliant, not because you felt inspired or things are going well in your life, you ship because it's that day. And you do that enough, where you start to find your good ideas, you start to revisit the same corners of the block and see them more clearly. You get powerful in the way you communicate. And you understand the things you can play with and you know, the structuring of things and the tone of voice and all that good stuff. And eventually you get to sort of take off those training wheels and say, Well, I'm not going to do the weekly podcast anymore. I'm going to podcast whenever I want. Every so often, but I'm good enough now that it's an A plus episode. And I can have impact and resonate deep enough that people will stick around even if I have an ad hoc cadence to it. So we have to practice our way forward to figure out what is it we're trying to say? Because we might know it in theory, but put to the market, we have to aerate those ideas and refine them. So they resonate. Because if it makes sense to us, that's fine. But it has to make sense to other people. And then we also have to understand what is it about us that we're bringing to the table, because the work is flowing through you and or your teammates. And again, both of those things are practice, whether it's out in public in view of people, and you're trying to get feedback to refine the ideas, or it's in a private practice that it doesn't matter how many people read that blog or listen to that show. It's about you, working out your creative muscles and understanding what kind of uniqueness you can bring as a storyteller.

Kenneth Kinney 30:36

Speaking of wheels, you wrote broke, break the wheel, almost say broke the wheel. You wrote, break the wheel in what 2018 2018? Yeah, maybe that's the sequel broke the wheel? I don't know. Well, yeah, I don't know. When's the next book coming in? Tell us a little bit about the book, please.

Jay Acunzo 30:52

I do. I do have another book in me. I think there's a confluence or a convergence of three core ideas. And I have to parse it to figure out what the book is really about.

Kenneth Kinney 31:00

I know. What the fun exercise isn't it?

Jay Acunzo 31:02

right? The outcome, the outcome I am seeking, is I do want people to resonate deeper. But the thing I really want is for people to stop focusing on being bigger or stop focusing on being the best and to start focusing on being their audience's favorite. I'm fascinated by this word favorite. Like my favorite shirt is definitively not the best shirt, asked my wife, she'll tell you that. But it's my favorite. My favorite sports team is the New York Knicks. And if you know anything about basketball, you know that for most of the last 20 years, they were like, among the worst. That's such a weird thing. But we want that from our brands. We don't wanna be the worst, but we want that. Because we want this irrational positive sentiment or bias flowing to our organization, our persona, our projects, right? We all want that level of favoritism where we're protected against someone else going, Yeah, but objectively the best is this or academically speaking the best, okay? But that's not how people make choices. Right? They make choices, because what you're doing resonates so deeply with them. The stories you're telling do affect them. They're not just good stories, they are effective stories, they feel that desire to act, that urge to act. So I know that that's what I want for people. And I want people to stop obsessing over like the optics of it all the reach. And all you know, the followers, all these vanity metrics, I want people to get down to the human element of what we're trying to do is win hearts and minds and spark some kind of action. And the absolute unfair advantage is for when people say, Oh, you're my favorite. So how do we all get that unfair advantage? And that's where I'm like, I don't know yet. I have some theories, right? I'm studying resonance. I'm talking a lot about that. I'm looking at this idea of good versus effective storytelling, and how a lot of the stuff we're taught is an abstraction, or at least put story up on a pedestal like, it's about your whole brand. It's on your homepage. And it's for special campaigns or moments or speeches. And I think it's about being a storyteller everywhere, right? So I have this massive stuff. And I'm trying to figure out, either How do I marry it all to shape the book? Or how do I remove some of the clothing to sort of lay the core idea out in public? as gross as that analogy ended up being my friend, so.

Kenneth Kinney 33:09

Well, he wasn't a good storyteller, but he was a hell of a sinner. I missed the old days with Patrick Ewing. You know, Oh, wow. Yeah, old days. It's like, cowboys. Were good. So Jay asked this of all my guests on the show. gotta ask you, what is your favorite kind of shark and why? You've got some waters not far from you with some, some large sharks.

Jay Acunzo 33:29

I do. I am fascinated by I grew up in animal nerd. And I used to have these little fliers they would send you and they would go through mammals and birds and lizards, and you collect them in a binder and there's little factoids about each one. So like, I'm that guy, and I still watch like animal documentaries that love that stuff. And I'm fascinated by when animals meet. And so I really love is it the bull shark, or the tiger shark that will venture up into brackish waters? Where the river bull shark? Yeah, what are the rivers meets, you know, I think about like mangrove forests and you know, like, tributaries of rivers and all these things. And I'm just fascinated by like, oh, this shark could run into an alligator, or a crocodile, right? Like this shark could run into all these species. This track could be where you're boating and not realizing there's a shark there. So I would have to go bull shark and also they're insane creatures.

Kenneth Kinney 34:18

They are but with your toddlers you'll you'll soon fun because it was sadly talked about this the other day. Octonauts my daughter is obsessed. Obsessed with J It's a special time in the show. Are you ready for the five most interesting and important questions you're going to be asked today? I love it. Let's do it. All right, number one. We talked about hot dogs earlier. So your preference on hot dogs? Would you prefer a hot dog with mustard or a dog with chili?

Jay Acunzo 34:46

Oh, that is a good question. Chili.

Kenneth Kinney 34:49

Do you go to many Red Sox games?

Jay Acunzo 34:52

I'm a Yankees fan. Actually. I grew up in southern Connecticut, which I lovingly referred to as New York at UCITS. So new Connecticut is home to the world's popular ation of Yankees Patriots fans is Connecticut.

Kenneth Kinney 35:03

The last ever home run hitter now with Aaron judge.

Jay Acunzo 35:06

Absolutely. So I Yeah, I'm a Yankees fan, but I do. I love baseball. I wrote about baseball for my senior thesis as a literature major. I was a sports journalist briefly. So yes, I love going to Sox games, honestly, because I can appreciate the history and the sport.

Kenneth Kinney 35:20

All right, number two, you got a podcast called Unthinkable but which would be more unthinkable. You giving up podcasting or you giving up speaking on stages?

Jay Acunzo 35:33

That is an incredible question, my friend. Oh my goodness. me giving up podcasting. I'll tell you why because it'd be much more like me giving up a drug to give up speaking, which there's benefits to it too. And as much as I love, love, love speaking quite frankly, I'm not on the road traveling as much right now because I have two little kids. So I'm doing local and virtual speeches only. So I've already started to give it up a little bit. But man is it's just a drug. It's the highs are much higher with speaking but the consistency the delight I feel. I love editing. I love you the moments I cackled on myself when something comes together on the show. I love what people say about it. Like I just I would never give up podcasting. That's much more of a foundation for me.

Kenneth Kinney 36:19

Alright, number three, you wrote break the wheel. So don't know if you knew this or not, but I'm a wheel mechanic, at least for my child's toy cars, and you're gonna be that soon. And we both got Toy cars at Content Marketing World. Yep. And how I got a tractor, which was goofy. It's one but number three is Hot Wheels or Matchbox

Jay Acunzo 36:41

Hot Wheels. Definitely. That was my childhood

Kenneth Kinney 36:44

I would agree. All right, number four. You worked for both these companies, which is better for a marketer, Google or HubSpot?

Jay Acunzo 36:54

I think Google's done more damage to marketers than HubSpot. Let's put it that way. Because the incentivizes they incentivize a lot of focusing on the wrong thing writing for algorithms obsessing over the algorithm, commodity content, churn and burn crap. I think all marketing companies good and bad. Right. I'm not saying that HubSpot has done all good things with their content. But I will say that I think they've done far more good for marketing than bad. And hunting. Google's been a profound reversal of that.

Kenneth Kinney 37:25

It's funny getting to know you more, you must have just been completely miserable in ad sales. It just does not seem like your wheelhouse at all.

Jay Acunzo 37:33

I love talking to people. I love teaching. Right? So there was an element of that. And yeah, at the end of the day, I felt like my soul was starting to slip out of my body selling ads. And so Google did Googles, the greatest trick they played was to attract really great, incredibly smart and creative people. And I was also there and put them to work, getting advertisers out the door, getting people to click on ads, like sorry, that's not the best use of those people's time.

Kenneth Kinney 37:59

Alright, number five, and the most important question that you're going to be asked today is biscuits, or cornbread?

Jay Acunzo 38:06

Well, it depends on where you're talking. My friend has a whole gradation of biscuits, but really, really good biscuits be really, really good cornbread in my book and my mouth.

Kenneth Kinney 38:14

Fair enough. All right. So Jay, where can people find out more about you get a copy of break the wheels, listen to your podcast, keep up with what your thought leadership is and more.

Jay Acunzo 38:24

The name of the show is unthinkable. And the premise is simple, but I hope powerful. We tell stories of creative people who stopped trusting the best practices and started trusting themselves instead and all the wonderful, weird, unconventional, refreshing creative things they did to build their careers and businesses as a result. So it's it's it is my biggest labor of love and my digital baby. Which I put third behind my two actual babies, but still, it's pretty high on the list for me, so the show is called unthinkable.

Kenneth Kinney 38:54

Awesome. Jay, thank you so much for being with us today on A Shark's Perspective.

Jay Acunzo 38:58

Shark I appreciate it.

[music]

Kenneth Kinney 39:05

So that was my conversation with Jay Acunzo, a brand storyteller, coach, author, podcast host, and sometimes even referred to as a creative consigliere. Let's take a look at three key takeaways from my conversation with him.

Kenneth Kinney 39:18

First, I grew such a strong respect for Jay and how he answered how he positions himself in his brand as a marketer. He said that he's never heard anyone come to him and say that they have to hit a certain number now because he puts out enough content and positions himself appropriately. As he said we're short termism has no place in his echo system. Such a great point because not every marketer is built like that every salesperson or financial leader, customer service agent or whatever comes from the same way to navigate growth. He leads with his belief system forcefully. I love it because it sets up a fair expectation for all parties. It's a better story to help you build your brand. less confusing if expectations are set well is great storytelling needed in your work. And of course, can you use it to meet a sales goal over a month or a quarter? Likely not, but can it with a longer term and better strategy help you across the board over time? Absolutely. Lots of people get caught up in having to defend content, marketing and storytelling, and no need to box yourself in with the wrong choice. Without the right strategy. He doesn't like reach in ads, but I do a lot. But we need great storytelling, regardless as part of the mix.

Kenneth Kinney 40:24

Second, is marketing advice losing the sight of the storyteller. Jay says it's not about just studying storytelling. Storytelling is a marketing buzzword. Jay says it's about being an effective storyteller to spark action with stories of any size found through any source and told any audience, as I've said before, and as I said, in my own presentation at Content Marketing World, it's about you telling the story better than anyone else.

Kenneth Kinney 40:49

Third, as someone who has worked a lot in both B2B and B2C, I've noticed that stories unfortunately, don't resonate as well in b2b. A lot of that is due to execution. The story you tell to a B2C customer often resonates with just that one, but b2b stories often need a more simplistic through line without falling flat. You shouldn't tell a simple bad story so that people remember it well. tell a great story so that it's simple to remember and and not boring way. Also, that thru line should last beyond who the next CMO is and their gaggle of staff and agencies. Please make it last longer, that consumers don't care about your short termism. They simply need a strong through line. Got a question? Send me an email to Kenneth at a shark's perspective.com.

Kenneth Kinney 41:34

Thank you again for the privilege of your time. And I'm thankful to every one of you who listens.

Kenneth Kinney 41:38

You have a great story, but it's up to you to tell it better than anyone else. So hear more of my shark story. And please join us on the next episode of A Shark's Perspective.

(Music - shark theme)