Why Storytelling Is the Super Skill of the AI Age, With Joe Lazer
Today’s episode dives into one of the most pressing topics in marketing and leadership today: the impact of AI on the creative and marketing professions, and why storytelling is more essential than ever. Host Sara Payne is joined by Joe Lazer, Chief Marketing Officer at Pepper and author of the new book, Super Skill: Why Storytelling is the Superpower of the AI Age. Joe’s work has been featured in outlets including Fast Company, Forbes, Adweek, and Digiday, and he brings firsthand experience navigating the seismic shifts in content creation caused by generative AI.
In this lively and insightful conversation, Sara and Joe tackle head-on the anxieties marketing leaders feel about AI. From the moment ChatGPT launched, writers, marketers, and creatives everywhere asked if their jobs would soon disappear. But Joe flips that narrative on its head. Drawing on neuroscience, evolutionary history, and today’s marketing trends, he argues that the uniquely human skill of storytelling is not just irreplaceable but actually more valuable than ever in an AI-powered world.
The episode explores why trust and authenticity are emerging as the most scarce and important resources as AI-generated “slop” floods the web, and why people increasingly connect with brands through real, vulnerable stories told by actual humans. Joe lays out the case for building a “creator culture” within organizations, where brand’s people, not just their logos, are the new engines of marketing excellence.
Key Takeaways:
Storytelling Is a Superpower in the Age of AI: When AI drives the cost of mediocre content to zero, only truly human, deeply authentic stories will break through. Speaker A explains that the value of real storytelling will rise not fall as AI-generated content proliferates. Storytelling’s roots in human experience, emotion, and connection simply can’t be faked by algorithms, and this advantage is backed by neuroscience and evolutionary biology.
Trust is the Ultimate Competitive Advantage: As AI blurs the line between truth and fiction online, trust not just content becomes the real scarce commodity. Sharing authentic stories, especially those rooted in vulnerability, remains the fastest way humans build trust. Speaker A notes that storytelling triggers biologically-embedded mechanisms, such as the release of oxytocin, that foster empathy and genuine human connection.
The Age of Institutional Brand-Building is Over. Welcome to the Creator Economy: Authority is rapidly shifting from institutions to identifiable individuals. The most engaging content now comes from real people, executives or employees whose stories mirror the values and challenges of their audiences. Social algorithms heavily favor posts from individuals over faceless organizations, driving engagement and conversions exponentially higher.
Vulnerability is Powerful Even (and Especially) on Professional Platforms: The “dinner party from hell” experience on LinkedIn, saturated with self-congratulatory “success” stories, only highlights what most brands and professionals get wrong. The real connection (and effective leadership) comes from embracing vulnerable, honest storytelling about hardship, growth, failures, and real life. This not only opens the door for others to reciprocate but forges genuine relationships and opportunities for help and collaboration.
Storytelling is a Habit And It’s Everyone’s Job: Speaker A insists storytelling shouldn’t be considered a niche or “soft” marketing skill, but a daily discipline and core competency for everyone, from the boardroom to the front lines. He encourages companies to actively nurture storytelling talent, train staff across roles, and build creator rosters. Building the daily habit of sharing stories offline and online hones the muscle of communication, empathy, and innovation, driving leadership and marketing excellence in the rapidly-evolving, AI-laden landscape.
Thank you for being part of the Health Marketing Collective, where strong leadership meets marketing excellence. The future of healthcare depends on it.
About Joe Lazer
Joe Lazer is the best-selling author of The Storytelling Edge and Super Skill: Why Storytelling Is the Superpower of the AI Age, and a renowned keynote speaker on storytelling and AI. His research and writing on the science of storytelling have been featured in Fast Company, Forbes, Adweek, and Digiday. His newsletter on storytelling and AI reaches nearly 200,000 subscribers. His interactive keynote talks and workshops have inspired thousands of business leaders to become better storytellers and build stronger relationships with their customers. He’s currently the fractional CMO at Pepper, and lives in Brooklyn, NY with his wife, son, and extremely anxious dog.
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Sara Payne [00:00:10]:
Welcome back to the Health Marketing Collective, where strong leadership meets marketing excellence. I'm your host, Sara Payne. Today we're talking about something that's on the minds of a lot of marketing leaders, AI. AI can now write blog posts, marketing emails, social posts, and do it at massive scale. So it raises an important question, one that's on marketing leaders minds. If AI can produce content at scale, what actually makes humans valuable? My guest today argues that the answer is storytelling and that storytelling is a uniquely human skill. He believes it will become the most important professional skill in the AI age. Joe Laser is the author of the new book Super Skill why Storytelling is a Superpower of the AI Age.
Sara Payne [00:00:54]:
His research and writing on the science of storytelling has been featured in Fast Company, Forbes, Adweek, and Digiday. He's also the chief Marketing Officer at pepware. Joe, welcome to the show.
Joe Lazer [00:01:04]:
Sara. Thanks for having me.
Sara Payne [00:01:06]:
Yeah, thrilled to have you here. Just coming off this, this newly released book, let's start right in with the anxiety that's on everyone's minds. That anxiety about AI replacing jobs, especially in the marketing and creative field fields. Your argument, Joe, is almost the opposite. That the rise of AI actually makes storytelling more valuable than ever. And why is that?
Joe Lazer [00:01:30]:
Yeah, so maybe I can answer that by telling a story myself of my own anxieties. When ChatGPT came out, like it was this seismic moment, especially for us, like it was in my slack immediately and I was like, okay, we're always sharing new AI tools. But the anxiety really hit for, for me a couple weeks after it was released when my son was born. And as I dug into it, you had all these people on LinkedIn professing these doom day prophecies that AI was going to wipe out the creative class, that it would soon replace all content teams, all marketing teams, all writers, that this skill set that I had spent my career developing would soon be obsolete. It makes a lot of sense that that was the initial reaction right at the time. Writing was the first use case that we experienced in, with generative AI. And so you know, like a lot of people, I was sent after AI came out into this sort of existential panic, was I as a new dad with a mortgage to pay, looking at a future career where I would soon be obsolete. And, and so I do what I tend to do as a, as a trained journalist is sort of dug into trying to find the answer.
Joe Lazer [00:02:39]:
And I was really lucky working at a team which was this future of work AI company. So this question of what skills would be most valuable in the Next stage of work was very fundamental to what we, we did. And so I launched this Gender of a AI Salon series in New York to try and understand where this technology was headed and, and what was the most likely outcome. And towards the kind of midpoint of 2023, I came to this realization that a couple of things were going to happen, which is one is that so much of this AI slop would start flooding the web that it would drive down the cost of creating mediocre content to zero. Right? But in turn, the value of that mediocre content would also approach zero. And that in turn would very likely create a premium or actually surplus value for people who could tell deeply human stories that sound nothing like AI and that were authentically human. And the second thing that I came to realize in talking in the AI research labs is that based on how AI is trained and also the economic incentives around was much more likely that AI would get rapidly better at technical skills like coding and data analysis versus content and storytelling, which has a much more kind of subjective viewpoint on what good is it requires taste. And so with these two factors at play, one, AI slop flooding the web, AI getting better at technical skills.
Joe Lazer [00:04:12]:
The dynamic that would play out, I realized, was that storytelling, which acts as this core technology for us, building relationships with other human beings, which is the thing that AI won't be able to do even if it gets 10 times or 100 times better, right? Because I can do all the work, but can it rally six different stakeholders around a vision, ram through a plan, build that relationship, that enterprise client? Those are the things that are most valuable in the next stage of work. And from a marketing storytelling perspective, the ability to stand out from AI to create truly exceptional human content would go up in value because it'd be the only way to break through in this age of endless slop. And so when it, when I first kind of came up with the idea for the book and started pitching it, people thought I was crazy because that was completely counter to the narrative at the time, which is that AI would completely replace creatives and writers. I think now we are just coming into this point where the people are coming more around to that viewpoint, right? We've seen the viral Wall Street Journal article that laid out that the roles for storytellers have doubled in the last year. We see, you know, the makers of these AI models, OpenAI and Anthropic, opening up hundreds of storytelling roles that pay 400, 500K plus in, in total comp. Because even they realize that these tools, while Powerful without being put in the hand of a great storyteller with strong taste aren't actually that effective to creating anything that's going to build connection and resonate emotionally with other human beings.
Sara Payne [00:05:50]:
Yeah, no, love that, love that. And obviously that's great news, right? It's great news for you. It's great news for me and all the marketing leaders listening as well. Right. Job security. As long as we're good at it, right. And one of the things I really enjoyed about the book is that you're not just talking about storytelling as a marketing tactic. It's this whole frame of it as a human advantage.
Sara Payne [00:06:11]:
There's one line from the book that really stuck with me and that's AI can write, but it can never be a storyteller. You started talking about why that is, the relational aspects of storytelling, connecting us as humans, the ability to influence, etc. Can you dive into that just a little bit more and explain why that is that this is a uniquely human skill that AI will never be able to replicate?
Joe Lazer [00:06:36]:
Sure, yeah. And what I meant by that in that line is that sure, I can craft a story, right? Like right now, if I ask AI to write like a short story that's like kind of Harry Potter esque, like it will give something with like the semblance of a, of a plot. But what being a storyteller means and what connecting through story means and what makes storytelling meaningful is that it's based on our experience and the things that we've been through in our lives, right? The joy, the pain, the wonder, the experiences that bind us. Like that's what makes storytelling meaningful. Storytelling is this cognitive technology that allowed us to rise from being this mid rate species to this ultrasocial learning machine that rose to conquer the earth. It's very much baked into our DNA and our evolution as human beings. Stories is what allows us to pass on knowledge to one another, to learn from one another. And as a result, there's all these mechanisms in our minds that are very much wired for storytelling.
Joe Lazer [00:07:40]:
As human beings, we are deeply, deeply programmed for stories. If I tell you a engrossing story that makes you really engage and pay attention, the neurons on our brain literally sync up. It's something called mirror neurons where you feel like you're experiencing the same thing that I am. Our brains are actually in sync. Research by Dr. Paul Zak, who's one of the neuroscientists I've spent a lot of time interviewing and spending time with in his lab for this book, he found that storytelling is directly related to the building of trust that when we tell great stories to one another, it triggers the release of oxytocin, which is this neurochemical that engenders feelings of empathy and, and trust and connection. So there's all these ways that on a fundamental level, we're programmed for stories not just that have a plot that go from A to B to C, but that relate to our unique human experience. And that's what makes us feel connected to a story and what makes a story valuable.
Joe Lazer [00:08:48]:
There's also the degree that like so much of what makes art art and a story a story is the choices that we make as a storyteller. Like, that's what makes it interesting. So to think we can just outsource all these things to AI, I think is a little bit flawed. Like, do I think that there probably will end up being a market for some AI generated TV shows, right, where it's just creating like a generic how I met your mother type of spin off? Like, sure, probably, you know, there's like, there's always a market for, for slop. But we think about at work, like what matters when you're on the fly, when you're in that boardroom, when you're with your team, when you're with your boss, like, what matters in that moment. So much more of work is building connections with other human beings. And I think we necessarily always want to admit, right, like so much of business, like you read any business book, like, like inside stories of HBO, right, runs off of these CEOs basically sending each other like you up text late at night or when they're watching golf to get business deals done. Like we still operate as social creatures very much on this human to human connection level.
Joe Lazer [00:09:52]:
And storytelling is that super skill that allows you to unlock all of those relationships that really matter at work.
Sara Payne [00:09:58]:
Yeah, I love that you bring up neuroscience. There's so much research behind your thesis in this book. When people say that storytelling is powerful, it's not just a metaphor to your point, it's actually biological. And that's really the brilliance of what you've pulled together in this book. And as I was reading it, you brought up trust too. That's actually where I was going to go next. I kept thinking to myself that this isn't just a shift. The shift isn't just storytelling.
Sara Payne [00:10:33]:
It's. It's trust. Right? In a world where AI can generate an endless stream of content, trust really becomes that scarce resource. And you know, are stories the fastest way humans build trust is that is that what you're. The argument you're making here in the book.
Joe Lazer [00:10:52]:
It is, Yeah. I mean, it is literally our gateway to trust. Like, the reason that we had to develop storytelling in a lot of ways from an evolutionary perspective is that, okay, we started out in. Let's go all the way to the beginning. Like, we started out in, in hunter gatherer tribes. There's a phenomenon called Dunbar's number, which is that there's basically like a cap to how many relationships one person can maintain. Like, generally one person can maintain between like 150 and 250 relationships. And we were in hunter gatherer tribes.
Joe Lazer [00:11:29]:
This tended to be the extent of, like, the larger social circle of our tribes. Right. You would be in a smaller core tribe, tended to be between like 20 and 40, 20 and 50 people. But then you'd have these concentric circles of, like, other tribes that you trusted that you would meet up with and that you would trade information when you were wandering around. And we were hunting, gathering. But then we got to the point where we settled in areas like Mesopotamia, and we then had decided, like, oh, wow, like, this is fertile ground. Like, let's stay here, let's build far, let's develop agriculture, let's actually live off the land here. And then that led to the development of first towns like Jericho.
Joe Lazer [00:12:15]:
Well, there we had a really big problem is because if you have a thousand people in one place, you can't know all of those people. It's. It's literally the limit that we have as human beings that's endured since then. Like, we really just can't maintain more than 250 relationships. So then it comes this problem of, okay, how do we bond people and enable them to trust each other? Shared myths, right? Shared beliefs that come from those myths and stories was a huge way that we did that that basically enabled us to do that. Like, okay, we. We both know the same story. We both believe the same thing based on that story.
Joe Lazer [00:12:48]:
Thus, I can, I can trust you. And that continues to exist today, right? Where if someone tells you a story, say about, like, the why behind your company, like, why did I build this? And that narrative is compelling. Like, you're very likely to believe them and then want to support them. Or if someone tells you a really compelling customer narrative of how you help someone in a similar situation as theirs, like, that's an immediate unlock to trust. And I think the way that you frame this is super interesting because we're actually, we're probably entering an age now where that trust factor is going to become more important than ever because we're quickly barreling into this horrifying time which we can't trust most of what we see on online. Right. Like even if it's. It used to be that, like, yeah, like you see a video of me used to be, be like cool.
Joe Lazer [00:13:43]:
Like I know that's real. I know that's Joe or I know that's, that's Sarah. Right. But now if you see that online, no idea if it's true and it's, we're getting closer and closer to the point where that line is completely blurred even for a sophisticated eye. And as a result, knowing that person, knowing their story, trusting that they're not going to put out weird AI generated slop on you. Also, like just in person, like human to human interactions, that's going to become at so much more of a premium than before. Like if, if there's like one like area of marketing I would buy stock in right now. It's like story driven in person, like relationship driven events.
Joe Lazer [00:14:28]:
Because so much of what we see online is going to be so hard for us to discern truth from fiction, you know, reality from slop.
Sara Payne [00:14:41]:
I totally agree. I think we're going to see a hard pivot away from like, away from anything generated to the opposite of that is like just be real. Show me your flaws. I want authenticity. I don't want to filter. Like, I want to be able to see like, you know, in person, face to face, the actual pores on your face. You know what I mean? Like, this is real. Right?
Joe Lazer [00:14:59]:
Right.
Sara Payne [00:14:59]:
And so I do think that's great advice and a great prediction in terms of where we think things are going to be going in the book. You start off with this argument, right, for why storytelling is a superpower and really talking about the shift towards the storytelling economy. And then you lay out within the book, you give people a powerful framework for how to do storytelling well. And I want to shift a little bit to the framework, of course, without giving everything away. People are, there's so much goodness in the book, they need to get their, their hands on a copy. You have a line in the book that made me laugh. You say because it's so true. You say that scrolling LinkedIn can sometimes feel like a dinner party from hell where everyone is bragging about their accomplishments.
Sara Payne [00:15:46]:
What are people and brands getting wrong about storytelling when they do that?
Joe Lazer [00:15:51]:
I'm glad you like that line. I think I finished it with it. Then you want to go to the bathroom and climb up.
Sara Payne [00:15:57]:
Yeah, there was, there was Definitely more to it.
Joe Lazer [00:16:00]:
I'm trying remember, like, what that line was
Sara Payne [00:16:04]:
without breaking your ankle or something like that, trying to get out of there.
Joe Lazer [00:16:07]:
Yeah, they try to jump out the bathroom window without breaking your leg or something like that. We're having fun writing that. I'm at a point in book promotion where I'm just like deeply nostalgic for the summer when I was just spending every day hold up in my. At my desk writing the book. Although promoting and doing stuff like this is super fun.
Sara Payne [00:16:25]:
Okay, so the LinkedIn example, right, feels like a dinner party from hell and people are bragging about their accomplishments. Like, we all know that that's gross, but, like, why do we still do it and what are people getting wrong that we need to do? What do we need to do instead? Right? What does the good version of that look like? Why is there this temptation to brag about accomplishments? What should we be doing. Doing instead?
Joe Lazer [00:16:48]:
Yeah, I. That's a great question. Like, why do people do what they do on LinkedIn? Is it's like the great existential question. Why is LinkedIn so terrible? Like, not all of it is. Is terrible, but, like, why do we see so many of these business parable broems out there? I think one, it's. I think there's one and there's almost like this awful insidification feedback loop happening because so many people are turning to AI to write their posts. And what AI has kind of learned is like that this is the formula for LinkedIn posts. So I'm going to suggest these sort of ideas and suggest this sort of structure.
Joe Lazer [00:17:27]:
And so we just get more and more and more of it. Like, the amount of, the amount of like, clearly AI written comments that I get on my posts are insane. Like, I feel like it is half or 40%. So, yeah, this question of why do people do this? I think it's a particular platform where on all social networks, like we do what the algorithms reward or think they reward. It creates this negative and vacation feedback loop so you get more and more slop and crap. But I think people are also like, scared to be real a lot of the time and scared to be vulnerable. And I think that's a really hard hurdle to get off of. It's a trend that we see overall in marketing.
Joe Lazer [00:18:12]:
If I can broaden it a little bit, because I was talking with, I was talking with the president of a consulting group that I was doing a workshop with about this actually last week where, you know, there's been this shift in, in branding, right? The kind of millennial brand being dead over the last year or two, where we used to have like these very nicely packaged, everything's on brand, everything seems on feel, like really consistent visual style, post after post. And now we've seen that that doesn't really work anymore. And what works is this real sense of authenticity and realness. Like there's a human being behind it, there's flaws, there's warts, as you said, like, see the pores on your face, I think is a great, a great metaphor for it. And what's driving that is that we are craving this connection to other human beings. It's why we've seen the sub sacrification of media where so many journalists have left big media companies and then found great success independently, because we're really drawn to follow not necessarily brands, but people, right? And we want to feel those people, we want to feel those people as real. But I think on LinkedIn, this professional platform, it becomes particularly hard for people to embrace that vulnerability. But what we learn is that vulnerability and vulnerable story, vulnerable storytelling is actually the best way to build connections with other people.
Joe Lazer [00:19:41]:
There's something that's called the vulnerability loop, right? Where if I tell you a vulnerable story about myself, most of the time, you'll detect that I'm sharing that vulnerability. And you'll have a natural instinct to reciprocate with a vulnerable story or anecdote of your own. And then I receive that and a greater bond of trust is built between us. So being real about, like what you're feeling and who you are, what you're struggling with is just one of the best ways that you can build connections with another human being. And that applies to LinkedIn, right? It's something that I advise, you know, folks that I consult to try, right? Like just talk about the struggles that you had starting this company or getting this job or just a moment in your life was hard. Like, I almost guarantee you that's going to be the best performing post that you ever did. Not just terms of like likes and views, but like comments that are real, right? Or like real responses that people have to it. But also if you're managing someone, like so much of this, you know, that I think goes outside of just what we post online.
Joe Lazer [00:20:51]:
Like, so much of our storytelling really shows up is with our colleagues, with our friends, with our teams, with your network. Like there's that cliche that your network is your net worth, but I actually think that's true. Like so much of being successful in your career is, is relationship. And like when you get to the real right when you dig down and like you actually share what you have struggled with. Like that's where you build a connection. It's like if to go meta like. It's why I started this interview by sharing a story of being terrified when Chachi PT came out because it was real and as a real vulnerable moment for me. And it was the why behind Rider wrote this book.
Joe Lazer [00:21:38]:
It's why I like open the book with a. A similarish story is because those moments of vulnerability are what matter to people. It's what allow us to build relationships with one another. So there's a multi layered factors, right. To why people are the way they are on LinkedIn. But I think that fear of vulnerability, especially on a professional network is a big reason why.
Sara Payne [00:22:00]:
Yeah, I, I agree with you. I think vulnerability pays off tremendously well and I think that the more that brands and individ can lean into that, they will prove that to be true. And to your point about relationships, that vulnerability actually is the moment when someone is going to offer you something that, that maybe you were, you would never have asked for outright. Right. Like, like when I realize that you're really struggling with something, Joe, I, I'm going to be like, how can I help? You know what I mean? Because like one of those just deeply human things is like wanting to help each other out. Right. And doing good for others. And so it's, you know, I don't know, it's like fully baked into the vulnerability loop that you talked about.
Sara Payne [00:22:40]:
That's more so. So maybe like the connection point and like me being willing to share a vulnerable story back to you and then a bond happening around that. But I also think inside of that is where people are going to be like, how can I help you? And then that bond forms through, like just giving something good. I'm going to give you something good and never expect necessarily something in return. But I know someday down the road, if I need something back from you, boy, that's going to come back around to me. Right. And so there, there's that, that bond and that connection that happens there as well.
Joe Lazer [00:23:07]:
Yeah, but I would bet that loop like happens maybe without you even realizing it. Like, I bet a lot of that time when someone does that to you, like your natural instinct is to share a time where you struggled in a similar way if there's something right?
Sara Payne [00:23:22]:
Like totally.
Joe Lazer [00:23:23]:
Like anytime someone on my team has come to me and shares a vulnerability like that, like I want to dig in and find like, okay, when was I 25 and struggling with something really, really similar, you know, and, and that's, that's something that's really natural for us. But it's something powerful that you can do as a manager. I think one of the best things you can do is proactively share those stories. Especially if you notice someone struggling with something instead of like, tell me why you're screwing up. Like, that puts me on the defensive. But if I come in and say, like, hey, you know what? Like, yeah, there's this one time actually I was, you know, in a similar role as you and like I was really struggling with this thing and tell that story, that usually is an invitation where they're going to, then going to share with what they're struggling with as well. So it's just one of those, like, very human things that we can do as managers. And I think that's like how we need to rethink what our jobs are.
Joe Lazer [00:24:15]:
So much more like your ability to fill out that spreadsheet correctly. Right. Or update Salesforce or update, you know, whatever data management system you have in, like, that's probably not really going to matter for very much longer. Like AI agents can already do that with a lot of accuracy. But how can you be a human being? Like, that's the question that you need to ask.
Sara Payne [00:24:35]:
Yeah. Love it. Love it. One thing I noticed reading the book is that many of the examples you cite from, from leadership examples, business examples, entrepreneur examples, which loved all of those stories. What I noticed is the examples you cite so often are individual voices of storytelling. The founders, the creatives, the executives like Steve Jobs and Sarah Blakely, not necessarily the institutions. Right. It's about the individual storytellers behind those companies or those brands or those movements.
Sara Payne [00:25:11]:
And there's a statistic in the book as well that reinforces that 70% of consumers say they feel more connected to a brand when the CEO creates content on social media and posts from individuals convert two and a half times better than company posts. So the question, Joe, is are we moving into a world where, and you talked about this a little bit earlier, where you're talking about sort of like, you know, that old school branding is kind of dead. Are we moving into a world where authority is shifting from organizations to individuals? And if that's true, what does that mean for brands and marketing teams? How should they be thinking about this?
Joe Lazer [00:25:49]:
I think we're already there. I think we've been there for, for years now. Yeah. People are drawn to individuals that they trust and represent the brand. Like the most successful companies today. They are epitomized by a figure that represents them. I'm not sure when this episode is going to come out, but, like, just look at what's happening with the open AI versus anthropic battle that's coming on right now. Like, yeah, OpenAI's brand right now is like, very much being epitomized by Sam Altman seeming kind of sneaky coming in and, you know, taking a deal to power terrifying killer robots for the Department of War and surveillance tech.
Joe Lazer [00:26:36]:
Whereas Anthropic is being personified by Dario, their CEO, who stood up and said no to using this technology in a dangerous and untested way and had very simple red lines that really clearly to communicate from a narrative perspective. Right? No killer robots, no terrifying surveillance state technology. And that's what people associate with the brand and then have that transference of trust over. So we then see a 295% increase in uninstalls of ChatGPT. We see Claude, which was six months ago, you know, 5% of the users of ChatGPT rock it up to number one in the app leader store. Like, that's how we think about brands, is by these people that represent them. No journalist, no media figure, no podcast wants the voice of the brand or the perspective of the brand on their podcast or in their interview or news piece. We want the voice of the actual person that represents the brand.
Joe Lazer [00:27:36]:
Like, that's how we think about things. I think if most of your content strategy and your marketing strategy is built on this idea of like, oh, what's our company page post going to be like? Honestly, like, who cares? You know how much you're going to get on that? Like, nothing. No one's going to see it. Like, you have. You have 5 million followers and you're getting 2,000 impressions. Like, that's just. That's just the truth. All of these algorithms are.
Joe Lazer [00:28:00]:
All of our social algorithms are built on this idea of we want to show people more of what they want to see more of what's going to keep them addicted on the app. And the thing that they've realized is that people want to see posts from other people. It's not a conspiracy just to get you to pay more advertising money. Like, maybe that's 5% of it, but for the most part, it's that they've realized that what people want on these networks is posts from other people. So your founders, your team, your executive, that character inside your company that's going to be relatable to the target audience that you want to Reach is that who, that's who needs to be the voice of your brands. Like you need to not think about anymore in terms of a content team. You should be thinking about building a creator team. Everyone on your team needs to be a creator.
Joe Lazer [00:28:41]:
Like I don't care if you're uncomfortable with it. Like that is the world that we live in and like the old, the old staid brand post world is, is gone and like it's just the reality of the world that we live in. And this is like a hard pill I think to swallow for a lot of founders and CEOs.
Sara Payne [00:29:02]:
Yeah.
Joe Lazer [00:29:02]:
If you're on a marketing team or a content team, there's one piece of advice that I would give you which is just like frame it as an experiment couple months and then just, you just need that one post where your CEO or a key executive pops off a little bit on LinkedIn and gets a lot of love and he gets that. Or, or she gets that dopamine hit.
Sara Payne [00:29:22]:
Yeah.
Joe Lazer [00:29:23]:
And then you're going to be good. Like then you're going to have buy in for this program. Then it's going to be strategic. Like you just need to get them that first dopamine hit and then you're, you're set.
Sara Payne [00:29:32]:
Yeah.
Joe Lazer [00:29:32]:
But you need to be making the switch. Like no doubt.
Sara Payne [00:29:35]:
Totally agree, totally agree. This is coming for a long time. Also agree that some brands have been risk averse around it because it's like, well, people, people leave, people go elsewhere. And then you know, that, that investment we put into them as the storytelling, whatever, they got to get over it because this is, this is the reality that we're living in. But we've also very, as a counter to this point and I think one of the reasons, and some people are, are hesitant and risk averse. We've also seen moments where companies put executives in the spotlight and doesn't go, well. Case in point, McDonald's CEO video that went viral for the wrong reasons. So.
Joe Lazer [00:30:08]:
But that was kind of great for them though.
Sara Payne [00:30:10]:
It totally was great. There's this whole argument about whether it was banned or not.
Joe Lazer [00:30:14]:
But it's bad, it's good.
Sara Payne [00:30:16]:
Even when it's bad, it's good. You know, all PR is good pr, even when it's bad pr. Right. But I guess my, my thought process on this is like not every executive is naturally great on camera. They're not, they're not, they're not going to be naturally great storytellers that have the charisma and enigma of a Steve Jobs. And so it Sort of raises the question of what should companies do? And is it like do we start training our leaders to be better storytellers or do we hire people who already are? Right. Or find the people inside of the organization who are. And I just was curious, sort of, what's your thought process on that journey?
Joe Lazer [00:30:51]:
I think it's all the above one. I just think you should be training everyone at your company to be a better storyteller because it's just a, it's a core skill whether they're going to be on camera or not. Right. Like this is how you make your presentations more engaging. It's how you went over the boardroom. It's how you become a better manager. Storytelling helps you develop empathy, improves critical thinking, adaptability skills. Like it.
Joe Lazer [00:31:13]:
It is the super skill that powers all the soft skills that matter most in, in this next stage of work. So yeah. At, at, at the front, like that's, that's just crucial. I would say though that if you're going to choose how you think about it, one is find the talent inside of your company and nurture it. I think you should be hiring for it. Like, I don't think you should be hiring anyone on your content or marketing team that's not really comfortable getting in front of a camera and doing video.
Sara Payne [00:31:45]:
Yeah.
Joe Lazer [00:31:46]:
Anymore. There is always talent inside the company. Like find people are willing who want to boost their brand and then getting over that objection. Because I think that's really important. The one that you brought up. Right. This idea that oh, we're these people are going to leave so we can't do it. Because I hear that right.
Joe Lazer [00:32:06]:
All the time.
Sara Payne [00:32:07]:
All the time.
Joe Lazer [00:32:07]:
All the time. It's the everyone, it's objection everyone needs to get past. Right. So the way that you need to frame it is A, we're not just gonna rely on one person. You create a roster of creators.
Sara Payne [00:32:22]:
Yes.
Joe Lazer [00:32:23]:
Around it.
Sara Payne [00:32:24]:
Yep.
Joe Lazer [00:32:24]:
There's. They're doing top of funnel awareness, but they're still driving to an action that's going to be a business result for your brands. You're still getting the customers, still getting the leads. You still have them in some way. But if you do this, well, a, they're, they're not going to want to leave because it's actually pretty fun.
Sara Payne [00:32:42]:
Right.
Joe Lazer [00:32:43]:
B, you create a culture that's going to attract better storytelling talent to come in and do this and see if you have a bunch of them like you, you spread out the loss. Like, yeah, maybe you lose one of them, but what it's 5% of your roster. If you have 20 people doing it, well, like, the hit isn't really that big and then it's relatively easy to replace them. And what all you've done is given them, you know, value in the way that they built their personal brand and are able to tell their story online. And that engenders goodwill. Other people see that, that, hey, this is a company that's going to go out there and give me the freedom to do really interesting work and to build my brand as a thought leader, which is like, if you want your people in your company to progress and evolve, what could be a more important, you know, skill or gift to be giving to them?
Sara Payne [00:33:36]:
Love that. Before we wrap, I want to ask a final question. If someone's listening to this conversation and they realizes they need to become a better storyteller, what's one habit they should start building tomorrow?
Joe Lazer [00:33:48]:
So you're really just teeing up the first principle of my book, but which is building a storytelling habit. So I'm, I'm a big believer in the overall methodology that James Clear puts out in Atomic Habits. Fantastic book. I feel like everyone on the planet has read it at this point. It's been impossible to knock him off the bestseller leaderboard for nonfiction business books for like a decade now or since 2018, I think, when that book came out. But the idea is that it's identity based habits. So if I think, oh, this is just like a goal that I have, like I, I need to go to the gym every day, you're, you're probably not very likely to adopt that habit. But if you adopt the identity of I am someone who goes to the gym every day and exercises every day, you're much more likely to actually adopt that habit and do it.
Joe Lazer [00:34:41]:
And then he also has the, the structure of like a four step structure in the book for adopting really strong habits. Right. And so starting with that identity based structure of saying, like, I am someone who tells stories, I am someone who in my team meetings every week gets up and integrates a story to engage the team. That's kind of the first thing and the first step that you can take to telling stories more often and actually adopting this practice because it just starts with actually doing it right to getting out there and trying and being okay with failing the first, like year you start publishing content online, like, don't have the expectation that it's going to drive big engagement or results. Like you're just finding your voice and what you find interesting, but by the act of doing it every day of Honing your craft of paying attention, you'll unlock just a ton. And it's also a great way of really understanding what you think about the world. Like so much of writing is thinking. It's how we make sense of things.
Joe Lazer [00:35:55]:
It's where we find the idea that we should be exploring and lose the idea that we shouldn't. And when we outsource all that to AI, we lose a lot of it. So it's not just about posting every day, but it's about practicing the act of storytelling every single day in some small ways, because you already do this. Like, that's like one thing I would love to end on is that right now, you know, my son's 3 years old and he spends 97% of his waking life in Neverlands. Like, the kid is never operating in reality. And it's not just because he's my kid, right? Or my wife's kid, who was a pretty successful actress before becoming a partner in Hydric and struggles. But it's because we're all like this, right? All of his friends are like this too. We're born storytellers.
Joe Lazer [00:36:45]:
Like, we live in Neverland. We live in a world of make believe. As children, we're programmed from stories. And sometimes as we grow older, we develop this narrative in our own head. Which is the most important, powerful story we tell is the story we tell in our own head about our own lives. And we tell the story that we're not storytellers, that we're no good at this thing. But you are good at it. I promise you, you are better at than you think.
Joe Lazer [00:37:09]:
So if you just hone that craft, you practice it every day. If you pay attention to, you know, I write about in the book on the elements of storytelling that really matter. That neuroscience proves makes your brain light up. If you just pay attention to the shapes of different stories that you really love in your life, if you notice that gap between where you are and where the stories you love are, that gap will get smaller and smaller and smaller over time, right? What? That taste talent gap. And so as you start to close that, it is just like the most rewarding thing that you can do outside of work. Even like the Harvard just finished their 85 year old, you know, longevity happiness study. They found that the key to a happy life is stronger relationships. And storytelling is that thing that gives us that gift.
Sara Payne [00:37:56]:
Yes.
Joe Lazer [00:37:58]:
I don't think I'm saying anything like revolutionary here. I think it's something that we all know deep down, if we pay attention to our life if we do, like just a little bit of noticing about it. But once you do, like man, storytelling is this gift and once you see the power of it, you can't unsee it and it changes the lens through which you see the world. So beautiful. If you can, like, give it a shot.
Sara Payne [00:38:26]:
Love that. Great advice. It's a great place to end the conversation. It's been such a fascinating and a fun conversation. I really enjoyed the book. This idea that storytelling will become more valuable in the age of AI is something marketing and brand leaders should really be paying attention to. If you'd like to dive deeper into these ideas, I encourage you to check out Joe's book, Super Skill why Storytelling is the Superpower of the AI Age. You can also learn more.
Sara Payne [00:38:50]:
Joe, thanks so much for joining us today.
Joe Lazer [00:38:52]:
Sarah, thank you. This is fantastic.
Sara Payne [00:38:54]:
Loved it. And thanks to all of you for listening. Be sure to subscribe to the Health Marketing Collective so you don't miss future conversations that sit at the intersection of strong leadership and marketing excellence. Because the future of healthcare depends on it. We'll see you next time.
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