Jul 28, 2026 · 35 min · 11 segments
Winning isn't about persuasion, it's about connection. That's what Esther Choy, CEO of The Leadership Story Lab, believes. In her latest book, *Winning Without Persuading*, Choy asserts that creating…
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Spencer LevyHostThere are lots and lots and lots of books nowadays about the importance as well as the how-to of telling great stories, and I think there's a really big hole in the collections, um, and that is while it's important to tell your story, it's just as important to get other people to tell you their story.
And so that's the impetus of me working on a second book, and I call it Winning Without Persuading to take the inspiration from, um, a book that many listeners might have heard of, and that is called The Art of War by Sun Tzu.
And, uh, a phrase that is, uh, quite well-known from the book is something called winning without fighting.
And so my inspiration from that is that it's important to win, we want to win, and there is a huge, huge missed opportunity of winning without persuading.
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And to use another Sun Tzu quote, um, "Every battle is won before it is fought," and there is a tremendous amount of truth there, uh, certainly in the pitch context where so much goes into it far beyond just the substance of what you're trying to sell.
When you wrote this title, Winning Without Persuading, it, it struck me as, as, as unusual because we're in the real estate business.
Uh, many of our colleagues are in the brokerage side, and winning is, uh, most important thing.
On the surface it might seem like I'm contradicting myself, because I help executives become more persuasive.
Uh, that is still something that is shared by most people, that the only way to win is to be persuasive.
And I am trying to say through my second book that you can win without the only way to win to be persuasive.
The way I took this book versus your last book, and again, this is my take on it, was that your last book was more tactical, meaning that you're winning in the moment.
I think relationships and trust is at the cornerstone of every win, and I think in that sense that is a very fair summary.
What I want to try to get people to think about is where do they direct their attention, because where you direct your attention is where the rest of your resources, your energy, and everything else goes to.
And where I'm trying to direct attention, people's attention is not only on themselves.
"What is my story? What do I have to say? What winning strategies do I have to offer?" And instead direct it to their clients, through their teams, and sometimes even to their adversaries, because when you direct your attentions at them and worry less about what is the perfect thing to say in the perfect moment, you can surprise yourself and everyone else by other possibilities and ideas and ways to win.
There are lots and lots and lots of books nowadays about the importance as well as the how-to of telling great stories, and I think there's a really big hole in the collections, um, and that is while it's important to tell your story, it's just as important to get other people to tell you their story.
And so that's the impetus of me working on a second book, and I call it Winning Without Persuading to take the inspiration from, um, a book that many listeners might have heard of, and that is called The Art of War by Sun Tzu.
And, uh, a phrase that is, uh, quite well-known from the book is something called winning without fighting.
And so my inspiration from that is that it's important to win, we want to win, and there is a huge, huge missed opportunity of winning without persuading.
And to use another Sun Tzu quote, um, "Every battle is won before it is fought," and there is a tremendous amount of truth there, uh, certainly in the pitch context where so much goes into it far beyond just the substance of what you're trying to sell.
When you wrote this title, Winning Without Persuading, it, it struck me as, as, as unusual because we're in the real estate business.
Uh, many of our colleagues are in the brokerage side, and winning is, uh, most important thing.
On the surface it might seem like I'm contradicting myself, because I help executives become more persuasive.
Uh, that is still something that is shared by most people, that the only way to win is to be persuasive.
And I am trying to say through my second book that you can win without the only way to win to be persuasive.
The way I took this book versus your last book, and again, this is my take on it, was that your last book was more tactical, meaning that you're winning in the moment.
I think relationships and trust is at the cornerstone of every win, and I think in that sense that is a very fair summary.
What I want to try to get people to think about is where do they direct their attention, because where you direct your attention is where the rest of your resources, your energy, and everything else goes to.
And where I'm trying to direct attention, people's attention is not only on themselves.
"What is my story? What do I have to say? What winning strategies do I have to offer?" And instead direct it to their clients, through their teams, and sometimes even to their adversaries, because when you direct your attentions at them and worry less about what is the perfect thing to say in the perfect moment, you can surprise yourself and everyone else by other possibilities and ideas and ways to win.
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