How to Use Storytelling to Close More Sales with Neal Foard

Welcome to from Click to Client, where we transform a confusing message into a clear, compelling story that sells. I'm your host, Kris Jones, StoryBrand marketing expert. I'm here to help you attract more dream clients with the power of story.

Kris: Welcome to the podcast, Neal.

Neill: Thank you, Kris.

Kris: Yeah.

Neill: Appreciate it.

Kris: Fellow storyteller, guru, and just an overall delight of a human being.

Neal, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Neill: Well, like you, I came from the propaganda business. I spent 30 plus years trying to create persuasive messages on behalf of brands and, trying to create experiences when I was in the experiential marketing part of that. And over the course of that, that long career, I discovered that maybe the most, excuse me, maybe the most cool tool that you walk away with.

Is a sense of how to be persuasive as a person. And if, if I could offer you any one of four superpowers, for [00:01:00] example, super strength or the power of invisibility, or the ability to jump into the air and fly it fast as a jet, or I gave you the ability to change people's minds, that's the one that is the most powerful.

Because with the power, with the ability to change people's minds, you can get anything you want. Anything that you could get by super strength, you can easily get by persuasiveness. It's since the invention of language, the ability to change people's minds has been the most potent and powerful way to take advantage.

I'm so sorry. I made the mistake of eating an almond before we went on, and now it is decided to establish base camp somewhere right about here.

Kris: It's resurrected.

Neill: Yeah. Anyway, but to, to complete the picture. So it, it wasn't, it wasn't so much learning to be persuasive by crafting persuasive messages for clients.

It was in the act of trying to sell the ideas to the clients. That's when you really found out whether you had any chops as a, you know, as, as [00:02:00] a Bengali, as the ability to sell someone something. When, and as you would know, only too well, Kris, people, you can't persuade somebody to buy something when they don't want to buy it.

If they don't want to buy it. Any excuse will do. If they wanna buy it, any reason will suffice. You know, the, the, so. The, the art of persuasion, and this goes right back to Dale Carnegie, 1933. I think the art of persuasion has everything to do with trying to make people feel good about you. And, you know, that's why I put this above my desk life as a team sport, that the, the more you see each other as friends and colleagues and not competitors, the more that you see your fellow human being as somebody who's experiencing the thing, same thing you're experiencing at the same time.

And that you should have empathy and compassion for them, not fear and distrust. The more you do that, the more you will capitalize on what makes us powerful as a species. Cooperation. Cooperation is where we get our power. Just imagine, Kris, I want [00:03:00] you to, you know, you and I are cave, caveman, and cavewoman on the African plane hundreds of thousands of years ago, and we are being approached by hyenas.

Or a pride of lions. Now, who do you think is more frightened? Us of the hyenas or 50 human beings with sharp sticks? We are far more dangerous than they are because we can communicate.

And you know, when they, by the way, I am told that human beings smelled terrible. That that was part of our survival strategy was our body odor was repulsive to animals.

Anyway. Whether that's truth, I return to my original proposition, which is our ability to cooperate is what made us survive.

Kris: Right.

Neill: And without nails and without long teeth, we nevertheless made it out the other end and it's because of our superpower language and cooperation.

Kris: So it sounds

Neill: like my background,

Kris: Neal, you have, you have a really rich background with Fortune 500 companies like Budweiser and Lexus and Toyota.

so you know. [00:04:00] You, you were really in the game working with some big names and using your ability to persuade and tell stories and get people on board with your creative. Is that right?

Neill: That's it. To be a modest, that was my strength, was I wasn't particularly genius, creative person. I was a copywriter and I wasn't better at it than everybody else, but I enjoyed the company of clients and I had one quality that I think was incredibly valuable when it came to persuasion, which was, I was, for the most part, I was a good listener.

So it was rare when I was working at cross purposes with my clients. And as you can imagine, you know, the most important thing about a client is that they pay your bills and the more they enjoy your company and the more they like you and the more they trust you, the more likely they are to pay those bills.

So, um. Yeah, that was my chief asset of in the business, was that I could go into a room of clients and be a good listener and deliver on what [00:05:00] they were hoping for.

Kris: And so after decades of that type of work, what I get a feel from you is that you've gone so deep into this work that it's almost become kind of spiritual to you.

Neill: Well, that's an interesting way of putting that. I will, I will agree with you in this sense that, uh, people operate out of too much fear and too much anxiety, and they needn't, but we are being inundated. By algorithms and forces that incentivize dividing us up and making us afraid. You know, these people are out to get you.

Those ones are stealing from you. You know, they have no right to take your rightful play. You know, I mean, this kind of

Kris: Right.

Neill: This kind of awful, drumbeat of negativity and Yeah. And division. That is the dark side, that's the dark energy of persuasion, that's using repetitive lies and, and, um, you know, pessimism in order to, [00:06:00] you know, rivet people's attention because attention is worth money.

Kris: Right.

Neill: My, the, the light version, the, the version I'm trying to pursue is to persuade people that there is an ROI to kindness and togetherness and cooperation that dwarfs the return on division. Mm. That. When you are good to people and you are a trustworthy person, and instead of going out into the marketplace and saying, what's in it for me?

Rather saying, I think I can help you and I, and even better, I think we can help each other that the, and I'll give you some really solid examples of, of that at work, but I'm preaching that evangel because I'm at the stage in my career when I don't think I'm gonna be, I'm not gonna be starting a new startup, you know, that goes unicorn on anybody.

I just want to leave the commons better than I found it.

And so, if you will, I'm sort of. Vacuuming up around myself right now for all of the sins and mistakes I made in the past to try to increase people's faith that being good to each [00:07:00] other in business is more profitable. I'll give you a couple of really solid examples, and I'll start in a very, uh, what's the word, counterintuitive world of car dealers. And as you can imagine, uh, as all businesses are on a spectrum of, you know, at this end, are the absolute rapacious huns, and then at the other end are sweet people who are only in the business to make life easier for people.

the most profitable and most powerful dealer I ever saw was a guy who was Hallmark, was generosity and trust. And he used to have a kind of unofficial slogan, which was, I'll lose a little money to make a friend. And a good example of how he would do that was he would give his service writers, you know, who were, as soon as you drove in for car service, they would write you up, you know, like, what do you need?

And so forth. And he would say, listen, Jim, if some. Elder gal comes in and she doesn't look like she's made of money and she's in there for anything less. That costs costs less than $200. Just give it to her. Don't charge her and don't tell her it's from me and don't tell her. It's the policy of the store.

We're we'll. Never Stop getting people with their hands out. [00:08:00] Just tell her it's from you because you like her and you know Mrs. Hutchin Curtis, it's nice to see you again. Don't worry about it. That's, that's no charge. Because I want her to drive away thinking I've got a guy in the car business and here's what's going to happen just between you and me and the friends post, she's gonna go home to the tennis club or the bridge club or just her friends and she's never gonna shut up about it.

And so that's already, it has paid for itself in word of mouth. But if she has a son or a daughter, I'm probably gonna sell them 11 cars. So as much as you know, I, I like being sweet to old people. I happen to know we're gonna make a lot of money off this gesture. We can do another thing, which was very clever, which was he, he was doing business near the New Jersey turnpike, and on the turnpike had spring when all of the road salt and all of the debris and everything that they've been putting down to, you know, for traction, that starts to come up and hit people's windshields.

Everybody is driving around on the turnpike with a crack in their windshield.

So what does he do? Every single car that parked in his parking lot, [00:09:00] he would send people out with a little hypodermic needle to put the adhesive in the crack so it wouldn't get any bigger and he wouldn't tell anyone.

He wouldn't, he wouldn't ask permission. He wouldn't charge, and he wouldn't tell anyone. And he said that the logic behind it was he wanted it to be a kind of urban myth. He wanted the word to spread. Like, oh yeah, if you go down there, it'll fix somehow. You're gonna drive out your windshield's fixed. And, and that was, it did what he said it would do, which is it became, people would show up, you know, to, to cheat the system.

They would show up just to get their windshield fixed. They would get fixed and they would drive away. And they're thinking, you know, oh, I cheated the system. No, you didn't, bro, you just increased the, the footprint of this, this myth, which it wasn't a myth at all. Right?

Kris: Right.

Neill: But these, these gestures of kindness and, you know, generosity.

It turned out to be vastly disproportionate in return to his reputation, to the number of reliable and, and, uh, loyal service customers he had to the number of repeat buyers. You know, there, there is a kind of perverse thing about buying a car, which is the dealers actually, [00:10:00] when on a, once the price of a car is well known, they actually don't make that much money off them.

They'll make about 500, $600 off it, but that's not enough to keep the operation running. They really do make their money off repeat purchases and service. And therefore, what you really wanna do is you want to create sufficient trust and graciousness that people come to you for service. Well, a lot of businesses are that way.

They survive on repeat business. And anybody who knows the term cac, customer acquisition cost, CAC, is very expensive. It's very difficult to get your first customer, to get a repeat customer has a CAC of zero. In other words, they've just come back because you've treated them well. So that in principle is the, the preaching I do in the world about business and brands is let's not make it about price, let's make it about you overdelivering in such a way that you are perceived as being generous and sweet, natured trustworthy, and just as loyal to the [00:11:00] customers as they are to you.

And I can, I'll give you a couple other examples. Yeah, yeah.

Kris: These are great.

Neill: So, um, I was at LAX, this was not recent, this was a few years back, but, you know, airports because of the trouble with, uh, the TSA and so on, they were having these insane lines and. People not thinking straight. They often take it out.

They take out their frustration on like the flight attendants or the the desk people, and it's you just, you want to grab them by the lapel and get very close to them and say, it's not their fault. They don't have anything to do with that. Why are you treating them badly? But people are not rational.

Kris: Mm-hmm.

Neill: Well, my friend Marcus and I were down at LAX on one day when Chicago, which was a United hub, LAX is a United hub. So Chicago was having a weather event and all of a sudden there were a lot of delayed and canceled flights in Los Angeles. It's brilliant. Sunshine outside and nobody understands what the hell the problem is.

Kris: Mm-hmm.

Neill: You know what? We're not having any trouble. Well, bro, everything's a connection from Chicago. Marcus was an improv actor and he sees [00:12:00] this, these poor women behind the counter are just getting treated like they have a big switch. They won't flick. You know, why aren't you fixing the weather? So everybody's so irrationally angry with them that you could tell they were just at the, at their wits end with the human race they were finished with.

You know?

Kris: Yeah.

Neill: People suck is basically what they were thinking.

Kris: Mm-hmm.

Neill: The couple just in front of us with this man and woman team, and they were just insufferable, they were awful. They were condescending, they were entitled. Just everything you lament about what we're capable of as a species, especially if they're upper income, you know, they can sometimes really be bad.

Well. The woman is now, she's gone a thousand yard stare. You know, she's been in, she's been in the trenches long enough that she doesn't even mind the shelling anymore. She doesn't care. We get up to the desk, we're gonna check some bags and before she can say anything, or even I can say anything, Marcus just goes, oh man, those two are in big trouble.

And he's pointing at the cup of sleeping. And she goes, what? And he pulls out this little miniature troll doll. I wonder if I have one handy. Um, 'cause I like [00:13:00] to keep, okay, so here's one.

Kris: Oh yeah. So he

Neill: pulls out this little troll doll.

Kris: Yeah.

Neill: And it had hot pink hair. And he says. Bki saw the whole thing, and all the trolls know each other and he's going to tell them what they did.

And if you give him his favorite snack before the sun goes down, he will wreak a horrible revenge. And then he pulls out this like bag of m and ms and he hands them to the woman. And now she doesn't quite know what to make of this lunatic in front of her. But the partner, you know, just to her left goes, can we feed him now?

And so here's what happened, and. The, what Marcus had done. I don't know if he had this in mind or not. He was just being playful. He was just being ridiculous.

Kris: Mm-hmm.

Neill: But the psychological reaction, if you think about it, was, it was profound because what he did was he shocked her enough to where she was no longer even thinking about these two.

Right. There were two of the 11, they, they were no longer on her radar. He had wiped the whiteboard clean, and now all she was thinking about was this lunatic in front of her. But he's a [00:14:00] friendly, lovable lunatic. And is he really like Danish or what the No, no. He's just. Right. Okay. The whole m and ms and everything, and the partner now here, now we know that what happened then was that they opened the bag of m and ms.

They put the troll behind the counter, you know, where nobody else could see it, but they could see it. And you knew that the accumulated m and ms were, the pile was getting bigger and bigger. Whereas with every douche nozzle that came in to be mean to them, they just kept feeding it. And they would laugh.

And, and so behind the counter, there's a kind of perverse pleasure. They're getting out of everybody that treats them bad. They're reacting differently. They're, they're going, oh, that's one more for borque. The revengeful. Okay, so now let's go back to the, the, uh, principle of return on investment. So what was Marcus', ROI?

Well, he, the, the patrol was about 66 cents, and the bag of m and ms was probably at about a buck 20. But when we got to the gate. Most people don't know that. The people at the gate were the same ones taking your luggage down below, and they know [00:15:00] the whole passenger manifest and people don't realize how much discretion those people have to affect your flight.

And guess who got an upgrade? Yeah. Marcus went up to first class, a $472 value for a mini troll and a bag of m and ms. Now, I did not get the upgrade, but I was only too happy to let the universe perform its magic.

Kris: Oh, wow.

Neill: Because, uh, as soon as she said it was the same woman, she goes, uh, she goes, oh, Mr.

McCollum, it looks like you've been upgraded. And then we all looked at each other like he.

So anyway. Oh man, man, that to me, that to me was a very good example of

Kris: Oh, that's,

Neill: that's the karma.

Kris: Yeah.

Neill: The karma of making friends and influencing people, you know, old fashioned Dale Carnegie. I'll give you the, my last example. I have many more, but I'll give you the,

Kris: yeah. Oh, I am Eaton Eze. Yeah, keep going.

Neill: So there is a, uh, there's a standup comedian, oh, [00:16:00] I wish I could remember his name. I'll figure it out. But standup comedian in la he's been doing his thing for years and years. He's kind of a journeyman, he's not a headliner. but he, uh, some years ago he started doing this thing where he would go out on the street in his car and he would roll up next to people and roll down his window, and then he would yell things to them that were very unexpectedly funny.

So, for example, he would pull up next to a woman in her car and he would say, excuse me, do you work for UPS? She goes, no. And he goes, really? 'cause you have the whole package. And then she laughs and then he pulls up next to these two guys on the street and he goes, Hey, would you do me a favor and maybe leave some women for the rest of us?

Okay. And so on. And he would just do this, you know, for two hours a day. And then he would, he would film it and then he would post it on YouTube.

And he got famous for this. And then he wound up getting, get this, oh my god, Kris, from that thing that he would do and he would do it all, you know, all the time.

He got 7 million followers.

Kris: Oh my gosh. [00:17:00]

Neill: And you and I both know that's an income. Yeah. That's like, that's a good income.

Kris: Yeah.

Neill: So all for probably about six or seven hours a week.

Kris: Right. Of fun. Of fun.

Neill: But it's, it's, he enjoys every minute of it. He was doing it just to do it anyway. he loves to make people laugh.

He has goofball things like, do you work for Google? No, really? 'cause you're everything I'm searching for. And then he would pull up next to these women and go, does it ever get tiring being that beautiful? You know, and so on and so on. Just these little things. Now, the reti, the ROI, is so disproportionate to the effort, all because he's just going out into the world trying to make people smile.

Now, even if he encounters the odd duck who feels obnoxious about his, he is so restored by the general feeling.

Kris: Right, right.

Neill: And in business, there was nothing, I don't think there was any. Quite such pleasure to be taken as offering a service or a product that people realize that [00:18:00] it's valuable. Like they, they really like it.

A pair of handmade boots that, you know, you can only get if you wait four months for, or, you know, uh, or I, I used to do a lot of advertising on behalf of Toyota and it was a brand I, to this day, believe in ferociously. Uh, you know, I was a real partisan for the brand. I had the good fortune to be working as an advertiser on a brand I believed in.

Kris: Mm. You

Neill: know, like, how cool is that?

Kris: Yeah.

Neill: But you didn't have to tell a single lie in all of the tell you we're gonna,

Kris: it matters. Yeah.

Neill: Yeah. And I just had such, I always took such pleasure and anybody asked me like, what kind of car they should buy? You were gonna have to shut me up. I could, I would, you know, what kind, what, what do you like to drive?

Do you want a minivan? Do you want a fly? Do you know this? Do you know that Toyota Sienna is absolutely the best minivan? And, uh, do you want a sedan? How about a sporty? And I knew the whole lineup. I knew 18 cars deep, and I could tell you what the grades differences were. And it, it really was like, um, like somebody knocking on your door to preach the gospel.

I mean, I was that obnoxious about it. But the reason I took such [00:19:00] pleasure in it, the reason I was so fanatical was 'cause I could believe in it. I could 100% believe in it.

Kris:

Neill: And yes, they made false steps like a lot of car companies do. Nobody has a perfect record when it comes to, you know, um

right

Neill: repair.

And so, but I did notice that when Toyota finally did have to recall the Camry, it was a very famous recall in 2209. They treated the customer so well and they responded so well to the recall that when they took customer surveys after people were happier with Toyota and their product after the recall than they were before.

Kris: Wow.

Neill: That's who they were. And to me, that's the ROI of kindness and compassion and making something so well and treating people the way they ought to be treated, to the point where, like me, you lock them in for, with a lifetime loyalty that won't tolerate a bad word being spoken about them in your company, and you'll see this again and again when it's small town restaurants and

And, um, you know, non big banks and

Kris: [00:20:00] Right. Yep.

Neill: That you will, you'll notice that there is a, a deep, deep satisfaction had by the people that work there.

Kris: Uh,

Neill: uh, a pride that they don't necessarily have to brag about. They don't go on social media, but they, they wake up in the morning glad that of all the places they could work, at least it's for some place that I enjoy or, you know, I like, you can really, you could truly like your customers.

You can love them, and just by doing your service, you can demonstrate that affection.

Kris: It's, yeah, it's a very different way to approach service. Have you read the book? Unreasonable Hospitality?

Neill: Oh, have I ever? Yeah. Yeah. And, um, there, there's, uh, oh my God, is it, uh oh. What is the name of the author? It's not Danny Meyer.

It's, uh,

Kris: I know, I'm blanking on it right now too.

Neill: Well, he's quite famous for the, for the hotdog thing. Very, yeah.

Kris: Yeah.

Neill: So now what he's a really good example of, and, and Meyer too is how dedicated they are to their own staffs. Like how they're, they at their core belief. It's that if I take care of my people, the people will [00:21:00] take care of the customers that I lead by example as much by what I tell them.

And they're very thorough and they're detail minded, and all that has to happen is for their own staffs to watch them paying attention to the details to realize, oh, he will, he'll change a tablecloth just like anyone else if it's, if he needs to. It's very, very team spirited.

Kris: Mm-hmm.

Neill: There's a, there's a, um, there's a positivity to that can-do, you know, everybody chips in kind of thing.

There's a positivity to it that you can't help but enjoy being around.

Kris: Mm-hmm.

Neill: That, that feeling like, we're all gonna make it. This is going to work, and, you know, we will, whether we are number one at the end of the year or not, I can tell you that we are going to make a run for it because. We, we love what we do to the point where it's not work anymore.

It's, you know, actors work very hard. Mm-hmm. But when they're performing, they don't think of it as work. Do they?

Kris: Mm-hmm.

Neill: Any, any more than Alyssa Lou, when she was winning her gold medal in the Olympics, [00:22:00] her nerves were a very different animal from the nerves of the other competitors.

It just wasn't the same experience.

Kris: Mm-hmm.

Neill: And you could feel it and see it, that when an artist or a musician is performing their art, like a great waiter

Or, or a wonderful mechanic

They are in it, they, they like what they do

Kris: point, it's a, it's a creative expression is what it's, yeah.

Neill: Yeah. In the, in the movie Man On Fire, there's this wonderful line where they say, you know, they're talking about this assassin.

He says, any, anybody can be an artist. If what they do, they do with enough passion, food, what have you. Everybody can be an artist. Well, Cree's Art is death and he's about to paint his masterpiece.

Mm-hmm.

Neill: And it's true of anything. We, if, you know, if you are a stockbroker or you are a, an accountant, there is an art form to it.

I've known enough CFOs to know that there is a lot of art to what they do.

Kris: Oh yeah. I, I'm [00:23:00] actually working with a client right now. Um, I was just working on it before our call. he's a mortgage broker. Yeah. And he is a, a very creative person outside of, of that. He's a guitar player, a musician, but he brings a creativity and, and a masterfulness to that field that.

Is unexpected and really cool. And there's all kinds of, even with story, there's stories are formulaic. fundamentally they're formulaic, but within the formula there, there's limitless creativity that can happen.

Neill: Yeah. Like music. But, uh, yeah, I do have to say that, you know, a mortgage broker in particular, they, their whole orientation is they are trying to make something happen.

They're trying to help you make this happen. So yeah, their creativity is really a, a good component, you know, to, to go back to storytelling for a minute, which is both our sort of, that's our, our purview.

The, the thing that I, the [00:24:00] evangel that I preach when it comes to that is you've got to, the stories you tell reflect who you are more than the way you tell it.

It's what you choose to, to tell, that's where it signals what your priorities are and who you care about and and so forth. And I saw a really good example of this in two different versions of why people should return to office. Now, you know that for a variety of reasons. A lot of CEOs are saying, well, let's get our people back into the office like five days a week.

And after people have experienced work from home and remote work and all of the various and sundry benefits that go to that, they're a little reluctant to give up those rights and privileges, especially since, you know, given that they now eliminated their compute commute, they can actually spend more time working on the, on the projects and so

Kris: forth, right?

Neill: Nevertheless. There are, there are different ways to entice people to come back into the office. And the one of the better versions of that that I saw was from a very avuncular, I love that word, avuncular, which is like, like a pleasant uncle. [00:25:00] a very avuncular, senior executive said, we are, we are returning to the office a, a great number of us.

I'm not going to tell you to come back into the office and I'm not going to disincentivize, you know, your work from home. What I am gonna tell you is something that I is true and that I experienced when I was a lot younger than I am now. When I was early in my career, I got the benefit of having a mentor and it was, when you look at the sweep of my career, it was priceless to get the guidance and counsel of somebody who was watching over me.

Like a father figure and helping me not repeat my mistakes and giving me some of the inside scoop on who the players were. And it was very much like he was a little bit like a drone is now, you know, going forward to tell you what the terrain is going to be like.

Kris: Yeah.

Neill: And I, I will tell you that my mentor had nothing to do with the official reporting schedule.

He was, he was nowhere remotely near my reporting structure. So it was happenstance that this guy took me under his wing [00:26:00] and it benefited me both economically, spiritually, and in terms of my growth as an individual. Now, I can't tell you that I will be your mentor, but I will tell you this, that I am at the stage where, and I see it around on a lot of the senior guys, they just have a compulsion to help younger people.

It's just something that happens to you when you get older. You want to be helpful. To young people because you like young people. And so for better or worse, if you don't come back in the office, you're missing out on an opportunity to get, basically a graduate degree you don't pay for.

Now I heard that and I thought, I'm just paraphrasing.

He actually did a more elegant version of it.

Kris: Yeah.

Neill: But you can see that what he's chosen to do is not make it, you know, a uh, a sanitized, clever way of saying everybody's expected back in the office. You know, or you're gonna get, you know, dis you know, you're gonna get spanked. It was come back in the office, or don't your discretion.

But I will tell you that there are benefits that accrue to those that return, and it was [00:27:00] packaged in such a human way that everybody could see the truth of it. You know, that they go, yeah. You know, I kinda had a feeling, you know, when you're around the boss and you're visible to the boss the next time.

Bonuses happen or the next time layoffs happen, that currency is valuable. You know? Yeah. It's not dollars, but it might as well be, this is what I mean by the story you, the story you tell, what you say, not just how you say it is to me, the more value of the two things. So when you and I are talking about storytelling, I think it becomes really important that people go, alright, what is the appropriate story to tell here?

One of the things, for example, that one of the councils that I gave was to my nephews who were gonna do speeches at a wedding.

Kris: Mm-hmm.

Neill: And. So I did on my, on my website, I did this talk on, you know, giving a good toast and the first thing I said to them was, okay, let's keep in mind what a toast is at a wedding.

A toast is very different at a business dinner [00:28:00] than it is at a wedding. And I want you to understand this right down into the double helix of your DNA. Do you understand me? Now, listen, this wedding is not about you, okay? It's about the young couple. You are not the main character in this play. You're not even the main character in your speech.

You are. You are a supporting cast member whose job is to make the young couple feel good about their decision and as an extra bonus, if you can make the parents feel good because you are the type of friend that they have,

Kris: right?

Neill: They think what an admirable young person. Then you score bonus points.

Because you weren't selfish, you didn't roast anybody. You didn't say anything stupid. You kept your language clean. Then you will have scored a 10 out of 10 by not being the main character. Do you read me the book? Got it. You know, every, every story is based on context. Where am I telling this? Right. What do they want from it?

And unfortunately, you know, I have seen [00:29:00] very, very funny speeches at weddings where it's like, yeah, but it it was about you and you didn't do yourself any favors here because you tell me, does anybody have a right to outshine the bride at a wedding? Answer? No. Don't go there.

Kris: Right, right.

Neill: So, so likewise, in business negotiations. Whether you are trying to encourage people to come back in the office, or you're confronting a very difficult decision about, are we gonna lay off this many people? Or, oh, we are gonna share the pain and stick together. I, you know, I'm gonna make the decision, but I want to hear your ideas.

That's a story.

Kris: Mm-hmm.

Neill: Just that simple gesture is a story. Why? Because I, what the story I'm telling is this is the kind of person I am, and I want to know whether or not this is the right thing to do.

Kris: Mm-hmm.

Neill: I don't know how, what you've experienced in your personal experience, but in my personal experience in small companies that, could either [00:30:00] lay off people or stick together and wind it, you know, and reduce salaries probably seven outta 10 times.

They, they pick cho they choose shared pain.

Kris: Yeah. Yeah.

Neill: And, ironically enough, I think they emerge from that much, much stronger than people that laid them off, you know?

Kris: Oh,

Neill: yeah. When a boss needs, when a boss needs you to stay, when a boss ask, asks you to Yeah. You do something that they, that they stay.

Kris: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you feel needed. You feel wanted, you feel like, you know, you are, you're, you contribute something to the group that really matters. And yeah.

Neill: That, that ability to make somebody feel as though they matter may be one of the most important skills, uh, of a, of a boss. It was a wonderful case of, uh, Jose Moreno.

He was the, the manager coach of the, oh, geez. They, it was a, a English Premier League soccer team. And, uh, Tottenham Hot Spurs. So he was the manager of the Tottenham team and they were in a game with [00:31:00] Olympiacos and there was just, you know, you know how it is in soccer, like a game can be one nil. Like that's the entire score.

Right?

Kris: Right.

Neill: That's how it could be. So any advantage you have is, is enormous. And what happened was one of the ball boys who was recovering a ball and was giving it to the Tottenham player to send back into play, he caught one of the Olympiacos players napping. He saw that he was distracted for a half second, so he rushed the throw in to the Tottenham player and they beat this guy by two steps.

It led to a very simple score, and it was all because the ball boy was paying attention.

And Marino, who doesn't miss a trick, saw what he'd done. And he comes over and he embraces this kid, and they talked about it in the post game press conference.

Kris: Wow.

Neill: They actually, they, uh, one of the reporters asked him, what was that all about?

And he talks, he sang the praises of this ball boy. And he's, and very seriously, he goes, he was a very good ball boy. He's a very good ball boy. He's not thinking about the scarves in the stands. He's not the there to watch the, the, the spec at the call. [00:32:00] He's playing the game. He's in the game and he winds up inviting him to the, to eat with the players.

Because, because, because Marino understands Everybody matters at one point or another if you're paying attention, even the cleaning crew will save your ass.

And this is a spirit of generosity that makes a great leader. Somebody who acknowledges you matter here. And even on days when you might think you don't keep your eyes peeled and the occasion will rise when you may be the nail in the horse's shoe, that saves this whole battle.

But you know, it's, there's a generosity. Great leaders are actually quite generous in spirit. Let's go back to the, uh, American Revolution. There was a moment at the end of the revolution when George Washington was being suggested as, look, you already have command of the continental Army. You could just pretty much be the strong man.

Like, why don't, why don't we just make you the leader? And Washington gave up his commission, went back to Mount Vernon. [00:33:00] Surrendered his power, and I don't know if this story's apocryphal or not, but apparently George, Richard George, George ii, the English king, heard that this is what happened and proclaimed that man will be remembered as the most important figure of the age F for that gesture.

That the generosity of giving up power as part of the birth of the nation will be remembered as the single most important single act by an individual in the formation of the nation. And and the tradition was after that the peaceful transfer of power was set as the example by George Washington. That's a story.

The story he tells is by his actions out of. Like, who can say these things get gilded? You know, over the hundreds of years, they, they take on a kind of mythic quality that may bear 60% resemblance to the truth. Like, I don't know for a fact that George II ever actually said that, but the important thing was that there's truth in [00:34:00] it,

When you, when you do these things from an, from a, when, when you adopt the car dealer's attitude of, I'll lose a little money to make a friend, in the end, the profit is compound.

Kris: Yeah. Why, why do you think? I feel like, I mean, I've been telling stories and in, in integrating storytelling into my work for a very long time, but it feels like it's really caught on and that people are talking about it now more than ever.

Why do you think that is?

Neill: Well, I. There's a variety of different possibilities. I can't put my finger on it. I'll, I'll suggest, here's one possibility that when you look at a meme stock, a meme stock is 99% story. It, it is defying gravity in the traditional market sense. You know, why is this stock valued like this that is so disproportional to the assets and the, and the revenue?

This [00:35:00] doesn't make sense. No, it doesn't make sense because what has happened is a story has made people irrational.

Now, now they're supporting that stock for reasons that defy logic. So given our fixation with money, I think that the storytelling. Has become the province of the CEO who wants to inflate his stock price by creating a narrative that outpaces the fundamentals.

That's, that's one hypothesis, is that?

Another hypothesis is that when you watch the show Mad Men, the thing that makes Don Draper so powerful is not his, you know, haughty dnce. It's his ability to walk into a room of Kodak executives and tell that carousel story about how this is not a slide projector, this is a time machine, you know, and it's one of the most artful examples of how just the interpretation.

Of how you look at something completely changes its place in your life and the value that, how much you'll pay for it. Mm. Um, and you know, [00:36:00] here's another example of, of how you can just take a simple narrative and all of a sudden it inflates the value of something beyond rationality.

So if you buy an ordinary New York Yankees, baseball jersey on, you know, online with the number three on it, babe Ruth sold number.

It'll cost you probably about in the order of maybe 120, 160 bucks. What if I told you that was the actual jersey worn by Babe Ruth in the 1933 World Series where he called his shot and they beat the Chicago Cubs? How much would you pay for that jersey now? Well now you'd pay literally $24 million

Kris: Uhhuh

Neill: or more.

Kris: Yep.

Neill: It's because of the story attached to it. It's the actual jersey. It was there.

Kris: Right.

Neill: Right. And only one Jersey gets to tell that story.

Kris: Right.

Neill: It's the same as like, well, why would anybody pay? I I can get, get a very, very fine reproduction of the Van Gogh sunflowers painting

By a beautiful frame, beautiful frame for $500.

Or I can literally pay [00:37:00] $180 million if, if I can even get it to go up for sale, I will pay minimum $180 million for it. Why? Why? Because it's the real one. And this is, the thing about a story is you don't just get a painting, you get the entire Van Gogh, uh, legend.

You own a singular asset from an artist whose story is fantastic.

And this is how it is with a lot of things. The, you know, limited supply just means that, that means it's. It is defined by a, you know, like limited supply usually means it's done by an artisan or something like that. Like

There's, there's a fantastic brand of a homemade boot that apparently some guy in Idaho or something makes, and the Germans send him his special leather and whatnot, and it, it takes you four months just to go in there to get your sizes taken.

And then it's gonna take probably about a year and a half to actually get the boots.

But people will pay unbelievable amounts of money for them because of that. All that your, [00:38:00] that lore.

That goes with it.

Kris: Right.

Neill: And so if I think of, let's, let's go to like what a CEO's life is like.

CEO's life is, you know, he has operational considerations and he, he has a very professional people reporting to him, and he has to hold their feet to the fire on reaching certain targets. And he has to be realistic enough about the targets to make sure that they're achievable so that nobody gets burnt out from, you know, just this constant drumbeat of more, more, more.

You know, and on top of that, he has that same, more, more that's in the other ear from investors and, you know, private equity, trying to grind him constantly with pressure about their never enough. There's never enough. You can have the best quarter the company's ever had, and next month if you only do 1% better, uh, you're an idiot.

So a CEO's life very much is about storytelling. It's if it, if you're not practicing the art, you better start getting good at it because you can take. Just the way you answer questions on an earnings call can make you sound confident. And self-assured [00:39:00] and knowledgeable, or it can make you sound prevaricating and tentative and cautious and or incompetent.

And you've got to get in your mind, what is the narrative I'm here to tell today, even if it's bad news. If spun the proper way, it can sound good. Now, bad news is not always bad news. If you look over the long throw of a CEO's tenure, bad news spoken plainly, honestly, with sincerity and you know, cleanly and clearly and not panicking, even if people are upset about the bad news seven months from now, they will remember that you are unafraid to tell them the truth.

That's a story.

And there aren't enough like. That, you know, the CEOs are quite adept at using euphemisms and buzzword buzzwords and, and, uh, cloaking their meaning in sanded terminology. And it, you know, you know the type, it's the, it's the button down collar and then the blue sweater.

You know that that's the Silicon Valley [00:40:00] CEO uniform.

They're casual just like you. Here, let's go have a coffee together. And, and they, they spew this sanitized

Kris: Yeah.

Neill: Chat. GPT press release verbiage.

The best, best q and i i ever saw. Oh, you would've loved it, Kris. It was just, it was a, we did this real song and dance on behalf of a very, very large client.

We were trying to win their business for a multimillion dollar installation.

The president of the company was whip smart and, and very. He was very, uh, affable. But we, after doing this big, colorful, loud, brilliant dog and pony show, he was skeptical that we could get everything done by the deadline.

That was, was hard. It was a hard deadline.

You could not violate this timetable. So he wanted to know if I'm gonna do apples to apples against the other people whose ideas I've seen. I need to know how much of this I'm comparing. And our, our chief of operations, the guy who was in charge of building the whole stuff, you know, everything.

He hadn't said a word [00:41:00] the entire meeting. We all had these little microphones in front of us 'cause it was a big panel. And finally the president says he, he turns to this guy and he says, how much of what they've shown me today, can you actually finish by opening day? And without a beat? This guy just leans into the microphone and goes a hundred percent.

Like that. And so that was, that was not two words. That was one word. A hundred percent. A hundred is spelled 18. All lowercase, right? A hundred percent. Now that was, that was the official response, but here's what the text actually reads. It's like, brother, I wouldn't let them show you anything I couldn't build.

They may be the ones talking, but believe it when I tell you I'm in charge here. Nobody makes a move unless I say it's okay, because I'm the one who has to answer for it in the end, and I have seen these things come to [00:42:00] grief and I will not live through that again.

Like it said all that.

in that one answer.

Now, why did it say all that? Because he didn't hesitate. He didn't prevaricate. It wasn't sanded. There was no disclaimer. It was 100% belief from somebody who was going to have to live with that. Mm-hmm. That promise.

Kris: Right.

Neill: And the, so he told a story in one word.

And the reason it's so echoes in my memory Yeah.

Is because, is because it's so rare to hear an answer like that.

Kris: Yeah. Yeah. And you don't question it, right. It's just, it's got the weight of the truth.

Neill: Whatcha say? Are you sure?

Kris: Yeah.

Neill: What do you mean? Am I sure? By the way, that guy who gave that answer, he was, he was a former underwater welder, so this guy was a no-nonsense

Kris: under pressure.

Neill: Yeah,

Kris: yeah, yeah.

Neill: Like, you know, I risked my life doing this job kind of a guy. Yeah. So, yeah, he was, he was a serious home brain.

Kris: Oh my gosh. You are [00:43:00] full of so much wisdom. A lot of the people listening to us today are coaches, consultants, solopreneurs, they're great at what they do. They're, they have a heart to help their clients.

I'm curious, what kind of wisdom or guidance can you share from all your experience around storytelling business? Yeah. You name it. Any direction you wanna go? Well,

Neill: yeah, I'll stick to storytelling. So here is the, here is the one thing that most people underestimate, and if you do this properly, the dividends are abundant.

most people do not rehearse enough when they're gonna make a sales pitch or they're gonna make a presentation, or they're gonna be on a panel discussion. They do not prepare adequately. And when you are really. I'll give you an example. If I'm going to tell a two minute story, I will rehearse that dozens, literally dozens of times.

I will do it over and over and over into a camera so that I can watch myself back on how it sounds.

And [00:44:00] generally speaking, it'll take me about 31 takes to get facile with it. So like, I know the, I know the rhythmic sweep of it. It doesn't mean I've memorized it.

Kris: Right.

Neill: But I've got, but I know, I know how to say

Kris: this.

You're, you, you're fluent with it, but

Neill: yeah. Yeah,

Kris: yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Neill: I, I know the rhythm of it and I'll, I'll feel good telling it, but most people will not sit still and do it 30 times in a row. They just won't. The great actors will

The great actors, that's just part of their process and they don't shy away from it.

And they don't, they don't think of it as work. They think it's the process. This is the process. I wanna give the best possible performance I can, which means I really need to know these lines. I need to know these lines so deeply. It is as if I have made them up myself. I, you need to feel it so completely that you saying it seems like it's the first time it's ever been said, and most people, because they're busy, you know, CEOs especially are very, very busy.

But here's the dividend. When you go in there and you nail it, I mean, when you really, when it sounds great, that adds [00:45:00] 30%, 30 IQ points to your, to the way people perceive you.

Kris: Right?

Neill: They, they think you are brilliant because you had it, it just seemed to roll out of you so smoothly. Oh my god. You know, Ron is brilliant.

Did you see him do that panel discussion? Remember when they asked him, you know, that question and it was just the most, yeah, he rehearsed it 35 times. He was prepared. To do the rehearsal. And then on top of that, most people don't, they, they know roughly what they're gonna say as opposed to writing down exactly what they intend to say.

So that their, their choice of vocabulary is just what they want it to be.

They look for the right, they look for, you know, instead of saying it was colorful, they'll say it was vibrant. Or they'll say, they'll say, well, I hadn't thought I couldn't remember up to now, but the vividness of your description has restored him to my memory.

You know, they, they have the, the right words for it that make them seem intelligent.

Kris: Yeah.

Neill: And so rehearsal is, it is not a nice to have, it's a must have if you want to be [00:46:00] competitive in terms of the way you're perceived. about the way you present things. Then another thing that people underestimate is they really should use their phones to record themselves making presentations and watch them back.

And I know most people, most, most, most people are really uncomfortable with watching themselves on camera. Mm-hmm. They cringe when they watch it.

But, and this is what I teach all my people. You've got to get over that. Get over it.

Watch yourself anyway. And don't, Nope. Don't stop watching. As soon as it makes you uncomfortable, watch the whole thing.

I wanna see you because you need to know how you're coming off.

Kris: Right.

Neill: You need to, you need to tune yourself up. You need to get better. This is like throwing a baseball around. You gotta, you gotta keep throwing. You gotta practice your backhand, man. You gotta practice and you gotta watch yourself on camera.

Doing a backhand and then you go, oh, is that what I look like? Oh God. So it, we are gifted with this device. It gives you the ability very simply to record yourself doing it and then watch it back. And there's another dividend to rehearsing on [00:47:00] camera. And here it is. And it's not insignificant. When you get used to recording yourself on camera, you get good on camera, you get good on camera.

That's fantastic. As you would know, right?

Kris: Yeah,

Neill: yeah. Video.

Kris: I can relate to that. Yeah.

Neill: Video is the canvas that we, that we practice our art on now. Right. That it, it is. If you can get good on video and you can do good presentations on video, you can prerecord your presentations.

And all they have to do is they don't even have to cut to you.

They just go, let's play, let's play Kris's thing. And it's, it's letter. Perfect. Of course it is. But you know, everybody's got a personal brand and you know, you're, all of us have a variety spectrum of skills. Some people are super organized, some people have incredibly high energy and some people are really, really good on camera.

And that being good on camera man, it's 2026. There is always a place for that. There's a, you know, the one of the jobs that I used to do years ago was a job nobody else [00:48:00] wanted to do, but I loved it. It was, Toyota has a very, very large dealer network across the country and somebody had to go out and interact with all the dealers to present them with the campaigns and ask them for their, their money on certain campaigns, you know, you had to go out and you interact with board boards of dealers and these are hard charging.

Entrepreneurs who are quite unaccustomed to having to listen to nonsense. And were very, very quick decision makers, and they're a tough audience. Mm-hmm. They're, you know, they're deeply suspicious.

And they don't, they don't want some flashy ad guy to come in there and think they're gonna bamboozle them.

It's like, bro, do you know who you're talking to? We're professionals here. You're not gonna trick anybody.

Kris: Right.

Neill: That was a great lesson is so you don't try, don't even, you don't even try. But through that crucible, it does teach you that being sincere and authentic is your best weapon in a tough room.

And, and, but rehearsal is the way to get there. There's a, isn't this, it's paradoxical. The [00:49:00] more you prepare, the less rehearsed you look

Kris: right,

Neill: the more authentic you actually become, because now you're. You know what you're gonna say now, so you're comfortable being yourself again. You know, you're not, you're not worried about what to do with your hands and stuff.

Kris: Totally. Yeah. It's like within, within the delivery, you, you can be a little bit nuanced and creative and play a little bit within it, right?

Neill: Yeah, yeah.

Kris: You're

Neill: gonna enjoy it.

Kris: Yeah. You

Neill: enjoy it. So if you, if we go back to like the wedding toast. Now, remember, it's not about you. It's about these two young people who are making a big step here.

And you need to reassure them that they're doing the right thing,

Kris: right?

Neill: And always remember they are the stars of the show. So your job is to be supportive and reassuring and so forth. Now, nobody really cares how good a presenter you are, how good a speaker you are. All they care about is what's in your heart.

Kris: But

Neill: then again, that is all the more reason why you should rehears. [00:50:00] Because only when you truly get comfortable with it, as you were saying it was play. Mm-hmm. But this is also, it's your heart coming out.

Because you're comfortable enough to, that escapes instead of your nerves.

So that was the one thing I wanna leave your people with is they are un no matter who it is, I'm, trust me, they are underestimating how much time they need to spend getting ready for a public appearance.

Kris: Mm. Thank you. That, that, that really is good for me to hear as well. How do you work with your clients?

Neill: in a variety of different ways. So I'll, I'll do, um, I'll do one-on-one coaching, although that's, you know, you can't scale. It gets very time consuming and so forth.

then I'll do small group sessions.

I, I do have to say I really, really love one-on-one coaching. I, it's, it's fun to try to help people. They're very, very specific needs.

Like somebody's trying to overcome an accent, or somebody's got huge stage fright or

Or somebody's not, they're not sure how they can even apply a story and so on.

I love doing that, but I, I do find that small groups, you know, eight people and so forth, it's, it's fun [00:51:00] to do that. I just did, a coaching clinic with, uh, a high school in Minneapolis who are trying to send out the right marketing messages, you know, to their, they've got a variety of different constituents.

I mean, obviously the students, but obviously the students' parents, and then also obviously the people that they have to fundraise with. And then obviously the cl you know, the, um, the staff and the

Kris: right,

Neill: you know, well, in each of those cases, what, what you're trying to do is just stay, uh, on your most fundamental values that make you special, and it was great fun to watch them arrive at what they believed those were.

It was a, it was such a pleasure to watch people who were thinking that, you know, this is about public relations and this is about, you know, word choices and so forth. When it was, no, in the end, it's really about what do you believe, what do you believe is important?

If you could only do one thing for your students, what would you hope it would be?

And you would hear just the most marvelous answers. You know, the thing that was most encouraging about that experience was how, how [00:52:00] in line and co uh, not coherent,

Kris: congruent,

Neill: you know, just how congruent the faculty was with the leadership.

Like how everybody really did agree in the end.

About what made them who they were.

And I thought, I left that experience going, wow, the young people that come out of this institution are going to lead, um, fulfilling lives. Because they were all about lives of public service. That was what the institution was for. So we want to train young people to live lives of service, to be compassionate and generous and ethical, and even in competitive situations, be honorable and, you know, have the strength of your convictions.

And it reminded me of all of the better clients I'd had. It, Remi, they, they, you know, if you, I wish everybody could have been there in the room with me, like everybody, because you would have such hope for the future.

You and I both know, and we were talking about this before you started [00:53:00] recording, you and I both understand that algorithms and, and media is being incentivized to divide us and to keep us paranoid and fearful.

And they, you know, pummel us with negativity. If you can just get away from it for a while. And meet with other people, even people that you possibly disagree with vehemently about something, if you spend enough time with them away from the influence of media

Everybody kind of winds up, you know, the, the waves start to calm

Kris: And everything goes back to smooth. And if you were in that room, you would see people who were, who recognized that the impact of negativity and, and media bias and so on, you know, was having on them and they were determined to be the antidote

Neill: To that they were sending young people out in the world to be the antidote to the division and negativity.

And um, you know, it's very, it's very hard to, it's very hard to face the day unless you go out and seek out [00:54:00] chances to restore your soul like that.

I think that's why time outdoors is so powerful.

Kris: You

Neill: know, the outdoors tends to, it, it casts sunlight on what is otherwise like a vibrating enclosure.

Kris: Mm. Where, where can we find you, Neal? I, I know everyone listening is gonna wanna follow you and be connected with you and Yeah. So where do we go?

Neill: So, I'm easy to find if you just know how to spell my name, because I'm the only one in the world who spells my name. N-E-A-L-F-O-A-R-D. And because of that, if you Google me, you'll find me and you'll find me on Instagram and TikTok and YouTube and, and everywhere else.

But the place I'd really like people to visit is. Story fire.net. So www sometimes you have to put that in www.storyfire.net. It gets its name from us telling stories around the campfire. So story fire.net. And how much? I wish I had the.com, but I don't, they're holding it. Ransom the bastards. Um, [00:55:00] so story fire.net and, and the the cool thing is that people go and they visit that site.

I have quite a number of videos if you wanna explore the course that I sell there. there are quite a few videos that they can get a sample of sort of what's, what's on offer.

Kris: That's great. What a gift, what a gift to be with you today. And I'm just yeah. Delighted to know you back. Yeah,

Neill: likewise.

Kris: All right.

Thank you.

Is your website turning away Potential clients? I can help you turn that around. Book a moneymaking messaging call with me today and we'll transform your story into your most powerful sales tool. That's all for this episode of From Click to Client. Don't forget to subscribe and follow. I'm Kris Jones and I'll see you next.