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#22: Discover the Power of Storytelling for Career Success

with Mike Ganino
April 6, 2023 | 64 Minutes

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On "Inside-Out Career Design" this week, hosts Nicola Vetter & Peter Axtell speak with Mike Ganino

This captivating episode delves into the world of storytelling and its profound impact on career success. Mike shares his insights on harnessing storytelling power to connect with others, stand out from the crowd, and achieve your goals. Drawing from his extensive experience in leadership training and improv theater, he offers a unique perspective on crafting compelling narratives that resonate with whoever you connect with. It's excellent for networking, interviews, or public speaking. This episode is a must-listen for anyone looking to elevate their communication skills and unlock their full potential. So, tune in and discover the untapped potential of storytelling for your career success.

In our conversation, we talk about…

  • how storytelling is a powerful tool for leadership, public speaking, and networking,
  • how uncovering the scripts we've learned over our lives and using that to discover who we truly are as individuals helps us to become better communicators,
  • why letting go of scripted responses and being present can help you genuinely connect with others,
  • why surviving difficult experiences is a form of success and can be seen as a gift of knowledge and resilience,
  • how everyone has a unique story and experiences, which can be valuable assets in any situation where a good story connects in a way nothing else can,
  • why you don’t need to learn tactics or tricks to impress others, but rather discover who you are and how to best express yourself in conversations, interviews, or speaking publicly.

About Mike Ganino

Mike is the creator of The Mike Drop Method – a public speaking, storytelling, and performance coaching methodology. He is a storytelling and communication expert who hosts The Mike Drop Moment podcast. He’s been named a Top 10 Public Speaking Coach by Yahoo Finance, and California’s Best Speaking and Communication Coach by Corporate Vision Magazine. He is an author, former Executive Producer of TEDxCambridge and has been named a Top 30 Speaker by Global Guru. He’s a trained actor and coach from the World Famous Second City, Improv Olympics, and Upright Citizen’s Brigade. In addition to his track record as an executive in the hotel, restaurant, retail, and tech industries, Mike worked with organizations like the Disney, American Century Investments, Caesars Entertainment, and UCLA.

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About the Inside-Out Career Design Podcast

This podcast is obsessed with answering a single question: Is it possible to create an authentic, meaningful, and fulfilling life you love while building a successful and rewarding career?

Join Nicola Vetter and Peter Axtell, co-founders of the WhatsNext.com Career Insights platform and creators of the groundbreaking MotivationFinder assessment, as they follow their obsession with answering this question by sharing their insights, discoveries, and life lessons and talking with career experts, leaders, spiritual guides, psychologists, data scientists, coaches -- anyone and everyone who might hold a strategy or answer to the age-old questions of “what’s next for me?” and “what should I do with my life?”

They seek to transform suffering into joy for millions of people stuck and confused in their lives and careers.

Get ready to be inspired, motivated, and above all, to connect deeply with who you are and what you are meant to do with the time you’ve been given.

Transcript

Mike Ganino  00:00

We don't need to be worried about do I have a story to tell? We got so many things stories to tell? And everyone does by looking and saying what are the big places where I've learned a lesson why I've changed and I just think that's fun because you're never done that you could write many, many stories.

 

Peter Axtell  00:17

Welcome to Inside-Out Career Design. In this show, we're obsessed with answering a single question. Is it possible to create an authentic, meaningful, and fulfilling life you love while building a successful and rewarding career? My name is Peter Axtell, and I'm here with Nicola Vetter. We're co-founders of the WhatsNext.com CareerInsights platform, and creators of the groundbreaking MotivationFinder assessment. Join us as we seek to transform suffering into joy for millions of people stuck and confused in their lives and careers. We'll share our insights, discoveries, and life lessons and talk with career experts, leaders, spiritual guides, psychologists, data scientists, coaches, anyone who might hold a strategy or answer to the age-old questions of: "What's next for me?" and "What should I do with my life?" Get ready to be inspired, motivated, and above all, to connect deeply with who you are, and what you're meant to do with the time you've been given. 

 

Peter Axtell  01:20

Are you trying to figure out what to do with your life, to figure out what to do with the precious time you've been given on this earth? Or to figure out what only you as a remarkable and unique individual can bring into this world? If you are, please join us for one of our live and completely free online workshops, where we cover different topics to help you figure out what to do with your life and career without wasting precious time, taking wild guesses, or risking it all. To save your spot in our next live and free workshop go to WhatsNext.com/workshops. We can't wait to see you there. Again, that's WhatsNext.com/workshops.

 

Nicola Vetter  02:13

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Inside-Out Career Design podcast. No matter where you go the people you meet, are telling a story about you. From stages to podcasts, from meetings to casual catch ups. It's the story of you that they are left with after you are gone, and the best storyteller wins. That's our guest today, Mike Ganino.

 

Peter Axtell  02:44

Mike is one of the leading experts on self expression, storytelling and public speaking. He's the creator of the Mike Drop Method, a public speaking storytelling and performance methodology that helps people influence, impact and inspire. He's been named a top 10 public speaking coach by Yahoo, and has helped speakers with ideas worth spreading reach millions as the executive producer at TEDx Cambridge.

 

Nicola Vetter  03:16

And today, Mike is with us. In our conversation, we talk about how uncovering the scripts we've learned over our lives and using that to discover who we truly are as individuals helps us to become better communicators. Why letting go of scripted responses and being present, can help you connect with others in a genuine way. How surviving difficult experiences is a form of success, and can be seen as a gift of knowledge and resilience. How everyone has a unique story and experiences, which can be valuable assets in any situation where a good story connects in a way, nothing else can and why you don't need to learn tactics or tricks to impress others, but rather, discover who you are, and how to best express yourself in conversations, interviews, or speaking publicly. And now it's time to listen and learn from Mike. Welcome, Mike. We've really been looking forward to having you on as a guest today. When we met in Lambertville in 2019 you were our favorite public speaking coach. And now I'm thinking how could I possibly introduce you, you who's the Pro and how to introduce yourself? I think I'm going to leave that up to you.

 

Mike Ganino  05:03

Thank you. Thank you. That's, you know, that's one of the things that comes along with the job often is people say like, oh, you know, I'll be at a conference and there'll be other speakers and and, you know, maybe I'm talking about storytelling or stage presence, and they're talking about HR or company culture, something and they're like, Do you have any notes for me? Were you watching me? And I'm like, No, I, I'm not paying attention to any of that. I'm just enjoying the ride and enjoying your information. And I'm letting myself off the clock in those moments. But thank you for that lovely comment. And that very generous thing to say there. I teach people public speaking and storytelling from a slightly different perspective, I think that a lot of folks out there a lot of times the approach is, how do you how do you fix the things that are wrong in you? How do you put on something? What are the right tactics or tricks? And what do you need to pretend to do or pretend to be in order to, you know, tell the audience what they want to hear. And my approach is that we've spent our whole lives learning these scripts, we've learned somatic scripts in our bodies, we've learned physical scripts, the way that we actually show up and move and carry our posture and our body and our head and everything, the way we gesture and make facial expressions are all things we've scripted over the years, even down to the way our voice actually sounds. And I think that to become a really dynamic, really transformational public speaker or storyteller, our job is to look at those scripts to look at our family histories, our social histories, our relational histories, our trauma histories and say, who am I. And a lot of times that journey is a really interesting one to discover who I am and what I'm here to do, and how I can best express that on stage. And so my approach is not a whole lot of counting uhms or counting likes, and not a whole lot of like, this is what you should do with your hands. But it's a whole lot of like, how did you learn to be who you are, when you're expressing yourself with others. And we dive into that, so I'm having a lot of fun doing that.

 

Nicola Vetter  07:04

Love it.

 

Peter Axtell  07:05

Well said.

 

Nicola Vetter  07:06

Yeah, we're definitely gonna dive into that more. But you are more than just just a public speaker, and a coach, you're also an author, a podcaster, a producer, and the founder and creator of the Mike Drop Method. But you've also worked in HR as a brand advisor, sommelier, trainer, and who knows what else a whole laundry list right? Now, what we are interested in is what were those What's Next moments where you had to figure out what's next for you on your journey?

 

Mike Ganino  07:47

Goodness, so many of those. So those are really fun places to to think about. When I was thinking about the show, and I was listening to other episodes to get ready to come on here and have this lovely conversation with you. I was thinking about like, wow, that's a really great storytelling prompt, right? That's a great way to get people to think about these, I call them threshold moments, you know, the what's next moments are these threshold moments where you're stepping from one room into another where you're leaving one door and entering another exiting these threshold moments where you decide something new is going to happen, it's a great place for stories. And for me, those What's Next moments have really been the big ones that have shaped my life when I grew up in a in a high school and a really small town and left and went to a college and a bigger place and was like, Oh, I can explore who I am and what I meant to do and what I want to be you know, when I grow up kind of thing down to when I dropped out of college to go explore acting and performance and what I learned about my own resourcefulness sometimes, because, you know, sometimes acting isn't the most bit of the most pay earning high pay until you get to a certain level. And so for me, that was a real way that I learned a lot about my own resourcefulness and my own resolve and my own ability to say, what do I really want? And how do I go after it? How do I deal with rejection? That's a lot of being an actor, when you're going to audition after audition. And really learning not to always value what someone else is looking for. And if I'm not it that that's my value. That was a big one for me. And hard to learn. Because I grew up always kind of thinking, How do I make everyone happy? How do I perform? How do I entertain them? And so you go out to auditions and you don't get it and you think oh I wasn't good enough versus I'm just not what they're looking for. They're looking for something else and I can't be what everybody wants and that was a big that was a big moment for me. That was a big what's next learning moment where that shaped a lot of how I went into everything even today. The work I do that shaped it because I don't believe that our job is to fit into someone else's box of what we're supposed to be. I don't believe that our best thing as a public speaker is to say, What does my audience want to hear? I think it's to ask yourself, What am I here to talk about? What excites me and upsets me? And what vision do I see for the world? And how do we share that in a way that's compelling? And so often in our lives, we're taught to look at what's expected of us and then deliver on that. And a lot of public speaking programs start that way to to say, who's your audience? And what do they want to hear? What are they buying? And I say, who are you? And what do you want to say, and so that what next moment for me as a as a performer, when I said, I've got a, I've got to really just make the leap here and say that I'm gonna do and I'm going to audition. And I'm going to write shows, and I'm going to put on my own productions for things that excite me, that's when I really tapped into who I was creatively. So I think I could probably talk for the whole show about all the what's next moments, but that one for me is one that I think has really shaped the way I look at how we express ourselves, and what we're meant to do here on this on this little spinning, spinning blue planet we're on.

 

Peter Axtell  11:04

Mike that's, you know, this really applies to all of life. Because, you know, the purpose of our podcast is for people to figure out what's next in their life and career, not just career but in their life. And when I think about the people who have to face rejection and how they get over it, and how you try to fit into someone else's mold, and what we're trying to do is get people to know themselves in which you landed on this applies not just if you want to be a public speaker, this, imagine you're going to change jobs, you're going to go to a whole different industry, it's all the same, isn't it?

 

Mike Ganino  11:40

Yeah. And it's and think about that, when people they go and they they're gonna write their resume. And they think, what do they want me to say on my resume to get the job? How do I, how do I fill out my CV so I can get them to see me a certain way. And then we show up to the interview. And we perform, right, we wear the nice clothes, we are polite, we show up on time, we try to give a performance. And we tell them the things we think are going to impress them are credentials that will impress them. And really, the reality is if we showed up and we said, let me try to match what I care about and what I've done in the past and how I've achieved things to where I think this company is going and what they're after, we'd have such a better shot than just simply showing up and trying to please them with all the stuff we've done before. And so often I see that in interviews for as Nicola said, I was an HR executive for a while. And I saw over and over where people would come in and they had memorized everything they wrote on their resume much the same as an actor can memorize the lines. But if all you do is show up in that moment, you know, even if you're being interviewed, say for media or something, if all you do in that moment is show up and remember everything you were supposed to say but you forget the story. You've really missed the point, haven't you?

 

Peter Axtell  12:54

Isn't it really just thinking about this idea of getting totally in your head and intellectual. There must be some connection that has to do with story. I'm not quite sure where you're sort of embodying what you're saying. That has to influence, let's say an HR person, wouldn't it? Wouldn't you kind of vibrating rather than just so this intellectual thing in your head?

 

Mike Ganino  13:19

Oh, this is now you're now you're really flirting with me, Peter? Because you are dancing in my, in my world where I live. That's exactly. That's exactly it, we are so much. And this isn't this isn't like woo woo alternate science here. This is like legitimate science of like, we are largely, you know, a huge part of us is this electromagnetic field. Like we have them around us you can measure it with science. This isn't like, you know, I live in I know I live in California and sometimes the joke about us Californians is that we're you know, we're all a little woo, woo centric, if you will, alternative health kind of vibes. But scientifically, we can measure the electromagnetic force of our body of our field around it. Our whole being is electric. And we can sense it with each other. You know, and even if you're watching and you think I don't know about this new age idea here, think about the last time that you walked into a room and there was nothing that anyone said that was off. But you had a vibe, you got a feeling of something's going on here. You know, when you go to your, you know, if you have a couple who is best friends of yours, and you go over to their house and you think oh, I am pretty sure they got into an argument before we got here. Even though there's nothing wrong. They're not saying anything wrong. It's just a feeling that is this. This this kind of frequency that we're sending out all the time. And if you think about so often people going in to interview for new positions or interview for a promotion, or even be interviewed on TV. If you're an executive who's going out you're going to be on a panel or interviewed on TV. We have all these things going on with us. We've learned all these scripts right about like how should I be what is my body like what's acceptable? How should I stand? How should I sit? How should I move my hands, that we're worried about all of that. And of course, our body is then transmitting not our excitement to be there not our excitement about the ideas that we want to share, or how we see the world or how we think we could uniquely help this company, based on experiences we've had in the past, what your body is admitting in those moments where we haven't sat down to kind of say, what's going on inside here is that you're anxious that you're unsure that you're not confident, all things that may not really be true. But if we don't stop before we walk into that interview and say, what's going on in my body right now? What is the energy that I am transmitting? Then no matter what you say, that's how we're going to feel. And I think probably anyone watching this can think back to an instance they had of meeting with someone and thinking, you know, It all sounded fine on paper. But there was just a, there was something there. That's something there is real, that's something there is real.

 

Nicola Vetter  16:02

I believe that also, besides of course, we would say showing up as authentic, even though it's a totally overused word. Anyhow. And we'll dive into those things I'm sure later on. But I'm also wondering, it's good to somehow put yourself into the shoes of the person you are, you're with? Meaning, what does the world look like for the HR person that's interviewing you?

 

Mike Ganino  16:35

Yes, and I think what happens so often Nicola is that people, people do that exercise in though in a way that off roads them? So I think yes, you should consider what the world looks like to them. Meaning, you should think about, okay, they're interviewing, you know, me, for a social media manager position, they're probably interviewing a lot of other people, they probably haven't called anyone in, who doesn't have a certain level of experience or resume background. So when I'm sitting in front of them, if all I'm sharing is that I've done 5000 campaigns, and I've done this and that, they're probably hearing that from everybody. So I'm giving them very little to actually base their decision on with me. What happens usually where I think people get off roaded here, whether they're public speakers or being interviewed, as they say, What is the worldview of this person? So what do I need to say to them? And we change our message, and we try to memorize a message based on what I think they need to hear. And what I think we need to do instead is say, Okay, well, the job of this HR person interviewing me is to find, to hear something to feel something from the person they're interviewing that says, wow, they have had really interesting experiences that could help us. What we often do is we memorize the stats on our resume, and we end up sounding like everyone else who came in, the person who wins, then, is the one who can look back in their experiences in those resumes and say, not, what are the things I've done? But what did the things I've done, teach me and helped me think differently about the world? Because ultimately, that's what they're hiring, right? What they're hiring is the way that you've developed the way you think about the world, the way you see problems and the way you approach solving them. So I think if we lead with that, in these interviews, and honestly, this can go to interviews, public speaking, being on a, Panel, all of those places, if we lead with the way I see the world based on what I've been through, yeah, I've done 5000 social media campaigns, but so has everyone else you've interviewed because that was a requirement on the job posting. So let me tell you what I've learned in those 5000. Let me tell you what I've seen differently, so that you understand the kind of person you'd be working with if I work with you. Because what you want to give that thinking of your original question, Nicola of should you think about how your audience is viewing it. What that HR person is viewing is, please let the next person who comes in, give me something that shows me, bingo, that's an interesting person who might vibe with us. And that's what we're looking to do.

 

Nicola Vetter  19:09

There we go and what is, so well said, what is repelling for HR people really repelling?

 

Mike Ganino  19:19

Goodness. I think one of the big things that and I again, I think you've probably talked to 20 different people and get 45 different answers. We all might have multiples. But I know that one of the things that that I always struggled with in that role was I wanted you to I wanted the person in front of me. I can just relate to what I just said to kind of show me who they were a little bit. Like, I don't need to know about your life outside of work. I don't need to know anything that's not valid to the job you're doing. But what I'm interested in is not the things you've done, or what you were part of because honestly, unless we're doing the same exact thing here, then it's not really applicable. But what I want to understand is like, how do you think how do you see the world? How do you do that? So for me, sometimes I would be interviewing people, even up to like the executive level. And they would really, really struggle at being able to bring to life like, you know, okay, so you've hired 400 people at your last company. That's what your resume says, What did you learn about hiring? How do you think about hiring? What's the way you see the world? And how did you learn that? What mistakes have you gone through? And how did you come out the other side, and for me, what was always really frustrating was people that weren't willing to share that share that character arc of like, this is what I believed. And then I went through this experience. And now this is what I believe instead. Because that's who I'm going to work with every day, not the person who did 500 interviews, because who cares? What I'm going to work with is the person who used to be this person went through an experience and came out the other side, this person, I want to know that one. So I would always have a really hard time when I was interviewing. If somebody was really, you know, I would have my different ways around of getting trying to, you know, ask in different ways to get them to share with me. But ultimately, sometimes people were just so frozen and stuck and memorized and rehearsed, that they couldn't let themselves get out of that. And so I had a very hard time at the end of the interviewing, knowing who is this person in relation to the job, we're looking to get done?

 

Peter Axtell  21:31

Now, this leads me to another point that we're going to bring up later, but I'm going to bring it up now. And that is the idea that what is a story, and then what is a laundry list? And I hear this, I hear this all the time, I went to the Eiffel Tower, I bought a bus ticket, and I got a had a ham sandwich. And then I got on the plane and went home. And that's my big story of my trip to France. So this reminds me of you know, the 500 jobs that I have, which I think what you're saying is, what is that the narrative? Or what is the story? Something with? Speak to that?

 

Mike Ganino  22:04

Yeah, it happens so often that we think because we're talking about a fun place, or because we use someone's name that like, Oh, we're telling the story, because I used a name. And it wasn't just facts. But often as you were, as you were saying, Peter, like, it really is just facts because I went here, and then I did this, and think of how often in professional settings, that's the way conversations go of like, Hey, tell me about a time when you did this. And it's like, well, I did this. And then I did this. And then I did this, and then I did that. And it's like the procedural document. It's like, No, what I need to understand there is, when you encountered that the first time really the breakdown is if you're out there, and you're like, I'm going to take a note on this. Here's how you break it down. Save yourself, I used to be a person who believed x. And now I'm a person who believes y. Here's how I discovered that. Here's how I learned that here's the trials and tribulations and struggle I went through to figure that out, that ultimately is going to guide you through helping us understand the decisions you made. The big thing here, in addition to that is we want to hear the places where you had agency. When I say agency, what I mean is the places where you had to make a decision where you had information in front of you. And you had to say, let me look at A, let me look at B and let me decide. What's the best reason? And then let me tell you why I decided it. How did I go through measuring these options and these options to decide on the right choice. And here's how that turned out. That tells us so much more about someone than I went to Paris, I hired 500 people, I had 300 direct reports. And we did meetings every Wednesday where we raised $1.5 billion in net cap like, that doesn't tell me anything about you versus this other version. I used to be a person this way. Now I see it this way. Here's how I learned that lesson. Here's what I went through that got me to the other side. And then the agency, here are some of the things I had to decide between. And let me tell you how I think let me tell you how I got there. When I was weighing what was my, well, we could go this we couldn't go that way. That is really the juice we're looking for. And so whether you're talking about your trip to Paris, or you're talking about the 500 people, you've hired, the 600 direct reports, the 10 companies you founded, what I want to hear is how you were changed and what struggles you went through to earn that change.

 

Peter Axtell  24:31

So that's interesting. What's sticking in my head is here's how the way things were and here's how they are now and here's how I interacted to make those changes. I mean, that's really showing initiative is actually showing that you're a person.

 

Mike Ganino  24:45

Yes. It shows this great ability to clarify situations to communicate what was going on in that alone. I always think it's funny when I interview when I've interviewed people in the past and it was They like, Oh, I'm a I'm a storyteller. You know, they're interviewing for a marketing position, or something. And I think, Gosh, you haven't in the last, you know, hour of this interview for a job, you haven't one time, told me a story, you've just tried to impress me with your credentials. And now I'm leaving this. And I don't know anything about you, besides what I already could have read on your resume, which by the way, makes you a little bit of a commodity. Because it looks like every other resume, we call them here to talk about this. Versus if you had just showed me, here's what was happening. Here's what's happening now, let me tell you how we got there. Let me tell you what we learned. And if you're brave enough to include some of the foibles along the way, some of the places where you thought A and you were wrong, so you had to recover. Oh, that is magic, hire that person every day of the week. If you're a hiring manager out there, that's the one you want. Because now you can see the kind of resolve they have, you can see how they make decisions, you have a much better shot of the person who shows up for the job actually being the person who interviewed because they had to back it up. Have you you've had that before, right? Where you've interviewed someone and you thought you were getting this, and then they showed up this way you think, oh, it's because I was hiring their credentials. And I actually didn't know anything about the way they think, work or make decisions.

 

Peter Axtell  26:22

You help people communicate clearly on message. And with confidence, can you give some tips on help people communicate more clearly?

 

Mike Ganino  26:31

I think if you think about, I mean, a really great place to start is to make a list for yourself of when you meet someone in that setting, a networking setting an interview setting, what are the things that that are x, you know, like, that are turn offs for you? What are the things that you say, oh, gosh, I hate when I meet someone like that, or I really didn't care for that person. And you'll see there's a there's a there's a common, probably a common thing across the board. And then ask yourself, Am I doing those same things? You see this a lot with networking, right? Most people would say, Oh, I don't want an icky, like, the person's looking over their shoulder to see if there's anyone more interesting coming in behind me. As they're shaking my hand, they're looking around the room to see who else they could talk to. And yet we show up to networking events. And sometimes we become that person, because it's kind of the energy in the room. So I say start with that start with that list of like, what are the things that really, when I experience them, I don't love them. You know, a lot of times with public speakers or people giving a presentation of some sort, what I will hear when they do that exercise is they'll say, Oh, I really don't like when it's so polished, you know, I don't want it so rehearsed down to the minute, I like to feel like I'm there. You know, think about when we go to see a concert. Even though we feel like the artist is going to sing the same songs, they have to sing the songs that we know and love. But we want it to feel each night like when it's in our city, we want it to feel special, like oh, oh, that was changed because I was in the room. That was for me. And so even though we know when we go to see Taylor Swift, that she's going to sing the songs and we know how the songs go. And it's a big tour. So she also has to be at the right place at the right time for the lights and the cameras and the trap doors and things. We also want there to be little moments where she looks at the audience where she mentions being in LA, where she does something different than normal, because that feels honest to us. And so what I find with networking, and with interviews of all kinds every kind of interview, a job interview, to a panel interview to a board interview, is that people get really stuck in this rehearsed practiced scripted version of themselves and not just scripted with the words they're going to say, but scripted with how they move, how they hold their body, how their voice sounds, we get stuck playing the same key on that piano of our expression of our self-expression. And we realize when that happens to us, we don't love it. We don't feel like we actually met the person or got to know them. And so my is there an easy way out of that. I don't think so. Except awareness is a good starting place. Because all of those things, all of those like how we are when we're in front of other people, we start learning from birth. You know, when we're babies, I have a two-and-a-half-year-old. And when I think of her I think of you know, she came out and when she needed something, she cried, she yelled, she had different cries for different things. I'm wet, I want food, I'm cold, I'm angry, I'm tired, whatever, different cries and she was just expressing herself and now she's two and a half and she's really expressing herself all of the time. And I think about the importance of how we respond to her expressing is, is impacting her and none of us survived childhood without some kind of, you know, unintended consequence of our parents. But think of there's so many kids who were told you know, good little Kids should be quiet, don't yell, don't scream, smile more, be nicer, don't do this. And some of those things we need to learn because we shouldn't be hurting people. But other of those things are just our parents, usually our parents own issues with, I don't want people in the store to look at me weird, or I don't want to upset anybody. So you need to be quiet and perfect. And we carry that in our body. For the rest of our lives, the way our voice sounds, becomes part of our family, our relational with other people, and then we end up you know, 42 years old, on a podcast, and unless we've had the work to understand, who am I that's showing up in front of people, then often we're not even aware of that. And what I find over and over is that that is really the work of whether it's stage presence, whether it's confidence in an interview, whether it's storytelling, or whether it's just that how do I have a good vibe, when I meet people? It always starts with understanding the way that I sound, the way that I move and the way that I feel that somatic feeling. These are all learned behaviors, which ones are helping me which ones are hurting me? Which ones don't feel right. Where am I stuck playing a key that isn't serving what I want. And so I wish there was an easy advice. You both know, I don't believe in like an easy trick of if you just do this, every time that you speak, people will love you. Because it's not true. Because we are we are reading the energy from each other all the time. And so my big, my biggest piece of advice, there would just be really, really look and say, Hmm, the me that shows up in a networking event or an interview or a presentation at work. Who is that person? How did they get here? What do I believe about my voice? What do I believe about my body? Think of how many times totally unrelated to work, right? We show up to give a presentation to our team. And we have to stand up in front of the room and the impact of the way we feel about our bodies, about our physical bodies. Think of how much that shapes it, someone who feels uncomfortable. Because they're, and they've gotten the message that the size of their body isn't acceptable. Think of how they move, think of how they tuck their clothes, think of what you would do if you were trying to hide. And all of that has nothing to do with the work presentation you're giving. But it is impossible for it not to show up in the room with you.

 

Nicola Vetter  32:34

You as a performer and an actor, you really do embody what you say, you really feel that in your body before even before it comes out. That's how it arrives at my end here.

 

Mike Ganino  32:51

Yep.

 

Nicola Vetter  32:53

Now, you developed the Mike Drop Method. What is that exactly? And how can people that are looking to differentiate themselves in an interview, in a meeting, in a situation, how can they use that method?

 

Mike Ganino  33:13

The Mike Drop Method is all about how we present our ideas, our stories ourselves to other people, and largely that program is that that ideology is around, you know, giving a speech or a presentation or something. But if you think about like, anytime we show up in front of one other person, and share our ideas, we are public speaking, right? So it applies all the case. So there's this, there's this, this belief system in the world of acting called The Method. And you've probably heard about this before, it makes a lot of rounds every time an actor is like I'm doing The Method and they're pretending to live as the character. You know, I'm gonna live like the Joker so that I can play the Joker. And usually it's used for, for male actors to mistreat people when they're not on camera. Because they'll often say, Well, I was in character, and it's like, you were just picking up your lunch and come on. So the method though started from a Russian theatre Guru Stanislavski and it was all about how can we tap into the somatic he didn't call it that he called it was a lot of psychological like, how can you feel the emotion but we both know because the work you do as well? Well, the psychological is not the brain. It's the full body here like your body is telling your brain what to do a lot of the times too, and you've got you know, neural brain networks all over your body. And so his belief was that we didn't need to at the time in Russia at the time in most acting. It was the period of that very like performative and almost if you if you love American soap operas or or Spanish television telenovelas, you'll know that that very like overacting of like, if I want you to know, I'm mad, I'm gonna go, I'm so mad at you, and I'm gonna really do it. So performance used to be, you know, like way back when and I'm talking to 1800s. And coming up theater was that way it was all very what we would today call over acted, it was really showing them your emotions and crying on the floor and really doing all of that which is not indicative of how we communicate in real life. And so Stanislavski was part of this, this thinking around that if we could tap into the emotional feeling of what it's like when you're angry, how do you respond? How does your body respond? What does your face do? What does your voice do? What is the truthfulness? That's really what it was about a truthfulness to the to delivering the lines and delivering the character. And so and then that's gone through many iterations. And many, many people have lots of thoughts on it. And so when I was coming up with my approach to public speaking, which is very much not about performing, and pretending to be someone you're not and over scripting yourself, it's very much about presence and tapping into your own. How do you express how you feel? How do you share your ideas? And if you were talking to four people, how would you get us to care about the thing you're caring about? And how could we map that to when you talk to 4000 people or one other person? And so the method is about first really understanding your personal scripts, meaning, not the script you're going to read from but what are the scripts in your body? What are the vocal scripts? What are the somatic and physical scripts you've learned?

 

Peter Axtell  36:37

Excuse me from interrupting, but what would a vocal script, what would be an example of that?

 

Mike Ganino  36:44

Yeah. So think about if you were a so for example, I go to Starbucks to get my coffee drink, right. And I normally am expressing myself like this, I have a fun, playful voice, it has a full range, I can go all over the place. But for some reason, when people ask me my name, at the airport ticket counter, or at Starbucks, they say, Oh, what is your name? I say, Mike, Michael, I go to this deep place. Because we teach men in America that like the deeper voice, the less emotion in your voice, that's a real man kind of way to sound. We teach girls that they need to have higher voices and be playful and fun and ask questions. And you know, that kind of thing. And so and it changes by country, by the way, you know, if you look at the range, in pitch between men and women, in a lot of countries, you'll realize how much it's cultural because we have the same anatomy, you know, and so why in Japan, for example, the gap is one of the biggest between male presenting female presenting people. Why? Well, women in Japan, it's to be very soft spoken and very gentle voice. And the men have a real guttural sound that is all learned, that is all social, that is all cultural. And what those do is they become scripted. Now, add on top of that, not just the cultural societal way we look at the world, but then add on top of that, also, did you get rewarded in your family for being expressive? Were you told not to be expressive? Were you ignored if you expressed yourself? Or were you paid attention to only when you got really outraged and kind of yelling and getting attention? And what? How did we get stuck in the way we sound vocally. So the script when we speak vocally, is a lot of people don't realize they've got all these tools. We can and we talked about five of them in the Mike Drop Method. One is your pacing. You can speed up you can slow down. A lot of times people will show up and say I speak too quickly. Or I speak too slowly. And I think neither of those is true. You probably just don't have any contrast. You just get stuck only speaking one way. But how can you use your pacing? Why did you get stuck in that place? And how can you speed it up a little or slow it down a little? Or what would excite you enough to talk faster?

 

Peter Axtell  39:03

What do you mean by, I have to interrupt you again, this is too good Mike.   You didn't say here's the technique speed up and slow down and get your pacing together. You said why are you speeding up and slowing down? Well, what does that mean?

 

Mike Ganino  39:07

I love it.  Yeah. And if you think about it, like when someone is sharing something they're excited about, they might talk a little faster, right? They might get into the details more. But when we've learned when we've gotten stuck only speaking this way, we start to create a big separation from our somatic experience, where we're excited or outraged or energized by something and the way we express. Our body is feeling like oh, you love this, share it and then you slow yourself down because you heard that you should speak slowly and be a professional. And so we get stuck in that all the time versus realizing pacing can be a tool. You can speed up, you can slow down. Humor, we can make things funnier in a speech often or in a talk, just by playing with pacing. You don't have to actually say something funny. If you went through a list, for example, if I said, you know, it's such a wild time being a parent, having a toddler during COVID is so wild. I mean, there's trying to get a child to wear a mask all the time. And then can you go to Target or should you not go to Target, should you take your kid into Starbucks or not. And when you go to the doctor, only one parent could go, but which parent gets to go, none of that's inherently funny. But you can usually get an audience to laugh because they're laughing at your expression of that which expresses outrage, chaos. And so pacing is a tool for us. But we often get stuck in a script of here's the speed I go, or I only go fast, because no one ever let me speak in my life. So let me talk really fast to get it all in. And your audience has trouble following you. Because there's no contrast, you know, which is very normal. We have contrast when we normally speak.

 

Peter Axtell  40:59

Fascinating.

 

Nicola Vetter  41:00

So we are on a podcast here, but we are on a video podcast. And I hope everybody, everybody is going to watch this. Because to see you while you speak is it's just a gift. Okay...

 

Mike Ganino  41:14

You are so, this is why I love coming on your show. You're so generous. Thank you for that.

 

Peter Axtell  41:19

You're a beautiful example. Just being yourself entertaining, but not trying to entertain really being yourself and all your enthusiasm, because it's just thank you. That's all I can say is thank you.

 

Nicola Vetter  41:34

The next question that's on my mind that might be on our audience's mind. And that is the so called elevator pitch. When you meet someone at a networking event, is this a thing of the past? Or is it still relevant?

 

Mike Ganino  41:53

Uhg, wow, you're gonna get me in trouble, you're gonna get me in trouble.

 

Peter Axtell  41:59

Oh, trouble, we like trouble. Great, great.

 

Mike Ganino  42:02

I think that the overly rehearsed to I want to actually I'm gonna go back to something that Peter just said about me, which is I think what we're always aiming to do with, you know, whether it's in a program like the Mike Drop Moment, or just in our own healing, and the work that you do with people on becoming whole again, or recognizing the wholeness really, is what we want when someone's in front of us sharing their ideas, is we want to feel like they see us too. And what a lot of coaches and programs tell you to do is then to like, say what they want you to say or use their name a lot, which I don't know about you. But when someone starts using my name a lot, I feel like, oh, there's a stick coming here. They're going to, they're using my name to fake proximity so they can ask me for my credit card. So a lot of people feel that way overusing it actually diminishes your influence they've shown but what you were saying, Peter around, the kind thing you said about the way I showed up of like, oh, it's clear, this person is excited. They know what they're talking about. Obviously, I'm not rehearsed on what I'm saying. But I know what I'm talking about. I know the stories to go to. And what you said also is like, and it feels like you're just being real with us. That is what people want. That's what they want to see on stages. That's what they want to see in networking. And that's what I think is such a big issue with the way that elevator pitching is taught is that it's taught as almost like a rehearse this, memorize it. And as soon as you have 30 seconds inserted before they start asking questions, insert it before they can stop you versus thinking of when we're with other people, our job is always to be if we want to be influential. If we want to be impactful and have an impact. Our job is always to be relational. And as soon as the other person can feel like you could swap them out with any other person or a robot and it wouldn't matter. You stop being relational. And that is, you know, everyone's talking about AI and AI generated notes and words and this and that. That's the one thing so far that AI can't replace two things really is your take away on the experiences you've been through, and your energetic presence and your relational skills with other people. Those are two things that more jobs should go that way more energy should go that way. Because that's how we're going to beat the robots, if you will.

 

Nicola Vetter  44:19

Beautiful, love it.

 

Peter Axtell  44:20

And it's happening right now. We're online. Sadly, we're not in person, this would be really crazily wonderful. But this is online, and it's still working online, which is a reality we have to face. I want to find out more about the concept of story of which of course you are an expert. So I'm a person who's done a lot of things over the course of my life. How do I sift through all those experiences, and then find my story or a story that resonates with others?

 

Mike Ganino  44:57

Yes, I have good news and bad news.

 

Peter Axtell  44:59

Dang

 

Mike Ganino  45:00

Now, the good news is that you have many, many stories. This was like I always say, with folks we're working with when they say like, I want to tell my story, and it's like, well, you have lots of them to tell. And in fact, the same story with a slightly different frame can be a totally different thing. My memoir coach, Marion Roach Smith, she teaches this idea that all memoir is an argument for something different than a biography, a biography or an autobiography is kind of like I was born. And here's what my life was like. We generally only care about autobiographies or biographies if someone is like, very influential. They're a celebrity, we want to hear about their life. Otherwise, for normal folks like us, we need the memoir version, whether it's a book or it's a story, you're going to tell in an interview, or on a stage, the memoir version is you aiming it and saying, here's an argument I'd like to make. I'd like to make the argument that that the, the best expressed ideas are the ones that change the world. That's the argument I want to make. Okay. Now, I would look at that argument and say, How did I learn that? When did I see a good idea not get created in the world, because it wasn't expressed well? And whenever I've seen in my life and my experiences, the reason something landed was because it was expressed so well that people ran with it. Okay. So if the argument I'm making is, you know, x, then I can look and say, Okay, how do I put together examples and times in my life, or the one time maybe, if it's just one time, where that was true? And so for you, Peter, you'd look and say, I don't have a story. Thank goodness, you have many stories. And depending on the, the shape you want that story to take, are you telling a, you know, a horror story, a romance story, you know, a psychological thriller. And then inside of that, what's the message of like, don't go down in the basement with in the dark without a flashlight, then can you give us some stories about times, you went down to the basement in the dark without a flashlight, and it didn't turn out well? Now, when you tell those stories, you tell them so they set up that lesson or that moral or that argument, and then you know, you're done. When you said, I prove my argument, I've got enough stories in there. And so that's the good news. You got lots of stories, and and you could use them in all kinds of ways.

 

Peter Axtell  47:29

So does that mean this is a combination of having your story clearly, you understand what the story is, you're not rambling? And also you're really feeling into the story I would guess?

 

Mike Ganino  47:41

Yeah. Because you need that, um, you need that feeling into the story to say, to tap into, what was I thinking, what was the inner monologue? What was the thing here? Because the reason that we tune into a story or we tune into something is, we think somehow, there's like survival information you're gonna give me and it doesn't mean like, survival information, how do I run away from zombies in the Apocalypse, it means, oh, I want to get promoted. I want to, I want to get more sales, I want to get the job. So if you're here to teach me storytelling or wholeness in regards to career, then I'm willing to listen to that, because it's related to survival for me. So now your job as the storyteller is to say, let me make sure I'm packaging it in a way. So that's really clear for the audience. And so I can't do that. If I can't tap into how was I feeling when that happened? What was my inner monologue?

 

Peter Axtell  48:35

One of my main stories is spending 15 years in a job, I absolutely hated and then having a massive heart attack, get into the emergency room, and 30 minutes later, and I would have been dead. I'd have no trouble feeling into that story. But the point about it was I just didn't know how to get out of this job that I hated that was killing me. For 15 years, all that time went by. And that's the feeling part of it. And the lesson, of course is don't stay in a job that you absolutely hate because it could kill you.

 

Mike Ganino  49:12

And think about even that story. There's so many ways to tell it right? We can pick up on things that you love doing as a kid and how it felt so natural. And you always felt better about doing them and yada, yada. And then contrasting that to how you felt at work every day. We could tell it from the moment you could start the story with a heart attack. And say as you're laying there, what are you thinking about? You're flashing back to the nights you worked the anxiety here, this and that and that so like, it's such a cool thing, because one story that you have there with a specific lesson you want to share, and we could tell it 20 different ways, depending on how we wanted to shape it, how we wanted to share it, who the audience was. And I think that's again that goes back to the good thing of like, Oh, we don't need to be worried about do I have a story to tell we got so many stories to tell. And everyone does. And it's by looking at our experiences and saying, like you said, either what's next? Like you asked me at the top of the great show here. Or by looking and saying, what are the big places where I've learned a lesson where I've changed and I just think that's fun because you're never done that you could write many, many stories.

 

Nicola Vetter  50:18

I would like to touch on one more component of storytelling. Now I was lucky enough to have been trained in improv by Keith Johnstone about 20 years ago. So I'm a bit rusty in that, but you use improv in your work. And I'm wondering, how do you do that and what are the benefits of improv that you see, for somebody trying to figure out what's next?

 

Mike Ganino  50:53

So, so improv I, all through my 20s and 30s. Really, I was I was involved in improv in some way, I was teaching it, I was performing it, I was writing, I was doing all kinds of things in Chicago, here in LA and New York in the improv scene. And so for me, the big lessons for someone on I think the biggest one, I'll focus on the biggest one here is that what improv is, so if you've never done improv, improvisational theater is where you're essentially getting on a stage and you don't have a script, you don't know what you're going to say, you don't know where it's going. And so when you learn improv, what you're learning are forms and you're learning how stories, you know how to put a story together so that in the moment, when we're creating something together, not knowing what we're creating, that we can follow some kind of rules so that we can put a show on that's good for the audience. Because otherwise, it's a lot of people just stammering around on stage. And so when you're learning improv, what you're learning are, you know, you're learning storytelling, you're learning to find comedic moments, you're learning about your own physicality, how does the way I stand or move shape a character. When I do improv on stage and when I teach it for performers, and even for public speakers a lot? It's we start a lot with start a character with a body shape. It's so much easier to characterize, if you say if I said you know, slumped over and, you know, kind of get the thing of a gas station attendant who has been working at this gas station for 40 years. What do they look like? Okay, now, how does that sound? Vocalize them like huhhh huhh. Okay, what kind of things do they say? It's much easier to get into character when you physically change your form. Because of those scripts that we talked about before. It's hard to stay Mike Ganino and find a character. It's much easier to twist my body and then say, Okay, well, how does this person sound? You know. And so, what improv is great for is that it teaches us to trust ourselves. That's the big, big lesson there. It teaches you that in the moment, when you don't know where the situation's going, when uncertainty is high. When someone is sitting on the other side of the table in an interview, and they ask you a question that you didn't rehearse or you didn't prep for. You're in a leadership meeting and your team asks you something difficult. The real lesson in improv Sure, you can use storytelling. Sure, you can learn how to shape your body and use voices and things like that. But the real big lesson, I think, for us, for people who are non-performers, is that it teaches you to trust that you will be able, through staying relational with someone else, you'll be able to figure out what to do next. You know, they say a lot that improv is making something out of nothing. Because you have no script, no props. I say improv is making something out of anything.

 

Peter Axtell  53:41

Making something out of anything. Yeah.

 

Nicola Vetter  53:44

I love that.

 

Peter Axtell  53:45

That's the Yes, and.

 

Mike Ganino  53:46

That's the yes, and. Yeah.

 

Nicola Vetter  53:49

And another big teaching, I think is always honor your guest. So the one you're with. That's what I learned back then. And that's probably what you were referring to in our show here.

 

Mike Ganino  54:04

Well if you think about that, if you think about what I was saying that it's that trusting yourself that you'll know what to do if you stay in relation, it means we need each other up there. Like if we're bombing on stage, we are both bombing on stage. So we've got to look at each other's eyes and figure out without saying anything without prepping and planning. We got to look at each other me and Nicola on stage and figure out like we got each other, we are going to just help each other through this. And that is such a powerful life lesson. There's this idea that came from Second City where I studied for a long time as well. And it's this thinking of play the scene you're in. A lot of times someone would go on stage and they would be creating too far in advance and we're supposed to stay relational. I do something you add to it. I add to it, you add to it to create and a lot of times someone wanted to be funny, or they were just so anxious their script was making them you know, anxious and nervous and So they were just shouting out things that made no sense. Or they were trying to get to a joke that we weren't ready for yet that we hadn't earned. And so they would be playing the scene they wanted, versus playing the scene they were in. And I think that is just such a beautiful life lesson as well of like, play the scene you're in. What is happening in front of you? what is happening with the person here? And if you can stay here, in networking, in an elevator pitch, in a podcast interview with wonderful hosts like you, if you could stay here, play the scene you're in, you're gonna get it all figured out.

 

Nicola Vetter  55:36

Not check your text messages and see whether somebody just you know, like, whatever.

 

Mike Ganino  55:42

Which if you think about that, like, really often what people do there is that is a numbing technique. We're anxious, we're nervous, the scripts that we have, are telling us somatically physically, that that we should be nervous, anxious, bored, not connecting. And so we go to our phone or our device to disconnect the same way that we would drugs or alcohol or anything else. It's a coping mechanism. And that can be a signal to say, Why am I uncomfortable? Because think about like, networking events, how many people show up to a networking event, and then they stay on their phone? It's not because they're jerks. It's because they're scripting and their body is telling them I'm not good enough. I don't deserve to walk up to someone and say, Hello, no one's going to like me, I'm going to make a fool of myself. So it's much easier to disconnect and stay with my phone than to take the risk and walk over to someone and say, Hey, I'm new in town. Who are you? I'm Mike. Because what if they reject me? So I stay in my phone? And I think if we can look at each other that way, and say, Oh, that person over there on their phone, maybe they're a jerk. But let me go learn that first. Let me let them show me their jerk. Let me go over and say, Hey, Are you new here? No, I'm not. I'm just busy. Okay, gotcha. Walk away. But a lot of times, you may save someone really save them by saying, Oh, I bet you're hiding over there on that phone right now.

 

Peter Axtell  57:01

I found that about 95% of my assumptions. I'm so sure I'm right. And I'm just 95% wrong. That person is such a jerk. And they turn out to be the coolest.

 

Nicola Vetter  57:13

You're so judgmental.

 

Peter Axtell  57:15

I know I'm not me. I'm not judging. Dammit. Deep. Can we say dammit on I guess it's our podcast, we can say dammit. Yeah, which we're also talking about this idea of vulnerability, which is different than just having your heart on your sleeve, being a bleeding heart, that's different. But you're also talking about being willing to be vulnerable. Every time I see somebody who's genuinely vulnerable, just the most powerful thing, just being willing to be in the moment.

 

Mike Ganino  57:45

Yeah, and that's exactly it is. So often we think for, for speaking, or interviews or sharing that vulnerability is about like, you know, showing my heart telling you a story. That's, that's gonna grip you. But really vulnerability, and especially in the way that we've been having this conversation today. Vulnerability is willing to show up, let down the script and say, like, hey, here I am. And I'm not putting up a wall. I'm not trying to hide behind my Starbucks morning voice. I'm not trying to physically, I'm willing to be here and be changed by you. That's another big idea from improv of, you need to be changed by your scene partners, by your audience, and that takes incredible vulnerability to say, I'm willing to be changed by our interaction. And that is why the elevator pitches that we were talking about, they get such bad press, why they don't work, why the networking doesn't work sometimes is because we show up with a rehearsed, scripted, scared, often fearful, protective being and we're unwilling to be changed by the person we're talking to. And real vulnerability is saying, Wow, you actually could hurt me. When I walk over to you and I say, Hey, I'm new in town. Will you be my friend? You could hurt me because you could say no, but I'm gonna do it anyway. That's vulnerability.

 

Nicola Vetter  59:08

Okay, I'm new in your room, Mike. And people should watch it again. Put him on on big screen.

 

Peter Axtell  59:17

Big Screen.

 

Nicola Vetter  59:18

Because I am so curious. I've been looking of course at you but also at this butterfly behind you the whole time, this huge, colorful thing. Tell us about that before we have to get to the end.

 

Mike Ganino  59:34

Yeah, so it's a moth. But it looks like a butterfly but moth and butterfly are very similar, but in a lot of indigenous cultures and a lot of folklore and a lot of old mythology pretty much everywhere. moth is always connected to death, right moth is you know, dying and that kind of thing. But if you think about a moth, it's drawn to the light. It's drawn to the lightness, and also, it can be the death of a version of ourselves of who we are not, it can be the death of the scripts we've learned. So for me, this moth is a reminder that what we're constantly doing is seeking the light, like a moth does, seeking the flame, and also constantly trying to break out of who we've learned to be, to be who we really are.

 

Nicola Vetter  1:00:07

Ah, I have chills, I'm, I just feel it all over. So I could go on and on and on with you, Mike. And I truly hope we'll have some continuation of this wonderful conversation probably when your book is coming out this spring, summer, I'll just put the title in, even though we don't know where to get it yet, but I'll put it in the show notes.

 

Mike Ganino  1:00:42

Perfect.

 

Nicola Vetter  1:00:45

Now, we have to come to an end for this one. So is there anything that we didn't touch on that you would really like our audience to know?

 

Mike Ganino  1:01:06

I think the last thing which maybe feels like a punctuation mark to everything we we've shared here today is that if you're out there, and whether you're interviewing for a job, or you're looking for, you know, a board seat, or you're getting up to give a speech, or a presentation to your team, or whatever the case is, is realize that all the stuff you've been through everything that you've learned all the scripts that you've encoded, as the way to be the experiences that have happened to you, all of those things you have survived, you have gone through every hard thing you've ever gone through, you survived. And so take those things and put them in your bag like Jack and the Beanstalk, as your little magic beans, and realize that all of your experiences, all of your stories, you may not know what it was yet, you may look back and say I don't know what I learned from that yet. It was hard. But you survived it for a reason. Every difficult thing, if you're watching this and listening to this, then you've survived every difficult thing that ever happened. And you have put little magic beans in your bag. And at some point, you will be able to plant those and sprout those and they are going to be a huge part of you becoming who you are. So don't ever look at what you've been through and who you are and how you show up as a liability anywhere you go. Because it is always a gift because only you have gone through those things. And in a world of 8 billion people I think it's pretty cool to say well, no one has exactly the situation I have. So keep those magic beans and plant them when you're ready.

 

Nicola Vetter  1:02:36

I love it. It's also this is success because you have survived. So you're successful no matter what you think about yourself.

 

Mike Ganino  1:02:45

I love that.

 

Peter Axtell  1:02:47

That's a beautiful place to stop.

 

Nicola Vetter  1:02:48

What a lovely interview, Mike. Thank you so much. Thank you, Mike.  Yes.

 

Peter Axtell  1:02:55

We hope you enjoyed this conversation. The biggest takeaway for me was how everyone has a ton of stories waiting to be uncovered by our past experiences, if we just dig a little deeper.

 

Nicola Vetter  1:03:08

Yes. And I love the metaphor that my stories are like little magic beans waiting to be planted and sprouted. And just as a reminder, go and watch this interview on YouTube to see the big moth behind Mike.

 

Peter Axtell  1:03:28

It’s so fun. To learn more about Mike, head to WhatsNext.com/22, where we share the transcript links and more. Again, that's WhatsNext.com/22.

 

Nicola Vetter  1:03:46

And if you like what you've heard, share it with someone you care about. And subscribe, rate, and review our Inside-Out Career Design podcast on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, or watch it on our YouTube channel whatsnextcom, one word, without a dot, and subscribe, so you'll never miss an episode. Thanks so much for joining us here today. We'll see you next week for another episode. Same time, same place.