2146 - Standing Out with Strategic Storytelling with The WellCrafted Workshop's Danny Brassell

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1:05With us right now, it's Dr. Danny Brassell. Danny, you are the co-founder of the Well-Crafted Workshop. Your website is wellcraftedstoryworkshop.com. Dr. Danny, it's great to have you. Thanks for having me, Josh. More importantly, thanks for all you do in the world. We need a lot more of your joy being spread around. Well, thank you. Listen, the moment I let them steal my joy, they win. I'm not going to let them win. So we soldier on. Before we get going, what are you into lately in terms of like entertainment? I don't know what you're reading, what you're listening to, watching, anything stand out?

1:42Well, I read all the time. So I always got about 20 different books going on at once. But when you were thinking about that for movies, I just showed my son Blazing Saddles, which I realized could never be made today. I'm going to laugh my head off. And people need to learn how to laugh again. Sure, sure. Yeah, no, I think in my top, it is absolutely my top five funniest movies of all time. And, yeah, we'll continue on with the conversation. There's a lot I'd like to talk about, but, yeah, I think to your point, you're absolutely right. Dr. Danny, tell me about the work that you do and why story is so critical.

2:23Yeah, so it's interesting. If I was going to have an autobiography, I'd name it Pivots because I've pivoted a zillion times in my life. You and I have shared this passion for journalism. I was a journalist over 30 years ago. I got to cover President Bush Sr. in the 92 election. And while I was doing that, I got all kinds of great job offers. One major daily offered me the city beat for$16 ,500 a year. And a friend told me they were hiring teachers in South Central Los Angeles in the inner city for$25 ,000 a year. So I became an educator for the noblest of reasons for the high pay. So I worked many years in the inner city.

3:00Then I became a professor. And then in 2005, my wife and I attended a real estate seminar, which turned out to be a scam and we lost everything. And I could moan about all the bad things, but I'm a positive person. I learned a whole bunch of things. First of all, my life, my wife is my soulmate. I put her through the ringer and she stood right by me. Second of all, I no longer think that money's the end all be all because I learned you can learn, lose it all in a second oh yeah you know third uh i try not to judge other people because if i was somebody looking at what i did i would have said well you deserve that but now i realize if you don't know everything about a person you don't really know anything about a person fourth i became a christian which i'm always ashamed to say but the more i read the bible i'm not the first screw up to find jesus and fifth uh i was gonna have to file bankruptcy and my account i didn't want to do that my accountant said well you have to make this much more money and so i started speaking on the side and I hit the number right on the number.

3:57Well, the next year, Josh, he gave me a much higher number and I hit that number right on the number. So in year three, I thought, well, maybe I should set a higher number. And basically during one of the worst economic downturns in American history, I was able to build up a very successful speaking business, which is going great until a thing called COVID came around and people asked me, how's your speaking business? I'm like, wow, it's great. The way I lost 200 gigs last night, just because they closed down the world. For years, Josh, people have been asking me to coach them. And I always resisted because as a teacher, I've always had a very high standard for my students.

4:29I want them to excel. I want them to succeed and I keep them accountable. Well, I found my niche. I love working with entrepreneurs and executives because they're highly motivated and I absolutely love watching their success. So that's a very long answer to your very short question. But now I I help empower leaders to transform their personal experiences into powerful business stories that inspire action, drive growth, and create lasting impact. So, Danny, you know, obviously, you know, you know your story. But when you're working with clients, they might, you might sit down with them. And I don't know if one of the questions you ask them is like, tell me your story.

5:08And I know one of the things that you work with your clients is you'll actually audit their story. What are the elements of an impactful story? Or I guess maybe impactful isn't even necessarily the right metric that we're looking for because your client may have their own goals of what they're trying to do. And so then you listen to their story and you make sure that that's going to help them get done what they want to get done and make that connection with that audience. But how do you dissect that and give them clarity? Yeah, so there, well, you just actually took the first most important element, which is clarity.

5:46We, my co-founder, Coach Jimmy Hayes Nelson and I, we call it the five C's process. I call us the professor and the poet because my background is in education and everything I'm suggesting to people is research-based, why we're doing this. And meanwhile, Coach Jimmy, he's from Broadway. And so he's about stage presence and engagement. And so we have what we call a five C process. I actually audited one of your videos I watched of you speaking to military influencers in Dallas. And if you ever want feedback, I can give you all kinds of feedback. Oh, that's pretty old. You can slash and burn, but hopefully I've already learned many lessons.

6:25It was seven years old, I thought. But we start with clarity. And there's two questions that, and these are very important for everybody listening here. They sound very basic, but in my experience, 95 % of the people I work with can't answer these questions. Those two questions are, who is your audience and what is the problem that you solve? Now, we'll speak with lots of people, ask who is your audience? They'll say everybody. I'm like, well, if everybody's your audience, nobody's your audience. The riches are in the niches. The more specific you can get, the better. You can always broaden your audience, but you need to have that avatar in mind of exactly who you're speaking to.

7:01You were very clear when we were talking in the pre-interview of who your audience was. So that's excellent. Second of all, what's the problem that you solve? The problem that we see a lot of people have is they actually don't discuss the problem in terms of the problem. They actually discuss it in terms of the solution. So for example, we were talking with financial planners a couple of weeks ago and I asked, well, what's the problem that you solve? They said financial planning, retirement planning. I'm like, well, those are actually, those are good things. Those are solutions. Those are not problems.

7:31The problem would be how to live the rest of your life without going broke. We were working with fitness instructors. What's the problem you solve? They said healthy eating habits. I'm like, that's not a problem. That's a solution. It's a good thing to eat healthy. So probably battling obesity is the problem. So when you can actually address those questions in a very clear and compelling way, then we can actually start the process of your presentation, which then gets into the other four C's, which, you know, this is the way we say it. I mean, when I covered the president, he called it a stump speech.

8:03He delivered the same speech 20 times a day. I could deliver it better than he could. This is how you introduce yourself to new audiences. In superhero movies, they call it the origin story. Simon Sinek in his book, Start With Why, would probably call it your visionary statement. We call it the well-crafted story. You can call it peanut butter and jelly, Josh. But this is how we're creating a presentation you're going to deliver again and again. So those four C's within the presentation are, first of all, how do you connect with your audience? What's the content that you're teaching? What's your clear call to action?

8:35And then finally, what's your close, which hits on the emotional heartstrings of your audience? If you can do that, you're going to have a very effective presentation. conversation probably the number one strategy I share with people is stop talking about your successes start talking about your failures because not everybody in your audience has succeeded but they've all failed and the more you share your own failures you're going to show your own vulnerability they're going to love you for it and they're going to connect a lot quicker with you yeah um and and so how do you do this work today like who are you working with I you know obviously you're consulting.

9:09I mean, you're, of course you have a full speaking roster now, but, but let's say that someone said, well, I I'd like to learn from you. I, and I don't know how you fulfill on that typically. Yeah. So when we originally started our business, we would have seminars that lasted two days with about 12 people. I like 12 because we can give you the individual attention you deserve, but then you also have the opportunity to watch other people and they get to watch you. You learn a lot from that process. Well, then we started dealing with a lot of companies that want us to sign non-disclosure agreements because they're not so thrilled about sharing company secrets in front of total strangers.

9:45And so now really what Coach Jimmy and I do is we speak to, well, we coach lots of companies that just want their specific, you know, for example, last week we were in Silicon Valley with a bunch of engineers for a major company. And I don't know if you know engineers, a lot of them are fairly introverted. and uh so we were able to my one of my specialties is spicing up speeches giving them uh something fun to talk i mean i had a indian engineer i won't tell you his name but he had a very difficult name to pronounce uh he's like danny please please help me uh and so he's like i cannot connect i'm not funny i'm like okay we'll make you funny so he had a very difficult name it was like we'll say it's shubanaker amagadala or whatever and so now he starts his presentation he's like hello I am Shubanakar Amagadala.

10:38Gee, I sure hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. My so name. All we're trying to do is how can I get people to just smile and be like, okay, this is somebody that I can connect with. Yeah. You know, and I really, I think, you know, it's called self-effacing in that instance. You know, it is, it's endearing. You know, as opposed to, you know, if someone comes with that energy versus someone that's all about them. and the, you know, kind of the bro-y, showy, standing in front of a car, flashing the black, like that is just, to me, is just so detached. To me, it also just projects, it just projects, well, maybe not for everyone, but, you know, it's not attractive for me.

11:20Like, because I wonder, well, what do they want? Like, what are they trying to do here? And it's like, you know, if they're trying, we've all been around someone who's trying too hard and it's uncomfortable for everybody. so that would probably be one of the biggest sins and so i i love i love that uh you recommended that he kind of lean into that energy a little bit yes and you're complete you're completely correct i mean a lot of people they come off sleazy we were working with these uh telemarketing guys and uh the guy had a line he's like i have an mba a massive bank account and i'm like oh Oh, God.

11:59Ouch. We got to get away from that. Yeah. Let's break out the shepherd's crook and pull that guy off stage immediately. Yeah, Danny. And I wanted to talk a little bit more about what you do, but I would be remiss if we didn't talk about your library of books that you have written. Would you mind maybe just highlighting Misfits and Crackpots? Is that your newest book? Yeah. Well, when I was a middle school teacher, I spent most of my career in Compton, California, in South Central LA. And I was the only middle school teacher in our school that none of my students ever showed up to class tardy. And it's because I always started off class by reading a lot of Paul Harvey story.

12:37Now, Paul Harvey passed away a couple of years ago at the age of 325 years old. But when I was a kid, I'd growing up, I always waited for 1215 on the radio every day because Paul Harvey would say, that's Paul Harvey with the rest of the story. And for five minutes, he's talking about somebody or something. You're trying to figure out who it was. My students loved it. But a lot of the people he talked about were like Sears Roebuck. Well, today, kids don't even know what Sears Roebuck is. And so when I wrote the book Leadership Begins with Motivation, that was a whole bunch of, it was an homage to Paul Harvey with stories profiling people like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.

13:17But then after I wrote it, completely unintentionally, Josh, I read it and I realized, whoa, so many of my examples were of white male Americans. And so Misfits and Crackpots, most of the stories are females, minorities, and international people. And it's probably the most fun I've ever had writing a book. Yeah. Well, so, and, and would, you know, to, to our friend that's listening to us right now, what, what is your hope with it? Like, what's the goal of the book or what's, what's the hope of the outcome that you would hope for the reader, the transformation that they, that they would go through?

13:51Well, it's kind of like listening to your podcast, Josh, is people need to hear something nice every now and then. There's so much negativity in the world. One of the reasons I wrote the book was I was walking down the aisles at Barnes & Noble in the young adult section and almost every book was about teen suicide, date rape, dystopian society. I'm like, no wonder teenagers are screwed up. They have nothing positive to read. And so I wanted to see, show them examples of amazing people that started from similar circumstances as them. Well, Danny, are you speaking as well? And if so, who do you speak for?

14:26And who might want to hire you and why? Yeah, I speak all over the place. Probably 90 % of my speaking engagements are for school districts. I have engaging presentations that convince teachers and principals not to quit because we're losing way too many great educators. I have no problem losing the bad ones, but the good ones, we need to keep them as long as possible. and so I have keynotes and and breakout sessions designed to to remind them take your job seriously but don't take yourself too seriously because you ain't all that neither of mine if you think you're all that teach kindergarten for one week those little ones will set you straight when I was teaching kindergarten one of my little girls raises her hand one day I'm like LaShonda questions like Miss Basile when are you gonna trim your nose hair I'm like this afternoon thanks for bringing that to my attention I ain't all that and so I just need to really reaffirm my thanks to all the educators out there so that we can keep great educators in the classrooms.

15:20I also do 10 % is probably more corporate oriented, but more of my corporate work deals with the coaching of people. Yeah, the book, by the way, Misfits and Crackpots. It's obviously on Amazon. It's in Kindle. It actually looks like it's part of Kindle Unlimited. So if you got that membership, snag it. And your website is wellcraftedstoryworkshop.com. Um, if somebody wants to engage you on the story work, um, again, like who would be a good fit for you? Who might not be a great fit? Well, any, that's kind of funny, Josh, that's a pointed question. People always ask me, who's my dream client? And I'm like the one that can pay my fee.

16:05Uh, Jimmy and I are very expensive. So that's why I usually corporations are the ones that, uh, generally tend to, uh, get us, but I want to make sure that everybody has an opportunity. to look at the same structure. So as a thank you for you and everybody listening, I wanted to send everybody to freestoryguide.com. Again, freestoryguide.com where you'll get your own personal storytelling blueprint. What this is, is your own guide that will help you construct a well-crafted speech that will get people to take the next step, whether that's to buy your product or to book a phone call with you. What this does for you is it takes the guesswork out of speaking.

16:46And what this means for you is the peace of mind that you can be a much more effective speaker without actually being a professional speaker. You can get all that at freestoryguide.com. And I just want to thank you, Josh, for all you do. I've listened to, I mean, you've got 2 ,000 episodes. I've listened to about 20 of them. Oh, I was going to say, and I've listened to all 2 ,200 of them. Oh, my goodness. Unbelievable. Dear God, have mercy on your soul if you have. That's too much, Josh, for anyone. One episode is usually more than enough. That's right. Well, Danny Vrasil, again, thank you so much for joining us.

17:19Again, new book, Misfits and Crackpots. The website that you shared is, I just had, it had a redirect on it. What was the name of it again? Freestoryguide.com. Freestoryguide.com. All right, Dr. Danny, thank you so much. Cool. Thanks, Josh.

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