Why Trying to “Sound Smart” is Losing You the Room with Strategic Story Producer Rob Willis
A Bit of Optimism
In this episode of 'A Bit of Optimism,' host Simon Sinek interviews Rob Willis, a strategic story producer and viral content creator known f
Key takeaways
- Charisma stems not from energy or performance but from genuine belief in one's message.
- People remember stories more than facts; effective communication relies on narrative over information overload.
Main topics
- The power of storytelling in public speaking
- Why overloading with data undermines credibility
Notable quotes
"Charisma is believing in the thing that you're talking about. It's not about jumping off the walls and energy."
"We all want to be credible when we speak. We want people to think we're smart... But it doesn't work. Because then we see the speaker who comes right after us, with few if any slides, and they hold the room."
Conclusion
Rob Willis's journey from corporate trainer to viral storytelling expert underscores that true influence comes
Transcript preview
Speaker 3 (0:00) The way I define charisma is believing in the thing that you're talking about. It's not about jumping off the walls and energy. There's some very quiet speakers who have unbelievable charisma. Speaker 2 (0:09) And Speaker 3 (0:09) the charisma is, you can tell they really believe in the things they're telling you. Speaker 2 (0:13) I heard a great Speaker 3 (0:14) definition Speaker 2 (0:15) of charisma. It's charisma is empathy and authority. Someone who cares about you and someone who can... look after you. Because you wouldn't want someone who's just very, very capable, but doesn't care about you. Equally, someone who cares about you, but can't do anything. Speaker 3 (0:34) That's true. We all want to be credible when we speak. We want people to think we're smart, that we know what we're talking about. So what do we do? We do more. We provide more data. More slides, more proof that we're the expert in whatever we're talking about. But it doesn't work. Because then we see the speaker who comes right after us, with few if any slides, and they can't remember the exact dates of things, and they get things wrong, and yet they hold the room and everyone talks about their talk after the meeting. That's why I invited Rob Willis on the podcast. Rob calls himself a strategic story producer. And I first discovered him on Instagram, where he breaks down how great speakers actually speak. And he actually did one on me. But it's how Rob learned what it takes to be a great speaker that I find fascinating. He was a tour guide in Berlin. And not a very good one, it turns out. At least, not at first. He started doing what most of us would do. He loaded up on dates and facts. And the more impressive his knowledge... the less money he made. And so he studied the guides who made the most money. Those guides actually gave less information, but the information they gave, they communicated those points through a few brilliantly told human stories. Speaker 1 (1:59) Whether Speaker 3 (1:59) we're pitching an idea or leading a meeting, our job isn't to prove how much we know. It's to give our audience something they can relate to, something they'll remember. And Rob is so good at explaining how we can do that, unsurprisingly. If you like this episode, please do remember to subscribe. This is a bit of optimism. Speaker 3 (2:27) This episode is proudly brought to you by SAP. Change used to take years, then months. Now it seems to happen in weeks. And in a world moving that fast, the winners are the companies that have figured out how to adapt at the speed of change. That's why I wanted to talk to David Robinson. As the North American President of Customer Success at SAP, he spent more than two decades helping companies keep up with the pace of change. And he has a surprisingly simple idea about what it actually takes. You can learn more in the middle of this episode. To learn more about SAP, the AI cloud ERP for businesses of all size, head to sap Speaker 2 (3:10) .com slash grow. Speaker 3 (3:11) Rob Willis, thanks for coming on A Bit of Optimism. Thank you for having me. So I learned about you when my friends all started sending me your video about me, telling people. my rhetorical device for how I start my talks. And we thought, wouldn't it be fun if we just invited you on the show to talk about how to talk, give people advice on how best to present. Speaker 2 (3:34) Yeah. I noticed you liked it. And for me, it was a very meta moment. My video about Simon Sinek liked by Simon Sinek. I thought it was good. I thought it was good. Speaker 3 (3:43) So Speaker 2 (3:43) you've only Speaker 3 (3:44) been doing this a very... short period of time, about a year, right? Yeah. Making videos. And you're a thing. Like, my friends all know you and many of them follow you. And your videos, they sort of go viral quite frequently. How did, like, when, how, what? A year is really quick to sort of pop like that. Speaker 2 (4:04) Yeah. Now, I've been, I'm also quite surprised by all of this. And I got into it because I have a friend who's also does Instagram videos. He's one of the big creators about Berlin history. And I saw him doing it and he was like having a good time. He was getting lots of work out of it. And he said, Rob, you've got to do it. And I was a corporate trainer and I thought, no, we've got to do LinkedIn. LinkedIn's the place to be. But then eventually I thought, okay, I'll give it a go. And I thought I'll do a hundred videos in a hundred days because I saw a video from another personal brand expert. And they said like, just resign yourself three months, see what happens. And I gave it 100 days. And then it began to get that momentum. And, you know, that momentum is the kind of thing that keeps you going, isn't it? Like, as long as you can see momentum there, then you keep going with the thing. And then one thing leads to another. And now I'm here in Los Angeles. So 100 videos in 100 days, that's a hell of a commitment. And you literally made one a day. Or did you make like Speaker 3 (5:03) four in one day? It Speaker 2 (5:04) depends on like time. Like if you have a workshop or, you know, family event or something, or it's the weekend, my wife would not let me work on a Sunday. Smart. Speaker 3 (5:13) Yeah. And when did you realize, okay, this is a thing. Like I'm now I'm a, I'm an influencer. I'm Speaker 2 (5:21) a Speaker 3 (5:21) content producer. I'm Speaker 2 (5:23) a thing. I think the first video that really took off was I broke down a scene from a film called Margin Call. which has this amazing scene where Jeremy Irons guides an analyst, a junior analyst, through the questions that you need to answer in a kind of executive presentation. And I made a video about that. And it just kind of popped off. And then people started like writing comments and then writing messages to me and so on and saying that they were getting value out of it. And it's kind of bizarre the first time it happens. I'm sure the same. was probably true for you when you first begin to get the breakthrough and people read your books and they're like, I've got so much value out of this. I don't know if it's imposter syndrome, but it's certainly weird when it starts. Where did your interest come from evaluating and sort of breaking down Speaker 3 (6:14) how people speak? Speaker 2 (6:16) Well, I love seeing patterns in things. So I've got one of my job titles, as I like to call myself, as I say, strategic story producer. because I used to work in music and work as a music producer. And the work I do now is very, very similar to what I did back then, which is a songwriter would come to me, they'd have a song that would be eight minutes long, have no hook, there would be nothing to latch on to. So my job was to identify what's working in this and make it shorter usually, and make it connect with their audience. And I thought, you know, I see this in films happening. I see it in people's speeches, you know, speakers like you, how do they do what they do? So I just apply that natural pattern recognition that I kind of do. I don't, I'm not really following a framework. I'm just seeing what feels right. What do I think they're trying to do here? And I, I'm very sure that probably a lot of the speakers are not even doing it consciously. They just have a way that they like to, to speak. It's just. how they communicate. Steve Jobs is a great example. I don't think that he went to some amazing speech coach and learned to do it. I think he just, that was him. That was how he got ideas across. When you were studying your own speaking, I imagine it feels very you, the way you communicate. Is that something you arrived at quite quickly or did you, did it, or was it something you had to work on or was it something just through trial and error and you never really knew what made it work, but somehow it seemed to work and you kept doing more of the thing that worked. So I get a kick out of when Speaker 3 (7:54) people make videos telling people the things that I'm doing because I, they, they, they make some of the videos that I've seen, they make as if like I studied this and structured it that way, which is not what happens. I learned a few things on purpose and some by accident. So I'm very good on my feet, like extemporaneously. Like I can show up without a plan. I've given entire speeches before. There's a few speeches that are online where literally somebody said to me before I went on stage, what are you going to talk about? And five minutes before, I'm like, I haven't decided yet. And they giggle thinking I'm joking. But I'm being deadly serious. I haven't decided yet. The funny story is, and I don't really talk about this publicly, so it's fun. I learned a skill by accident. So I used to pay to go see my favorite speakers years and years ago when I was a young marketer, you know, folks like Seth Godin and Jim Collins, and I'd go see them in these big events. And I was always struck by how brilliant they were off the cuff and how spontaneous they were and relaxed they were. And I thought to myself, I want to be able to do that, you know? And... Not because I wanted to be a speaker. I just wanted that skill, you know, even just presenting for work. And I practiced. And basically what I did is I would get presentations for work all the time, you know, pretty traditional. Here's my PowerPoint. I'm going to walk you through my PowerPoint. Like many people, I'm Speaker 2 (9:16) going Speaker 3 (9:16) to read most of the slides, you know. And I got better at, I put fewer words on the slides. So I had to kind of know my stuff. I couldn't be too reliant on the slides. And then I went to just a couple of slides. And then I went to no slides. And then I went to like very prepared to less prepared. And I would sort of practice being less prepared so that I could, I knew my thing. It's like people are always amazed. How do you talk about your thing without preparing? I was like, could you just start talking about your kids and tell me about, you know, about your kids? And like people are like, of course. I'm like, yes, because you know. Speaker 2 (9:50) I Speaker 3 (9:50) don't have to prepare to tell you something I know. This is my life's work. I know this, you know. people just freak themselves out, which is why they memorize and overstudy. And so I got really good at just walking up and being able to share what they're asking me to share, what I know extemporaneously. And then years later, I met some of my heroes who I used to go pay to see on the stage. And I learned that they rehearse and study and practice and memorize. And I completely got it wrong because they were so good. I thought they had a skill that actually they didn't. And so I practiced something by accident and got good at something by accident. But it is a process. That's what happened. Speaker 2 (10:32) But it's also a process. Like, I mean, if you see, remember that film 8 Mile with Eminem? Speaker 3 (10:37) I never saw it, but yes. You Speaker 2 (10:38) never saw it. Okay. Well, there's a bit, it's about freestyle rap. And there's a bit where he's writing down lines on the bus. And these are lines that he... always will use and a lot of freestyle rap they're uh they're putting together material that they've already got yeah so it's like modules in their heads and it seems like complete magic in the moment but it's just putting together what you know yeah as you say and i think that people can also compare themselves unfavorably to people like you people like seth godin you know amazing speaker amazing Speaker 3 (11:12) speaker yeah Speaker 2 (11:12) he's given that speech a million times yeah and To expect that your average person in their Tuesday morning presentation is going to deliver something with that kind of ease and fluency is just not going to happen. Speaker 3 (11:28) But Speaker 2 (11:28) you can get better, for sure. Speaker 3 (11:30) I think that's 100 % true. What is the most common mistake people make when they're trying to be better speakers or presenters? Some of the most common mistakes. Well, Speaker 2 (11:43) I think the core challenge. which I think people often have, is what scientists would call the knowledge deficit model, which is people just lack the information. If you gave them the information, then they would think like