411: What happens when you finally stop settling (with Bobby Umar)

Yeah, I'm excited to talk about what it's like to do a TEDx talk and how you get into that kind of stuff and what the pathway looks like for that.

But I want to ask you real quick about something you say in your Substack bio, first of all.

So a line that really stood out to me was, I turn stories into strategy and vulnerability into leadership superpower.

Can you tell me what's the thinking behind that? Where did that come from?

Yeah, so the first part is storytelling, which I think is an important thing that every brand, every person, every individual wants to get better at.

And this is something I kind of learned actually during the pandemic.

And I started

coaching people and CEOs and teams on this.

And so it comes across in content.

It comes across in presentations in the workplace.

It comes across in speaking and all that kind of, and in TEDx talks as well.

And so for me, storytelling was kind of the expertise that I was focused on for the last, particularly the last five years, I would say.

But more recently in the last year or two, I would say, you know what? What about taking it to the vulnerable level? the vulnerable aspect is, you know, most storytelling is either you tell stories of other people or other things, or you tell maybe some personal stories, but how vulnerable are they? You know, you can tell a story that's really funny, but maybe it's not very vulnerable.

But I'm saying if you can go vulnerable and go deep and really authentic, it builds greater trust great authority and actually creates greater impact for whatever you're trying to do, whether you're trying to motivate your team or they're trying to cut through the clutter on social media or you're trying to make your TEDx talk go viral.

So I think they both go hand in hand.

You know, the storytelling piece is a communication method that is memorable.

But then, you know, the vulnerable piece, which is where it really deepens that trust and that connection.

And the combination, I think, is really powerful.

So I'm really big on exploring that with people.

I love that.

Yeah, I tell everyone I speak to to tell stories and to tell vulnerable stories as much as they possibly can.

How do you advise people, Bobby, when it comes to knowing what kind of vulnerable stories to share? So what is the limit or the line people should go to? Should they just tell everything about themselves or explain what the process would look like for that for somebody?

Yeah, I mean, first, it's good to understand what your objective is, you know, who you're targeting, what do you want them to know, you know, where they live, how they feel, things like that.

I think that's important.

Number two, doing kind of a database build of all the stories of your life that are interesting.