[Susan Friedmann]
Welcome to Book Marketing Mentors, the weekly podcast where you learn proven strategies, tools, ideas, and tips from the masters. Every week, I introduce you to a marketing master who will share their expertise to help you market and sell more books.
Today, my special guest is Kelly Swanson, an award-winning storyteller comedian, motivational speaker, and cast member of the fashion hero television show now airing on Amazon Prime. She's the author of “Who Hijacked My Fairy Tale: The Gutsy Girls, Pocket Guide to Public Speaking,” and many more titles.
She's been a featured entertainer for Holland America Cruise Lines, keynote speaker for the International Toastmasters Convention, and has keynoted major conferences and corporate events from coast to coast.
She's just launched her one-woman show, “Who Hijacked My Fairy Tale” and is being booked all over the country. A National Speaker Association colleague, and someone I've admired for many years. Kelly, what an absolute pleasure it is to welcome you to the show and thank you for being this week's guest expert and mentor.
[Kelly Swanson]
You're welcome, Susan. Thank you for having me. And hello to everybody listening. I'm glad to be here, Kelly.
[Susan Friedmann]
Whenever I hear your name, “story” is the first word that just pops into my brain. Let's jump right in and talk about stories and why are they so important to us, not only as speakers but also as authors.
[Kelly Swanson]
I didn't realize it at first. I stumbled into it just being able to tell a good story, thinking it was just an art form, and making people laugh and making them feel good. Over the years, the more I studied it and the more I practiced it, the more I realized that stories do so much for us with an audience that our data and our information cannot do. It just overwhelmed me, Susan. That me, a stranger who I'm meeting in a cold moment in the middle of their business or their life, and then I can just share my story. And in 20 minutes, we're friends and we're laughing together and we're crying together.
Stories just really open up this portal between us and our audience and create trust and rapport. It's just a magical tool, not just to entertain people, but a tool of persuasion. I feel like I'm only scratching the surface and uncovering all its power.
[Susan Friedmann]
Oh, yes. I mean, stories have gone way back to the Bible, probably before then. I mean, it's something that we've grown up with, we love. We go back and want to hear the same story over and over again. I'm sure you've got stories that audiences say, “will you tell that story?”
[Kelly Swanson]
Oh, sure. You know, it reminds me, Susan, there's an old fable that illustrates this perfectly.
“Truth, naked and cold, sat shivering in the middle of the village, for it had been turned away from every door. Parable came along and found Truth, took it in, fed it, wrapped it in a story, and sent it back out where this time truth wrapped in Story was welcomed, invited into every home to sit at their tables and eat by their fires.
And that story has been around forever.
But I think it's a beautiful, perfect illustration of what a story can do for those of us who have a truth to share or who, and most of your authors, we have something that we care about, that we want others to care about. Just telling people what to do has a pushing action. That's why Truth sat cold in the middle of the village.
People didn't want to hear it. But when it is wrapped in a story, it really is invited in. People step into your story. They stand inside their own.
At the same time, it invites them to receive your message in a non-threatening way, come to their own conclusion, and be more persuaded than had you just given them a list of facts and said, here's what you need to know and why it matters. That's not going to be very persuasive.
[Susan Friedmann]
Oh, my goodness. That just gave me goosebumps when you said that. I'm going to have to listen to that over and over again. It's so beautiful. I know.
For me, it's been challenging to tell stories. I mean, at one point I said in my life that I didn't have any stories, which I found out was a load of nonsense. I know I've got stories. It's a matter of, how do you pick the right story to tell when you want to share something, let's say about your own expertise or even something from the book.
[Kelly Swanson]
Great question. You are not alone. Many people struggle with where do I find the stories. What stories do I tell? And how am I going to know which ones are the best ones?
I always tell them, first of all, stop asking for the best story. This isn't about the best story or the sexiest story or your story beating someone else's. It's not about the best story. And you said it, Susan, already. It is about finding the right story. It's finding that story that illustrates your point, that puts a human face on the talking point that you're giving to your listener.
Yes, we create stories in theater, and I write stories for comedy, and I have a whole imaginary town, and that's all for entertainment and motivation.
But stories serve a strategic purpose to make someone think, feel, or do something as a result of hearing that story.
So, you're really more concerned with, does this story illustrate the point that I'm making?
That's the first thing is releasing yourself of this burden of it having to be something it doesn't have to be. And then when you go looking for the stories. Usually, I will tell someone, you've got a book, you have a message. You have three talking points. You have lessons that you want to give your listener in your book and take one of those lessons. Maybe you're a financial planner, and maybe one of your lessons would be. “Kelly, I want people to start saving money earlier. They need to not wait till they're 70.”
So I would ask, oh, do you know anybody who waited till they were 70 and it had a negative impact on their life? “Oh, yeah, certainly do.” Great. There's a story there.
Do you know somebody who did follow your advice and it paid off in a beautiful way? “Oh, yes. I've got plenty of examples.” There are stories there.
Stories are simply now. They're not a list of facts. A story isn't, I was born in 1920. I started a business in a basement. Those are facts.
A story is about somebody who had a problem, a conflict, and it was resolved. I do want to clarify that. That's how I define the story. You're simply finding a story that illustrates the point that you want to make.
You're just putting a human face on it, somebody who followed your advice from a personal angle. Susan, those of you, the authors, if you're going to give a talk or you'll read from your book or whatever that may be. I, as your listener, would love to know what made you create your life's work around this.
What was your journey to this truth that you now teach?
Why does this matter so much to you personally?
Tell me the story of you, and why you wrote this book.
What it means to you and why you have made this your calling and why it feels so good for you to be part of helping other people with this knowledge?
I think all of us as authors are well served to have some sort of an opening story about this, and this is why I'm here today.
I'm not here just because I wrote the book.
I'm here because I learned this the hard way.
I'm here because I saw my mother go through this.
And the reason we do that in our books and in our talks is because how can I best put this?
When I stand on that stage as a speaker, I am not just here to give you all this information.
I have a vested interest in you believing in it and buying into what I'm saying is I’m wanting you to go and take this information and change your life.
I could easily come up and say, here are 47 things I know about story and call it a day.
I could write a book that would do that. I probably have.
But it becomes even richer when I can become a salesperson up on that stage or on that paper or in that video, and actually sell you on why this material is so important. And getting that buy-in.
It sort of makes the salespeople, whether we're doing it on a page, on a video, or in person. And the cardinal rule of sales, I did not come up with this. It's been around forever that people buy from people they like, and people they trust. People they believe in and people they feel like they know.
And as authors and as speakers or however we're getting our message out on whatever platform, giving our audience a chance to know us and create a relationship with us serves us very well. They lower their arms, and they follow us on that journey that we now want to take them on because they trust us.
Stories show who you are without you having to tell them.
[Susan Friedmann]
Oh, yes. And the whole idea and as you were saying that, the authenticity in which you were saying that just comes through in the words that you were using and just the realness of it. I can see doing that with any of the authors, and even myself included, is just to share from the heart. And because I felt that that was all coming from your heart, as you were saying that. You're passionate about what you do. You want me, you're inviting me to share that passion with you.
Am I correct in that?
[Kelly Swanson]
That's a beautiful way to put it, yes. I believe even though I'm not seeing you, I'm looking at a camera, but I am seeing you. I saw you a minute ago, and I'm not seeing your audience. But I believe we're having a conversation. And in conversations, you speak from the heart.
You share things about yourself.
There's a give and a take.
Gone are the days of connecting through a performance or overly polished or scripted writing that has no voice in it. Well, that's not totally gone, but you know what I mean. I think that's part of having an authentic, engaging conversation.
I will often tell speakers, to tell us a little bit about yourself before you start your speech. And it doesn't have to be anything that really matters. It can be. I'm addicted to Big Bang episodes. I love candy corn in the fall. I light a candle every day at work. I love my dog Max, even though he gets hair everywhere. When you let them into your story, they are now seeing you as human. And you're not just a talking head.
There almost is no wrong way to do it, as long as you just open up a little bit and tell me something. And the greatest way to do it is, well, let me tell you a little bit about myself before we get started.
[Susan Friedmann]
When you say that, it almost feels for me, it's like, oh, well, it's all about me, but it isn't. So, it's a matter of you just getting to know me a bit. Not me saying, oh, how wonderful I am, but rather something almost like it was very trivial and mundane about, as you said, every day I come in, I light a candle, or, you know, your dog hair, I mean, that says, oh, wow, she's a real person, even though she looks wonderful standing on this stage. There's realness, there's that authenticity.
You and I have been around the speaking business for so long, it's interesting wtat you said we're not scripted in the same way we used to be. And I really like the way that this industry is going. We are now more authentic and we are more genuine about the way that we share our information on stages.
[Kelly Swanson]
I agree. And I'm going to spin it in the other direction for a minute as well because I do like that direction. I do like that we're becoming more authentic and we're talking with the audience, and we are who we are up there.
Well, the good parts of us, not some polished version of something else that everybody in the room knows is fake. I love that authentic part. I will, however, say, because I love scripting, that we have done it, in some cases to a fault, where media has come in and video has come in and we're losing the art of well-scripted language as well, in our society, but on that stage. And yes, I strive to be authentic, and I strive to be conversational and organic and real and to let a lot of that polish and professionalism. I still want to be professional but let a lot of that polish go.
But I'll tell you what, the beauty of a well-crafted phrase or a phrase that you know when I say that Harriet and Harold, who lived two streets over from me, were the type of couple who never got overly excited about religion or politics.
As parents, they lived in various shades of beige and never really colored outside the lines.
The time I took to craft that language sets me apart on the stage. I believe it allows me to deliver a funny line. It'll give me a phrase, what would you do if you were brave? That becomes tweetable.
Yes, I'm agreeing, and I totally derailed the conversation, but I'm agreeing that authentic and organic is good to a point, but we can't lose the art of the spoken word either.
Am I making sense without I'm seeing it disappear in favor of, oh, I've got a great PowerPoint presentation. I've watched entire presentations where I was like, well, that was a great video, but the speaker was in the dark the whole time. I don't even really know what you looked like anyway. Sometimes I lament the direction that it's going in.
[Susan Friedmann]
What's coming out of this, Kelly, and this is so key, is that despite the fact that you're being authentic and you're sharing and you're inviting people into your life, there's an element of it being orchestrated as well. The whole idea of it being scripted out, certain phrases, as you say, or certain how you now described your neighbors and these people. I mean, that isn't something that you just thought of just like that. You spent time thinking about that. And I have a feeling that you’ve used that several times in your presentation, or when it's appropriate.
[Kelly Swanson]
Yes. They say the best speakers are the ones who make it look easy. I'm sure most of your listeners, wouldn't just wing it in your book.
You want that combination of authenticity, but you want it to have structure.
You want it to be powerful language. I take it the reason when you think of me, you think of “story,” is because I probably go deeper into it than most speakers will ever care to do. Because I look at it like music, like a musician looks at music. Every word is a note. And where you place it, the pause you take in between the rises and the ebbs and the flows, the melody of that presentation, that keeps it from being a flat line. It thrills me. And any writers who are listening know that feeling of playing with words to such a degree. I feel like a conductor, Susan, because you can I shouldn't say manipulate, but it's like music.
You can choreograph the journey you take your audience on. We're going to laugh here, and we're going to cry a little bit and, oh, this is going to be touching, this father's jumping in the leaves with his children.
And it's just this beautiful journey that takes strategy.
[Susan Friedmann]
Talking about strategy, is there a simple formula to putting together a simple story, let's say, about yourself that you could share with our listeners?
[Kelly Swanson]
There is not one formula everybody uses. There are many people who come up with their own methods. I have a method I follow.
I have what I call an anatomy of a presentation. And then what I look at is the anatomy or the structure of a story. It does not follow. Many of your listeners may be thinking of the hero's journey or the things we learned in school. This is not that.
Because I look at story, not in writing a Batman movie or a novel. I'm looking at stories simply as a strategic tool to persuade someone and change the way they think. Yes, sometimes they're just fluffy, light, funny, and silly. So, my structure is for that purpose.
I'm not going to go into all the pieces of it. I'll give you a free gift link in this call that will take you there. But I believe stories, while sometimes I break this rule, I believe that stories that have a character that we can see with a conflict, problem or a desire.
With an emotion.
With a resolution.
With another emotion attached to that.
With a victory moment.
With an emotion attached to that.
With a lesson that they learn.
That's kind of the structure that I put up underneath a story in your free gift. You can go see those words written out for you. There's not a lot of them. But yes, I have a structure I follow in putting a story together.
Here's an even simpler one.
A lot of my stories, I'll put them through what I call a three-paragraph method. And that's simply first paragraph…
Set it up.
Give me context.
Tell me enough to get in the scene.
Second paragraph…
Tell me what happened.
Third paragraph…
Tell me what you learned from it.
I have a story I tell all the time. “The woman with the mop in the hospital lobby.” And I tell stories about these ordinary moments, how I see something simple in life, and it affects me, and I learn from it.
But I'll tell this woman with the mop. And that's exactly how I did it in three paragraphs.
First paragraph…
I'm sitting in the hospital lobby. Now, I'll put more flowery language around it, but I'm sitting in the hospital lobby.
I'm getting ready to go do a job.
I'm teaching about customer service, and boom, there's this woman standing there singing and dancing and twirling her way across the marbled floors of her hospital lobby, while the beeps of the monitors and the dings of the elevators sang to her in sweet harmony.
And suddenly I could smell the perfume of my changed perspective as I watched this woman turn her job into an art.
And then the next paragraph…
I just talked about all throughout the day, I'm watching her. She's helping the old man wrap the shawl tighter around his wife shoulders.
She does this, she does that.
I saw her give away her lunch.
All throughout the day, in the cold, unexpecting antiseptic corners of that hospital, I saw pain find healing.
I watched sorrow meet comfort, and I saw hopelessness find hope all wrapped up in her faded cotton dress and comfortable shoes.
And then in the last paragraph…
I watch her leave.
And I say, you know, that day, a woman with a mop showed me what it looks like when we serve.
A woman who smelled of bleach and blessings reminded me that happiness, peace, contentment, and love for what you do and why you do it is not something you wait to be given to you or you wait for your boss to tell you.
It is a mindset.
It is a choice you make.
That woman wasn't singing because she had the best job in the place.
She was singing because that is the story she writes every day.
And I think if a woman with a mop can sing like that, so can we.
And see, that's simple.
Set it up.
Tell me what happened.
Tell me what you learned from it.
[Susan Friedmann]
Oh, my goodness. I'm like my jaw is just hanging down here.
[Kelly Swanson]
Well, in fairness, I've told that story a gazillion billion people.
[Susan Friedmann]
Oh, no, you didn't just tell it for the first time.
[Kelly Swanson]
Let me tell you, Susan. People will ask me, they'll say, how is it that I've heard you tell that story ten times, and every time it feels different?
And I say, because every time I'm there, I am in it.
Even now, when I'm looking at a computer on a podcast, even now, I am seeing her.
I am smiling.
I am remembering.
I'm hearing.
I am standing inside the story and telling you about it as if I have virtual reality glasses on.
Instead of standing over to the side and pointing to it and saying, that happened. That happened. That happened.
And many of us stand at a safe distance from our story.
We recite it, and we're not realizing it's coming out in the same way we would say our grocery list or the rest of our talk.
What I try to do is stand inside it. That's why people sometimes say, oh, my God, I've never cried at my story before. I said, yeah, because now you stood inside it again. You shared it with me from the inside, and that makes it feel new and fresh every time. And it feels new and fresh to me, even though I'm like, oh, my gosh, I'm so sick of this story. I've told it a million times I can just see her all over again.
And I will tell you, Susan, every person listening can find a story, hundreds of stories like that. Simple people out there who embody the principles that we're trying to teach our listener or our audience, yeah, I'm guilty.
[Susan Friedmann]
Without overthinking it. It's like, oh, you know, I've got to find the perfect example, the perfect wrapping for the point. But here you're right.
And I remember Jeanne Robertson always talked about writing down these simple things that she saw every single day, seeing how she could fit something around a story.
One of the things that struck me, too, as you were telling that it was so sensory. I could feel it. I could see it, I could hear it.
There are all these different senses that you brought out in telling that story as well, that made it so real. Even though I wasn't there. I was there.
[Kelly Swanson]
I look for ways to describe people that are not typical. She smelled of bleach and blessings. I like throwing words that don't really make sense. As an English major, I should know what that's called. Simile, metaphor, analogy, whatever. But I love using words that wouldn't normally make sense.
I love talking about how my characters see the world. My Aunt Betsy was convinced that Sweet and Low was going to kill us all.
Just a viewpoint on how they see the world, I think, also helps our audience step into that story.
And you're right. Jeannie was brilliant at just taking these simple moments and pulling out of it these beautiful things or funny things we all notice.
Comedy isn't so much what's a funny line. It's what we're all nudging each other, going, oh, my gosh, that is so true.
Like when I say, in Price Hollow, my town, every occasion, birth, death, and everything in between is commemorated with a covered dish casserole with some sort of cream of mushroom soup and a Ritz cracker topping.
People laugh at that. That's not a funny line. They laugh because they understand that.
Well, one thing I do want to say, too, Susan, about what you're commenting. Oftentimes in the stories I tell, the insight comes from me, the narrator. When I would tell people, give your stories a character in a conflict, which a woman with a mop really doesn't. In fact, I say the woman with the mop is not the character of the story. I am. I am the narrator looking through the window whose life has been changed by watching her.
And actually, when I tell the story in a more extended way, I talk about how she taught me what customer service really looks like. I really talk about how I was impacted because of seeing her in all of your stories.
Anybody who's listening, sometimes we get our stories out there from life, maybe from other books, but let's try to get away from that. Or we don't need another Disney story, but just the simple things around us. And we're not part of that story. So, make yourself part of the story.
Why does that story matter to you?
What did it mean to you hearing it?
What did it mean to you to be there at that point in history?
What did you learn from that story?
The closer you can get to the story, the better.
It's why, when you make a joke, comedians will act like it happened to us because the more you removed it is the more, we disconnect from it.
It's why your personal stories will be more powerful than were you to find a great story from Chicken Soup for the Soul. We kind of roll our eyes and go, okay, well, that's a great story, but this is what I'm trying to say. Sorry, it took me so long.
It is in the simple life experiences that we all have in our own personal life where we have the most power to connect with our audience. It's the only thing other people can't take from us. It's our story. People used to tell me, and by the way, you can talk about yourself the whole time as long as you make it about me.
You said something earlier about I didn't want to brag or I didn't want to bring myself up or talk about me. You may talk about yourself if you make it about me.
The second thing I want to say is for years, I would get the impression that I wasn't allowed to tell stories about my personal life in a business setting. Like, I couldn't talk about my husband or my son or no, you’ve got to tell business stories in a business setting.
Well, I tell you what. The stories about my husband get the most laughs. People can relate to them. People connect more to those stories because they are relatable and they are real life, and they are universal. So, I have quickly changed my tune on that, and I'm like, no, there's nothing wrong with a person now. I would say don't tell all stories about being a mom and your kids if you're in a group full of salesmen or dairy farmers in Amish country. I mean, you want to sort of be selective because you want to find stories that mirror your audience in terms of emotion, not so much plot.
And let me say that again, people connect with us when they identify with the emotion in our story, not the plot. No two of us are ever going to walk the same journey in life when we hear your story. We're not going to relate to that, even if the same thing happened. But when you name the emotion that I recognize now, I try to find that emotion. I already said this earlier a little bit, but I try to find it in my own day. My brain automatically searches for it, and I'm now standing inside my story at the same time. It is an extremely powerful tool.
[Susan Friedmann]
Yeah. And something that you said is your audience. I mean, know your audience and then relate the stories so that it's meaningful for them, even though, as you said, it's your story and you experienced it, it's your life experience. But they've also had maybe a similar life experience then it's like they relate and they can put the pieces together, and it makes sense. And then for them, it becomes meaningful.
[Kelly Swanson]
There's something even deeper, too, like if you need them to understand a complex thing or something you're explaining and you go into a story about your first job or well, let me give you a better example.
I was working with a client who spoke about a very complicated computer issue thing, whatever. His clients know nothing about what he's talking about. He speaks an entirely different language from the people that he has to work with. So he's constantly saying over and over again what they need in their computer, and he's like, I don't understand it. They don't get what I'm saying. I'm like, no, they don't get it. They don't understand the context. You're using a vocabulary that they don’t have a context for. Give them a story they do understand.
What can you compare this to that they do understand? And he said, oh, well, it's like now this isn't a personal story, Susan, but I'm still giving it as an example. He said, let's say you have a bakery and you have a commercial refrigerator in there, and everybody in the bakery keeps buying groceries and sticking them in the refrigerator. And milk goes into the back and cream goes to the side, and another cream is going to the other side, and things are spoiled, and you're buying new things and shoving them in there. You're wasting all this money, blah, blah, blah.
He says that's what's happening inside their computers, and that's what I've come to help them fix.
Now, he did a better job explaining it than I'm doing right now. But my point still stands true. When we hear him talk about a commercial bakery with a refrigerator, we all go, yeah, you don't want that. Of course, they've wasted money. That's not very organized. And we accept that. If that is true, then this must be true over here when he says, that's why I'm coming here. And it could be totally bogus, but there's something so powerful in that.
Give them a story they do understand that you can now relate to your topic. And I bet, Susan, you've got some people on this podcast. Financial planners are a great example. Healthcare, insurance, anybody whose industry tends to have its own terminology, well, they just feel like these people don't understand what I'm saying. And I spoke for IT people in government, and wow, did they speak an entirely different language? And we just had to go back and forth, and I finally say, tell it to me like I'm five, I don't understand. What do you do? And they would finally get it and kind of come out of their own context. I hope that was helpful.
[Susan Friedmann]
It is. And it obviously brings up another whole other issue of, as you said, you know, speak to tell me as if I'm a five-year-old. And I often say to people is like, yeah, help me understand that. Pretend that I'm a five- or six-year-old and that I don't understand, and we start putting a whole different language onto that. And you've fulfilled more than what I thought we would do here. But there's just so much more. So, Kelly, you know you're going to be coming back, don't you?
[Kelly Swanson]
That we've got really getting started.
[Susan Friedmann]
We've only just gotten started. I'm like, okay, I know that our listeners are chomping at the bit to find out how they can find out more about you. This free gift that you are generously offering, tell us.
[Kelly Swanson]
Sure. Usually when people hear me talk about why, they're like, okay, okay, I get it. It's important, but how do I do it? There is a free gift for you, meaning a lot of free online resources. My Story Formula book and My Story Libs template book. There's a training video. There are a bunch of resources, and I'm going to give you a link that will direct you there. And it's called StoryImpactNetwork.com. And that's my community. I am building my own, like, social media platform, I guess. My own community. I am building for people who love Story and there are resources in it. Now, if you want to go deeper and really learn and have meetups and get my eyes on your stuff, then you definitely want to check out StoryImpactAcademy.com. That's where you can actually take a journey with me and go deeper into that.
[Susan Friedmann]
Yeah, and I'm part of that academy and it's great. She takes my stories and pulls them apart and tells me how I could make it better. So, yes, I highly recommend that. And listeners, you're going to want to listen to this several times and get hold of Kelly's information because she's brilliant, she's absolutely brilliant at this.
Kelly, we always end up leaving our listeners with a golden nugget. What's yours?
[Kelly Swanson]
Your story matters to the one who needs to hear it.
[Susan Friedmann]
That's short, sweet, and simple. Wow. Yes. And poignant, right on the button. Thank you. This has been amazing, even more amazing than I thought it would be, or I should have known better. I thank you for sharing your wisdom. And for you all, listeners, thank you for taking time out of your precious day to listen to this interview and I sincerely hope that it sparks some ideas you can use to sell more books. Here's wishing you much book and author marketing success.
Here's how to get Kelly's free resources: The Story Formula; Story Libs Template and much, much more.
