Storytelling with Nancy Duarte: How to craft compelling presentations and tell a story that sticks

1. 0:00 – 3:25

   Nancy’s background

   1. NDNancy Duarte0:00

      A lot of people think that the only time you really need to present well is when you have a big stage talk and you make the big investment in the script, the big investment in the contrast, and story. But I'll tell you a dirty little secret, I can get my husband to do chores for me on the weekends with a real quick "What is, what could be new bliss?" So the ability to just have that contrast as a framework in your brain during a meeting, on a phone call, any moment of influence, like literally it works. It works in any format.

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky0:27

      (intro music) Welcome to Lenny's Podcast, where I interview world-class product leaders and growth experts to learn from their hard won experiences building and growing today's most successful products. Today my guest is Nancy Duarte. Nancy is the type of guest that I never imagined being able to get on this podcast, but I'm so happy that it happened. Nancy is a best-selling author, speaker, and CEO of Duarte Incorporated, which has helped create over 250,000 presentations for the world's most influential business leaders, brands, and institutions, including Apple, Ted, Google, The World Bank, and famously, Al Gore on his Inconvenient Truth presentation. In our conversation, Nancy shares a ton of tactical advice for how to improve your own presentations, how to tell better stories, how to lay out convincing arguments, how to reduce your nerves when you present, and even a simple communication framework to improve your relationship dynamics. I had such a good time chatting with Nancy, and I'm sure you will love this episode. With that, I bring you Nancy Duarte after a short word from our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by Microsoft Clarity, a free, easy to use tool that captures how real people are actually using your site. You can watch live session replays to discover where users are breezing through your flow and where they struggle. You can view instant heat maps to see what parts of your page users are engaging with and what content they're ignoring. You can also pinpoint what's bothering your users with really cool frustration metrics like rage clicks, and dead clicks, and much more. If you listen to this podcast, you know how often we talk about the importance of knowing your users. And by seeing how users truly experience your product, you can identify product opportunities, conversion wins, and find big gaps between how you imagine people using your product and how they actually use it. Microsoft Clarity makes it all possible with a simple yet incredibly powerful set of features. You'll be blown away by how easy Clarity is to use, and it's completely free forever. You'll never run into traffic limits or be forced to upgrade to a paid version. It also works across both apps and websites. Stop guessing, get Clarity. Check out Clarity at clarity.microsoft.com. Are you hiring? Or on the flip side, are you looking for a new opportunity? Well, either way, check out lennysjobs.com/talent. If you're a hiring manager, you can sign up and get access to hundreds of hand-curated people who are open to new opportunities. Thousands of people apply to join this collective, and I personally review and accept just about 10% of them. You won't find a better place to hire product managers and growth leaders. Join almost a hundred other companies who are actively hiring through this collective. And if you're looking around for a new opportunity, actively or passively, join the collective. It's free, you can be anonymous, and you can even hide yourself from specific companies. You can also leave anytime, and you'll only hear from companies that you want to hear from. Check out lennysjobs.com/talent.

2. 3:25 – 4:52

   The insane number of presentations Nancy has helped create

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky3:27

      Nancy, welcome to the podcast.

   2. NDNancy Duarte3:31

      Thank you for having me, Lenny.

   3. LRLenny Rachitsky3:33

      How many presentations have you helped craft at this point, both directly and indirectly?

   4. NDNancy Duarte3:38

      That's a great question. I, I... People know I'll like take a swag of data and pretend it's real. So I had a president who took a, a whack at that number in, it was 2014, and he said at that time it was 225,000, and that was like almost 10 years ago. So I don't even, I can't even, I can't even tell you. I mean it's, I, we stopped tracking, so (laughs) . But it's a lot. I mean, in 35 years, we have thousands of projects we open, and each sometimes has two to 100 presentations in it, so it'd be hard to tell. Exactly.

   5. LRLenny Rachitsky4:13

      200,000? (laughs)

   6. NDNancy Duarte4:14

      Two hundred and... He said 250,000, but that was-

   7. LRLenny Rachitsky4:17

      (laughs) .

   8. NDNancy Duarte4:17

      ... that was 10 years ago. And I didn't do the math.

   9. LRLenny Rachitsky4:20

      Okay.

   10. NDNancy Duarte4:20

       So when my team questioned it, I'm like, "Oh, Dan did the math." They're like, "Oh, then it's accurate." (laughs) 'Cause they thought I was just making up this number. I'm like, "No, no, we actually went in and looked," so.

   11. LRLenny Rachitsky4:30

       Okay.

   12. NDNancy Duarte4:31

       Yeah.

   13. LRLenny Rachitsky4:31

       I was not expecting it to be that large. That's insane.

   14. NDNancy Duarte4:34

       It's so funny, 'cause I have the whole history of the Silicon Valley in a way, right? It's like every little startup and then they grew to massive brands like Cisco and you could actually look at the rise and fall of all these companies and then I actually have all the decks. I still have a lot of these archived, so it's, it's, uh... I could actually verify that number exactly

3. 4:52 – 7:04

   The most memorable presentation of Nancy’s career, and what it taught her

   1. NDNancy Duarte4:52

      (laughs) .

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky4:52

      Okay. Well, this next question's gonna be extra hard then. Of all the presentations you've worked on, which one stands out to you as the most memorable or most impactful?

   3. NDNancy Duarte5:02

      I mean, it has to be Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth, right?

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky5:04

      Mm-hmm.

   5. NDNancy Duarte5:05

      And it kinda hit the world in a season where, uh, nobody really knew or had an example of a really well done presentation. So it came out before Ted Talks were even out, um, on the web. And so, people had never seen someone tell a data story and stand in front of data in the scale of 90-foot screen. But we had worked with him for five years before Inconvenient Truth. Like people think he went from, you know, vice president to this, um, presenter. And I didn't work with him. I let my team work with him. So they were the ones jetting around, jumping backstage at Oprah. Like they, they loved it. Like it was a real peak season. But the thing actually that was most memorable is, you know, we work with these, you know, 20 some year old CEOs here in the Valley and, and they tend to show up and act like they know better, you know, than someone who's been doing this for so, so long. And what was so interesting about this large figure politician, you know, communicator, is we, uh, the team would sit in a room and say, "Hey, we think you need to do this this way. We think you needed to convey it this way. We think it should be visualized this way." Or, or whatever it was we were proposing. And he would literally pause, and-... and like touch his chin and really think and really consider that we might actually be experts. And more times than not, he would adopt the way we, we said it should be done. And so I think as like the, the customer who actually probably had some of the most power in the whole world to thoughtfully defer to us as experts was delightful customer and, you know, consulting experience. I mean, I remember when they called me t- to say it was gonna become a movie and, uh, that it had gotten funded and I started to get the information, they wanted us to do a lot of work to get it movie ready. And I'll never forget, I, I, I said, "Wow, that's gonna be a lot of work we'd have to do for free. And who's gonna go see a movie about a slideshow anyway?" (laughs) Like that's literally what I said. And so, yeah, I, I just didn't believe it would become what it became. So

4. 7:04 – 9:00

   The lasting impact of working with Al Gore

   1. NDNancy Duarte7:04

      the whole process was amazing.

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky7:05

      Did you expect the impact of what happened after that presentation? Or is that, was it just like, "Oh, we got this one job we gotta do. Let's just get through it and then move on"?

   3. NDNancy Duarte7:13

      (laughs) Well, we'd been doing it for five years. I think the strategy, whether it was intentional or not, I don't know. So he would go city to city to city to... He was traveling for five years seeding, like planting seeds for a groundswell. And he went into the, you know, he would go to the Stanford campus, invite, you know, the Bay Area elite and it was always private and it was always VIP. And so he, he did a really good job for five years traveling, traveling, traveling, traveling and, and really, really delivering that talk. And I think that created a desire. I don't know that it would have gotten that much traction. I don't know if he hadn't al- if people already didn't know about the presentation and hadn't already seen the presentation and they brought their friends to the movie, is how I kind of picture at least that part happening. And he was generous, Lenny. I mean, at the end when he traveled around for those five years, at the end he always had a slide with our name on it and would thank us if we were in the audience. I mean, super, I mean... And paid, you know, mostly paid for what we did, though we did, you know, give a lot of our own time. But yeah, super generous and, and yeah, movie became what it was. It was a surp- a bit of a surprise (laughs) . But it was good. The movie was good, so.

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky8:26

      It was good. It also makes me, uh, think about a pattern that I often see of, it wasn't just like one presentation that changed everything.

   5. NDNancy Duarte8:34

      Yeah.

   6. LRLenny Rachitsky8:34

      It was, you said five years of kind of prep ahead of that.

   7. NDNancy Duarte8:36

      Mm-hmm.

   8. LRLenny Rachitsky8:36

      And it's... You always see these like, wow, overnight success stories and you always find, okay, it wasn't actually that.

   9. NDNancy Duarte8:42

      Yeah. And he did a good job after. Once it got traction, we built like a whole training program where he could fly people out, uh, to his place in Tennessee and start to train people. So it almost became like a train the trainer and he could sanction you as a ambassador for it. So it's just the way the whole thing kind of unfolded and

5. 9:00 – 11:44

   How Nancy landed Apple as a client

   1. NDNancy Duarte9:00

      scaled and then got traction was lovely.

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky9:03

      Speaking of impressive clients, I only learned this recently, but Apple has been a client of yours since the day you were founded as an organization.

   3. NDNancy Duarte9:10

      Uh-huh.

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky9:10

      Is that right?

   5. NDNancy Duarte9:11

      Yeah, it was. Yeah.

   6. LRLenny Rachitsky9:12

      Okay. How did you land that initially? And then also just what have you learned from that experience-

   7. NDNancy Duarte9:18

      Yeah.

   8. LRLenny Rachitsky9:18

      ... that has informed your approach to presentation design, communication and, and how you work with clients?

   9. NDNancy Duarte9:22

      I love that question. So yeah, I w- I w- had like a real job. I was working my real job and my husband had bought a Mac and he's like, "I think this is a business. I think it could be a real business." And he was an illustrator, uh, wasn't a designer, but he had been a fine artist and he's like, "Look, I can draw." Of course it's all pixelated and like bitmappy. He goes, "Look, I could draw lines in here." And he's a, like if I could show you his art studio, his work is just gorgeous.

   10. LRLenny Rachitsky9:47

       Mm-hmm.

   11. NDNancy Duarte9:47

       So he's definitely a fine artist and he's like, "I think this is a business. I think this could be a business." And I'm very pregnant. (laughs) We were talking about that earlier. I am very pregnant with my son and I'm like, "Dude, you're gonna go get yourself a real job. You know, I don't want you playing around with this little Mac thing."

   12. LRLenny Rachitsky10:02

       Hmm.

   13. NDNancy Duarte10:02

       And he begged me, like twice in our marriage. He like literally has gotten on his knees and- to try to get me to see his perspective, begged me. He's like, "Just read a MacWorld Magazine. Just read it through once and if you still don't think this could become a thing..." 'Cause I was working on a mainframe, I'm like, "I work on a real computer." So what happened was I made some phone calls. I called NASA and I called Tandem, which is now HP, and I called Apple and we won contracts at all three brands at the same time. And back then our company was called Duarte Desktop Publishing & Graphic Design.

   14. LRLenny Rachitsky10:36

       Oh, wow.

   15. NDNancy Duarte10:36

       (laughs) I know. I know, right? And, and we slipped in, like when you talk about a product life cycle, very early, like everything was still bitmappy, was not attractive, you know, most people as users didn't know how to typeset, didn't know how to do columns, didn't know how to make in this tool at all. And w- there's about an 18 month window in the life cycle of the Macintosh where graphic designers refused to use it. Refused. "It's a toy. It's ugly. It's bitmapped. Nobody would do a t- a font like that. We use Linotype." Like it was very s- the snobby kind of... (laughs) we, we won't touch it. And that's right when we entered, like right then. Went and checked out books at the library on typesetting, we tried to figure out what we could do, how we could, you know, what could we do with this tool? And then the rest was, was kind of history. And so that's how it started and, and the timing and just p- kind of pushing the tool that nobody was that interested in that were in the design community. It was small adoption.

   16. LRLenny Rachitsky11:36

       That's interesting that it was like cold emails basically, or cold reach out. Just like, "Hey, we wanna work with you."

   17. NDNancy Duarte11:41

       Yeah. Cold calling.

   18. LRLenny Rachitsky11:41

       That's an awesome example. Oh my god.

   19. NDNancy Duarte11:42

       Cold calling. Yeah. (laughs)

   20. LRLenny Rachitsky11:43

       Okay.

6. 11:44 – 16:22

   How working with Apple informed future presentations

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky11:44

   2. NDNancy Duarte11:44

      It was.

   3. LRLenny Rachitsky11:45

      What did you take away from that experience that kind of informed what works and doesn't work in presentations?

   4. NDNancy Duarte11:51

      Presentations used to be 35 millimeter slides in an old carousel. In fact, that's what Al Gore had when he showed it, he was like, "Here's my slide carousel from the '70s." (laughs) Like it was just how it was done. But Apple was the first company to hook up the computer to a projector at scale. And the com- projectors at these big venues, like San Jose Convention Center. I mean, it was huge and it was, uh, risky. So because we were kind of f- we were first in, they pushed us to start to do the presentations in this tool. And it was black and white, like everything was black and white when we first started. And then we started to push and push and push from how we illustrated things in the tool, how we would colorize clip art. I mean, I'm talking like clip art packages just came out and they're like, "Could... Hey, grab these. Colorize 'em." And, and so it was a really, uh, momentous moment to win them as an account. And I remember the tool had started to really take off and it was ugly.You can call it fugly. I don't know what you want to call it, but everyone who made slides did it so poorly, just so poorly, and we were kind of pushing the boundaries of it to make it look attractive. And there was a sales conference in 1992 in San Francisco and the leader of sales at the time was kind of a creative savant of sorts, and I remember he's like, "I don't know how you're gonna do it, but I want you to take the whole slide." Like this is when slides were basically teleprompted, covered in text. If you could stick a piece of clip art on it, you were lucky.

   5. LRLenny Rachitsky13:11

      Hmm.

   6. NDNancy Duarte13:11

      And he said, "I want- I want you to just make the whole slide, it's just covered with the word big in hot pink, and I want the background black 'cause when this slide pops up in all pink big, I want it to actually light the faces of the people in the audience." And it was like, I didn't know how to, like, we couldn't do that. We had to go into Freehand, convert it to this, do this, do these six steps, and then we came up with a small JPEG at the time, or PNG or something and we scaled it up, so it was still kind of pixelated. And I remember I was in that hall during the rehearsal and the production team gasped, a couple people squealed, they're like, "Who did this? How did- What is..." I mean, it was just the word big in magenta pink and- and I just remember thinking, "This is how it's supposed to be done." Like, the putting the tool in the hands of the masses kind of destroyed the medium itself and I feel like the first 10 or so years I was in business, it was reshaping this medium that ran amok when it got into the hands of the users, it just went completely the opposite way that it was supposed to. So that, it's weird to say, that was a real defining moment for me to say, "Wait, wait, we can do this different and we can return to how they used to be done when they were 35 millimeter slides." So that's one story. And then- and then I think we're very good at mapping to the brand, the brand requirements. So we take this tool, whate- whatever the tool, we have all the bra- all our brands use different ones, they use slides, Keynote, uh, they use, um, PowerPoint, like we use whatever tool the brand wants, and we push it in each medium, and, but we- we take their brand guidelines and really push it into the spoken word medium where when they stand up on a stage, it's cinematic, like the visuals can become an experience in itself. And I just, I remember when Apple came up with the Think Different campaign.

   7. LRLenny Rachitsky15:02

      Mm-hmm.

   8. NDNancy Duarte15:02

      Steve Jobs was just back and my designer, everyone, you know, Photoshop was new and everyone's doing these beveled backgrounds with tons of crap on the background, like, it, you know, and I walked by, I'm like, "No. Oh, we can't have a blue frame looking photo frame to, for the Think Different campaign. This is not gonna work." And so I just, I remember looking at all the posters and remembering the Alfred Hitchcock ones that had these particulates, like these particulates, and it was just shadows, and I found a- a stock video that, uh, Adobe had made at the time and it was just particulates floating through the air at an angle and we stuck the six color apple on top of it. That was so revolutionary back there to push the brand and get out of the way, every, the whole world was making these hideous templates. So there's these moments that pushed the company forward because of an idea that I knew would not be okay for the Apple brand, therefore it shouldn't be okay for any brand, and I think, I think those are just a couple s- stories of how- how to really push the medium in a way that is more pleasing to the audience. Like, the audience just likes it better when it's really clear what you're supposed to focus on. We love that brand.

   9. LRLenny Rachitsky16:21

      (laughs)

   10. NDNancy Duarte16:21

       We love it.

7. 16:22 – 17:33

   3 things to remember when creating a deck

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky16:22

      Okay, so let's get a little tactical 'cause you're talking about-

   2. NDNancy Duarte16:25

      Sure.

   3. LRLenny Rachitsky16:25

      ... some very specific things that you've found to be working.

   4. NDNancy Duarte16:27

      Mm-hmm.

   5. LRLenny Rachitsky16:27

      So everyone listening to this podcast has probably heard many times it's really important to be great at presentations, that there's so much power in storytelling and communication, all these things, and they probably read a bunch of books and blog posts and watched videos of like how to give a great presentation. Uh, but myself and I feel like most people sit down at a deck when they're about to present to an all hands, say a week later or are gonna do a meeting and I'm always just like, "What? Okay, what do I do?" Have this, okay, there's like a beginning, middle, end.

   6. NDNancy Duarte16:56

      (laughs)

   7. LRLenny Rachitsky16:56

      They should have some kind of problem, and it's always like, "I don't know what I'm doing." So if someone were to just be listening to this podcast and they're like, "I'm gonna write a Post-it to myself of three bullet points of things that I should remember when I'm starting a deck." What would those three bullet points be?

   8. NDNancy Duarte17:11

      Your audience is the hero. That was in my TED Talk from 2011. I would say it's, infuse your talk with story, and I would say it is asking yourself, "Can they see what I'm saying?" Those would be the three tips. Other than starting with empathy. I mean that- that's, well, audience is the hero is the empathy centric approach,

8. 17:33 – 20:29

   The importance of empathy

   1. NDNancy Duarte17:33

      but...

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky17:33

      Let's dive into these then. So, and I was actually gonna ra- ask around empathy and it feels like that comes up a lot in your-

   3. NDNancy Duarte17:39

      Yeah.

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky17:39

      ... in your recommendations to people is empathy is kind of is at the heart-

   5. NDNancy Duarte17:42

      Yeah.

   6. LRLenny Rachitsky17:42

      ... of your methodology, of telling great stories, telling great presentations. So let's spend a little time there. Why- why is that so important and what does that actually look like in practice?

   7. NDNancy Duarte17:50

      Empathy is important to Duarte. Everything we do is empathy first, and some of it comes from my own childhood story a little bit. I, uh, was raised by a clinically narcissistic mom, and narcissists are missing the empathy gene. So I feel like that void of not having it modeled for me is why I keep clawing at empathy as being important, and I think a lot of people listening might work for a boss that does not have empathy, that isn't other centric, that doesn't think before they talk and all of those things, and I was raised by someone like that. And so every single book and every single model that I ever make has empathy at the core because you have to, have to, have to think about...Who am I speaking with? Especially in communication, who am I speaking with? And so when I went on my journey through storytelling, I figured out that... I thought, "Okay. The presenter's the hero. For sure, the presenter's the hero. They're the central figure. They're talking the most. They're well-lit. They're up on a stage." (clears throat) So when I started to look at all the archetypes, that's where I landed, and then I was like, "Oh, my God." You know, when I got to really digging into the mentor, I realized it's really the mentor in myths and movies that's the presenter. And who really holds the power in the room of a presentation is the audience. Like the audience gets to make a choice if they accept or reject your idea. So they'll... The, the balance of power is with them and not you. So it really is the role of the presenter to be the mentor and in myths and movies, the mentor comes alongside the hero. In other words, the presenter should come alongside the audience and help them get unstuck or bring a magical tool. So like, I think Obi-Wan Kenobi is a great example. He did two things for, uh, Luke Skywalker. He gave him a lightsaber, which was for his outer journey, the physical journey he was doing, you know, and then an, an inner tool, which was the resolve which came to him through the force. So when you're speaking to an audience, they're gonna have a internal conflict that you have to give them something to soothe, and then you're asking them to therefore go and do this thing, take this action, do this call to action. That's asking them to physically do something or physically change in some way. So they're not gonna do that for you if you haven't empathetically thought about how hard what you're asking them is gonna be for them to do. And so it just... You have to change your mindset when you're starting to build your deck to think about, "Who am I talking to? How am I gonna help them get unstuck?" And that's a s- that's just a super foundational principle in everything we do.

9. 20:29 – 22:40

   Empathy in action

   1. NDNancy Duarte20:29

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky20:29

      What is an example of that in practice as we go through these? 'Cause this is really great, um, of that, uh, implemented-

   3. NDNancy Duarte20:36

      Yeah.

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky20:36

      ... like a deck that we know about maybe or s-

   5. NDNancy Duarte20:38

      Oh, that we know about. So I could talk about our own internal ones.

   6. LRLenny Rachitsky20:40

      Yeah, that'd be great

   7. NANarrator20:41

      That works great.

   8. NDNancy Duarte20:41

      Most of, most of what we do is under MSAs 'cause they're fantastical brands.

   9. LRLenny Rachitsky20:46

      Mm. Mm-hmm.

   10. NDNancy Duarte20:46

       Uh, so in our, in my own company, we, before I do a presentation that's gonna require goals or them reaching goals, or we do an annual vision talk.

   11. LRLenny Rachitsky20:57

       Mm.

   12. NDNancy Duarte20:57

       We do a listening tour first. So some of it's based in surveys, some of it's based in interviews, and we feed that information up and then we compare it to what we're gonna ask them to do, and we do some gap analysis. Like we literally... (laughs) There's some, uh, actual questions you can ask yourself, which are somewhat classic design thinking, kind of, questions about where they're at. And then what we do is I create a real rough cut or the exec team creates a real rough cut, and then we invite the next level of leaders in, and we do a, a fake. I mean, the slides are ugly. Like we don't spend time on the slides. This is about the message and maybe a model or two or three that we're gonna go through to feel like it may amplify or make the message more concrete, and then they give feedback and that's when the... It's hard. It's hard to go from like rough cut, here's what we're gonna say, to making it absolutely resonate, and then, and then we deliver it after all of that work has been done, then we share it to the company. So we go through that, uh, knowing that's the hardest presentation I deliver all year. Like I used to travel and speak and be a public speaker, but it's my own internal ones I have-

   13. LRLenny Rachitsky22:03

       Mm.

   14. NDNancy Duarte22:03

       ... have to take more time with. So when I travel and speak, they're like, "Oh, my God. I love your models. Oh gosh," You know, "Mwah, mwah, mwah. Can I get a picture with you?" Right? (laughs) But when I'm standing in front of my own team, they're like, "I wonder what she's gonna say 'cause she's about to either make my job harder or she's gonna change my priorities," right? They're, they come in more skeptical, and we, we definitely have nailed the annual kickoff meeting. Definitely have nailed that. And then we do quarterly, quarterly updates to that annual kickoff meeting, and it's a cadence and people get enthused and, and we're kind of killing it right now.

10. 22:40 – 23:09

    Why internal presentations are so high-pressure

    1. NDNancy Duarte22:40

       Yeah.

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky22:40

       Right. That's what it feels like from the outside. I'm just thinking about, uh, the pressure to create presentations within Duarte Design.

    3. NDNancy Duarte22:47

       Yeah.

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky22:47

       Uh, (laughs) if it's-

    5. NDNancy Duarte22:48

       Yeah.

    6. LRLenny Rachitsky22:48

       ... like if you think about your job as hard, uh, creating a deck for your company, imagine that.

    7. NDNancy Duarte22:52

       Yeah. Presentations in front of presentation experts is like-

    8. LRLenny Rachitsky22:55

       Oh, my God.

    9. NDNancy Duarte22:56

       And, and I get nervous. Like I get really nervous 'cause I have one slide that's kind of flawed or I say, um, or I pace too much. You lose a third of your team each time. (laughs) You know, they're such experts, so it's hard.

11. 23:09 – 25:38

    Signs you’re doing a good job making the audience the hero of the story

    1. NDNancy Duarte23:09

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky23:09

       I'm go-... I wanna walk through these three bullet points. So the first is make the listener the hero of your story-

    3. NDNancy Duarte23:13

       Mm-hmm.

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky23:13

       ... and that comes from being empathetic-

    5. NDNancy Duarte23:15

       Mm-hmm.

    6. LRLenny Rachitsky23:15

       ... and understanding their challenge. So if you're trying to do that, what are, like, signs that you're doing it well or not well? Like is there, like, the way the flow of the story start, is it like the, here's the way it starts? Or-

    7. NDNancy Duarte23:27

       Mm-hmm.

    8. LRLenny Rachitsky23:27

       ... like what should people identify of like, "I'm doing this well or I'm not doing this well"?

    9. NDNancy Duarte23:31

       Yeah. If the audience is the hero, y- you would see visible signs that they get it. P- people would come, like, uh, before I did a really good talk and people were tweeting saying, "Hey, come to this talk. It's really good." So there's... You'd see a reaction. You know you've done it well, uh, if you're infusing your talk with story, uh, which is the second bullet-

    10. LRLenny Rachitsky23:49

        Mm-hmm.

    11. NDNancy Duarte23:49

        ... by utilizing story structures. So when I say storytelling, I'm talking about an anecdote, and when I say story structures, I'm talking about this format of a, of a three-act structure of storytelling that goes back tens of thousands of years, which is fused into the brain. Like fMRI machines, now you can see them, uh, while a story's being told, and the science is beautiful. Like if you're telling me a story and I'm listening, our brains are firing in the exact same order, in the exact same place, so it has power to align our brains. And so by, by implementing attributes of story, like a beginning, a middle, and an end, and we have method for that-And in- and also incorporating the rise and fall, like the story kind of builds tension and releases it. And that's why we love it so much, is we escape through kind of someone else's messy middle and conflict and problems. Like it's messy and then it resolves, like you build the tension and resolve it, and that's what a really well-structured presentation can do. It can pull on that rise and fall in a way that creates longing, so story- story creates longing. It- it- it helps people long for something they never wanted before, because if the future is told in the shape of a story and they see this alternate future... Like so many people escape through sci-fi, they escape through moviemaking into these future worlds, right? And so picture that you could verbally paint a picture of this future state, and then you could bring your whole audience to this future state in an amazing way using this kind of ri- this cadence of rise and fall. That's how you, that's how you can incorporate story into a presentation where you need to influence others. It's- it's actually really can be beautiful when it's done well.

12. 25:38 – 28:08

    The structure of great talks

    1. NDNancy Duarte25:38

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky25:38

       And so you gave a TEDx talk on this exact topic-

    3. NDNancy Duarte25:41

       Yeah.

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky25:41

       ... and so I want to go deeper here. And you kind of shared this very, um, visual way of thinking about a great story where it-

    5. NDNancy Duarte25:46

       Mm-hmm.

    6. LRLenny Rachitsky25:46

       ... kind of goes up and down and up and down-

    7. NDNancy Duarte25:47

       Mm-hmm.

    8. LRLenny Rachitsky25:47

       ... like these teeth, uh, almost. Uh, can you actually talk about-

    9. NDNancy Duarte25:50

       Yeah, it's like pumpkin teeth. (laughs)

    10. LRLenny Rachitsky25:52

        Pump- um...

    11. NDNancy Duarte25:52

        Yeah. It does.

    12. LRLenny Rachitsky25:54

        Can you, um, share what that structure visually looks like?

    13. NDNancy Duarte25:57

        Mm-hmm.

    14. LRLenny Rachitsky25:57

        And we'll share a link in the show notes of what that actually looks like.

    15. NDNancy Duarte25:59

        Yeah, sure.

    16. LRLenny Rachitsky25:59

        And then just why that is so value- so impactful and important.

    17. NDNancy Duarte26:02

        Yeah. I love that. I, so I've went on a three-year journey through story and I knew that the greatest speeches of all time did have that rise and fall and rise and fall, but it wasn't one single story. It- it had a whole lot of other very important information, but it still did this rise and fall and rise and fall. So I am not a digital native. I took a f- quarter inch graph paper and I would s- listen to all kinds of... map out, took the words. When I analyzed Steve Jobs' iPhone launch speech, I did it all by hand. I wrote every word. I did th- I did quarter inch graph paper. I needed to know, I needed to see it-

    18. LRLenny Rachitsky26:38

        Yeah.

    19. NDNancy Duarte26:38

        ... the way I work, which was analog. And so at first it was zigzaggy and I realized, "Wait, you can't, you can't, you can't map something over time and have it be a zig saw- zigzag." There was too much data loss. So to verbally describe it, you could picture a line at the bottom of your screen and that line, uh, going left to right is what is, and you need to set up every talk by stating what is. And then it moves straight up and you move to what could be, come back down, uh, to the bottom line again. Say what is, back up what could be, what is, what could be, what is, what could be. And then at the last what could be, you state... the last horizontal line is what we call the new bliss. So this motion of traversing between what is, what could be, what is, what could be, what is, what could be, that sense of longing for the future, it makes people leave their current state or the status quo or- or our current reality and makes them long for this future state by using contrast. So that rise and fall of, "Hey, here's our current problem. Here's a solution." Or, "Here's the state of the union, but we imagine it could look like this." Like there's so many different ways to build that cadence of- of contrast that's so lovely. And it- it- it... I mean, it really works. I, uh, I think the talk came out in 2011 and- and the amounts of notes and emails of things people have accomplished by changing the structure of their presentation has been really astounding.

13. 28:08 – 30:02

    Lessons from great historical speeches

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky28:08

       The state of the union is a really interesting example 'cause I'm trying to imagine this-

    2. NDNancy Duarte28:11

       Mm-hmm.

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky28:12

       ... in, uh, s- presentations I've seen and that totally resonates of just like, "Here's the problem we're having and here's where we're gonna go.

    4. NDNancy Duarte28:18

       Mm-hmm.

    5. LRLenny Rachitsky28:18

       Here's another problem we're having and here's what I'm gonna change."

    6. NDNancy Duarte28:20

       Yeah. Steve Jobs was great at that. Like when he launched the iPhone speech, like he always did like, "Here's the state of the company, here's how we're doing. Oh my God, our stores are more full than 10 Macworld Expos." You know, he always did a setup of- of what was going on and then he did a really rapid what is/what could be when he started to compare the iPhone to, like, the Blackberry. (laughs) You know, it's like, "Look how much it sucks now that you've seen what we're doing." Like it's just this what is/what could be, what is/what could be. And so I took all the classic speeches, historical speeches, uh, everything presidential speeches, and, uh, knew that if I c- I could find a pattern in Dr. King and Steve Jobs' iPhone launch speech that was the same, that had the same type of nature of cadence and a pulsing to it, for lack of a better word, that I knew I- I had solved it using story. It was- it was a really great moment to- to finally draw that out on my quarter inch graph paper. (laughs)

    7. LRLenny Rachitsky29:19

       I love that. That's-

    8. NDNancy Duarte29:19

       It was awesome.

    9. LRLenny Rachitsky29:21

       I feel like there's just so much opportunity for primary research like that still. Like I feel like that's-

    10. NDNancy Duarte29:25

        Yeah.

    11. LRLenny Rachitsky29:26

        ... why my newsletter does well is I just spend the time doing that work that you're describing of like-

    12. NDNancy Duarte29:29

        Yeah.

    13. LRLenny Rachitsky29:29

        ... watching a thousand interviews and then just distilling, "Here's a takeaway here." And so, um, a lot of-

    14. NDNancy Duarte29:34

        Pattern finding. That's an interesting point. I- I worry sometimes, you know, with the emergence of new technologies and stuff, the ability to be able to sit and think, synthesize and all of that is, uh... 'cause you don't... you... a human's gonna come up with different insights and synthesis than any future machine can do. So I think it's fascinating that- that you do that so well and it really shows that, you- you know-

    15. LRLenny Rachitsky29:58

        Wow. I appreciate that.

    16. NDNancy Duarte29:58

        ... you're... Yeah, you're really putting your mind and heart into it all.

14. 30:02 – 32:07

    You’re presenting more often than you think

    1. NDNancy Duarte30:02

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky30:02

       Enough about me. Um, I'm thinking about pr-

    3. NDNancy Duarte30:05

       (laughs)

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky30:05

       But I appreciate it. I'm thinking about product managers and founders maybe listening to this and they're like, "Oh man, every time I do a deck, I need to create this whole story and this up and down thing." In your ex- experience, when do you go that far to create? Like is this when you have like an epic im- important presentation, you think about a story structure like this? Or is there always a way you should kind of, you know, put this into your presentations as like some kind of story with this contrast?

    5. NDNancy Duarte30:31

       It's an interesting question. I- I think, uh, a lot of people think that the only time you really need to present well is when you have a big stage talk and you make the big investment in the script, the big investment in the contrast in story.I'll tell you a dirty little secret. I can get my husband to do chores for me on the weekends with a quick, with a real quick what is, what could be new bliss, kind of just that first bit, like what is, what could be new bliss. It's like even, uh, the very, very short, short talk that Abraham Lincoln gave in the Gettysburg Address, those, uh, it was basically a funeral, it was a eulogy. And back then, eulogies used to be two hours long, it was an Aristotelian structure and, and he only had a couple of hundred words. So there's no pictures of him giving it because it was so short, so tight and done. They, they were setting up the cameras still thinking they had tons of time.

    6. LRLenny Rachitsky31:20

       Hmm.

    7. NDNancy Duarte31:20

       So the ability to just have that contrast as a framework in your brain during a meeting, on a phone call, any moment of influence, I'm getting the husband to do some chores for me (laughs) like literally it works, it works, uh, in any format. And I think the investment that you make in the longer form or when it's a huge audience, you know, you add the visuals, you really hire the speaker coaches, you, you really make that moment and there's these moments that breach above all other moments where you really have to nail it. Just in basic conversations, in a moment of influence you should, if, if you practice it enough, it'll live in your head as a mental model for when you know you're in a situation where, uh, where there's influence in the air that you could do.

15. 32:07 – 35:00

    How Nancy uses this story structure in her marriage

    1. NDNancy Duarte32:07

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky32:07

       What is, uh, how do you actually do it with your husband if you could share? (laughs)

    3. NDNancy Duarte32:10

       (laughs) .

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky32:10

       For helping you do the dishes?

    5. NDNancy Duarte32:11

       Well, I won't get graphic about what the new bliss might be.

    6. LRLenny Rachitsky32:16

       (laughs) .

    7. NDNancy Duarte32:16

       (laughs) . But, you know, early in our marriage, we figured out that when we... Not early, actually it's been almost in the la- only the last 10 years, we've been married for 40.

    8. LRLenny Rachitsky32:25

       Oh.

    9. NDNancy Duarte32:25

       And, uh, we realized that when we tangle, it's, it's usually only about process. So the gaps are when I, if I ask or he asks me to do something or we start to kind of pick on each other, it's because the way I'm executing something is different than the way he chose to execute it. And so it'll be anything from like, "Why are you chopping?" He'll, you know, "Why are you chopping the onions like that?" He'll say to me. And now I'm like, oh, we have a process gap. Do you want to chop the onions? Or do you want me to chop them my way? (laughs) You know? And so for the what is, what could be, uh, new bliss, it, it happens all the time. So he needs a lot of context. He's a detail-oriented person and I've started to learn with him that my what is needs to be quite a bit longer than sometimes I have patience for. As I start to frame, "Oh, hey baby, could you take the dog over to the... I need you to take the dog over to the dog care." I don't start there. I start with, "Oh my gosh, tomorrow I've got back-to-back, back meetings. In fact, I'm going to be on Lenny's podcast right about here and that's when she's whiny. And what's gonna happen is if that doesn't happen, I'm gonna have to reschedule next week and next week it's just loaded up. And I..." You know how it is when I'm stressed out at the end of the day and it's real- I'm kind of hard to deal with, you know? And then I say, "Well, what could be, you know what? The, the doggy place, you know, she was- loved it last time she was spooning with a red cavalier king spaniel and loved it." You know? (laughs) It's like that, I have to unpack it a little bit more for him. And then the new bliss could be any sort of marital promise you want it to be, but (laughs) I just have to unpack the current state, the pro- a little bit of the process and then I state what could be. And, and it's funny because, uh, acts of service like that, like him taking the dog to the doggy daycare for me, or, is, uh, is like I feel loved. So when someone does something generous with their time for me, it's how I feel loved. And so there's a whole lot there in shaping how you communicate with someone empathetically. At my company, everyone knows each other's love language. Like, they know that this person feels more appreciated when they get a written note. This person feels more appreciated when they get a gift. And, and everyone knows that. So that's just baked into our-

    10. LRLenny Rachitsky34:39

        Hmm.

    11. NDNancy Duarte34:39

        ... I don't know, our marriage, our, our company and just how it rolls.

    12. LRLenny Rachitsky34:43

        I imagine people listening to this podcast were not, uh, expecting marriage advice.

    13. NDNancy Duarte34:47

        Oh. (laughs)

    14. LRLenny Rachitsky34:47

        And so I love that. I'm gonna try-

    15. NDNancy Duarte34:50

        They could scrap that if it doesn't work. The process tip though is good.

    16. LRLenny Rachitsky34:52

        No way, this is gonna be the best part. This is gonna be the whole podcast, is just this segment. Just joking. But this is, this is really good advice. I'm gonna try to use

16. 35:00 – 36:07

    The framework What is? What could be? What is the ideal bliss?

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky35:00

       it myself. So the structure, I think it's even easier to think about this less as like story, infused story.

    2. NDNancy Duarte35:05

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky35:06

       Like for me it's more this what is, what could be, what is the ideal bliss? Like that's almost the simpler way to think about it.

    4. NDNancy Duarte35:11

       It is.

    5. LRLenny Rachitsky35:11

       The story is this like, oh my God, I gotta think of a story. Oh wait, what is the story?

    6. NDNancy Duarte35:14

       It has a beginning, middle, and an end. So the first what is, is the beginning. The m- the middle is the messy middle. That's where you're trying to contrast and show them that it's messy, it might be hard, it's worth it, you know? And then the new bliss, you end with what, you know, in Western cultures where it's like a happy ending. So the new bliss is just imagine a world with your idea adopted. Just, and then you paint a picture of that world poetically or pragmatically, uh, and it works. It definitely works.

    7. LRLenny Rachitsky35:41

       Okay. This is really great. So just to recap, 0.1 is to make your listener the hero of the story.

    8. NDNancy Duarte35:49

       Mm-hmm.

    9. LRLenny Rachitsky35:49

       And come at it with empathy. And I was actually thinking, the Think Different campaign is a excellent example of that, 'cause it's about you thinking differently and being this incredible-

    10. NDNancy Duarte35:57

        Exactly.

    11. LRLenny Rachitsky35:57

        ... creative. Okay. And then item two is infuse your presentation with story and this what is, what could be new bliss.

17. 36:07 – 41:12

    The importance of visuals

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky36:07

       And then, okay, and number three, what was number three again?

    2. NDNancy Duarte36:09

       Oh, it was ask yourself if they can see what you're saying.

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky36:13

       Okay.

    4. NDNancy Duarte36:13

       Can they see what I'm saying would be what would be written on the note.

    5. LRLenny Rachitsky36:16

       I love this. Okay, let's talk about that. What does that mean and how do you do that?

    6. NDNancy Duarte36:18

       Yeah. So for people to see what you're saying, that you have opportunity to use visual tools like the presentation software. You have opportunities to have live sketchers sketch it while you're talking. There's so many ways you can help people see what you're saying. I would contend that you, you can use something in your talk that gives people something they'll always remember. We call that a star moment. And i- it could be a piece of dramatic data where the big number's put up there. It could be a, uh, an evocative story. It could be a-... beautiful picture. Eh, one of the things that happens really well, eh, especially with tech companies, is demonstrating through a picture so you can get alignment. So the concept of a diagram, like when, when you describe your product that you're working on, is this thing inside of it, outside of it, attached to it? Is it on it? Is it above it? Like, especially marketecture slides or, or just how technology works as something flows through a complex system. When people can see that and it accompanies your verbal, uh, narrative, they can actually understand what you're conveying and, and move on. If you only had a verbal narrative, it wouldn't work as well. There's a lot of times though where you don't have the support of a presentation or slides. You could be at a dinner table. If you're ha- in a interesting conversation and you want someone to see what you're saying, that's where you pull out the napkin and you draw it so you could both see it. In meetings sometimes someone will just walk right up to the board and draw something. And my team, especially my design team, is so good at this because they'll just stand up and say, "I wanna, I wanna draw for you what I see." 'Cause w- we're about to prepare them to present to an audience. "When you verbally said that, I saw this. Was that your intent?" And then the, then the room will stand up and we'll start all co-creating a graphic so that everyone sees the exact same thing, the exact same steps, the exact same insights in the order, so nobody leaves with a question in their mind. And that's just, it's so important for there to be an alignment around, "What? What is this?" (laughs) "What are we all fighting for? What are we all living for? What are we all working for?" And those moments of alignment are so, so important. And I'm, I'm a leader who sees things in the air. I just see it. And to me, my pattern finding nature, which you're like that too, right? I can see these patterns. And to me, I, I see a whole scene and I could see it all clearly. But when my team's trying to look at the same thing, they might see 22 mosaic tiles out of a massive mosaic beautiful picture. I see the final beautiful picture, but I've only served up a, you know, a little tiny mosaic tile, (laughs) you know, in a few places. And so I even have to be better about really bringing it to earth and saying, "Oh, here's the seven steps to get to this amazing outcome."

    7. LRLenny Rachitsky39:09

       Mm-hmm.

    8. NDNancy Duarte39:10

       Sometimes we see things so plainly in our mind's eye. And I was working with a really famous, a powerful (laughs) -

    9. LRLenny Rachitsky39:18

       Yeah.

    10. NDNancy Duarte39:18

        ... CEO.

    11. LRLenny Rachitsky39:19

        Mm-hmm.

    12. NDNancy Duarte39:19

        And as she was talking, it's like, uh, I could see her... I was watching her hand motions too, and she was like, "And this thing and, and this," and like she's moving her arms around in, in a distinct way. And I said, "I can tell you, you have a picture in your mind's eye. Let me draw for what I..." And I did the same thing, walked up, drew, had this, had this, had this. And, and she's like, "Exactly." And, and we were brought in because nobody could articulate at all what she saw in her mind's eye. And so that was a massive program to be, to be rolled out to the entire retail... It was like 100,000 retail workers needed to understand this graphic. And, and the whole process she was trying to roll out wasn't getting traction. So the minute people could see what she was saying, then it had all the breakthroughs that needed to happen around that program.

    13. LRLenny Rachitsky40:04

        That reminds me of, uh, when I was working on the Superhost program at Airbnb. I don't know if this story (laughs) will be of any interest to anyone, but I just remember I had this very clear hand set of motions that described the strategy of the Superhost program. And then my friend's like, "You should, you should draw this on a slide."

    14. NDNancy Duarte40:18

        Why don't you draw it? (laughs)

    15. LRLenny Rachitsky40:20

        Yeah. And, uh-

    16. NDNancy Duarte40:20

        Unless it's such a powerful hand gesture, right? You could do that 'cause your body is visual. And the other thing we try to get our customers to do is like if Dr. King had slides that day of the I Have A Dream speech, it just wouldn't have been as beautiful. Like, his words painted the pictures in our mind's eye. And so when we can have the slides off so people are focused on the verbal stream and what's coming outta your mouth, that is such a powerful moment, is to not have any visuals supporting you so they're 100% focused on your, on your body, how you're showing up, and on the words coming out of your mouth is... And they're verbally seeing what you're saying versus actually pictorially seeing what you're saying is, it's good.

    17. LRLenny Rachitsky41:03

        I like the idea that people are not staring at me and I prefer them distracted with a slide, but, uh, but, and I wanna talk about like nerves and stuff presenting in a bit.

    18. NDNancy Duarte41:10

        (laughs) Yeah.

    19. LRLenny Rachitsky41:10

        But, uh, that's interesting.

18. 41:12 – 45:46

    Slide-making principles (titles, organization, and more)

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky41:12

       So you're talking about very, kind of some concrete tips for slides.

    2. NDNancy Duarte41:16

       Mm-hmm.

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky41:16

       And something I've heard a lot is when you're sharing a deck internally or talking, like an internal meeting, it's really powerful to just have, uh, obviously just like a quick s- image thing, but then also the title of the slide is the point you want them to get from that slide.

    4. NDNancy Duarte41:30

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

    5. LRLenny Rachitsky41:30

       Is that something you recommend? And then generally any just like very tactical advice on how to make a slide effective.

    6. NDNancy Duarte41:35

       Yeah. The, the concept that each slide should make one point. So your, your whole presentation should be grounded in what we call the audience journey, which is the big idea, where you're trying to move them from, where you're trying to move them to. And then a big idea is, uh, what is your point of view and what's at stake if they do or do not adopt it? That's the organizing mechanism for your whole deck. And then each slide itself that supports that one big, big idea, each slide itself should make one point in support of that big idea. People can't process too many things at one time. So depending on where you work, some people want, uh, something that's, uh, not the key insight at the top of the slide, some people do. So some might want the action to be taken or some might want the dreamy future state to be clear. A lot of, some consulting firms c- uh, where the slides are much denser because they were paid millions of dollars to make a big old deck, (laughs) you know, some of them are like, "Oh, it always belongs in the lower right corner. It always belo-" So it's kind of a little bit up to the brand and everyone believes it belongs somewhere else. If you're making what we call a slide doc, which I think your listenership-

    7. LRLenny Rachitsky42:43

       Mm-hmm.

    8. NDNancy Duarte42:43

       ... is interes- would be interested in, presentations go from-... big staged event to, like, in a meeting where you're trying to persuade your peers too. Can I make a presentation I can just circulate on email and everyone gets it? Well, that's called a slide doc.

    9. LRLenny Rachitsky42:57

       Hmm.

    10. NDNancy Duarte42:57

        You put more words, you put stronger picture. You could have a 100-page appendix and maybe the front of it's only five slides. But everything they need to see your thinking, it follows behind it. And you could circulate those and people read it. You write full sentences, you write full prose. It's kind of like the six-page memo that's so popular at Amazon but we contend that if you have words and pictures, the six-page memo is better. So how do you send a memo around without the help of a presenter? And that's on one extreme and those are called slide docs that you build in presentation software. And then the other extreme is I'm on a massive stage somewhere and there's all kinds of usage in between. And so I think the one idea per slide is important and then this guiding principle like, don't make a single slide unless it supports the one big idea of your whole talk. Uh, that's another principle for slide making 'cause most people go back to, like, some sort of repository in some data store somewhere and they dig through old crappy slides and see if they can assemble something super quickly and that's a cop out. Like some or most of the time if you really think empathetically about your audience, the, going to the repository might get you halfway there but you should be modifying and mapping all of the content based on who you're talking to and especially if it's high stakes. And sometimes you're speaking to an audience that wants high density slides 'cause that's how they communicate in their culture, and if you showed up with cinematic stage ready slides, they'd laugh you out of the room, and, uh, so you just really got to, I mean it, you got to know your audience, you got to know how they communicate, who they talk to and, and map to that.

    11. LRLenny Rachitsky44:39

        This episode is brought to you by Eppo. Eppo is a next generation A/B testing platform built by Airbnb alums from modern growth teams. Companies like DraftKings, Zapier, ClickUp, Twitch and Cameo rely on Eppo to power their experiments. Wherever you work, running an experiment is increasingly essential but there are no commercial tools that integrate with a modern growth team stack. This leads to wasted time building internal tools or trying to run your own experiments through a clunky marketing tool. When I was at Airbnb one of the things that I loved most about working there was our experimentation platform where I was able to slice and dice data by device types, country, user stage. Eppo does all that and more delivering results quickly, avoiding annoying prolonged analytic cycles and helping you easily get to the root cause of any issue you discover. Eppo lets you go beyond basic click-through metrics and instead use your North Star metrics like activation, retention, subscription and payments. Eppo supports tests on the front end, on the back end, email marketing, even machine learning plans. Check out Eppo at GetE-P-P-O.com. That's GetEppo.com and 10X your experiment velocity.

19. 45:46 – 48:02

    The Minto Pyramid Principle

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky45:46

       What's your take on the Minto Pyramid Principle? I don't know if you think about that?

    2. NDNancy Duarte45:50

       Uh-huh.

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky45:50

       Okay. Yeah, 'cause-

    4. NDNancy Duarte45:51

       Yeah.

    5. LRLenny Rachitsky45:51

       ... 'cause there's a recommendation of just, like, start with the conclusion and then explain why and you're saying sometimes that's effective, sometimes not maybe and, yeah, and then I'd love to hear your perspective.

    6. NDNancy Duarte45:59

       Sometimes it's effective. So the Minto Principle is amazing. Like she's got the, uh, was it horizontal and vertical thinking so your main segues or your main section heads should add up and then all the slides should support it and then also, uh, how the construct of it is. And when you're, when, when you state the conclusion first, that's a great thing to do with execs, it's a great thing to do when you are fundraising. There's a certain type of an audience that that works for and there's other audiences where they really need to be taught to long for this future state and you need longer to unpack it. So one of the reasons you would start with the conclusion is, especially in a funding round. Now my version of a conclusion or a result are, is different than how she describes it because I would say you start with the new bliss. So if you're trying to raise funds, y- you would say, "I am going to share you some, share with you something today." That, and you share how your solution increases human flourishing. Like it needs to be tied to the humanness and the big problem you're going to solve and how human, solve and how humankind will benefit. Well, that's different than just, um, like a consultant would show up and say, "Hi, I have this 800-page deck and the results of it are this. Let's unpack it." It's just a completely different motion, and we use a three-act story structure, uh, that's quite a bit different too, um, but, uh, that work is solid and it was based kind of like my work. Her, her work was based in going super deep in McKinsey's thinking over time, whereas my work is going laterally across the 35 highest performing brands in the world that have been our customers. So I went laterally across all those brands and then, and then come up with solutions that are based more on story and are based in a broader, uh, a bit of a broader application across companies but I have tons of respect for that body of work.

    7. LRLenny Rachitsky47:57

       Awesome. And willing to, uh, I wrote a post about this whole concept for folks that want to dig deeper.

20. 48:02 – 50:00

    Think and plan before diving into software

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky48:02

       Maybe one more question around tactical slide stuff.

    2. NDNancy Duarte48:04

       Mm-hmm.

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky48:05

       And I know this is, like, people ask you about this stuff all the time but I can't help it. I guess just any other tips for just, like, you're sitting there trying to create a couple of slides-

    4. NDNancy Duarte48:12

       Mm-hmm.

    5. LRLenny Rachitsky48:12

       ... like what else should, maybe people should keep in mind to make it effective and let's say this is for, like, a small meeting kind of thing.

    6. NDNancy Duarte48:18

       Yeah. I think that's a good question. I think that if, uh, do some thinking first if it, if it's important, like if it's an important point of the meeting.

    7. LRLenny Rachitsky48:25

       Mm-hmm.

    8. NDNancy Duarte48:26

       Uh, my team is, uh, taught to just kind of sketch, change your environment up a little bit. A lot of people will fire up the deck which is very linear. It's like make one slide, second slide, third slide. So just think and plan for a minute and, uh, we tend to draw out, uh, like storyboards. It's like okay, the first point, the second point, the third point or the f- you know, just think first. It could be analog or digital, like put a p- page in front of all your decks. It's just boxes. Just, just get the narrative right and then when you actually open up the software, uh, that's where you have to think about what are the s- what's the slide type?... that will convey this the most? Is it a table? Put a table. Especially for, uh, like program managers, you have to convey dense project information, program information, product information, and that comes with density. So if you're in a room with your peers and everyone in the room is a team and everyone has their own shorthand and way of working, put that common slide up there. That common slide for that team might be dense to the outside world, but it, but everyone's used to using it. So there's no harm in using a commonly known, commonly acceptable framework or slide or table or Excel spreadsheet because you're aligning around a process. And so don't feel like every single meeting needs, like cinematic pictures of kittens 'cause that's not gonna get you anywhere. You're trying to move an objective along, and that does mean that your slides might be more dense, and sometimes internal slides have a lot more important information that needs to be on it to kick a product along or kick a process along.

21. 50:00 – 53:18

    The Duarte process for crafting presentations

    1. NDNancy Duarte50:00

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky50:00

       You were just talking about process, and that is a great segue to a question I wanted to ask is just what does your, what does your process look like when you're working with a company to help them craft an awesome presentation?

    3. NDNancy Duarte50:10

       Yeah. Yeah. It's funny because I, I don't have to do this much anymore. (laughs)

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky50:14

       (laughs)

    5. NDNancy Duarte50:14

       I haven't done, I haven't done it for about 15 years, which is nice. I have a gorgeous team of strategist writers, uh, conceptual thinkers, beautiful designer-

    6. LRLenny Rachitsky50:23

       How luxurious.

    7. NDNancy Duarte50:23

       ... coaches. It's uh, yeah, no, I get, I get coached. I get, it's fun. I, I, I definitely, my books look awesome, not 'cause of me but because I'm followed around by people that are- (laughs)

    8. LRLenny Rachitsky50:33

       (laughs)

    9. NDNancy Duarte50:33

       ... do really gorgeous work. But, y- you know the, the phrase that we use internally and sometimes with customers is, uh, we ma- we make presentations the way Pixar makes movies. And that's very similar to the way we get somebody that has this high stakes moment where it's, it's a big deal in this moment. You have to win in the moment to push things along. And so we do. Like we literally craft a narrative, craft the big idea, craft the script, and visualize certain moments. We start to map it out. We start to chunk it out. And then we, big models, sometimes when you're really making a revolutionary model, one that could drive all the web assets, a lot of that stuff people don't realize actually happens in the presentation first as an idea. So sometimes we'll start working on some of the key models right away too, and we start to circulate that around the company because e- ev- everyone has to build consensus around it. So sometimes there's multiple motions happening at the same time. Like let's sketch this. You go away. You work with this department. You try to get this settled. You get that set. You get this, you know, and so... And then it gets reassembled, you know, at the end, and then the narrative is worked, w- you work all the kinks out, and then when they stand and deliver it, it's like a, uh, yes, the, it's the voice track, uh, that all the, all that process supported. And then o- other times when we're building a report in a slide doc or, um, there, there was a time where we had a multinational head of a multinational company that will remain nameless, and, and the guy w- that was head of all of India was gonna come over here and petition the CEO for $100 million, $100 million budget. It's non-trivial. And he comes and is like, "Okay, I need your help with these five slides," and he just sends us the five slides. And we're like, "Well, yeah, 100 million. That's kind of a lot. You really want to put technology between you and the CEO? Do you really want to sit side by side and both be looking at a computer in this moment where it's like you're petitioning him for... That's a lot of money." And he's like, "Yeah, you're right." So what we did is we made a mental model he could hold up in his head, and the structure was so simple and clear, and then there was three moments where we were like just, I don't know, just grab a piece of paper or go to a whiteboard and just start to draw in front of him. Let him see your eyes. Let him have eye contact. Let him see your passion. Like, don't be dispassionately looking at this computer. And he did it, and he called us, and he's like, "I got my 100 million bucks," you know?

    10. LRLenny Rachitsky52:54

        (laughs)

    11. NDNancy Duarte52:54

        So it's just those moments that, it's just those moments where you have to realize, wait, wait, wait, wait, do I need a deck? Who am I talking to, and should I, should I, is, is this a cookie cutter thing, and does the same process work every time? No. Uh, so every time we solve something, it's very different, and we try to make it unique to the presenter and the audience that they're speaking to.

22. 53:18 – 55:46

    How remote work has influenced the way we communicate and present

    1. NDNancy Duarte53:18

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky53:18

       Along the same lines, a lot of presentations now are actually remote and on Zoom-

    3. NDNancy Duarte53:22

       Yeah.

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky53:22

       ... and virtual. What do you recommend to people in terms of how they present and put presentations together being remote?

    5. NDNancy Duarte53:28

       Yeah. It's funny. Uh, uh, we spent a lot of time coaching people to look in the camera. So while I've been talking to you, I'm not actually looking at your face. I'm looking at the little dot at the top of my screen in my camera, and not a lot of people-

    6. LRLenny Rachitsky53:43

       Wow.

    7. NDNancy Duarte53:43

       ... can do that. So it's gotten to where I can see that little white glowing dot, and my heart warms. Like I know you're there. I feel you. I can s- I can get sensations in my skin when, when I know I'm talking to someone that's, that, that I adore or admire, and that took a long time, uh, to get there. And I was presenting remotely pre-COVID, so a lot of our coaching was about eye contact and doing... But the other thing that happens is people don't see our hands anymore. Like they're under the table. They can't see how much space in a room we're taking up. They can't, they can't see a lot of the characteristics that are common in communicating. And so there's a lot of coaching around presence and how do you have presence in a room? How do you even get the microphone away from someone that's remote and all those kinds of things. And, uh, a new study, uh, just came out, I just came across my desk today, and it said that soft skills really suffered, and the people who did it right say, and looked at the camera, they don't have good eye contact skills anymore. When they are looking face-to-face in someone's eyes, it's like, oh, they're, they're not used to it. It's been so long. Uh, and then the other thing is, you know, how, h- h- where do I sit in a room? Who's got the position of authority? Like just kind of some classic, uh, things that convey information in real life that... So it's w- it's interesting. It peaked, and now people are going back to the office some. A percent are back in the office, and now we have this weird place where it's, oh, it's half in the office and half the people are remote. And the people that are remote are having a hard time hearing, getting their voices heard because the people in the room consume most of the air. So it's kind of going through this...... undulating life cycle of new communication skills people need while, while they're remote. It's all changing.

    8. LRLenny Rachitsky55:34

       I'm glad that, uh, I was not a PM in this remote world, to be honest. I, I never experienced it so... And I, but I have a lot of empathy for being a project manager in-

    9. NDNancy Duarte55:41

       Yeah.

    10. LRLenny Rachitsky55:42

        ... in this wor- remote work world. Feels like the job got a lot harder. And-

    11. NDNancy Duarte55:44

        It did, I think it did.

23. 55:46 – 1:01:10

    Strategies for overcoming stage fright and nerves

    1. NDNancy Duarte55:46

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky55:46

       Yeah. So let's talk about nerves and stage fright. So-

    3. NDNancy Duarte55:51

       Mm-hmm.

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky55:51

       ... I hate public speaking. I get extremely nervous. People maybe may not feel this when they watch me, but I-

    5. NDNancy Duarte55:55

       Yeah.

    6. LRLenny Rachitsky55:55

       It's not my natural state. Uh, you work with a lot of people that I imagine are like, "Oh my God-"

    7. NDNancy Duarte56:00

       Yeah.

    8. LRLenny Rachitsky56:00

       "... I'm so scared to give this presentation." What advice do you give them to help them through that and feel more comfortable?

    9. NDNancy Duarte56:06

       Uh, I think people who are more thoughtful and contemplative about speaking have better content. Like they tend to really think through stuff than someone who's like, "I got this. I'll just wing it. I'll just walk on the stage." Like anyone who's like and tells me, "I am a nervous presenter," I'm like, "You have probably got gorgeous content in your heart that the world needs to hear." Because usually they are really deep thoughtful, like you already mentioned you're a pattern finder and you like to do thoughtful work. And so it's, it's hard. Like my hu- my husband is actually brilliant communicator, it's just getting him to feel like he wants to take up the space. He's a m- he's a better communicator than I am. And so what happens is the reason you get scared, it's a fight or flight instinct. For some reason, stepping out on that stage, you feel your body and your mind and your psyche is feeling threatened, like you would be attacked by an animal. Like that's literally what's happening. And so you, a couple things you could do. You can actually sit in one of the seats of the, uh, of the auditorium and just sit there and look at the stage, look at the setting so you can imagine yourself on it. But then picture yourself as that friendly face, the one that's happy to see you, the one that's delighted that you're speaking. And then as you're standing up, remember, member- member that you saw yourself sitting there smiling and very happy. You have to change your visual model that, that people's faces will be scowling, they'll be judging you, they'll be doubting you. All of those things are only in your head. Uh, 'cause getting you out on the stage to be able to start to expose people to this amazing content you have, the, the biggest battle is to get you out on the stage and, and, and, um, delivering it. And those are my... I, I asked a bunch of people once, I did like a survey of all these public speakers and was like, "How do you prepare? How do you prepare? What's your pre-talk ritual?" And, uh, some of 'em were like, "I play heavy metal music and I skip around the entire convention center just to get all fired up." I'm like, "Wow, I have to calm myself down 'cause I already have over the top energy." So I literally find the dark. I don't go to the green room, that stuff, I don't like to hear jibber-jabber. I have to be focused on my content, and so I find the darkest corner of the backstage and calmly sit and just breathe. I just breathe. Sometimes if I'm nervous, like if there's someone real famous in the audience, I have a little list, a little playlist of funny things that people sent me but I never watch. And that way right before I walk on stage, I chemically, my whole body chemically shifts from nervous to laughter. And that really helps me too, 'cause it is a, it's chemical and you have to train your chemistry a bit.

    10. LRLenny Rachitsky58:46

        Ooh, I really like that tip. Uh, what are these funny things you watch if you (whistles) ?

    11. NDNancy Duarte58:50

        Just like YouTube things, TikTok thing, like just things that I tag and I try not to watch 'em, or things that make me laugh. Like there's this dorky and low, like low watched video of a, a guy, a guy with tin cans wrapped around his waist and he plays 'em and my husband walks around the house like, like him and making the noise and I could probably sing the beat if I had... And so sometimes I just play that 'cause I, I, it just transports me home 'cause a lot of times I'm presenting away from home and it just makes me laugh at my, at my husband who's hysterical. Uh, so it's just random, random things. But if you laugh and, and somehow can transport yourself outside of the fear of walking out there, it, it, it helps reset you before you walk out on stage.

    12. LRLenny Rachitsky59:39

        I really like that.

    13. NDNancy Duarte59:40

        Yeah.

    14. LRLenny Rachitsky59:40

        Is there anything else just off the top of your head that just like right before you go on stage that you find to be really effective? So watching funny videos I love that. Breathing?

    15. NDNancy Duarte59:47

        Yeah.

    16. LRLenny Rachitsky59:47

        Is there anything else?

    17. NDNancy Duarte59:48

        Uh, some, I breathe. I think I, I've learned a breathing pattern. I take three, I take a deep, deep breath and then I take that one, uh, while my lungs are full, I take another gulp of breath and I have to let it out real slow. But whe- when I got the feedback that my friend, and some people, uh, get over their fear by headbanging to heavy metal. So I'm not saying that's not the wrong thing. So I thought, well, maybe I should try that before I go do a talk. And so I literally, uh, didn't do that. But I stretched, I bou- I jumped a little, just low jumps, put my arms real big up in the air and then I walked on stage. And I happened to be speaking at a massive medical company, like big brand. And I finished my talk and, and they, my assistant got a call and they were like, "We're a little worried about Nancy. We think she might n- need to see a doctor. She could never control her breathing and we're really concerned." (laughs) And it was just 'cause I just pumped myself up a little bit and I, so I don't do that, not whatsoever anymore. I s- I went back to my calming, contemplative meditative, uh, pre-talk ritual. So for some people literally I do encourage people to try headbanging to heavy metal. It might work. It's just a matter of what you need and ev- nobody would guess that I'm not one to, to dance around or pump myself up, but I am not. I have to calm myself down. It's the opposite.

    18. LRLenny Rachitsky1:01:09

        Awesome.

    19. NDNancy Duarte1:01:09

        Mm-hmm.

24. 1:01:10 – 1:04:54

    The concept of “torchbearer leaders” and why it’s important

    1. NDNancy Duarte1:01:10

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky1:01:10

       Just a, just a few more questions.

    3. NDNancy Duarte1:01:12

       Sure.

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky1:01:12

       So you wrote a book called Illuminate! and something that stood out to me from that book is this idea of a torchbearer and torchbearer leader. Can you just talk about what that is and why that is important in power?

    5. NDNancy Duarte1:01:22

       Yeah. I loved writing that book. Co-author Patty Sanchez, a hat tip to her. So to come up with this book, we knew that there's one presentation, there's a single presentation. Could be on a stage, could be in a, uh, a-... meeting, just updating people on a project status. And, uh, we knew though that every presentation usually is part of a larger movement where you're trying to move people en masse to this alternate future. So we studied movements. We s- uh, de- deconstructed the largest movements. We went, met with Marshall Ganz at Harvard to say, "Hey, could this be true?" 'Cause he studies movements. It was so fun. And then, uh, movements have a five-act structure. So picture there's this moment where you have to verbalize the dream. Like, "Hey, we're gonna head to this new place." And, and this is what I have to do at my kickoff meetings. It's like, "Imagine this place in the future that we're headed to." So you... So it's five steps. It's a five-act story structure if you wanna call it five acts. It's dream, leap, fight, climb, arrive. So the torchbearer, the reason we called that is the leaders know where they're headed but they might not ever see it super, super clearly. And we chose a torch because a torch, i- i- if you're in a cave and you have a torch, you only see about five, eight feet around you. But it's enough to dissipate the fear of the people following you within. And so nobody sees the future clearly. Like nobody has that kind of level of skill. All we know is I need to traverse this direction to be at the right place in the future so all my staff is safe, all are... we stay a leader in the industry. That's all I know. And as we start to head there, there's these moments of communication you need to do which is, "Hey, everyone. Here's the dream. Here's where we're headed." That's the dream phase. And then there's this moment where they either choose to jump in and go with you, or they choose not to. You could talk about Frodo, like Sam, and only a few hobbits followed him, you know? And so it's like people select to commit to this journey, and that's the beginning of your movement. Uh, but then the middle is the messy middle of a story. It's, we call it the fight and climb phase. So what happens is they commit to your idea, they commit to your program, your project, and they're like enthused at first and then they go into this state of, "Oh, my God. This is harder than I thought. It's a long slog. This climb is getting exhausted. Hmm, I don't know if I have this much fight in me to make this all work." Not fight with each other but like, "Oh my God, I'm having to overcome this roadblock and that roadblock and we have to go get that budget." So it's just... It's like a fight, climb, fight, climb, fight, climb. And then ultimately you arrive. Each one of those five phases, you need to use speeches, stories, ceremonies and symbols at each phase to give the people traveling with you the emotional fuel they need to keep going, to keep seeing that idea become realized. And it's, it literally is about fueling the right emotions with speeches, stories, ceremonies and symbols, while you're moving people toward a bigger initiative so it's bigger than just one presentation. It's multiple presentations, multiple stories, multiple ceremonies. Um, so that's... I loved that, uh, book. It, it... Uh, people are really feeding off of it right now because leading change has been, what? Non-stop. Uh, it's just been change, change, change the last especially few years.

    6. LRLenny Rachitsky1:04:40

       Change is the, only constant like they say.

    7. NDNancy Duarte1:04:42

       Mm-hmm. Exactly.

    8. LRLenny Rachitsky1:04:43

       I really like this metaphor of the torch giving you a sense of like as a leader you can see some-

    9. NDNancy Duarte1:04:49

       Yeah.

    10. LRLenny Rachitsky1:04:49

        ... portion around you but you're not gonna see-

    11. NDNancy Duarte1:04:51

        Yeah.

    12. LRLenny Rachitsky1:04:51

        ... the entire cave necessarily. That is really interesting.

25. 1:04:54 – 1:07:37

    The surprising truth about informal vs. formal production quality

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky1:04:54

       Maybe a final question, very tactically. As I give an interview where you shared that you... You had kind of two videos. One where-

    2. NDNancy Duarte1:05:01

       Mm-hmm.

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky1:05:02

       ... it's very informal. You just sitting, standing in front of whiteboard in like jeans or something just like talking about some about data, I think, in presentations.

    4. NDNancy Duarte1:05:08

       Mm-hmm.

    5. LRLenny Rachitsky1:05:08

       And then you had a similar video where it was very well constructed, high production value and the informal video did a lot better.

    6. NDNancy Duarte1:05:16

       Yeah.

    7. LRLenny Rachitsky1:05:16

       Is that something you're seeing? Just that kind of content ends up being more successful? And when... Why do you think that is?

    8. NDNancy Duarte1:05:21

       I think video content, uh, production quality now isn't... The, uh, the expectation for it being high quality has just completely shifted over the last five, eight years or so, as everyone's an expert and can show up as an expert. There's a big difference to me about showing up as a keynoter which is like, "I'm gonna stand. I'm gonna look right. I'm gonna have this eye contact. I'm gonna nail it. My slides-"

    9. LRLenny Rachitsky1:05:42

       Mm-hmm.

    10. NDNancy Duarte1:05:42

        "... are gorgeous. I'm, I'm driving the industry." And, and for people to think that our explanations of things needs to be done as a stand and deliver keynote, that's just not true. So I experimented with that and I had some videos I had done and, uh, one of them like you said was me looking in the camera. I even had HD makeup, a film crew. I was well-lit. (laughs) I looked amaz-... I mean, I did look amazing. And it was polished. I delivered it really well. And then I thought, uh, 'cause on LinkedIn I post a lot, that's where my primary channel is, and I thought, "What would happen if I just posted a rando shot of me?" And I'm maybe erring on a little bit like orange. I look a little Trumpian, a little bit orange, not... It's not color-corrected but it's super informative, like really full of information. And that was my highest viewed, uh, video so far. And I realized that it's like, you know, people want the content. Uh, and we do. As a presentation company, I have to nail it maybe more than others but it doesn't have to be fully video edited, infographics spinning, swooshing things forward and swooshing things back. Like that kind of nature of it ƒs- was... It's not necessary to get the message across and so we actually have a, a whole process and program we're rolling out where you're gonna see a lot more video from us. Uh, partially from that insight but partially 'cause my team... I have a team of experts. They have a lot of great things to share and so I'm trying to give them... Uh, I'm trying to make it be like Duarte does not equal Nancy Duarte. I'm trying to make it so it's like so many experts work at Duarte. You got to watch any video from any of 'em is where we're moving it towards 'cause they're f- they're freaks of brilliance and just experts. They're world class experts. So that's what we're trying to do.

    11. LRLenny Rachitsky1:07:27

        I feel like you have a similar challenge to me where I name my newsletter Lenny's Newsletter.

    12. NDNancy Duarte1:07:30

        Yeah. (laughs) Yeah, same thing.

    13. LRLenny Rachitsky1:07:31

        And I'm gonna stick with that. (laughs)

    14. NDNancy Duarte1:07:32

        Same thing. Yeah.

    15. LRLenny Rachitsky1:07:33

        Can never be anyone else.

    16. NDNancy Duarte1:07:34

        Mm-hmm.

    17. LRLenny Rachitsky1:07:34

        Uh, it's a challenge but, I don't know, it worked out.

26. 1:07:37 – 1:11:49

    Examples of PMs telling great stories

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky1:07:37

       Okay. Actually, real final question before we get to a very exciting lightning round.Have you seen examples of product managers specifically telling really good stories?

    2. NDNancy Duarte1:07:46

       The product management process has multiple phase. There's the creative explorative process all the way through to getting it produced, and I think s-story gets you, can take you along in each phase. So there's an example, uh, which I read about, I wasn't actually even part of, but Brian Chesky at Airbnb. There's a whole article where he unpacked this moment in their product development cycle, where, uh, they decided they would take a walk in the shoes of their customer, and they hired a Pixar illustrator to illustrate each scene as the team's like, "Okay, okay." They said, uh, "This is her name." And they were like, "Okay, what happens? Her alarm goes off. Okay, what happens next? What happens next? Okay, now she's decided she needs to book something. What does she do? She wants to..." da, da, da. They realized from this little walk in the shoes of their customer, just this day in the life, which is a classic storytelling method for any product, they realized that they had their strategy wrong. That they needed to move as soon as possible to a mobile first strategy. And it was just because they actually thought about, "Okay, what do..." Okay, she goes, brushes their teeth, they do this, they, they were just literally walking through the life of their ideal customer, and that was when they realized they had it all messed up. But the other phases, like after all this work people put into product and the making of the product and the managing of pushing it through, we have a, m-large client, uh, that makes shoes, uh, or athletic things. (laughs) I love telling stories, but I can't say this.

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky1:09:14

       Mysterious. Yeah. (laughs)

    4. NDNancy Duarte1:09:15

       And there's, there's this moment, right, where we get brought in and like, "Could you please train our product people in story?" We're like, "What's the big problem?" They're like, "They'll spend a year or two on a shoe and be like, chunk, put it on the table." And they're like, "What do you have to say about it?" They're like, "It's red." And, and it's like all these years of investment, all this years they couldn't unpack any sort of story or any sort of reason or even their passion for why they chose red. It, you know, it was just like, "Here's my shoe. It's red." And, and so this ability to move things along by adding meaning or why, and then wrapping it in a story, actually can get a product chosen or rejected, or there's just so many examples of, uh, different spaces in the product cycle that could benefit from a really well-told story from, like I said, how the product's innovated and the roadmap all the way through to, you know, what gets accepted and then the big reveal. Like you think about even all the big Apple launches, it's about a big product reveal. It's about, it's about revealing this thing that had been hidden for so long, and it's another moment, you know, to tell amazing stories. So that's kind of a little bit of an insight on the product side of how to use story.

    5. LRLenny Rachitsky1:10:27

       The Airbnb example is an awesome example. Uh, it's all true. Uh, when I joined Airbnb is actually right, they were right in the process of doing that.

    6. NDNancy Duarte1:10:34

       I love that.

    7. LRLenny Rachitsky1:10:35

       And they ended up drawing these key frames of the journey as you described-

    8. NDNancy Duarte1:10:40

       Mm-hmm.

    9. LRLenny Rachitsky1:10:40

       ... and they became, they put it right in the center of the office. Here's the journey of a host and a guest.

    10. NDNancy Duarte1:10:45

        Yeah.

    11. LRLenny Rachitsky1:10:45

        That's like 12 frames of that journey. And that actually became the strategy of the company is let's pick six of these frames and make them awesome. And that's what we're gonna do.

    12. NDNancy Duarte1:10:54

        That's awesome.

    13. LRLenny Rachitsky1:10:54

        So make the booking experience awesome. Make the arrival experience awesome. So there's a lot of truth to that.

    14. NDNancy Duarte1:10:59

        And it was visualized, right? The vision was visualized-

    15. LRLenny Rachitsky1:11:02

        100%.

    16. NDNancy Duarte1:11:02

        ... like what you were saying. It's here's where we're headed in the future and it was super clear. I love that story.

    17. LRLenny Rachitsky1:11:07

        Yeah, yeah.

    18. NDNancy Duarte1:11:08

        So cool you were there.

    19. LRLenny Rachitsky1:11:09

        Yeah, it was very cool. And they actually were very mobile. You could like grab one of these drawings and bring it to your desk and like, "How are we gonna make this moment better, this (inaudible 00:24:56) ?"

    20. NDNancy Duarte1:11:17

        That's awesome.

    21. LRLenny Rachitsky1:11:18

        Yeah. And, um, and it was actually indeed a Pixar storyboard artist that they hired for like-

    22. NDNancy Duarte1:11:23

        Yeah.

    23. LRLenny Rachitsky1:11:23

        ... a year. (laughs) That was his job. Draw these key frames. And-

    24. NDNancy Duarte1:11:26

        Oh, that's amazing.

    25. LRLenny Rachitsky1:11:27

        And it connects so directly with your point about empathy. Like those-

    26. NDNancy Duarte1:11:31

        Mm-hmm.

    27. LRLenny Rachitsky1:11:31

        ... like the epitome of empathy. Here's what the guest and host are going through and, and here's where we could do better.

    28. NDNancy Duarte1:11:37

        Yeah. It's amazing. Yeah. It does tie together.

    29. LRLenny Rachitsky1:11:40

        If, um, folks wanna look this up, by the way, we'll link it, link in the show notes.

    30. NDNancy Duarte1:11:44

        Mm-hmm.
27. 1:11:49 – 1:12:44

    Lightning round

    1. NDNancy Duarte1:11:49

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky1:11:49

       Well, with that we reached our very exciting lightning round. I've got six questions for you if you're ready.

    3. NDNancy Duarte1:11:54

       Yep, I'm ready.

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky1:11:56

       What are two or three books that you've recommended most to other people?

    5. NDNancy Duarte1:12:00

       I think I always classically recommend the gospels 'cause there's just so much love and groundbreaking thinking there. And then for people who do wind up taking an interest in story, I think one of the best books if you wanna pick that up is, um, Chris Vogler's The Writer's Journey where he took Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey, made it 12 steps and it was, uh, Disney, he was a Disney story analyst. So it's, it's this really classic body of work that have really helped people get their minds around story and the archetypes.

    6. LRLenny Rachitsky1:12:30

       What is a favorite recent movie or TV show?

    7. NDNancy Duarte1:12:33

       It's my little sinful pleasure. It's, um, way into K-drama, Korean drama. Don't even ask me how, but I'm way into that. I've seen almost all of them now. I'm at the bottom of the barrel of them. (laughs)

Episode duration: 1:17:23