My site to help business leaders tell better stories has expanded. | Jeremy Connell-Waite posted on the topic | LinkedIn (2024)

[FREE MASTERCLASS] How do you create a video about a “boring” topic that gets MILLIONS of views?Dan Mace is the production genius behind YouTuber’s MrBeast & Casey Neistat’s videos. For those of you not be familiar, Jimmy “MrBeast” Donaldson is currently the world’s top YouTuber with 259M subscribers and over 67 billion views, from which he makes an estimated $700M per year from brand deals and ad revenue. And you should all know Casey Neistat (one of the world’s first vloggers) - and if you don't, look him up. In this clip from a recent interview with MrBeast’s video director, Dan Mace talks about the art of storytelling and how he has built MrBeasts philanthropy channel - from a channel that few people watched (because it’s philanthropy and not entertainment), to a channel that regularly creates videoswhich get over 10M views.Dan has a bunch of Cannes Lions awards for ads he has produced and recently turned down directing a “traditional" film with Renée Zellweger to focus on YouTube and work for MrBeast. (Watch the interview for the full story behind that interesting decision).In this 8-minute clip, Dan talks about his process:🎥 How do you tell short stories about difficult topics?🪝 What is the hook for your story?⁉️ How do you give the audience something they don’t expect?🌶️ Why should you add spice to your story?It’s a great clip and if you care about telling better stories and you have the time, you should check out the full video. (Link in the comments)

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Want to know the history of AI in 20 seconds? This clip from Amy Webb is a bit of fun from her annual keynote at SXSW this year where she breaks down the impact of each technology trend, industry by industry.The 2024 report from Future Today Institute is 979 pages long 🤯 with over 100 trends in #AI alone! It's a GREAT document. [Link to download the full PDF in the comments].I've been using this document to train a large language model (LLM) Llama-3 this week, to help some presenters quickly add some more compelling stories and statistics into their keynotes.Check out the report - and if you have the means, try feeding it into a LLM to have a conversation with it.I'm using IBM's watsonx Consulting Assistants to "Chat with Documents" asking the report such questions as "Which are the top 5 insights I could include in my presentation to the CFO of a large financial institution, who cares about reskilling her employees and is apprehensive about digital workers".The results were impressive.If you have then chance, take an hour this bank holiday weekend to watch Amy's brilliant keynote if you've not seen it already. It's 69-minutes well spent and it will make you feel a lot smarter (and much more informed) about where the world of technology is heading.

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Jeff Daniels is coming to speak and he's bringing a guitar! 🎸I adore this clip of one of my favourite actors on The Kelly Clarkson Show, who just gave us one of the most important lessons in storytelling. SURPRISE YOUR AUDIENCE. 😳Why?SURPRISE intensifies your emotions by 400%.Surprise makes EVERYTHING memorable.Why do you love your favourite [speech/story/song/Ted Talk/keynote]? Chances are it's because something about it stopped you in your tracks and surprised you when you first saw it or heard it.Maybe they used a prop, told a personal story you didn't expect, did something unusual, used the venue in a unique way or shared a line that you just couldn't stop thinking about?Maybe they sang? (like Obama did when he gave that famous eulogy in Charleston) 💙Maybe they made you laugh. A LOT. (Like Jerry Seinfeld's commencement or Sir Ken Robinson's epic Ted Talk?) 😂Maybe they shared a vulnerability? (Like Brené) 🔴Maybe they fell on their face or lit a cigarette? (Like 2 world champion Toastmasters did) 🎤Maybe they didn't use slides when the audience expected them to? (like Simon Sinek) 🎯Or maybe they brought a guitar? (Like Jeff Daniels... and astronaunt Chris Hadfield for one of my first IBM events when he sang some Bowie at the end of his keynote!) 🎸What all these examples have in common is that they turned a simple presentation in a performance by doing something that the audience didn't expect.Something extraordinary.So... if you want your audience to remember your next presentation, that should be YOUR GOAL:SURPRISE. YOUR. AUDIENCE.Give them something they don't expect. 🙌🏻✨ Just make sure that you've tested it in advance (to make sure that it works), practiced it to death (so you can't get it wrong); and you're ready to embrace the moment (and enjoy it) when it's your time to shine! ✨

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JERRY SEINFELD just gave a 1,000 second commencement address at Duke that many of those students will NEVER FORGET.Over the last 3 days comments about the speech have ranged from “The Warren Buffett of stand-up comedy” and “The best commencement speech I've ever heard!!” To “Awesome. Brilliant. Insightful. Wise. Genius. We need more speeches like this.”With no autocue, no looking down to check his notes and no awkward poses, Jerry spoke from the heart with the same rhythm and cadence that he is known for in his standup routines. But this wasn’t the small downstairs room of the Gotham Comedy Club speaking to a few hundreds folks. This was a few thousand.It was a masterclass in how to deliver an inspirational talk.💙 At 2,607 words long Jerry spoke at a respectable 156 words per minute but what was most (technically) impressive, is that this speech has the LOWEST READABILITY SCORE I’VE EVER SEEN. 💙6.77 on the Gunning Fog Index or 4.9 on Flesch Kincaid grade level. That’s a 5th grade (age 7-11) reading level! I showed it to my 7-year old twins and it kept their attention.This is a big deal for business leaders because most presentations score really highly (15+) and then they wonder why their audience didn't get it. Only a rare few write their script longhand so that they can measure the readability of it - and then gauge how their audience is likely to receive it.His script was written in the style of a song or a Psalm and not a speech. Just like Winston Churchill used to. That’s why it flows so well. Read the transcript on YouTube and you’ll see what I mean. A quick look at the science behind a speech like this reveals what makes it SO good:• 274 sentences• Av 1.42 syllables per word• 9.51 words per sentence.• Lexical Density: 44.113️⃣ Jerry Broke speech into 3 sections: 1. Bust your ass. 2. Pay attention. 3. Fall in love. He used a simple format that all great speakers use: Tell them what you’re about to tell them; tell them; tell them what you just told them. He addressed an elephant in the room that few commencement speakers dare mention: “Thank you for the phony degree... it's pretty much as useful in real life as this outfit I'm wearing.” He even had a dig at AI “making fake brains is risky” and suggested “the ad campaign for ChatGPT should be the opposite of Nike. You just can't do it!” 😂⬇️This impressive speech had tons of advice about work for leaders at any stage of their career:🤩 The goal is not to make as much money as you can. The goal should be to have the COOLEST JOB.🤣 Humour is the most powerful, most survival, essential quality you will ever have or need to navigate through the human experience.😳 We’re embarrassed about things we should BE PROUD of and proud of things we should be embarrassed about.💙 Don’t think about having, think about becoming.🔬 FASCINATION is way better than PASSION. Find something where you love the good parts and don't mind the bad parts too much. 👏🏻

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Being able to witness an artist re-inventing themselves is quite extraordinary. From the world’s most popular standup comedian to an A list movie star and a musician, Steve Martin is quite something. He’s a novelist, playwrite, musician, composer, comedian. 🎤You should watch this gorgeous documentary for many reasons:Steve was very shy. He was closed off to people and suffered the “intensity of aloneness”. Depressed and lonely in his younger years, he found joy and excitement much later in life.As I was watching it I thought how relevant it was to the thousands of you who are currently changing career later in life, reskilling yourselves for your next chapter, or who are currently feeling anxious and stressed about the future of business and where the world is heading... This 2-part doc is a story about how Steve basically "lived his whole backwards!" From being riddled with anxiety in his 30’s to being really happy at 75. He talks about how “Thankfully, persistence is a great substitute for talent” and why "the solution to many of life’s biggest challenges is that you haven't seen enough movies - all of life's riddles are answered in the movies.”He’s a funny guy who makes funny movies, but if you look just beneath the surface - you discover that all of Steve’s movies are actually about longing: Somebody wants something really badly and a formidable obstacle is standing in their way...This isn't just a biography doc. It’s a masterclass in how storytelling can improve your quality of life.“As you get older you become your worst self OR your best self”. 😂He deconstructs his artistic process, which is a joy in itself: “People think artists talk about theories and ideas. But all they really talk about is where to get paints!”Steve believes in the 8% rule of success. You have to make 40 movies to get 5 good ones. (You pour your heart into a movie but 2 years later it’s just another spine on the video shelf).Whatever you think you know about Steve Martin (and whether you like him or not) this really is well worth a watch.It’s a beautiful and thought provoking film about writing, performing, creating, failing, relationships, reinvention, transformation and the difficulty of accomplishment. 💙

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This 268-page PDF contains full transcripts for the top 51 TED Talks on #AI (March 2014-April 2024). It features many of the world’s top business leaders, academics, scientists and AI researchers.I put it into a simple document for you in case you fancy reading the raw data, or using it as inspiration for presentations and prompts that you're working on.My conclusion after reading all 51 talks?Every great talk begins with a STORY.The end.

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I used AI to analyse 50 of the top TED Talks on Artificial Intelligence to try and understand what made them so good. Here’s what I discovered:⏰ The average length: 11 mins 50.👩🏻💻 34 of the top 50 talks are male.6️⃣ They made the audience laugh every 6 minutes (Important since that's alleged to be the average attention span of a live business audience).🤷🏻♂️ “HOW” was used one-third of the time as the title for the talk. (Great tech stories focus on HOW – not what or why).⏲️ Average speaker talks at 157 words/min. (Many tech speakers are 175-200. The best speakers are usually around 125).👏🏻 Half of the speakers were stopped at least once for applause. (There’s a great goal to aim for!)📝 Analysis of all 93,029 words of the transcripts (9 hrs 51) shows a Gunning Fog readability score of 10.72. (Many corproate presentations are bad because they score 17+).🖍️ The transcripts had a Flesh Kincaid reading ease of 61.54. That’s 10th-12th grade in US (year 11/12 in UK). Calculating reading scores is really helpful. Below 50 (college students) are generally bad for tech presentations.🤯 “Lexical density” measures the number of unique words used, which can indicate the complexity of the language. These talks averaged 46.94% (It's a strong KPI most people don’t use. Most tech talks drown in complexity at 70%+)✒️ An easier way to describe the above? The average word was only 1.5 syllables long. Impressive given the complexity of topics & themes.💙 “HUMAN” was one of the most used words. 513 times. (Av. 10X per talk).⚖️ But “ETHICS” or “MORALS” were only mentioned 12 times. Read into that what you will.😳 Overall sentiment reveals the mindset of the audiences: “Concern and alarm regarding the advancement of AI particularly in terms of job displacement and the importance of developing emotional intelligence to complement technological progress."🥳 Presenters added LEVITY to contrast darker themes “expressing excitement towards utilising AI for enhancing education and promoting cross-cultural understanding.”Intelligent use of rhetorical devices. 3 simple examples:📖 Oxymoron: "humanistic AI". This term combines the words "humanistic" (having qualities associated with humans), and "AI" creating an oxymoron because AI is generally considered non-human.📆 Anadiplosis: "Now, today I'm happy to see that the idea of an intelligent assistant is mainstream." - This sentence begins with the word "now," connecting the current state to the previous context.🌊 Hyperbole: "a tsunami of misinformation" - This expression exaggerates the potential effects of misinformation created by AI.Was all that enough to max out your storytelling geek quotient for today! 😂This is all really interesting stuff that will HELP YOU get better at communicating the more you dig into it, so I’ve attached this PDF with URLs for all 50 talks so that you can check them out yourself.10 hours well spent!

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“Ordinary people are capable of doing extraordinary things, and that’s what it’s all about.” Studs TerkelI’m reading “WORKING” at the moment. It’s a huge collection of 128 beautifully written short stories about ordinary people and what they do at work every day. (It was the inspiration behind Obama’s Netflix show - Working: What We Do All Day.)Louis “Studs” Terkel wrote the 666-page book in 1974 after becoming obsessed with telling stories about what every day people do all day, and how they feel about what they do. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his work in 1985.I wanted to share this classic book with you because despite it’s age, it offers a huge amount of inspiration for managers, and anyone who is “reskilling” or looking at a career change right now. After interviewing hundreds of people and sharing their (often mundane) stories, Terkel’s came to two conclusions:1. Most of us have jobs that are too small for our spirits.2. People are hungry for stories. It’s part of our very being. Storytelling is a form of history, of immortality too. It goes from one generation to the other.WORKING is a literary masterpiece but it’s also a very practical reminder to celebrate what each of us do every day. Linkedin is full of content and quotes from inspirational leaders but those aren’t usually the ones putting in the work. It’s the ordinary folks like me and you.When Studs was asked about why he chose to celebrate “ordinary people” in an Esquire interview a few years ago, he had this to say:“Ordinary people? I hate the word ordinary. It's patronizing.Tell me: Who built the pyramids? People say: The Pharaohs built the pyramids. The Pharaohs? The Pharaohs didn't lift a finger. Anonymous slaves built the pyramids. They're the ones who could tell you what it was like. That's what I'm getting at when I talk about looking at history from the bottom up.” So here’s to all the ordinary people who are quietly going about their business and getting stuff done. Let’s do a better job of telling THEIR stories.

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For the last 3 months I’ve been building a team of AI-powered storytelling assistants to help my colleagues at IBM tell better stories.While we’re obviously in the early days of this new era (and it’s like the wild west as models are breaking and hallucinating left, right and centre), it’s still very exciting to see the speed of progress, and the quality of what these models are capable of.I have recently created some business stories (with complex narratives and story structures) in under an hour. 12-18 months ago it might have taken me and a couple of folks over 30 hours for research, planning and storyboarding.This 2-minute video (diluted for public viewing for obvious reasons) shows a very simple but interesting use case.It demonstrates Llama-3 giving some communications advice to a nervous presenter, using an assistant that I’ve been training with vast amounts of storytelling and personality type data. The 3,000 word prompt behind the assistant took me a month to write! (That’s a whole story in itself).AI is getting a bad rep in some creative circles because it’s “not good enough”, “can’t augment human performance well enough” and either “hallucinates all the time” or just “gets everything plain wrong”.And for many public models that’s very true. 🤯Those are often the type of stories you hear in the media because they're the ones that get the most eyeballs.Many open and public LLM’s (you know the ones I’m talking about) are tested on questionable data and provide no governance at all. They can’t be trusted with important tasks or sensitive data. They don’t tell you where their training data came from, and they definitely don’t clearly explain how the model came to its conclusions.But the models I’m working on for our clients at IBM are mind-blowingly good. Robust. Trusted. Safe. Secure. Compliant.Of course I’m biased 🤷🏻♂️ - but whether I’m wearing my IBM hat or not, I'm seeing these models telling strong stories with factually correct data (citing all their sources).They write scripts or speeches according to the most relevant story structure that I’ve trained them on - and they can then re-purpose it for the personality type of the presenter and their audience.That’s insanely great. 😉I’m already seeing teams of people saving up to 5 hours each per week.That’s like having an extra day in your week.I built a story in 57 minutes last week that would have normally taken me a day (taking into account time needed for research, statistics, audience demographics and storyboarding). I was happy with 75% of the work done by the AI (watsonx) - I took just over an hour to fact-check and refine the story myself.As a storyteller who is naturally suspicious of AI - and one who values empathy, accuracy and emotional human connections - THIS IS A BIG DEAL.We have no real idea where this is going yet and what the implications will be.But it’s here.And it’s already MUCH better than you think it is.

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