January 19, 2025 • 32 mins
HATE clunky workshops? They're super annoying and they make it harder to learn.
Here's why:
❌ No direction means information is less intuitive.
❌ No clear purpose means you've got no....purpose...
❌ Poor pacing rushes crucial insights or drags simple stuff
What the solution?
Design your workshop like a story arc.
Result?
A workshop that feels whole and creates genuine "aha" moments.
Want to see how this can work for your next workshop?
Then listen to this week's guest, Rob D. Willis who's taking us on a deep dive into how you can design workshops that flow as smoothly as stories.
Rob is a storytelling consultant and workshop facilitator who's on a mission to unlock your potential with clear storytelling techniques.
Resources
Register for the Coaching-as-Marketing Blueprint training.
(It’s FREE)
Connect with Rob Willis
Listen to Rob's Podcast
If you're the best-kept secret in your industry, it's time to change that.
Because when you start showing up with clarity, confidence, and the right content—your ideal clients won't just notice you. They'll choose you.
Don’t miss your chance to get a free video brand assessment to start creating videos that actually work for your business.
Schedule your video brand assessment here >
Thanks for tuning in. If you found this episode helpful, share it with another expert entrepreneur who’s ready to stop blending in.
And I’ll see you next time—on The Standout Business Show.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Rob Willis (00:02):
imagine if you watched a film of just one
camera angle, one personspeaking the whole time.
It would get terribly boring.
The way to maintain engagementis contrast.
So you have people changing,different characters speaking
different scenes, differentthings going on.
The same needs to be true inyour workshop and you need to
(00:22):
think about how the differentexperiences go against one
another.
So you'll start with speaking,then there might be a pair
exercise, then there might be avideo, then a discussion, then a
small group exercise.
It needs to keep changing.
If you have too much of onething for too long, you will
inevitably drop an engagement.
Brad Powell (00:44):
Welcome to the Standout Business Show, where
it's all about making a biggerdifference by doing business
differently.
I'm Brad Powell, your StandoutBusiness Coach, and today we're
talking about what could be thebest workshop design framework
in the world.
So if you're one of thosepeople who absolutely hates
(01:06):
those clunky, boring workshopsor maybe you're someone who's
been leading a clunky, boringworkshop my guest today
storytelling coach and workshopfacilitator, rob Willis he's
coming on to break down how youcan avoid the pitfalls of
running a workshop that justkind of drags.
(01:27):
Designing a workshop that istruly engaging is actually one
of the best ways for you tostand out with the work that
you're doing, because from timeto time, we always have to make
some sort of presentation, andwe all know what it's like to
die by, know, die by PowerPointpresentations that go on and on.
If you've ever been in thecorporate sector, those things
(01:49):
are rampant and they're to beavoided like the plague.
It's really timely for mebecause later this month I'm
going to lead a one day virtualworkshop and I do not want it to
suck.
Today, rob is here to help usuncover the secret and spoiler
alert the secret lies instorytelling and turning the
(02:12):
whole design of your workshopinto a kind of narrative arc.
So stay tuned, because we'regoing to take a deep dive into
how you can design workshopsthat flow as smoothly as stories
, and if that sounds good, let'sstart the show.
(02:33):
Before we get started, I'vecreated a masterclass that I'm
presenting in January.
It's called the Coaching asMarketing Blueprint.
I'm going to present thefull-on model on how you can
create your experiential offerso that when people come in
contact with you, what theyactually get is this experience
(02:55):
of working with you, whichactually takes them one or two
or three steps closer to thedestination that they want to go
.
They see you in your zone ofgenius and they see you as
possibly the only and bestsolution for them, and they
believe in the solution becausethey go.
Wow, I've just had theexperience of doing this.
(03:17):
Now I know it's possible for meand I want more, and this makes
you super attractive.
So if you're interested in that, the link to the Blueprint
Masterclass is in the show notesor you can go to
awesomevideomakerscom slashBlueprint.
(03:38):
It's free and you can thank melater.
And now back to the show.
All right, rob, welcome to theshow.
Rob Willis (03:51):
Hello Brad, Good to be here.
Brad Powell (03:54):
You know, this whole conversation was inspired
by a LinkedIn post you didrecently that I saw, where you
really broke down in detail howthis can work and basically
you're telling the story of aworkshop you led recently with
about 200 people and how you hadcreated this arc, so that the
whole thing was like this long,engaging journey that you were
(04:18):
taking people on, and to methat's super intriguing and I
really thought, ok, well, thispost is cool, but can we go
deeper?
Can we actually take a coupleof the details so that not only
myself but everybody listeningcan figure out?
Okay, for my next workshop, Iwant to be able to apply some of
these strategies to the designof how I put my next
(04:40):
presentation together.
So when you look at workshopdesign, let's just talk about,
like, the big mistakes or thethings that people have been
doing that you really want toavoid.
Rob Willis (04:52):
So I think the mistakes for workshop design are
kind of similar to the mistakesthat people make in all kinds
of communication which isrushing in too quickly with the
answer and throwing it at peopleas a kind of shopping list or
list of facts.
I like to call it checklisttype communication, which is I
(05:17):
have all of these things whichI'm going to tell you, I've done
all the research, I've got thedata.
Here it is, and you go throughthis one after the other and you
think, well, I said everything.
that means I'm right and it'sgoing to work.
It comes from, I think, howwe're educated.
We are at least where I waseducated in the UK.
(05:40):
It feels like in exams we werepretty much judged on quantity
of information and accuracy ofinformation.
But when you get into theworking world you realize that
quantity and accuracy is not theway you build impact, and
definitely when it comes todelivering a workshop and you're
trying to get people to changebehaviors in some way, you're
(06:04):
going to have to find more of anarc.
So, yeah, happy to take youthrough this.
Where do you think we shouldstart for people?
Brad Powell (06:12):
The first thing that you mentioned was just
mapping out the journey, and Ireally like the idea of looking
at this as a kind of a journey,that it's a path that you're
outlining and saying here, we'restarting here and we want to go
over there yeah and so whatwere the elements that you
include in?
Just the features of of anykind of map like that?
Rob Willis (06:35):
okay.
So start super simple, as Iwould say, because we're trying
to move away from the checklistlots of of information and
really break it down to thesimplest story structure there
is, which is beginning, middle,end.
Just like your mom used to tellyou at night, a story just has
(06:59):
a beginning, a middle and an end, and any piece of communication
does as well, and I thinkthat's how we need to think
about it.
Now a good question would beokay, what's the beginning,
what's the middle and the end?
So the beginning would be whereare your audience right now,
the people in your workshop?
Where are they?
(07:19):
What is their problem?
I believe it was.
Aaron Sorkin said that all thestory is is a character who
wants something and there's anobstacle.
So identify what is thatobstacle.
What's keeping people up atnight?
What are they worried about?
The frustrating thing here isthey may not be totally aware of
(07:43):
the problem that you're goingto solve for them.
You need to start where theyare and show them what the
problem is.
Yeah, but anyway, I'm gettingahead of myself.
At the beginning, understandwhat is the problem that you're
going to solve and at the end,what is success going to be?
What are they going to be afterthis workshop with you and the
(08:05):
middle you fill this inafterwards.
It's very intuitive from thispoint If you understand where
people are and where you want toget them to work out the top
three things they need to knowthe high-level topics, the
high-level takeaways that theywould need in order to achieve
that goal.
Brad Powell (08:21):
So just give an example In the workshop that you
were leading, what did thatlook like?
What was the beginning?
And what example like in theworkshop that you were leading,
what did that look like?
What was the beginning and whatwas the end to the?
Rob Willis (08:29):
stuff that you were talking about.
Yeah, so the reason I needed tospend quite some time on this
was that workshop was actually aseries of three workshops, for
a lot of people and it wasn'tcompulsory to go to all of them.
So not only did I have anoverarching flow for three
workshops, each individual onehad to have its own particular
(08:53):
arc as well, so I needed to workon it on two different levels.
I guess it's similar if you'recreating a TV show Each episode
needs to have a story arc andthen that feeds into an episode,
and the episode feeds into theseries and the series into the
world of the story.
So you know, that's nothingunusual about that, I guess.
(09:14):
So what I did was I sat downwith the clients and I discussed
what are the kinds ofchallenges they see in the
company.
To make it easier for me, I'dworked with the company a lot,
so I knew a lot about them, Iknew about the challenges they
had, I knew about what they hadto do.
So I had to think about okay,what are the three professional
(09:37):
environments in which thesepeople are challenging to
communicate?
And I broke it down into threetopics.
In the end, the three workshopswere nail your next update.
That was the first one.
Two was about driving action,about persuasion, which I feel
(09:57):
was like the next stage.
And step three was more aboutcollaboration.
How do you actually work withpeople?
All under this arc ofstorytelling and more effective
communication at work all rightnow that we have this, let's
just call it destination.
Brad Powell (10:14):
We know where we're going, we know where we started
and now this is the there's themessy middle part, like
somewhere in there.
There there's obstacles, butthere's also solutions, and
there's probably more than onealong the way, especially if
you're doing what you just did,which was like a three separate
stages of your workshop.
(10:35):
So talk a little aboutencountering the obstacles along
the way and then picking up,like I know that in your post
you were talking about likeinsights and aha moments.
That you want to slot in, and Ithink that this is something to
really be thinking about for aworkshop thing.
I think most people make themistake of thinking that the big
(10:57):
aha is going to be at the end,like at the end I'm going to
reveal the final thing and beable to go oh my god, that's
amazing, you blew my mind.
But actually you want to beshifting and changing
perspective along the way sothat you're pulling people along
with you.
Rob Willis (11:14):
I think so talk about that process so, firstly,
I would say the mistake, orrather it is a mistake to feel
that you are the one who has toreveal the aha moment.
In fact, I would say that itceases to be an aha moment if
you are the one who reveals it.
(11:36):
The idea is you want to buildup a kind of tension and create
an environment in which peoplekind of come to the answer on
their own.
Now, this totally depends, ofcourse, on the size of group.
If you're dealing with 200people, then you do need to
explicitly say what the harmmode is.
If it's a smaller group, thenyou want to create exercises and
(11:58):
discussions and give themquestions that lead them to
coming up to the solutionthemselves.
When they have some agency,it's more relevant to them and
they're more likely to followthrough on it.
I mean, you coach, don't youBrad?
So I imagine you've got someexperience of sharing questions
with people and they come to theanswer themselves.
Brad Powell (12:21):
Yeah, absolutely that's the.
I mean that's the main job of acoach is not to really say
stuff, it's to ask stuff, and itcarries over into the podcast
realm.
I mean, one of the one of theways that I hone my skill as a
coach is by doing interviewslike this, where I'm constantly
asking and I'm doing my best tolisten.
In fact, it's one of thebiggest reasons why I do the
(12:42):
style of podcasting that I do,which is more conversational,
Like I don't have a bunch ofquestions that I came up with
earlier.
It's more of we're starting aconversation and I'm listening
to what you have to say and thenthat's.
That's keying something in methat I can add to our discussion
.
Rob Willis (13:01):
Yeah, I think that's it's a relevant way to think
about building a workshop aswell.
Again, it totally depends onwhere you're doing the workshop,
how many people are there, etc.
But it is a conversation andyou are building something with
others and they will appreciatemore the stuff that they were
able to have some agency increating, the stuff that they
(13:22):
were able to have some agency increating.
Very often you'll get requestsfor workshops which are like oh,
can you just give us some tips?
People feel that thatchecklist-style approach of just
deliver bits of information,that's going to be enough.
But think about any of the bigbreakthroughs or the
(13:43):
achievements that you've had inyour life.
It's knowing more didn't makethem happen.
Taking continuous action did.
And when you're planning aworkshop, you need to be able to
visualize what that will looklike.
To give it an analogy, one of myprevious jobs I guess when I
really learned aboutstorytelling was I was working
(14:05):
as a tour guide in Berlin and Iwould have to find routes for
people starting in one place,finishing somewhere else, and
that route would have to havesome sort of narrative arc to it
and on the way you'd need tobuild up a whole story for them.
You'd also tell the stories ofthe individual points You'd need
to think about, okay, what arethey doing before and what are
(14:26):
they doing after?
And it would need to make sensein the idea of their day.
You'd have to think about whereare they going to get a little
bit tired?
Where are they going to havequestions?
It's the same principles forbuilding a workshop, actually
for any, you know, building ameeting, a keynote.
You need to think about what'sthe context of what you're doing
(14:47):
.
Brad Powell (14:48):
Yeah, that's so interesting that you're doing
working as a tour guide.
It reminds me of my past life.
I was an outdoor educator,working for Outward Bound and
taking young people out into theoutdoors.
And the cycle of ourfacilitation.
First of all, we're reallyfacilitating how to confront
some kind of challenge in theoutdoor world and be okay with
(15:13):
being there and be okay as agroup working together so you
don't just all melt down, andalso individually, how you can
meet the challenge and becomfortable and confident in
that kind of environment.
And but.
But the truth was that from dayto day there were all these
little cycles of activity thatyou know things would.
(15:34):
Things would happenspontaneously and some things we
would plan.
But the facilitation waswhere's the group now?
Where do we think they want tobe, and how can we facilitate
the growth that will allow themto get there?
Rob Willis (15:49):
Yeah, and you also have to, of course, think about
all the stuff around it, likeokay, what's, what's their limit
?
What, how far can they go inall of this?
Right, if you're dealing with agroup of teenagers who have
never climbed a mountain beforeand you send them up K2 or
something, it's a recipe fordisaster.
Brad Powell (16:09):
It's not going to work very well.
Rob Willis (16:10):
Yeah, you need to find a challenge that they're
going to be able to engage within that.
Well, we're talking aboutworkshop, but in that instance,
the experience- yeah, instancethe experience.
Brad Powell (16:23):
Yeah, yeah, I used to uh talk to the staff about
having virtual tachometers soyou can gauge and have a
tachometer.
That was for the students andyou're always watching and make
sure that you know there's.
Sometimes you would have itlike do things so that you know
that they're going to go intothe red zone and they're going
to be challenged there yeah butmake sure that they're not so
(16:47):
far that they'll never come backlike they're going to just be
destroyed there, but sort oflike.
There's this thing of bringingthem up and then helping them
come back out, kind of thing,but at the same time watching
your own tachometer so that, nomatter what's happening, your
own tachometer is never goinginto the red yeah, so because
you need to be the one helpingthem.
Rob Willis (17:09):
If they can't, it can't go any further right, yeah
you need to find the, the limit, the, the bounds and and I
think, visualizing all of that,then you you will kind of know
what's required for the rest ofthe workshop.
You will have such a clear ideaof okay, we start the workshop
(17:30):
at this time in this location.
It's online or in person.
What are they doing before?
This is how we're going to getpeople into the right frame of
mind.
This is the exercise that'sgoing to help them engage with
the problem and see where theyare right now.
Then these are the three maintopics and for these topics
we're going to watch that videoor have that discussion and
(17:52):
discuss this question.
They're going to do thisparticular exercise and at the
end of all of this there's aexercise where they can bring
everything together and try itout, and at the end we're going
to discuss how we're going tomove on beyond the workshop.
You can really see everythingwithout having made a single
(18:14):
slide by this point.
You know exactly what's goingto happen, you know what you
need, and then you can just sitdown and methodically go through
putting it all together and youfeel ready for the workshop at
this point, and the weirdestthing I found from working like
this is.
For some reason I always seemto finish pretty much exactly on
(18:37):
time.
Having said that, now I'mtempting fate and I'm not going
to go terribly over time in thenext workshop.
But when you have this clearidea of how long is it going to
take, this is going to take thema bit longer than there'll be a
bit of a fumble to get themback to their seats for this bit
.
Once you have all of that takeninto account, you can kind of
(18:58):
judge how long it's going to bequite accurately actually.
Brad Powell (19:02):
Yeah, that's great.
I can really appreciate that.
I mean because there's a lot ofelements, especially when
you're facilitating groupexercise.
You really don't.
I mean you can put a time limitand say, okay, put your pencils
down or whatever, but stillpeople are always wanting to ask
questions.
Some people, when they ask aquestion, they tend to tell
their own story while they'redoing that, and so it can take a
(19:24):
lot longer, and so it's a realtrick to pay attention during
those moments.
So when you're looking at, like,this whole picture of designing
a workshop with this narrativearc as a thing like I see it as,
especially when you're talkingabout doing a series, which is
(19:46):
great, like we're, we'reconstantly, as business people
now compelled to put out variouskinds of content, and a
workshop or a masterclassdelivery is just another form of
that content and we are doingthings not necessarily
repetitive in that you know, ifyou're working for a particular
(20:07):
client and they want to hire,you do something with a group of
people that they're going towant to come back.
(20:33):
Like you leave an appetite, sothat you're building something
that the experience that they'vehad is so compelling that
they're going, oh, this isfantastic.
We could certainly use a lotmore of this, and so this is
what I want you to speak to interms of design elements that
not only are getting them to thedestination but are building
(20:53):
the appetite and even kind ofthe challenge of you know, you
guys as an organization or as ateam, or whatever the group is
like as a cohesive whole, orwhatever the group is like as a
cohesive whole, you guys havenow achieved a certain level,
but we're just getting startedLike there's a lot more that you
(21:14):
could do, and be putting themin that mindset of oh yeah,
we're on a pattern of growthhere.
Rob Willis (21:21):
One thing I'd say is give a good enough workshop and
they probably will hire you togive exactly the same thing
again to other people in theirorganization, because most of
the organizations I work withare at least 1,000, 2,000 people
, and there's usually morepeople who need the same
training, and people in yourgroup tell their friends about
(21:44):
it and they want to come alongto it.
So have to acknowledge thatsome people won't have seen your
training already, and, thoughit may feel frustrating at times
, repetition is kind of part ofyour job whatever you do.
So that's one thing I say.
Sometimes you do need to repeatwhen it comes to developing.
I think I want to make it clearthat you shouldn't ever hold
(22:09):
anything back when you'representing.
Give people a completeexperience and they'll want more
, and there's always more thatyou can talk about.
There's either taking the sameprinciples and applying it to
something else, or there'sdiscovering new principles.
Very often it's simply takingthe same principles and applying
(22:31):
them in different situations,but you can grow the topic as
well.
Actually, at the end of lastyear, I gave a workshop to a
team who I'd worked with alreadya workshop to a team who I'd
worked with already and theclient said okay, like most,
(22:55):
almost everyone has done yourworkshop two years ago or
something.
And I was a bit worried aboutthis because I thought, okay,
well, everyone's done it, butthere's a few people who haven't
.
So how do I include people whohaven't done it but also provide
something new and exciting forthose who have?
And I guess the answer was justlooking at what was going on
right now, because there'd beena year to year gap in between
(23:15):
the two workshops.
They had slightly differentneeds, they had a new executive
team who wanted them tocommunicate in a different way,
and all I had to do was discoverwhat is the new context.
The principles of storytellingare the same I didn't invent
them, aristotle did, and it'snot really changed a whole great
deal since then.
But the context, of course, thereality of people using these
(23:40):
principles, that changes all thetime, and the demands of their
job that also changes.
So you're always going to findnew avenues and ways to apply
this stuff.
Brad Powell (23:49):
Yeah, and one thing else I'd like to talk about is
during the process of goingthrough a workshop like this you
mentioned this in your post,called it, calling it reality
checks.
I would call it in sort of acheck in or a debrief, something
like that.
But there's this element of youdo want to check in with people
to see if, like, where they'reat like, have they moved?
(24:11):
Are they actually moving alongthe path or are they stuck
somewhere, and so talk about thetechniques that you use to do
that kind of check in.
Rob Willis (24:23):
So this will very much depend in what kind of
business you are in, if you'reB2C or B2B.
B2c, in a way, is easier butharder in other ways.
So B2C is easier to get peopleto make a change because they
put their own money on the line.
They want to do this, they areinterested in it and if they're
interested in it they'reprobably already okay at it.
(24:45):
So it's a bit easier to getthem to implement things.
B2b, which is where I work.
So I am very rarely employed bythe person who does the
training or the facilitation ofthe workshop.
I'm employed by their boss orthe people team in their company
.
So they might be there thinking, oh what's this for?
(25:07):
Or I didn't realize I had to dothis thing, so that's going to
be a little bit harder thing.
So that's going to be a littlebit harder.
The three pillars of learningare relevant content, a personal
motivation and a supportiveenvironment.
Now in the workshop you onlyreally have control over
(25:27):
relevant content.
You can make sure that it'srelevant and that it's good.
That should be a given, I think.
Personal motivation you don'thave so much control over.
The only control that you haveis your relationship with the
manager.
So getting the management teaminvolved, that will both make
people more motivated but alsocreate the better learning
(25:50):
environment.
There have been some jobs I'vedone where that wasn't possible
to have that kind ofcoordination and the challenge
you find is people never havetime for the training, they
never have time to implement itbecause there's something else
going on and then boss told themthey needed to do something.
So they forgot to do what youasked.
So getting their boss, theirwhole environment with you,
(26:19):
that's going to lead to a moresignificant change.
It's much easier to work with ateam than to work with a
disparate group of people in anorganization.
In some ways, I'd say yeah,absolutely Well.
Brad Powell (26:32):
I can recall being with groups that you know in the
Outward Bound work.
We also had professionaldevelopment programs with
employees from a company thatwould be kind of dumped on us.
It was kind of like, you know,the teenagers would come and the
parents had dumped them on usand the corporate people would
come and the company had dumpedthem on us and them.
(26:52):
You're all going to go out anddo team building in the outdoors
and be whatever and made better.
And a lot of these folks arelike why am I here?
Why did my boss make me do this?
I'm just going to be miserablethe whole time.
And so it was a reallyinteresting magic act to work
with groups like that and bringthem to a place, like really
(27:13):
help them come to a place wherethey're really okay with what's
going on and not only that, butfeeling like they really got
value and benefit from the wholeexperience.
And creating that kind oftransformation was super
rewarding when it was possible.
But it's super challenging aswell because you're just right,
I mean, often the workshopenvironment is this it's kind of
(27:38):
like having to go to church onSunday.
It's just like you might notwant to be there, but the whole
everybody is telling you that issomething you just have to do.
Rob Willis (27:50):
It can be.
But if I might just jump in, Ithink that if people are going
into your workshop expecting apassive engagement like
entertain me, impress me, it'snot going to work very well.
It doesn't matter how good youare, People need to be involved
in the process, and I think thatgoes for when you're presenting
(28:12):
as well, or when you're in asales conversation.
If people are not engaging withyou, then it's going to be very
, very hard.
It doesn't matter how good yourcontent is.
So time needs to be spent atthe beginning of a workshop,
bringing people into your world,showing them what the problem
is, showing them how it relatesto them.
That has to be part of theworkshop.
(28:33):
If you just go in and startsaying this is how you do this,
this is how you do that, peoplewon't necessarily see the
application, they don'tnecessarily see the need to do
it.
Brad Powell (28:44):
Yeah, that's probably the best piece of
advice I can imagine.
It's just at the start.
I mean sort of we used to callit framing.
We're creating a frame thatwe're going to operate in and,
of course, as you continue, youcan keep on reframing, like you
can bring in new frames and sortof set the pace and the scene
(29:07):
you know before you actuallystart telling the story and are
bringing them along the journeySuper critical, so that people
know what to expect.
But they also understand that,oh, if I'm going to get anything
out of this at all, I need tojust do something more than just
sit and have you be like theentertainer yeah, and some, some
(29:29):
people you won't successfullyachieve that with, but it and
it's less to do with you thanwith them.
Rob Willis (29:37):
To be quite honest, there may be lack of interest.
It might be that all you'rereally good, or they think they
are.
At least it may be they havesomething else on their mind,
some things you can't control,but you can do your very best to
control what you can.
Brad Powell (29:52):
All right.
Well, I think that might be areally good note for us to close
on.
We're getting right close tothe end of the time, but if
there's one other thing that wehaven't touched on that you
would like to impart aroundworkshop design.
I got a whole page of noteshere.
Really good stuff, but whatwould you like to add?
Rob Willis (30:13):
This is a tip I got from a book called Two Hour
Workshop, which I think Iunderstood intuitively but
hadn't quite graspedtheoretically was that the way
to maintain engagement iscontrast.
Imagine if you watched a filmof just one camera angle, one
person speaking the whole time.
(30:34):
It would get terribly boring.
You have contrast.
You have people changing,different characters speaking
different scenes, differentthings going on.
The same needs to be true inyour workshop and you need to
think about how the differentexperiences go against one
another.
So you'll start with speaking,then there might be a pair
exercise, then there might be avideo, then a discussion, then a
(31:00):
small group exercise.
It needs to keep changing.
If you have too much of onething for too long, you will
inevitably drop an engagement.
Brad Powell (31:05):
Well, all good storytelling has that in it.
If there's nothing to pushagainst, it's not an interesting
story.
Rob Willis (31:14):
And if the end is not different to the beginning,
then it's not a story.
Brad Powell (31:17):
Yeah right, that's right.
If there's no transformation,then nothing happened.
All right, Rob, this has beenterrific.
I really appreciate youbreaking some of this down for
us.
If people are interested inconnecting with you, what would
be the best way for them to dothat?
Rob Willis (31:33):
They can visit my LinkedIn.
Rob D Willis, based in Berlin,should be easy to find.
I also have a podcast calledthe Superpowered Podcast, where
I talk about the unique storiesof modern leaders.
So I'm really interested inpeople's X factors, how they got
those and what I think isreally unique about it is in
every episode we give people anactionable ritual or exercise
(31:57):
that they can try out for thenext week.
Brad Powell (31:59):
Well, that's cool, all right.
Well, I'll check that out.
Well, I'll make sure that linksto both your LinkedIn and to
your podcast are in the shownotes.
Rob Willis (32:06):
I appreciate that.
Brad Powell (32:07):
Thanks so much for coming on today.
This has really been great.
Rob Willis (32:10):
Thank you for having me, Brad.
Brad Powell (32:11):
This has really been great.
Thank you for having me, brad.
Yeah, and for those listeningat the end, I just want to
remind you if you'd like to goand grab the entire archive of
the Standout Business Show, justgo to standoutbusinessshow.
It's all there, all the audioand all the video, all the extra
(32:32):
stuff that I put in there onlyfor our listeners.
We go live every Tuesday at 11am and until the next time, so
long.
imagine if you watched a film of just one
camera angle, one personspeaking the whole time.
It would get terribly boring.
The way to maintain engagementis contrast.
So you have people changing,different characters speaking
different scenes, differentthings going on.
The same needs to be true inyour workshop and you need to
(00:22):
think about how the differentexperiences go against one
another.
So you'll start with speaking,then there might be a pair
exercise, then there might be avideo, then a discussion, then a
small group exercise.
It needs to keep changing.
If you have too much of onething for too long, you will
inevitably drop an engagement.
Brad Powell (00:44):
Welcome to the Standout Business Show, where
it's all about making a biggerdifference by doing business
differently.
I'm Brad Powell, your StandoutBusiness Coach, and today we're
talking about what could be thebest workshop design framework
in the world.
So if you're one of thosepeople who absolutely hates
(01:06):
those clunky, boring workshopsor maybe you're someone who's
been leading a clunky, boringworkshop my guest today
storytelling coach and workshopfacilitator, rob Willis he's
coming on to break down how youcan avoid the pitfalls of
running a workshop that justkind of drags.
(01:27):
Designing a workshop that istruly engaging is actually one
of the best ways for you tostand out with the work that
you're doing, because from timeto time, we always have to make
some sort of presentation, andwe all know what it's like to
die by, know, die by PowerPointpresentations that go on and on.
If you've ever been in thecorporate sector, those things
(01:49):
are rampant and they're to beavoided like the plague.
It's really timely for mebecause later this month I'm
going to lead a one day virtualworkshop and I do not want it to
suck.
Today, rob is here to help usuncover the secret and spoiler
alert the secret lies instorytelling and turning the
(02:12):
whole design of your workshopinto a kind of narrative arc.
So stay tuned, because we'regoing to take a deep dive into
how you can design workshopsthat flow as smoothly as stories
, and if that sounds good, let'sstart the show.
(02:33):
Before we get started, I'vecreated a masterclass that I'm
presenting in January.
It's called the Coaching asMarketing Blueprint.
I'm going to present thefull-on model on how you can
create your experiential offerso that when people come in
contact with you, what theyactually get is this experience
(02:55):
of working with you, whichactually takes them one or two
or three steps closer to thedestination that they want to go
.
They see you in your zone ofgenius and they see you as
possibly the only and bestsolution for them, and they
believe in the solution becausethey go.
Wow, I've just had theexperience of doing this.
(03:17):
Now I know it's possible for meand I want more, and this makes
you super attractive.
So if you're interested in that, the link to the Blueprint
Masterclass is in the show notesor you can go to
awesomevideomakerscom slashBlueprint.
(03:38):
It's free and you can thank melater.
And now back to the show.
All right, rob, welcome to theshow.
Rob Willis (03:51):
Hello Brad, Good to be here.
Brad Powell (03:54):
You know, this whole conversation was inspired
by a LinkedIn post you didrecently that I saw, where you
really broke down in detail howthis can work and basically
you're telling the story of aworkshop you led recently with
about 200 people and how you hadcreated this arc, so that the
whole thing was like this long,engaging journey that you were
(04:18):
taking people on, and to methat's super intriguing and I
really thought, ok, well, thispost is cool, but can we go
deeper?
Can we actually take a coupleof the details so that not only
myself but everybody listeningcan figure out?
Okay, for my next workshop, Iwant to be able to apply some of
these strategies to the designof how I put my next
(04:40):
presentation together.
So when you look at workshopdesign, let's just talk about,
like, the big mistakes or thethings that people have been
doing that you really want toavoid.
Rob Willis (04:52):
So I think the mistakes for workshop design are
kind of similar to the mistakesthat people make in all kinds
of communication which isrushing in too quickly with the
answer and throwing it at peopleas a kind of shopping list or
list of facts.
I like to call it checklisttype communication, which is I
(05:17):
have all of these things whichI'm going to tell you, I've done
all the research, I've got thedata.
Here it is, and you go throughthis one after the other and you
think, well, I said everything.
that means I'm right and it'sgoing to work.
It comes from, I think, howwe're educated.
We are at least where I waseducated in the UK.
(05:40):
It feels like in exams we werepretty much judged on quantity
of information and accuracy ofinformation.
But when you get into theworking world you realize that
quantity and accuracy is not theway you build impact, and
definitely when it comes todelivering a workshop and you're
trying to get people to changebehaviors in some way, you're
(06:04):
going to have to find more of anarc.
So, yeah, happy to take youthrough this.
Where do you think we shouldstart for people?
Brad Powell (06:12):
The first thing that you mentioned was just
mapping out the journey, and Ireally like the idea of looking
at this as a kind of a journey,that it's a path that you're
outlining and saying here, we'restarting here and we want to go
over there yeah and so whatwere the elements that you
include in?
Just the features of of anykind of map like that?
Rob Willis (06:35):
okay.
So start super simple, as Iwould say, because we're trying
to move away from the checklistlots of of information and
really break it down to thesimplest story structure there
is, which is beginning, middle,end.
Just like your mom used to tellyou at night, a story just has
(06:59):
a beginning, a middle and an end, and any piece of communication
does as well, and I thinkthat's how we need to think
about it.
Now a good question would beokay, what's the beginning,
what's the middle and the end?
So the beginning would be whereare your audience right now,
the people in your workshop?
Where are they?
(07:19):
What is their problem?
I believe it was.
Aaron Sorkin said that all thestory is is a character who
wants something and there's anobstacle.
So identify what is thatobstacle.
What's keeping people up atnight?
What are they worried about?
The frustrating thing here isthey may not be totally aware of
(07:43):
the problem that you're goingto solve for them.
You need to start where theyare and show them what the
problem is.
Yeah, but anyway, I'm gettingahead of myself.
At the beginning, understandwhat is the problem that you're
going to solve and at the end,what is success going to be?
What are they going to be afterthis workshop with you and the
(08:05):
middle you fill this inafterwards.
It's very intuitive from thispoint If you understand where
people are and where you want toget them to work out the top
three things they need to knowthe high-level topics, the
high-level takeaways that theywould need in order to achieve
that goal.
Brad Powell (08:21):
So just give an example In the workshop that you
were leading, what did thatlook like?
What was the beginning?
And what example like in theworkshop that you were leading,
what did that look like?
What was the beginning and whatwas the end to the?
Rob Willis (08:29):
stuff that you were talking about.
Yeah, so the reason I needed tospend quite some time on this
was that workshop was actually aseries of three workshops, for
a lot of people and it wasn'tcompulsory to go to all of them.
So not only did I have anoverarching flow for three
workshops, each individual onehad to have its own particular
(08:53):
arc as well, so I needed to workon it on two different levels.
I guess it's similar if you'recreating a TV show Each episode
needs to have a story arc andthen that feeds into an episode,
and the episode feeds into theseries and the series into the
world of the story.
So you know, that's nothingunusual about that, I guess.
(09:14):
So what I did was I sat downwith the clients and I discussed
what are the kinds ofchallenges they see in the
company.
To make it easier for me, I'dworked with the company a lot,
so I knew a lot about them, Iknew about the challenges they
had, I knew about what they hadto do.
So I had to think about okay,what are the three professional
(09:37):
environments in which thesepeople are challenging to
communicate?
And I broke it down into threetopics.
In the end, the three workshopswere nail your next update.
That was the first one.
Two was about driving action,about persuasion, which I feel
(09:57):
was like the next stage.
And step three was more aboutcollaboration.
How do you actually work withpeople?
All under this arc ofstorytelling and more effective
communication at work all rightnow that we have this, let's
just call it destination.
Brad Powell (10:14):
We know where we're going, we know where we started
and now this is the there's themessy middle part, like
somewhere in there.
There there's obstacles, butthere's also solutions, and
there's probably more than onealong the way, especially if
you're doing what you just did,which was like a three separate
stages of your workshop.
(10:35):
So talk a little aboutencountering the obstacles along
the way and then picking up,like I know that in your post
you were talking about likeinsights and aha moments.
That you want to slot in, and Ithink that this is something to
really be thinking about for aworkshop thing.
I think most people make themistake of thinking that the big
(10:57):
aha is going to be at the end,like at the end I'm going to
reveal the final thing and beable to go oh my god, that's
amazing, you blew my mind.
But actually you want to beshifting and changing
perspective along the way sothat you're pulling people along
with you.
Rob Willis (11:14):
I think so talk about that process so, firstly,
I would say the mistake, orrather it is a mistake to feel
that you are the one who has toreveal the aha moment.
In fact, I would say that itceases to be an aha moment if
you are the one who reveals it.
(11:36):
The idea is you want to buildup a kind of tension and create
an environment in which peoplekind of come to the answer on
their own.
Now, this totally depends, ofcourse, on the size of group.
If you're dealing with 200people, then you do need to
explicitly say what the harmmode is.
If it's a smaller group, thenyou want to create exercises and
(11:58):
discussions and give themquestions that lead them to
coming up to the solutionthemselves.
When they have some agency,it's more relevant to them and
they're more likely to followthrough on it.
I mean, you coach, don't youBrad?
So I imagine you've got someexperience of sharing questions
with people and they come to theanswer themselves.
Brad Powell (12:21):
Yeah, absolutely that's the.
I mean that's the main job of acoach is not to really say
stuff, it's to ask stuff, and itcarries over into the podcast
realm.
I mean, one of the one of theways that I hone my skill as a
coach is by doing interviewslike this, where I'm constantly
asking and I'm doing my best tolisten.
In fact, it's one of thebiggest reasons why I do the
(12:42):
style of podcasting that I do,which is more conversational,
Like I don't have a bunch ofquestions that I came up with
earlier.
It's more of we're starting aconversation and I'm listening
to what you have to say and thenthat's.
That's keying something in methat I can add to our discussion
.
Rob Willis (13:01):
Yeah, I think that's it's a relevant way to think
about building a workshop aswell.
Again, it totally depends onwhere you're doing the workshop,
how many people are there, etc.
But it is a conversation andyou are building something with
others and they will appreciatemore the stuff that they were
able to have some agency increating, the stuff that they
(13:22):
were able to have some agency increating.
Very often you'll get requestsfor workshops which are like oh,
can you just give us some tips?
People feel that thatchecklist-style approach of just
deliver bits of information,that's going to be enough.
But think about any of the bigbreakthroughs or the
(13:43):
achievements that you've had inyour life.
It's knowing more didn't makethem happen.
Taking continuous action did.
And when you're planning aworkshop, you need to be able to
visualize what that will looklike.
To give it an analogy, one of myprevious jobs I guess when I
really learned aboutstorytelling was I was working
(14:05):
as a tour guide in Berlin and Iwould have to find routes for
people starting in one place,finishing somewhere else, and
that route would have to havesome sort of narrative arc to it
and on the way you'd need tobuild up a whole story for them.
You'd also tell the stories ofthe individual points You'd need
to think about, okay, what arethey doing before and what are
(14:26):
they doing after?
And it would need to make sensein the idea of their day.
You'd have to think about whereare they going to get a little
bit tired?
Where are they going to havequestions?
It's the same principles forbuilding a workshop, actually
for any, you know, building ameeting, a keynote.
You need to think about what'sthe context of what you're doing
(14:47):
.
Brad Powell (14:48):
Yeah, that's so interesting that you're doing
working as a tour guide.
It reminds me of my past life.
I was an outdoor educator,working for Outward Bound and
taking young people out into theoutdoors.
And the cycle of ourfacilitation.
First of all, we're reallyfacilitating how to confront
some kind of challenge in theoutdoor world and be okay with
(15:13):
being there and be okay as agroup working together so you
don't just all melt down, andalso individually, how you can
meet the challenge and becomfortable and confident in
that kind of environment.
And but.
But the truth was that from dayto day there were all these
little cycles of activity thatyou know things would.
(15:34):
Things would happenspontaneously and some things we
would plan.
But the facilitation waswhere's the group now?
Where do we think they want tobe, and how can we facilitate
the growth that will allow themto get there?
Rob Willis (15:49):
Yeah, and you also have to, of course, think about
all the stuff around it, likeokay, what's, what's their limit
?
What, how far can they go inall of this?
Right, if you're dealing with agroup of teenagers who have
never climbed a mountain beforeand you send them up K2 or
something, it's a recipe fordisaster.
Brad Powell (16:09):
It's not going to work very well.
Rob Willis (16:10):
Yeah, you need to find a challenge that they're
going to be able to engage within that.
Well, we're talking aboutworkshop, but in that instance,
the experience- yeah, instancethe experience.
Brad Powell (16:23):
Yeah, yeah, I used to uh talk to the staff about
having virtual tachometers soyou can gauge and have a
tachometer.
That was for the students andyou're always watching and make
sure that you know there's.
Sometimes you would have itlike do things so that you know
that they're going to go intothe red zone and they're going
to be challenged there yeah butmake sure that they're not so
(16:47):
far that they'll never come backlike they're going to just be
destroyed there, but sort oflike.
There's this thing of bringingthem up and then helping them
come back out, kind of thing,but at the same time watching
your own tachometer so that, nomatter what's happening, your
own tachometer is never goinginto the red yeah, so because
you need to be the one helpingthem.
Rob Willis (17:09):
If they can't, it can't go any further right, yeah
you need to find the, the limit, the, the bounds and and I
think, visualizing all of that,then you you will kind of know
what's required for the rest ofthe workshop.
You will have such a clear ideaof okay, we start the workshop
(17:30):
at this time in this location.
It's online or in person.
What are they doing before?
This is how we're going to getpeople into the right frame of
mind.
This is the exercise that'sgoing to help them engage with
the problem and see where theyare right now.
Then these are the three maintopics and for these topics
we're going to watch that videoor have that discussion and
(17:52):
discuss this question.
They're going to do thisparticular exercise and at the
end of all of this there's aexercise where they can bring
everything together and try itout, and at the end we're going
to discuss how we're going tomove on beyond the workshop.
You can really see everythingwithout having made a single
(18:14):
slide by this point.
You know exactly what's goingto happen, you know what you
need, and then you can just sitdown and methodically go through
putting it all together and youfeel ready for the workshop at
this point, and the weirdestthing I found from working like
this is.
For some reason I always seemto finish pretty much exactly on
(18:37):
time.
Having said that, now I'mtempting fate and I'm not going
to go terribly over time in thenext workshop.
But when you have this clearidea of how long is it going to
take, this is going to take thema bit longer than there'll be a
bit of a fumble to get themback to their seats for this bit
.
Once you have all of that takeninto account, you can kind of
(18:58):
judge how long it's going to bequite accurately actually.
Brad Powell (19:02):
Yeah, that's great.
I can really appreciate that.
I mean because there's a lot ofelements, especially when
you're facilitating groupexercise.
You really don't.
I mean you can put a time limitand say, okay, put your pencils
down or whatever, but stillpeople are always wanting to ask
questions.
Some people, when they ask aquestion, they tend to tell
their own story while they'redoing that, and so it can take a
(19:24):
lot longer, and so it's a realtrick to pay attention during
those moments.
So when you're looking at, like,this whole picture of designing
a workshop with this narrativearc as a thing like I see it as,
especially when you're talkingabout doing a series, which is
(19:46):
great, like we're, we'reconstantly, as business people
now compelled to put out variouskinds of content, and a
workshop or a masterclassdelivery is just another form of
that content and we are doingthings not necessarily
repetitive in that you know, ifyou're working for a particular
(20:07):
client and they want to hire,you do something with a group of
people that they're going towant to come back.
(20:33):
Like you leave an appetite, sothat you're building something
that the experience that they'vehad is so compelling that
they're going, oh, this isfantastic.
We could certainly use a lotmore of this, and so this is
what I want you to speak to interms of design elements that
not only are getting them to thedestination but are building
(20:53):
the appetite and even kind ofthe challenge of you know, you
guys as an organization or as ateam, or whatever the group is
like as a cohesive whole, orwhatever the group is like as a
cohesive whole, you guys havenow achieved a certain level,
but we're just getting startedLike there's a lot more that you
(21:14):
could do, and be putting themin that mindset of oh yeah,
we're on a pattern of growthhere.
Rob Willis (21:21):
One thing I'd say is give a good enough workshop and
they probably will hire you togive exactly the same thing
again to other people in theirorganization, because most of
the organizations I work withare at least 1,000, 2,000 people
, and there's usually morepeople who need the same
training, and people in yourgroup tell their friends about
(21:44):
it and they want to come alongto it.
So have to acknowledge thatsome people won't have seen your
training already, and, thoughit may feel frustrating at times
, repetition is kind of part ofyour job whatever you do.
So that's one thing I say.
Sometimes you do need to repeatwhen it comes to developing.
I think I want to make it clearthat you shouldn't ever hold
(22:09):
anything back when you'representing.
Give people a completeexperience and they'll want more
, and there's always more thatyou can talk about.
There's either taking the sameprinciples and applying it to
something else, or there'sdiscovering new principles.
Very often it's simply takingthe same principles and applying
(22:31):
them in different situations,but you can grow the topic as
well.
Actually, at the end of lastyear, I gave a workshop to a
team who I'd worked with alreadya workshop to a team who I'd
worked with already and theclient said okay, like most,
(22:55):
almost everyone has done yourworkshop two years ago or
something.
And I was a bit worried aboutthis because I thought, okay,
well, everyone's done it, butthere's a few people who haven't
.
So how do I include people whohaven't done it but also provide
something new and exciting forthose who have?
And I guess the answer was justlooking at what was going on
right now, because there'd beena year to year gap in between
(23:15):
the two workshops.
They had slightly differentneeds, they had a new executive
team who wanted them tocommunicate in a different way,
and all I had to do was discoverwhat is the new context.
The principles of storytellingare the same I didn't invent
them, aristotle did, and it'snot really changed a whole great
deal since then.
But the context, of course, thereality of people using these
(23:40):
principles, that changes all thetime, and the demands of their
job that also changes.
So you're always going to findnew avenues and ways to apply
this stuff.
Brad Powell (23:49):
Yeah, and one thing else I'd like to talk about is
during the process of goingthrough a workshop like this you
mentioned this in your post,called it, calling it reality
checks.
I would call it in sort of acheck in or a debrief, something
like that.
But there's this element of youdo want to check in with people
to see if, like, where they'reat like, have they moved?
(24:11):
Are they actually moving alongthe path or are they stuck
somewhere, and so talk about thetechniques that you use to do
that kind of check in.
Rob Willis (24:23):
So this will very much depend in what kind of
business you are in, if you'reB2C or B2B.
B2c, in a way, is easier butharder in other ways.
So B2C is easier to get peopleto make a change because they
put their own money on the line.
They want to do this, they areinterested in it and if they're
interested in it they'reprobably already okay at it.
(24:45):
So it's a bit easier to getthem to implement things.
B2b, which is where I work.
So I am very rarely employed bythe person who does the
training or the facilitation ofthe workshop.
I'm employed by their boss orthe people team in their company
.
So they might be there thinking, oh what's this for?
(25:07):
Or I didn't realize I had to dothis thing, so that's going to
be a little bit harder thing.
So that's going to be a littlebit harder.
The three pillars of learningare relevant content, a personal
motivation and a supportiveenvironment.
Now in the workshop you onlyreally have control over
(25:27):
relevant content.
You can make sure that it'srelevant and that it's good.
That should be a given, I think.
Personal motivation you don'thave so much control over.
The only control that you haveis your relationship with the
manager.
So getting the management teaminvolved, that will both make
people more motivated but alsocreate the better learning
(25:50):
environment.
There have been some jobs I'vedone where that wasn't possible
to have that kind ofcoordination and the challenge
you find is people never havetime for the training, they
never have time to implement itbecause there's something else
going on and then boss told themthey needed to do something.
So they forgot to do what youasked.
So getting their boss, theirwhole environment with you,
(26:19):
that's going to lead to a moresignificant change.
It's much easier to work with ateam than to work with a
disparate group of people in anorganization.
In some ways, I'd say yeah,absolutely Well.
Brad Powell (26:32):
I can recall being with groups that you know in the
Outward Bound work.
We also had professionaldevelopment programs with
employees from a company thatwould be kind of dumped on us.
It was kind of like, you know,the teenagers would come and the
parents had dumped them on usand the corporate people would
come and the company had dumpedthem on us and them.
(26:52):
You're all going to go out anddo team building in the outdoors
and be whatever and made better.
And a lot of these folks arelike why am I here?
Why did my boss make me do this?
I'm just going to be miserablethe whole time.
And so it was a reallyinteresting magic act to work
with groups like that and bringthem to a place, like really
(27:13):
help them come to a place wherethey're really okay with what's
going on and not only that, butfeeling like they really got
value and benefit from the wholeexperience.
And creating that kind oftransformation was super
rewarding when it was possible.
But it's super challenging aswell because you're just right,
I mean, often the workshopenvironment is this it's kind of
(27:38):
like having to go to church onSunday.
It's just like you might notwant to be there, but the whole
everybody is telling you that issomething you just have to do.
Rob Willis (27:50):
It can be.
But if I might just jump in, Ithink that if people are going
into your workshop expecting apassive engagement like
entertain me, impress me, it'snot going to work very well.
It doesn't matter how good youare, People need to be involved
in the process, and I think thatgoes for when you're presenting
(28:12):
as well, or when you're in asales conversation.
If people are not engaging withyou, then it's going to be very
, very hard.
It doesn't matter how good yourcontent is.
So time needs to be spent atthe beginning of a workshop,
bringing people into your world,showing them what the problem
is, showing them how it relatesto them.
That has to be part of theworkshop.
(28:33):
If you just go in and startsaying this is how you do this,
this is how you do that, peoplewon't necessarily see the
application, they don'tnecessarily see the need to do
it.
Brad Powell (28:44):
Yeah, that's probably the best piece of
advice I can imagine.
It's just at the start.
I mean sort of we used to callit framing.
We're creating a frame thatwe're going to operate in and,
of course, as you continue, youcan keep on reframing, like you
can bring in new frames and sortof set the pace and the scene
(29:07):
you know before you actuallystart telling the story and are
bringing them along the journeySuper critical, so that people
know what to expect.
But they also understand that,oh, if I'm going to get anything
out of this at all, I need tojust do something more than just
sit and have you be like theentertainer yeah, and some, some
(29:29):
people you won't successfullyachieve that with, but it and
it's less to do with you thanwith them.
Rob Willis (29:37):
To be quite honest, there may be lack of interest.
It might be that all you'rereally good, or they think they
are.
At least it may be they havesomething else on their mind,
some things you can't control,but you can do your very best to
control what you can.
Brad Powell (29:52):
All right.
Well, I think that might be areally good note for us to close
on.
We're getting right close tothe end of the time, but if
there's one other thing that wehaven't touched on that you
would like to impart aroundworkshop design.
I got a whole page of noteshere.
Really good stuff, but whatwould you like to add?
Rob Willis (30:13):
This is a tip I got from a book called Two Hour
Workshop, which I think Iunderstood intuitively but
hadn't quite graspedtheoretically was that the way
to maintain engagement iscontrast.
Imagine if you watched a filmof just one camera angle, one
person speaking the whole time.
(30:34):
It would get terribly boring.
You have contrast.
You have people changing,different characters speaking
different scenes, differentthings going on.
The same needs to be true inyour workshop and you need to
think about how the differentexperiences go against one
another.
So you'll start with speaking,then there might be a pair
exercise, then there might be avideo, then a discussion, then a
(31:00):
small group exercise.
It needs to keep changing.
If you have too much of onething for too long, you will
inevitably drop an engagement.
Brad Powell (31:05):
Well, all good storytelling has that in it.
If there's nothing to pushagainst, it's not an interesting
story.
Rob Willis (31:14):
And if the end is not different to the beginning,
then it's not a story.
Brad Powell (31:17):
Yeah right, that's right.
If there's no transformation,then nothing happened.
All right, Rob, this has beenterrific.
I really appreciate youbreaking some of this down for
us.
If people are interested inconnecting with you, what would
be the best way for them to dothat?
Rob Willis (31:33):
They can visit my LinkedIn.
Rob D Willis, based in Berlin,should be easy to find.
I also have a podcast calledthe Superpowered Podcast, where
I talk about the unique storiesof modern leaders.
So I'm really interested inpeople's X factors, how they got
those and what I think isreally unique about it is in
every episode we give people anactionable ritual or exercise
(31:57):
that they can try out for thenext week.
Brad Powell (31:59):
Well, that's cool, all right.
Well, I'll check that out.
Well, I'll make sure that linksto both your LinkedIn and to
your podcast are in the shownotes.
Rob Willis (32:06):
I appreciate that.
Brad Powell (32:07):
Thanks so much for coming on today.
This has really been great.
Rob Willis (32:10):
Thank you for having me, Brad.
Brad Powell (32:11):
This has really been great.
Thank you for having me, brad.
Yeah, and for those listeningat the end, I just want to
remind you if you'd like to goand grab the entire archive of
the Standout Business Show, justgo to standoutbusinessshow.
It's all there, all the audioand all the video, all the extra
(32:32):
stuff that I put in there onlyfor our listeners.
We go live every Tuesday at 11am and until the next time, so
long.
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