"You have a real gift," we say to our storytelling heroes. But do they? Storytelling is a skill. Communicating with greater impact is a craft. It’s not something anyone is gifted. It’s something we all can master. Today, it’s just me, Jay. Hello! I’m trying a solo episode, sharing my favorite trick for stronger ideas and stories. Be forewarned: this trick involves sharing your thinking publicly. Not “building in public,” as many like to talk about doing, but by aerating your thinking to...

It's time for a new edition of "Is This Anything?", the miniseries where friends and clients join me to work out new drafts and ideas for upcoming pieces and projects. In this episode, I help Justin Moore design his signature talk, beat by beat. Justin is the founder of Creator Wizard, which helps creators secure more and better brand deals to grow their businesses. Through trainings, coaching, and his signature course, Justin has made a name for himself in the creator economy. For both his...

Today, it's a total treat as the one and only Seth Godin takes us into how he thinks about storytelling and the intersection of strategy and story, and then we hear him dissect a signature story. Plus, Seth and I trade stories in the back half of the episode—business storytelling nerdery on full display. Seth is a world-renowned storyteller and thought leader, a legendary keynote speaker who helped disrupt the format, and the bestselling author of more than 20 books, including Purple Cow, The...

This week, we’re joined by our first-ever recurring guest. The brilliant Ann Handley (WSJ bestselling author of Everybody Writes and globally touring keynote speaker) joins us for a very special episode of “Is This Anything?”, the mini-series, where friends and collaborators join me to work out new ideas, unproven drafts, and hidden ideas to see if it is, in fact, anything. But because it’s Ann, we’re renaming it Is This ANNything. Get it? Do you get it? (If you didn’t like that, you’re...

Why is candor essential for a good story? How brutally honest should you actually be in sharing a story with the world?  The great Chase Jarvis brings us into his story of self-discovery, with the many twists and turns his professional career has taken, as he works through how to best tell that story ahead of his next book tour.  Starting in second grade when his entrepreneurial spirit was snuffed by his teacher, Chase works to find acceptance by pursuing the “best” path forward, before...

What is a super-story? And how can you flex yours to fit different audiences, mediums, or conclusions? That’s what we dive into today with powerhouse storyteller, Laura Gassner Otting. Laura takes us into a small story about her first time decorating a Christmas tree with her husband’s family. Initially horrified by the chipped ornaments and tattered boxes, she grew to love these mismatched decorations. It’s a story about finding meaning in often unexpected, imperfect places—and it's full of...

Go inside the development of a brand new TED Talk, as Jay offers notes to friend Simone Stolzoff on his v1 draft. Simone is the author of The Good Enough Job and a journalist whose writing has been featured in The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, and more. This is the first episode of a new bonus episode of How Stories Happen called "Is This Anything?" which we'll occasionally run in our off weeks. During this miniseries, you'll hear Jay and friends...

Telling stories about your life feels fraught. How do you weave together a story that is deeply personal to you and others, contains the right amount of tension without being too dramatic, and feels both gripping and accessible for your audience?  In the case of our guest today, Nat Eliason, his story is about the moment he went from investing hundreds of dollars to having $10 million of his own money on the line, plus more than $100 million of others under his purview, when the whole system...

You know how a comedian will test out new material, and turn to their colleagues and ask, “Is this anything?”  Welcome to a new bonus episode series—aptly named just that (Is This Anything), that will run on our off weeks from the traditional show, where a guest and I will take their ideas, put it under a storytelling microscope, and find out if these ideas have legs. So what do you get? A front row seat on how the pro’s develop and evolve their stories. So for this episode, meet my friend,...

What should you include or omit to ensure your stories carry your message, resonate with others, and deliver something that could only come from you? That’s the challenge we encounter today.  In this special episode, Jay is joined by a favorite client, Susan Boles, to work through a draft of a signature story, which emerged on the back of their months-long work together developing Susan’s premise of “calm is the new KPI.” They apply Jay’s Align-Agitate-Assert structure, and they find the two...

Storytellers often face a paradox: to connect deeper externally, you have to turn deeper internally. You have to know yourself and get more honest with how you think and feel than others might be comfortable doing themselves. That often means we have to stop caring what people think of us quite as much. In this episode, we meet Brook Cupps and Ryan Hawk, coauthors of the book The Score That Matters. We talk about how they collaborated on their book together and how they use stories to inspire...

How do we compress our lifetime into their runtime? When we’re asked to explain our backgrounds and bios, we need a structure, some practice, and a few anecdotes at the ready. Because our story has to pull triple-duty: clarify who we are, build credibility, and teach whatever it is we’re there to teach. In this episode, author, PR agency founder, and friendship expert Danielle Bayard Jackson reveals the simple way she responds to that simple question: “How’d you get here?” Together, we break...

While everyone scrambles to learn the new trends and act like a futurist, it’s the folks who understand what parts of this work are timeless – because they’re based on human nature – that are most powerful of all.  Storytelling is one such thing. It’s been a constant throughout the history of humanity. Why? Because although the world changes in many ways, human nature is one thing that doesn’t change much at all. So says our guest today, Scott Monty, and it’s part of what makes Scott such an...

How do we craft a metaphor that works? More importantly, perhaps, how do we ensure the metaphors we use pivot to the audience to teach them something in their lives or work, without them getting lost? Do we overtly explain the lesson? Imply it? Some combination? It’s a delicate dance, and few do it like Tucker Bryant. Tucker isn't just a keynote speaker; he's a poet who has taken the stage everywhere from corporate boardrooms to major conferences, importing what he knows from the world of...

The hardest question to answer when we show up publicly might be the simplest question we receive: “Tell me about yourself.” Who are you? How’d you get here? What’s your story? We then face a choice: we can make the story about us, or we can make it about the thing we’re there to say. We can make our own stories about the audiences we wish to serve, and we can do so without feeling like we’re bragging and even without any newsworthy moments in our past. Meet Rand Fishkin, cofounder and CEO of...

When so many people are excited to create a higher volume of content, shouldn’t we think more about what gives our work greater power? That’s what our guest today understands better than most, and she draws that power from everyday moments she hunts out, like a squirrel finding nuts in the yard. Meet Ann Handley—she’s a best-selling author, a pioneer in content marketing, and a popular B2B speaker with a knack for imbuing ordinary moments with extraordinary meaning. Ann reveals her morning...

Our guest for this episode is rarely online. But when she is, she’s telling small stories with big meaning. Meet Michelle Warner—she’s a business strategist and consultant who architects business models and marketing strategies for clients who sell high-priced services. She also hosts the podcast Sequence Over Strategy—an idea that represents her entire platform’s differentiated premise, and one the story she brings to us today reflects. Michelle has founded multi-million dollar startups,...

I know a ton of storytellers and creators and entrepreneurs, but I know exactly zero other people who have learned how to do what they do from both legendary news broadcasters and Kermit the Frog. Meet Andrew Davis. He is a powerhouse business speaker who’s given speeches in 35 different countries, at more than 50 events every year. He speaks to audiences ranging from marketers and entrepreneurs to plumbers and physicians — and there may not be a storyteller who is this craft-driven and...

Welcome to How Stories Happen, a show for business storytellers focused on standing out easier and resonating deeper through substance and stories, not hollow stunts. Each episode, an expert, entrepreneur, or world-class communicator breaks apart a single story piece by piece, sharing how they developed it and how they're using it to grow their brand and leave their legacy. Hosted by Jay Acunzo As Ira Glass said, “Great stories happen to those who can tell them.” He doesn’t mean worthy things...