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Lenny's Podcast
Product | Growth | Career
Episode Summary
The Power of Strategic Narrative with Andy Raskin
Introduction
- Host: Lenny
- Guest: Andy Raskin
- Sponsors: Coda, Lenny’s Job Board, Eco
Episode Overview Andy Raskin, known for helping CEOs align their teams around a strategic narrative, discusses:
- Crafting a strategic narrative
- The importance of strategic narrative for company alignment
- Real-world examples of strategic narratives
- Who needs a strategic narrative and who doesn’t
- Thinking about movements instead of categories
Key Concepts
Strategic Narrative
- Definition: A single compelling story that drives success across sales, marketing, product, fundraising, and recruiting.
- Purpose: Aligns the whole company towards a common strategic North Star.
Traditional vs. Strategic Narrative
- Traditional Pitch: Problem-solution framework, often leading to an "arrogant doctor" approach.
- Strategic Narrative: Focuses on a fundamental shift in the world (old game to new game), creating a movement, not just solving a problem.
Framework for Strategic Narrative
- Name the Old Game and New Game
- Example: Salesforce shifted from owning software to the cloud.
- Importance of succinctly naming these shifts to create a movement narrative.
- Name the Stakes
- Highlight winners who have already adopted the new game.
- Create a sense of urgency and life-or-death stakes, similar to storytelling in movies.
- Name the Objective of the New Game
- Simplify your message into a rallying cry or mission statement.
- Example: Zora’s objective was to turn customers into subscribers.
- Identify and Name the Obstacles
- Define new challenges that arise from the shift.
- These obstacles should be framed as hurdles to the new objective.
- Overcome the Obstacles
- Present your product or service as the solution to these obstacles, akin to the hero's journey.
Real-World Examples
- Salesforce: Transition from software to cloud services.
- Zora: Movement from transactions to the subscription economy.
- Gong: Shift from opinions to reality in sales intelligence.
Writing and the Power of Content
- Andy’s career was significantly impacted by his article, “The Greatest Sales Deck I’ve Ever Seen.”
- Writing online can have exponential effects on influence and reach.
Thoughts on Category Creation
- Andy prefers focusing on creating a movement rather than just naming a category.
- Movements can transcend specific categories and become more impactful.
Application and Impact
- B2B Enterprise Technology: Best fit for strategic narratives due to complex product environments.
- Signs of Need: When companies outgrow founder-led sales, pivot, or expand product lines.
Getting Started
- Begin by crafting a simple narrative using the five-step framework.
- Test the narrative in real-world sales calls for immediate feedback.
Contact and Resources
- Andy Raskin: [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/andyraskin/), [Website](https://www.andyraskin.com/)
- Podcast: "The Bigger Narrative"
Lightning Round Highlights
- Books: "Story" by Robert McKee, "Out of Sheer Rage" by Jeff Dyer.
- TV Show: Station Eleven.
- Product: Fitbit.
- Presentation Tip: Use slide titles to convey the main takeaway.
Conclusion Andy Raskin emphasizes the importance of a strategic narrative in aligning teams and driving company success. By focusing on a single compelling story, companies can better navigate the complexities of product development and market positioning. ```
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00the way I learned how to pitch in business school, I think way most people did is what I call the arrogant doctor. So you have a problem, a pain, I have a solution, you know, a treatment, and I'm going to tell you why it's better than all the other treatments. And the structure that I read about in these movies was different. Every movie starts with some kind of shift in the world. And I call this shift the shift from old game to new game. And the archetypal example of this, I think in the business world, is what Benny off did with Salesforce. So he comes in and he says, Hey, software is over.
0:35And there's this new world called the cloud, a new game, new rules, you know, that's the new way to win. And we're going to help you if you're in there. This structure really is about defining a movement. And that's very different from, Hey, I'm going to solve your problem.
0:54Welcome to Lenny's podcast where I interview world class product leaders and growth experts learned from their hard one experience is building and growing today's most successful products. Today, my guest is Andy Raskin. Andy helps CEOs and company leaders align their teams around something he calls a strategic narrative, which as you learn all about in this episode, essentially a simple story that helps people understand why they need your product and with that helps you align your sales, marketing and product teams along with your fundraising and even your hiring efforts. Andy has worked closely with some of the most successful founders and companies out there, including companies like Gong, Dropbox, Uber Sales Force Square, IBM, and many others.
1:35In our conversation, Andy explains why most people are pitching their product completely wrong. Why focusing on the problem you're solving for people is no longer an effective pitch and how the strategic narrative helps you frame your solution in a much more effective way. Andy also shares a ton of examples of the framework of action. Why focusing on categories and categorization is so limiting, signs your narrative needs to work, and so much more. Enjoy this episode with Andy Raskin after a short word from our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by Coda. You've heard me talk about how Coda is the dock that brings it all together.
2:13And how can help your team run smoother and be more efficient? I know this firsthand because Coda does that for me. I use Coda every day to wrinkle my newsletter content calendar, my interview notes for podcasts, and to coordinate my sponsors. More recently, I actually wrote a whole post on how Coda's product team operates, and within that post they shared a dozen templates that they use internally to run their product team, including managing the roadmap, their OKR process, getting internal feedback, and essentially their whole product development process is done within Coda. If your team's work is spread out across different documents and spreadsheets and a stack of workload tools, that's why you need Coda.
2:52Coda puts data in one centralized location, regardless of format, eliminating roadblocks that can slow your team down. Coda allows your team to operate on the same information and collaborate in one place. Take advantage of this special limited time offer just for startups. Lennonp today at Coda .io slash Lennonp and get a thousand dollar starter credit on your first day met that's COVA .io slash Lennonp to sign up and get a starter credit of $1 ,000. Coda .io slash Lennonp. Are you hiring or on the flip side are you looking for a new opportunity? Well, either way, check out Lennonp's jobs .com slash talent.
3:32If you're a hiring manager, you can sign up and get access to hundreds of hand -curated people who are open to new opportunities. Thousands of people apply to join this collective and I personally review and accept just about 10 % of them. Don't find a better place to hire product managers and growth leaders. Join almost a hundred other companies who are actively hiring through this collective. And if you're looking around for a new opportunity, actively or passively, join the collective. It's free. You can be anonymous and you can even hide yourself from specific companies. You can also leave anytime and you'll only hear from companies that you want to hear from.
4:09Check out Lennys jobs .com slash talent.
4:16Andy, welcome to the podcast. Oh, thanks Lennys. So great to talk to you. So you're quite known as someone that helps to use optimize their pitch, their story, their strategy, which we're going to get deep into. But before we do that, can you just give us a little glimpse into how you found your way into this line of work? So I started as a coder. I was a computer science major undergrad. A friend and I had an idea for an app. So this was like during the dot com years. So Windows app and we coded a little prototype and we started. We put it out there. We started getting some users and we thought, okay, maybe we can get some investment.
4:56So of the two of us, I spoke English fluently. So we decided, okay, I'll write the investor pitch. So I wrote the pitch, sent it out and the reaction was really bad. And one BC wrote back and said, listen, I rate every plan I get on a scale of one to 10 and yours is a one. And the next to the one he wrote in parentheses worst. In case we thought like maybe that was the top of his real scale. Yeah, brutal. And but then lower down. So this is back when they would like you send the hard copy of the plan. And they might mail it back with comments written in and he had written in not a compelling story.
5:36And a few weeks later, I'm walking by this Barnes and Noble and there's a sign in the window. It says for anyone who wants to tell a compelling story. Okay, that's me. And there's an arrow that's pointing to these books. And he turned out to be screenwriting books. And I didn't know anything about this. So I started reading these books and it strikes me like a movie is a pitch. Like, you know, what is Star Wars a pitch for? It's a pitch for, you know, be good, like care about people. Trust the force, you know, in their terms. But I don't have a couple hours, you know, I'm pitching a business is very different.
6:09You know, I'm not writing a three -act screenplay. So like what applies? What doesn't apply? I mean, these are questions I think I'm still asking. But I did my best to kind of take some of the learnings of how the movie was structured. It was very different from how my pitch was structured and kind of restructure it. And we did that and we sent the pitch out and we start getting more interest. Like, he's really clear. And then we had a term sheet, I think, a few months later. And I'm like, what is this story thing that we didn't change the product? I was basically the same I business just sort of how we talked about it.
6:45That was really interesting to me. And I mean, over the next like 10, 15 years, I thought about like, maybe I could do consulting with this. Like CEOs who heard about this would like ask me about it. But I still was like, no, no, no CEO is going to like budget a line item for the story. You know, like that's not a thing. So I just didn't do it for a really long time until eventually I was proven. And wrong about that. And how many years ago was this at this point? So this was dot this was like 98 when I was pitching that company. Amazing. I think there's a couple of interesting tidbits about this.
7:23One is that interesting opportunities arise when you're doing something you're excited about. So you had to start up. It didn't work out. But like you've you had a problem that you saw for yourself and that led to another bigger opportunity. Yeah, total road. So that's interesting. And then also just some of the best opportunities arise from solving your own problem. Not having not planning to start something with it, but just like I have a problem. Yeah, I think that same with you, right? Link, like you started writing about something like boom, like that became the thing. Absolutely. It was not quite boom, but eventually eventually became boom feels like boom from outside.
7:55Yeah, that's that's how it goes. It always feels it always feels overnight for everyone else that isn't right. Exactly. Yeah. Okay, so let's get into it. So you help CEOs at this point come up with what you call a strategic narrative. And you help them not only come up with this strategic narrative, but you help their teams align around this strategic narrative. So let's just start with what is a strategic narrative? Yeah, you think like I've been doing this for like 10 years. I'd have a very snappy definition of it. And and I don't know if I'm really happy with like I've ever found one that totally gets at it yet.
8:30The one thing I say is like it's this one story that the CEO uses to drive success in marketing sales, but also product that it becomes like a North Star strategic North Star for product roadmap for fundraising for recruiting really everything. And what I think it's really interesting is a kind of qualifier is that this story has a certain structure kind of like I said, like when I found the screenwriting books, I sort of shifted the structure. And the traditional structure of the way I learned how to pitch in business school, I think way most people did is what I call the arrogant doctor. So you have a problem, a pain, I have a solution, you know, a treatment.
9:20And I'm going to tell you why it's better than all the other treatment. Not not to say it's not better, but just this is the structure of it. And it kind of sets you up for for bragging like where he let me tell you why it's so great. And the structure that I read about in these movies was was different. The movies every movie starts with some kind of shift in the world in the in the characters world. And I call this shift the shift from old game to a new game. And the archetypal example of this, I think in the business world is what Benny off did with Salesforce. So he comes in and he says, hey, software is over.
10:05Like, being software in the sense that we're going to own it and maintain it. And there's this new world called the cloud, a new game, like the new rules, everything has changed. And we're going to, you know, that's the new way to win. And we're going to help you if you're in there. This structure really is about defining a movement. And that's very different from, hey, I'm going to solve your problem. I think the Salesforce example is an awesome example of your approach. If they were thinking about it in the old way, what would have Salesforce have done? How would they have pitched it if not for everyone's moving to the cloud?
10:45You're dumb if you're using desktop software. Well, I think they would have just come out and said, like, oh, you know, hey, I mean, CRM, by the way, was already a category. I mean, they were already, you know, Sebel was the huge giant of that space. There were already even companies doing it online, doing it through the web. And so they would have come and said, oh, you know, where easier to install than, you know, faster to get up and running than Sebel. Or we have this much functionality compared to what I think was, was it net suite or an or so, so it was some early, early Salesforce like thing that was out there.
11:22They would have done these sort of comparison things. And, you know, Benny up, I mean, he's a pretty proud guy. I think he did still say like, hey, where's the number one here? But that wasn't what they led with. They led with this story about this fundamental paradigm shift. And, you know, are you in or you not in? And what they did was instead of just saying like, hey, we're better than they said, they said, hey, all those others, those, those Sebel's no, they're part of that old game. You want to play that software game? Be my guest. Go, go by Sebel. And, you know, of course, we know how it played out.
12:02So the crux of the approach is instead of problem solution, you should go do this. It's the world is changing. Here's where it's going. And we're going to help you get there. And I want to go in a little more depth of the framework. But before that, what are some other examples to give people a sense of like, oh, I see, I understand what this might be. So another great example, and no coincidence. So it is Zora. So Zora is the company I wrote about in this, this post called the greatest sales like I've ever seen. The CEO of Zora TN Swo was an employee number 11 at Salesforce. So he learns this from Benny up.
12:36And he's pitching, you know, hey, in the old world, businesses operated on transactions. You sold things to people outright. In this new world, he calls it the subscription economy where people want the benefits of those things without necessarily having to pay for them. And of course, it gives all these examples of all the winners, you know, in this, look at all the winning companies are all basically going to this new model. And, you know, and so he's pitching someone like Ford. And you can imagine they're going to Ford and pitching, you know, a subscription for car service, which is quite different from just a lease.
13:16And they're starting out with this, you know, this is the big shift. Another one team I worked with early on, and I think I think they agree like their story came out of this work was gone. So gone, you know, everyone probably knows by now, like they take the video recordings of all your sales calls and they stick AI onto it and come out with all these insights. And that story is, you know, hey, goodbye opinions used to be a world where we sales has run opinions. Hello reality that now all the winners are going to are adopting this new mindset. What we really have to see what's really going on in the Gong example.
13:57Let's say what would they have done if they were going like here's the problem. Here's the solution. Here's what we're going to do for you. Yeah, I mean, that's kind of what they were doing when they started out. And I'm not saying like that that didn't work totally. I mean already by the time they started doing this, like they were starting to become a big company. I remember I meet Ben Dove said to me, listen, Andy, you know, they were around like series B. I think this is around 2018 is like we're going to be a huge company. The question is how huge. And, you know, I think that this narrative like along the lines of like a Zora or sales or if we get this right, this is going to be a multiplier on our growth.
14:38So, you know, I don't remember exactly the pitch beforehand, but it was very much like, hey, we're going to record your calls. We're going to get insights from them. They're better than the insights you could get sales for it from Salesforce. There wasn't this kind of unifying kind of movement ideology that put it all in context. And what was really interesting was one thing I don't think they upset if I shared it. Maybe it's no, like, you know, initially they were seen as a tool for like sales operations. You know, for someone who's going to record the calls. And what this narrative did for them, I mean, I think it was already starting to happen.
15:17But what it really coalesced was this is a tool for sales leadership. You talked about Zora and the post you wrote. And I imagine many people are sitting there like, oh, shit, this is the guy that wrote that post that everyone's always sharing with me about how to make a deck. And I wanted to ask how impactful was that one piece of writing for you in your career just like as a tangent. I had written some other posts on medium in particular medium. Medium chance changed quite a fit. But back then I found that I could write stuff there and get really like a lot of people who were interested in what I was interested would sort of come in and create some noise about it.
15:57So I was already doing this kind of work for a couple of years. But that post immediately got something like two million views around the world. And I started getting inquiries from teams all over the world. And it was, I think what really allowed me to sit no, okay, I could do this work that that CEO's wood budget, a line item for this. Because I think if you really understand that post, it's not really about a sales deck. It's really about this story that TN and that, you know, the CEO is telling everywhere and that, you know, is showing up in the sales deck and structuring it that way. I think that's just another example that comes up a bunch on this podcast, just the power of writing and the power of content.
16:45And there's, yeah, and you're shaking your head. Yeah, totally. I mean, I had a, I had a little mini career as a journalist as a freelance writer. And I really love that. I actually, I took a class in New York called How to Write a Magazine article. I was, you know, it's sort of mid career sort of curious. And the class wanted to be more about like how to sell a magazine article. And I found I really love that like pitching articles and, you know, but one thing that was always a downer for me was like, there's always this editor, you know, sort of like deciding what, what I'm, what's going to be out there.
17:23And, you know, when you work with a great editor, it's great. Like, if they make yourself better and they're priceless. But still there's this intermediate and, and what started to happen, I think, around when I started writing around 2013, 14, I mean, you start to see these platforms like medium, even LinkedIn where you can just write and have this audience. And I think no way I could do this, what the work I do if that development hadn't happened first. I'm taking a soft track, but I want to go a little deeper with this. I find that there's kind of two paths to writing online. One is like, is your path where you write one piece that just like blows up like crazy.
18:03The other path is more my path where I just write consistently for a long time and both work. And most people try to get your path and they never succeed. It's really hard to make something. It's two million views, but you can go that path. You know, this is like you said earlier, like, hey, it seems like boom, but really it. So I had, that was, that was probably the 30th or 40th piece, you know, and they were gradually getting more and more traction. There was one I wrote before that about it's kind of dissecting Elon Musk's pitch for the power wall, the battery that they sell. And that one got maybe like few hundred thousand views and also was a big jump.
18:42And then, you know, the next one got, you know, some Paul tree number. So there was a, what I find is like, yeah, there's this, there's this a while where you're writing and it feels like you're talking to no bug. And then sort of gradually it grows and, and you'll have these peaks and about, but then, you know, over time is, is, is where the magic is. Okay. I'm really glad you're pointing that out, but it rarely is just you write one thing and boom. Yeah. Great. I'll also say sorry, because I worked at a magazine. I haven't done a newsletter because that idea of like having a deadline all the time, like constantly having to, we used to call the magazine Feed the Beast.
19:20Like, I feel so free not to have that. So for now, at least I haven't done that. I know that well. So let me take us back on track and let's talk about just the high level framework here. So you talked about the, it starts with this idea of tell people, world is changing during this movement. What's like the simple way to think about this, the pieces of this strategic framework? A lot of times people will contact me say, hey, I tried it, did it work? And well, one, one very common thing, at least earlier was they would basically just take this war a deck. They get it hold it and just like put their logo on it and so, you know, that's not going to work.
19:58One thing is, you know, we're not just saying, hey, the world is changing. And then it is sometimes see, the world is changing and there'll be used to be and there's a long list of things. And then now it is a long list of bullet points, right? What's really I think he is naming it, like naming that old game, the example you saw software cloud transactions, subscription, opinions, reality. This very, very concise naming is really key and it's hard because in making it compact, you're losing completeness. So, you know, you can imagine you're in a meeting someone says, like, hey, how about we do transactions to subscriptions?
20:41And so I was like, well, I don't know, there's a lot of things I don't really subscribe to subscription economy really. So we're always kind of overstating it in a way, but it's not a problem. Like, you know, I don't think people say, like, oh, you know, that's wrong subscription economy because I still go to the grocery store and buy things, right? So anyway, that that's the first piece. The second piece is what I call naming the stakes. And there's a few ways to do this, but one that's really great if we can do it is to name the winners to show that winners are already playing this new game.
21:14So for instance, with Zora, they're saying, hey, look, look at all the new winners, like this is like 2015. So like Airbnb box, you know, all these companies, they're already doing this subscription thing. And by the way, overall, like, they show this scary stat about the, like, the longevity of Fortune 500 companies, it's getting smaller. And so it's a little disinjeeze, but basically they make this case that, hey, companies are dying. The ones that are winning are doing this, right? And so to the extent we can, we want to, we want to make this life and death, just like a movie, right? And this is again, I'll make the parallel to Star Wars.
21:56So Luke spends like the first 15 minutes of the movie belly aching, like, he wants to be a pilot. He wants to go out and have adventures in space. So Obi -Wan comes, he says, hey, we got this mission, this princess, we got it in all the steps. Let's go out and let's go. I'll teach you to be a pilot. We'll go out and have adventures in space. What does Luke say? He says, ooh, you know what? I can't really get involved. They got to go home. It's late. Who does this sound like? The reluctant buyer, you know? So yeah, I want to be innovative and also, ooh, you know what? I remember I budgeted this quarter.
22:32So how does George Lucas change Luke's mind? He basically kills the aunt and uncle, sorry spoilers. It's been 40 years though. If you haven't seen it, it's probably not going to see it. Kill's aunt and uncle, now it's pretty clear they're coming for Luke. Now the stakes are life and death. Probably he's going to be dead. But there is this other path that Obi -Wan holds out for him. And whenever I work with the teams and I talk about this, so they're like, okay, I guess we got to then kill the prospect, aunt and uncle. And basically, yes, I mean like figuratively. We got to show them that the future is not going to just be sort of okay.
23:10That there are, it's probably people talk about like making it emotional. And I've always wondered like, what does that mean? Like literally, what is the definition? And this is for me the definition is that the prospect doesn't see the future as sort of okay. They see it as split between a very negative outcome and a potentially very positive outcome. The third piece is what I call naming the object of a new game. I used to call it the promised land message, but I've changed it to this because I think it's, I've found that it's sort of a little more fruitful. You know, this subscription economy transactions, it can get a little high falluten and sort of like big, right?
23:51So, you know, but all like on the website, when we just have to boil it down to a couple of words that's going to be clear like right away, what can we say? And I find that, you know, what's the object of the new game really boils it down as kind of the rallying cry of the movement. So the example with Zvora, the object for a while is turn customers into subscribers. Very simple, you know, just sort of flows from it. Air B and B for a while had this one live anywhere. You know, if you think about, you know, so blog anywhere. Well, well, actually it was, it was so you're right. It was belong anywhere and then it switched to live there.
24:28It was, it was, it was, I mean, I have the the chronology wrong, but it was the two of those things. You know better than I do, right? But either one, I mean, I think they're saying very similar things. Hey, there's this new world where you can, you know, you don't have to, you don't have to live in hotels. You can stay in people. What's the, what's the object of that game is to belong anywhere to live there? Right? And it's a, I love it when it works that way where it's almost like an asymptotically unachievable thing. Like you're never literally going to live there. But and if you think about it, this, this buyer mission statement is this rallying cry.
Read the full transcript
25:05I think of it really as the mission of the company. I mean, what, what is the mission of Air B and B other than to help people live there? You know, if they're going to be customer focused and all that. The fourth piece is, okay, well, this object of the game, you know, winning this game, it better be hard, right? Because if it's not like we don't have a, like why are we even exist? Just like with the movie, like if it's, if, if Luke can just go like destroy the death star, then, you know, no movie. So there's got to be sort of obstacles in the way things that are preventing them from it. So saying, okay, you want to, you want to turn customers into subscribers.
25:46So worse, Zora where they go next to say, okay, well, how are you going to measure lifetime value? Because now you have this always on thing. How are you going to measure preferences and how they're changing over all these new kind of challenges that didn't exist before. And then, and these are like the, these are like the, you know, the monsters in Lord of the Rings or, you know, the, the Empire in Star Wars, these are the obstacles. And I think about them because they sound like problems, you know, this is what people would normally say, oh, these are the problems we saw. But by setting up this story thing first, we've kind of re -packaged them as obstacles to a new goal state that we've already positioned as life and death.
26:30So they take on this much more emotional meaning. We understand why they matter. And then of course the last piece is, is now talking about well, how are we going to overcome these obstacles? How, you know, what are the, in the narrative people in the movie business, they call these like the magic gifts that the main character gets to go, you know, help them win? What are the ways, now we can talk about that and success stories and all the rest of the stuff. So there's some obvious parallels to the heroes journey here. I imagine that was a source of inspiration. And the Star Wars I think is like the epitome of that journey.
27:05Can you talk about just how related those two are, how you think about that? Yeah, I mean, so here's a journey is this book that comes from, I think it's here of a thousand faces. It's a book by Joseph Campbell, sociologist, and he looks at myths over different cultures and different times. And he finds this kind of common structure that he calls the heroes journey. I mean, there's some controversy about that about his book, you know, is it a very male oriented sort of take on things and a bunch of things. But, you know, even that aside, I found when I would talk about heroes journey and stuff, it's just like, it didn't really tell me what to do.
27:48Like, okay, yeah, I got to do this pitch. So, you know, in the heroes journey, there's like refusal of the call. That's actually that what thing where Luke, like doesn't, says he doesn't want to go and where the buyer says, you know, hey, I'm, I'm, I don't have budget. But I don't know, it was just like too theoretical for me to really, when I use it, people seem to sort of glass over it. So, I just don't really talk about that at all. But yeah, I mean, that's behind a lot of this stuff, for sure. Yeah, that makes sense because I think the people here are about that all the time when they're like, become better storyteller, tell your story and the heroes journey.
28:23And it's like, I don't know what I'm doing. Also, I would say, you know, there's storytelling as a skill kind of thing, which is a great thing, you know, learn how to tell stories better, blah, blah, blah. I'm not really interested in that in my work. What I'm interested in is the one story and the structure of that one story. And this one story, it doesn't really have, you know, the world is moved from transactions to subscriptions. Like, there's not a main character in that story who's like having a problem and getting sick. You know, it's, it's almost as if what's happening is we're present, we're turning the person we talk to into the main character by creating this, by spelling out the shift.
29:04We're like changing their world. And we're asking and we're saying, hey, you, you got to, you got to change. And you want to come with us. Yeah. And it's almost like you're putting them into the heroes journey. Like you can exactly win exactly. I love that. So let me just try to summarize what you shared this five step framework. So you start with, here's a new movement that's happening. You want to name it. You want to name the stakes and there's winners and losers. And here's what's already happening. And it's really important. Then you want to name the object of the new game, like turning customers into subscribers, then show the obstacles.
29:36Here's why it's challenging. And then talk about how you're going to overcome these obstacles. Yeah. And by the way, the naming of the object of the new game, I find it often is really nice to do it as a question. So, you know, so we asked it. So, so hey, there's this shift from transactions to subscriptions and look, everyone's doing it. So we asked a simple question. What would it take to turn every customer into a subscriber? You know, and this way we're kind of bringing the person we're pitching to along almost like they're coming along with us as a co, I don't know, adventure in crafting this story.
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31:29That's ECO .com slashlennie. Maybe just to reinforce this even more, what if we go through the five steps and just with one company as an example and just talk about what each of those were for them? Okay, great. So there's a company called 360 learning. So this come, I don't know if folks know this company has raised like over $200 million there in the space of like corporate training software. So big companies, they have to train their people on all kinds of stuff. So you want to go through that one? Yeah, that sounds great. Okay, great. So the story and by the way, Nick Hernandez is the CEO and Nick's been on my podcast, so he's talked about this.
32:13So they for a long time were pitching themselves as collaborative learning. So they have features that let people sort of collaborate on courses and all kinds of stuff. And Nick is often pitching CEOs, of course, his team as well. And he told me that it was sort of like kind of falling a little bit flat. Like people, cloud were learning, okay, whatever, you know, how are you different from this learning platform, this learning platform. And so when we worked together, you know, this collaborative learning, it's almost like a category name or a descriptor or something, they was so embedded that I decided like, I don't even want to take it out, but can we define it in terms of like a of the story.
32:58So the story they came to was, hey, used to be that companies train their people through a through a basically a mindset of top down learning. There's going to be some like learning guru at the company, they're going to get all the courses, they're going to, you know, put it all together and like sort of set out this training material to everybody. And what's happening now is winning companies or are approaching this differently in this, they're adopting this approach, you may call up skill from within, which is, you know, if you look at like Google, like there's this page where I think you can go, it's a public, you can like connect with like Google's AI experts, they literally turn their internal experts into like champions that are educating, not only that, but they're going to be able to do that.
33:51Even just the company, but even external people, they created this culture of our own people are going to be the educators. So that's the shift from top down to this up skill from within. And of course, I just even started to do the second piece, which was like, hey, there's there's look at the big companies who are doing this. And then I think they showed, hey, you know, you're not doing this. Look, training is becoming very expensive. It's people don't care. People, you know, so this is the downside. So we're creating these sort of state. And also, I think he had something about, you know, how training now like companies like if you don't adapt, like you can't get these skills to your people like your car company and you can't get these skills around, you know, electric cars, you're dead, you know.
34:34So Nick was in France and he saw this poster from recruiting poster from McDonald's. And it said, hey, if you work in McDonald's, you're going to learn from everybody else on your team. And it was like, wow, there it is. Right. So it was another example we used as a kind of winner example. And so then the question became, you know, how I can remember exactly it was something like, how do you up skill from within like what would it take for you to turn your experts into like champions?
35:06And then I'm going to forget what all the obstacles were. But I think it was things like, well, how are you going to make it possible for anybody to create a course, people who don't even know how to, you know, how might have expertise in electric engines, but you know, don't know how to create a course that haven't. How are you going to make sure that there's still like the learning department, they're going to keep control and can, you know, all this, you can imagine all the different kind of questions. And then of course now 360 learning starts talking about all that stuff. And what Nick has told me, I'm actually going to be on a, on a webinar with Nick where someone asked me, like, could you bring in a CEO who could talk about, you know, this stuff, not just you blabbing on about teaching narrative.
35:48And so Nick is going to join it, join it. And we had a dress rehearsal the other day. And he was telling me like, it's just like when he starts with this now, he doesn't even get the question anymore of like, well, how you different from this other learning platform, which is always used to always be the thing. And it's just so much more seamless, like, okay, yeah, talk to our learning people get this, get this going. So it just sounds like it's been really effective for them. That's actually was what I was going to ask next is what kind of impact every scene with someone shifting their pigeon story from this doc.
36:19What was it the arrogant doctor approach to the strategic narrative. Yeah, I mean, it's always this kind of thing I hear. I mean, of course, it's very difficult to say to measure this. I mean, like, what was the value of the strategic narrative for going into screws? You know, was it, was it three X versus one at two X or I don't know who knows, right? But the things I hear from CEOs, a few things, one is that, yeah, when they're pitching, they're not pitching features out of context, they're pitching now a movement, you know, which is a lot better place to be, I think, you know, you're in a way you're not pitching product product your product is like a prop for making the story come true.
37:04Very important prop. But there's this higher level overlay that becomes the focus of the conversation at first. And of course, we're going to get into product. And and that that helps sell. Once we have this story, then everything in marketing can be all about this story, you know, with Zora when they, if you look at their website, well, when they when they first started doing this, like maybe 80 % of the content is not, hey, let me tell you about how Zora is so great or here's our new release or whatever. It's here's how music companies are embracing subscriptions. Here's how luxury goods companies are embracing subscribe, you know, it's like all these kind of almost trend pieces that become unlimited fodder and again, you're not touting your it's less salesy right.
37:51Another thing I just hear always I just interviewed a CEO this morning for for my podcast and and this is the first thing he actually said was it becomes a strategic north star for the product. So what he was telling me and this was actually little unusual I asked him like, why did you come to me at first. And of course, I've asked him that before, but he said something that I this time that was like a little different from what I heard before he said, you know, we're constantly getting feature requests through sales through customer success. And we had sort of no way bar. But for to decide like, well, what do we take on what don't we take on.
38:34And this clearly has become our bar. You know, if you think about it for 360 learning, you know, does it help us up skill from within. It's in does it not or it's prioritized, you know, does it not less prioritize. I mean, bend off told me this directly. He said, you know, we exactly the same thing we used to we we get a lot of requests for features and a lot of them are basically about opinion. Like some some way to to record opinions. And this is gone. We're not going to do those and got a gone. Yeah, we're not going to do those. Are there any companies out there that maybe aren't clients that you see as like, wow, these guys are nailing it and they're doing great job at the strategic narrative.
39:15Well, one that really comes to mind is, I mean, it's been out there for a while, but drift, you know, drift comes out with a with essentially like a chatbot for your website, which might be like the 30th chatbot for your website. And they don't say, hey, here's why our chatbot is the best one. They come, they start from a completely different place, which is, hey, used to be people would sort of wait around for you to get back to them. You know, it's a world of sort of later of they called it the world of forms. You know, you put up a web form and you expect someone's going to fill it out and maybe wait a few days while you take your sweet time deciding if they're going to get back to them.
39:57And David cancels and David get her started from right the beginning saying, now we're in a world of now where they where buyers are they I think they showed this woman. I remember this woman's sleeping with her phone like that's your that's your prospect. Like there's always on and they're going to expect you to be engaging with them right away and they called this conversational marketing and you know they really went with that and created I think a whole movement. And they broke away from all of the other, you know, chat box awesome example. So earlier you throughout this word category and I've noticed you haven't talked about category and category creation too much.
40:44And I think that you're kind of not a fan of this idea of creating a category and focusing on category. I'd love to hear your perspective on how that all relates to the stuff you recommend. Lenny, are you trying to get me in trouble like that guy who make that guy in your podcast who who attacked jobs to be done? Apparently, and let's do it. I would I would soften it a little bit and not just because I don't want the iron of the category design folks, but I really would soften and say I wouldn't say I'm not a fan of creating category. Look, I think the you know, if you look play bigger, which is being become kind of the the Bible of that category creation thing.
41:22You know, if you look behind that, they're going to what what do they say the category is they say it's a narrative. It's a story about how the world was to how it is and and so what I find though is that when people think about category creation, they tend to just focus on like, OK, well, this is this category name going to be that we got. What are these three words that are or two words, whatever that are going to sort of magically make us seem like we're totally different from everybody else. And and and a, I think that's not really possible like these three words aren't going to do it. Take gone.
42:00I mean already other companies were using this term revenue intelligence, right. With gone, it suddenly becomes a thing because I think they have this opinions to reality story behind it. You know, one point I again, I asked a meat. He said, yeah, in it because he had really I remember he really struggled a level. What should we call it? Which we call you came up with with with that one. But then when I asked some ladies like, yeah, you know what, in hindsight, we probably could have called it like strawberry intelligence. It didn't matter. It was really the story that that was sort of matter.
42:31I don't I think he was exaggerating a little bit. But and I think the category people would actually agree with this. I think they would agree with like, hey, you are these three words are it's sort of a short hand for this movement for of old game, new game narrative. But I guess that I guess I feel like still by calling it category and category name, like we're just focusing on those three words so much. And what happens often is is CEOs will they'll kind of come up with this little category like like what happened with with Nick at the 360 learning with collaborative learning. We have this name, but we don't know how to tell the story around it.
43:12And that, you know, so my feeling is like, well, let's let's focus on the story. So that's why I talk about strategic narrative and and movement creation versus category creation. You know, if someone decides that your movement is a category, great bonus. I see. So essentially your approach is category can play a part of this, but there's a bigger question you have. What's the story? What's the movement? What are the obstacles and categories and element of that potentially? I mean, I always almost see them as orthogonal like, you know, with HubSpot, you know, HubSpot had this narrative run inbound, you know, used to be just outbound.
43:53Still now we're going to have inbound. And that that wasn't really a category. There's still I think if you back then they were probably known as marketing automation. Now they're probably known as CRM because they've broadened. But this movement is the thing that's sort of the constant. And in some ways orthogonal to whatever category they're in. Is the strategic narrative framework right for essentially any company or is there like a sweet spot? I've noticed most of the companies you've been talking about are B2B SaaS. So I don't know, maybe like if there's a spectrum of perfect fit for strategic narrative framework and then like not a fit at all.
44:31What's like, what's along that spectrum? Yeah, well, you can see it. I mean, it takes a little time. I mean, to tell this story. And it's a kind of you were kind of framing it a little bit and we're telling you lots of different channels, right? So I think it does really play well in sort of like this enterprise sales context because also we have a group buyer there. So it's not just one person who's doing some research and there's like this whole group has to sort of have a united a uniting story. So I think you're right that in noticing that the companies that this tends to resonate with tend to be B2B enterprise sales.
45:18Technology I think because often the product is very complicated. You know, that arrogant doctor stuff. You know, comes from an age when the things people were selling were like products on shelves that didn't change much. You know, cans of soup at the supermarket or or like a car and the dealership even software back then, you know, shrink wrapped in a box doesn't change. Soft B2B software, you know, this stuff is changing by the minute. And does it even make sense to make a claim to say like, oh, we have these features and they have those features. Therefore, but I mean, like, does that can you even does that make any sense?
45:58That said, you know, hey, I was looking for I was looking for like a sports watch, you know, like a Fitbit and an, you know, and I'm, yeah, I'm comparing specs and I'm doing all that stuff, you know. And so that mode of buying is still happening, but I think that's, you know, so yeah, when like consumer products companies contact me, I usually say no occasionally they're they're looking they still say, okay, yeah, we'll build this. We still want to have this narrative, but yeah, I think it has the most value most impactful right away for B2B enterprise technology companies. Just a few more questions.
46:34When it's just what's a sign that you should spend time in this area that something is broken in your strategic narrative story pitch. Well, I can tell you what I hear from CEOs when they contact me like, why did I always ask like, what's happening? Like, what, because that idea I had no CEO is going to budget a line item for this. I'm basically asking like, why was I wrong? Like, what? So a few things they tell me one is that the company is maturing from a point of stage where they've been successful, but that success is one placebo, put it this way as like was brute force of the founders. So the founders are in every meeting there in every in every product discussion every sales call.
47:18And that's shifting the company is getting bigger. Usually I'm seeing this around like series B where the company is getting so they can't be in every every sales call every market. And they're looking to kind of transmit all the good stuff and some direction in a way that people are going to remember and all and all that everything from how we pitch to what the product should be and all that. And they see this as as that. There's another kind of point that I see people contacting me out, which is where they're growing. That's usually a bit later where they've had they've scaled tremendously successfully.
48:02Now we're either acquiring or building out whole new product units. And that old story we told is just it's just not big enough and we got to expand it to something bigger. This is this is the example of like one trust, which I was on my which I'll have on my see all have my podcast recently starts out with just sort of I think is the data privacy around, you know, the regulations that people have to be able to say don't track me things like it. And then they buy these other company and now we have this much bigger, bigger offering. So how do we tell the story. And then I guess the third one is some form of pivot where we were telling an old story, but we're, you know, whatever the market changed or whatever and we're we want to go in a different direction.
48:52So say a founder is listening to this and they're like, okay, I realize I need to do this. I haven't spent enough time on this. So I'm not working. This could be a huge unlock for us. What are the first couple steps they could take to start to figure this out. And I imagine at some point it's like go talk to Andy. He'll help you through this. Is there a step you can do in your own? How do you go about? Well, a lot of folks have have emailed me over the years like, hey, well, I told you before there were some who emailed me like, hey, try it. It didn't work. But many, many more have have emailed me.
49:22Hey, I tried it. It did work. Thank you. And so yeah, just try to lay out that structure and try it. I mean, even when I work with teams, I, I adapt what what my people might call sort of lean approach. Like I want to get that thing out there into sales calls. You know, we're not rolling out the whole sales team right away, but getting it out into some sales calls and get a sense like, hey, is this resonating or are people like given the nods. Ideally, by the way, one way I look to test it, you know, is it working is like when we talk about this shift and the stakes and the, you know, do they stick.
50:02Do they kind of say like, yeah, let me tell you how that's playing out for us. And or or in my yes, I'm seeing that let me sometimes literally I'll train sales people to ask them that question like, am I crazy or you see in this and what did they say and you know, you can usually tell like if they're in and it's qualitative, but I really like that kind of kind of testing to see if it's working. And I think anybody can do that. Is there a template or a guide you have online for folks to follow other than maybe just listening to this podcast and reading. Is there a post that's like, here's the framework defined and go follow these steps.
50:41I mean, I guess the closest is that the greatest sales deck I've ever seen post, which is this war a deck. But even there, I really people have asked me like for a framework like and like, you know, presentation companies that could we have your template so we could like make it available people will revenue share with you or. So you know, and I am so against this template like every team I work with it's different, you know, it's not like the same number of slides. Sometimes we can lay out this shift in one slide. Sometimes it just feels better or the team likes it better, whatever if it's a few and we're sort of getting people into it.
51:20Sometimes there's no slot. So I am really hesitant to sort of recommend any template. And what I'd say is like these are principles for, you know, for building it not not any prescribed formula. If they do want to reach out to you while we're on this topic, what's the best way to contact you? Can I move me on LinkedIn? That's usually a good one. I am usually posting things on LinkedIn that I've learned from working with other teams. Awesome. Last question before we get to a very exciting lighting round. I saw speaking of LinkedIn, you posted how in a working session with companies that the second session is always this like low point they all go through and they're going to get discouraged and pain.
52:08And first of all, I love the expectations heading. You're like, this is going to suck initially and it'll get better. Why is that the low point and what is it that they focus on in that second session? Well, apparently I'm not doing enough of a expectation setting because like what that post was about was like this woman who would so when I work with the CEO always asked them to create what it calls strategic narrative team of up to four people. And usually those are leads of like marketing sales, whoever in this case the CFO was a really important person in this company and so the CEO wanted her as part of this team.
52:41And she said to me at the end, she's like, you know, I would love what we got to always asked what worked, what did it work? And she's like, love what we got to that work great. What didn't work was like, you told us that this second session was going to be bad, but I don't I think you could have drilled home more like exactly how bad. So and then I asked her actually, could I could I have that quote with your face on a slide that I now present to future team. She said she said, yeah, you could do that. So the way I work it is in I have a kickoff session where essentially I'm asking people on the team, like what are these pieces?
53:16What is this old game, new game shift? What what how do we talk about winter set the stakes and everything I just talked to you through. And you know, we have like five people in the room, there's going to be like we're going to come out of this with notes and notes and boards are boards and boards of ideas of like this stuff, right. And so then two things happen. One is I asked the team to start interviewing customers about how they see this shift and and sometimes the customers will literally give us the words and that can be helpful and sort of aligning if we have differences. But but I also start working with the CEO one on one and we start when we build a first version of this thing and it's the second session where we present this first version to the team.
53:59And think about what's happening like the team is just giving us like millions of gold ideas like truly they're all and in order to make something sort of clean and powerful. So the CEO and I have had to pretty much throw out all of them, you know, save one or two right and there's going to be feelings about that first of all. Second of all, you know, if this weren't easy to just like get all the interview everybody come up with it, they would have done it right. So it's going to be wrong. But the good news is this is where the team gets to weigh in. I also asked what's working not working in this thing.
54:38And when we learn how it's not working that gives us the juice to then me and the CEO go back to the drawing board. Wait, we plan on this in advance. We're going to go back the drawing and then bring up something good. So I you know having a shit draft is like a million times more valuable than having all these great ideas. But it's also really painful. It's painful not only for them, but for me like no matter how many times I say that. I want it. I expect they're going to love it in that first one too. And I'm really pissed off when they don't, but luckily now I've done enough times like I know that's going to happen.
55:19I was just watching a documentary about Annie Lamont who came up with the shitty first draft concept for writers that I stick to. I'm a firm believer in that. Yeah. As you're talking one last thought that I had is he'd work with CEOs and founders. I feel like this could be just as useful to product leaders, product managers working on a product that they're launching. Just like what is the movement we're happening here's why this product is important. Do you do you find that too? Absolutely. And it very frequently like the product leader chief product officer is part of this group. And what I'd say though is that the reason I so when I looked after I did this work for a few years, I looked back and I was like, which were the ones where, which were the engagements I did where like I can see it and it just the narrative is like really this two North star for everything.
56:09And it was always the ones where the CEO was leading it. Not just like in name, but like literally the person who called me who was like in working on the drafts with me and like going through like. And so initially I didn't I didn't insist that it would be the CEO doing that, but eventually I started to and I think even for a product leader, like you're going to want the support. You don't want to be just telling that story in product, you don't want that supported from you know this war person who gave me the initial deck. He said, you know, it was like I was like I had air cover. And I was just going down and knocking down deals on the ground.
56:49You're going to want that air cover and marketing sales recruiting everything. And you know, how much better is it if it's if it's really driven by the CEO and you have that amazing. Is there anything else you wanted to touch on or you want to share before we get to our very exciting waiting room. No except I love category design people and it's really just it's really just sort of terms that I like better. You know what forget it scratch that part. I thought that's funny. Oh yeah, okay. Yeah, we can leave it in. We can leave it in. You can even leave this in where I'm telling you to scratch it.
57:26That sounds good. I was actually going to joke that I was going to cut this out and leave you hanging. But okay, I know you can do that. Yeah. Category design people love you. Don't don't hate me. Thank you. Great. I love it. We're going to be okay. I think. Okay, well with that we reached our very exciting lightning round. I've got five questions for you. Are you ready? I'm ready. I haven't seen the quiet. I saw the quit. You sent them, but I didn't really look at them. So I'm I'm just going to tell you what I said. I'll go. Perfect. Excellent. So the best version of this. What are two or three books that you've recommended most to other people.
57:59One of the books that I read initially in that from that Barnes and Noble. It was story by Robert McKee. I think a lot of people know about it who are sort of interested in story stuff, but it's it's kind of a Bible of people who are doing screenwriting and stuff. Pretty if you know anyone who's in Hollywood who are thought about going to Hollywood like they they know about this book. I love a book called Out of Sheerage. It's really not about what I do or anything, but it's the author is Jeff Dyer Jeff. He's a he's written a lot of books that are kind of essay memoir. And this is a book about him trying to write a book about the edge Lawrence.
58:37So it's all about procrastinating and like, oh, like him. I'm supposed to write this book. I think I'm going to I'm about to go on a trip somewhere. Should I bring the collected works of the edge Lawrence on the trip because that'll help me start the book. But maybe I shouldn't because it's not going to. Then I could come back refreshed without having. You know, basically it's all that it's all this sort of like in the head. I just really enjoy that book. What's a favorite recent movie or TV show they really enjoyed? Station 11. Station 11. That was just so beautiful to me. Tripping was a trippy movie.
59:11Did not expect to go where it went. Yeah. I usually ask what's a favorite interview question you like to ask and I don't know how often you're interviewing people. But does anything come to mind when asked that? Well, I can tell you one thing I ask when I speak with CEOs is I like to ask what role this narrative played in your leadership. What does it play? How does it work in your leadership? It's always really interesting for me to hear that. I was often here things that I don't expect. What's a favorite product you've recently discovered that you just really like? I recently got a Fitbit. I think I made a major earlier.
59:48I was like looking for a product like that and so far I'm really loving it. Amazing. Have you tried other versions of Fitbits or that's the one that's working? I also ordered a polar at the same time and want to returning the polar. Basically it was just a little clunky on my wrist so I went with the Fitbit. Why do you have one that you recommend instead? I just have the Apple Watch and I've never tried a Fitbit and it gives me all this stuff that seems cool. I've never gone further. I got the Fitbit a week ago and I actually still am on the fence whether I bring it back to return it for the Apple Watch.
1:00:26I'm enjoying it but we'll see. Final question. Your expert on presentations and I imagine you spent a lot of time in decks. Just what's one small change people can make to how they put together a deck or a presentation that will make their presentation a lot better? This is the one thing. Make the title the takeaway of the slide so that the person looking at it has to do zero work to take away. So example you'll sometimes see like the problem or the team replace like the team with our team is a veterans of whatever industry or every single slide the takeaway. It's a takeaway not a label and it'll make everything flow a lot better.
1:01:16You did a killer job answering the lightning round questions without having a peek at what they were going to be. Andy this was incredibly insightful. I'm going to go start working on my strategic narrative from my podcast and newsletter. Two final questions working folks find you online if they want to reach out learn more maybe consider working with you and then how can listeners be useful to you? So I mentioned LinkedIn is with the connect with me that's that's fine. I'm going to go to my website is Andy raskin .com. I also have a podcast where I talk with CEOs of if you're interested in hearing like more details about no actual use of this.
1:01:47It's called the bigger narrative. I my mom introduces every episode I call her I sent her the interviews in advance I call her an interview about what she thinks people will get out of it and that conversation becomes the intro to the podcast episode. And what was the last question? How can listeners be useful to you? Useful to me. Just you know if you try any of this stuff let me know like worked didn't work. You know have this question I would love to hear that stuff. Amazing. Andy thank you again for being here. Thanks so much for having me. It's just really fun. Bye everyone. Thank you so much for listening.
1:02:26If you found this valuable you can subscribe to the show on Apple podcasts Spotify or your favorite podcast app. Also please consider giving us a rating or a leaving review as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at Lenny's podcast dot com. See you in the next episode.
From the publisher
Brought to you by Coda—Meet the evolution of docs | Lenny’s Job Board—Hire the best product people. Find the best product gigs | Eco—Your most rewarding app
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Andy Raskin helps CEOs align their leadership teams around a strategic narrative—a single story that powers success in sales, marketing, product, fundraising, and recruiting. His clients include Gong, Dropbox, Uber, Salesforce, Square, and IBM. In today’s episode, we discuss:
• What a strategic narrative is, and how to craft one
• How having a strategic narrative can bring alignment to your entire company
• Examples of strategic narratives in action
• Who needs a strategic narrative and who doesn’t
• Why Andy thinks about movements instead of categories
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Find the transcript at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-power-of-strategic-narrative
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Where to find Andy Raskin:
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andyraskin/
• Website: https://www.andyraskin.com/
• Podcast: https://andyraskin.com/podcast/
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Where to find Lenny:
• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/lennysan
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/
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In this episode, we cover:
(00:00) Andy’s background
(08:03) What is a strategic narrative?
(10:34) How Salesforce would have pitched the old way
(12:02) Examples of a strategic narrative in action
(15:23) How one piece of writing skyrocketed Andy’s career
(16:40) The power of writing online
(17:53) Two paths to writing online
(19:27) Naming the old game
(20:59) Naming the stakes
(23:29) Naming the objective
(25:17) Naming the obstacles
(26:35) Overcoming the obstacles
(26:57) How the strategic narrative parallels the hero’s journey
(28:25) Telling one story well vs. being a good storyteller
(29:18) The 5-step framework summarized
(31:33) An example of the 5-step framework in action
(36:12) The impact of shifting to the strategic narrative approach
(39:08) Companies that are nailing their strategic narrative
(40:36) Why Andy thinks about movements instead of categories
(44:15) Should every company have a strategic narrative?
(46:33) Signs that something is broken in your strategic narrative
(48:53) Steps to get started on your own
(51:36) How to reach Andy
(51:53) Why the second session is the low point in the process
(55:30) Why the CEO needs to be part of the process
(57:40) Lightning round
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Referenced:
• Salesforce: https://www.salesforce.com/
• Marc Benioff: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcbenioff/
• Zuora: https://www.zuora.com/
• The Greatest Sales Deck I’ve Ever Seen: https://medium.com/the-mission/the-greatest-sales-deck-ive-ever-seen-4f4ef3391ba0
• Gong: https://www.gong.io/
• Tien Tzuo: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tientzuo/
• Want a Better Pitch? Master the “Move”: https://medium.com/firm-narrative/want-a-better-pitch-master-the-move-5fbee071ca7f
• Star Wars: https://www.starwars.com/
• The Hero with a Thousand Faces: https://www.amazon.com/Thousand-Faces-Collected-Joseph-Campbell/dp/1577315936
• 360Learning: https://360learning.com/
• Nick Hernandez: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicoconut/
• Amit Bendov: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amitbendov/
• Drift: https://www.drift.com/
• OneTrust: https://www.onetrust.com/
• “Shitty First Drafts” by Anne Lamott: https://learning.hccs.edu/faculty/pamela.golden/engl2327/shitty-first-drafts-by-anne-lamott/view
• Story: https://www.amazon.com/Story-Substance-Structure-Principles-Screenwriting/
• Out of Sheer Rage: https://www.amazon.com/Out-Sheer-Rage-Wrestling-Lawrence/
• Station Eleven: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10574236/
• Fitbit: https://www.fitbit.com/global/us/home
• Apple Watch: https://www.apple.com/watch
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Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.
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Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.
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