The power of strategic narrative | Andy Raskin

The way I learned how to pitch in business school I think the way most people did is what I call the Arrogant doctor so you have a problem a pain I have a solution you know a treatment and I'm going to tell you why it's better than all the other treatments and the structure that I read about in these movies was different every movie starts with some kind of shift in the world and I call this shift the shift from the old Game to new game and the archetypal example of this I think in the

business world is what benioff did with Salesforce so he comes in and he says Hey software is over and there's this new world called the cloud a new game new rules uh you know that's the new way to win and we're going to help you if you're you're in there this structure really is about defining a movement and that's very different from hey I'm going to solve your problem Welcome to Lenny's podcast where I interview world-class product leaders and growth experts to learn from their hard-won experiences building and growing today's most successful products today my

guest is Andy Raskin Andy helps CEOs and Company leaders align their teams around something he calls a strategic narrative which as you'll learn all about in this episode is essentially a simple story that helps people understand why they need your Product and with that helps you align your sales marketing and product teams along with your fundraising and even your hiring efforts Andy has worked closely with some of the most successful Founders and companies out there including companies like gong Dropbox Uber Salesforce Square IBM and many others in our conversation Andy explains why most people are

pitching their product completely wrong by focusing on the problem you're solving for people is No longer an effective pitch and how the Strategic narrative helps you frame Your solution in a much more effective way Andy also shares a ton of examples of the framework it action why focusing on categories and category creation is so limiting signs your narrative needs work and so much more enjoy this episode with Andy Raskin after a short word from our sponsors this episode is brought to you by Coda you've heard me talk about how Coda is The doc that brings

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or passively join The collective it's free you can be anonymous and you can even hide yourself from specific companies you can also leave anytime and you'll only hear from companies that you want to hear from check out lennysjobs.com Talent Andy welcome to the podcast oh thanks Lenny so great to talk to you so you're quite known as someone that helps CEOs optimize their pitch their story their strategy which we're gonna get deep into but before we do that can you just give Us a little glimpse into how you found your way into this line of

work so I started as a coder I was a computer science major undergrad a friend and I had an idea for an app so this was like during the.com years so Windows app and we coded a little prototype and we started we put it out there we started getting some users and we thought okay maybe we can get some investment so of the two of us I spoke English fluently so we decided okay I'll write the Investor pitch so I wrote the pitch sent it out and the reaction was really bad and one BC wrote

back and said listen I rate every plan I get on a scale of one to ten and you're yours is a one and then next to the one he wrote in parentheses worst in case we thought like maybe that was the top of his uh rating scale uh yeah brutal and uh but then lower down so this was back when they would like you'd print send the hard copy of the plan and they might Mail it back with comments written in and he had written in not a compelling story and a few weeks later I'm

walking by this Barnes and Noble and there's a sign in the window that says for anyone who wants to tell a compelling story okay that's me and there's an arrow that's pointing to these books and they turn out to be screenwriting books and I didn't know anything about this so I started reading these books and It strikes me like a movie is a pitch like you know what is Star Wars a pitch for it's a pitch for you know be good like care about people trust the force you know in their terms but I don't

have a couple hours you know I'm pitching a business it's very different you know I'm not writing a three-act screenplay so like what applies what doesn't apply I mean these are questions I think I'm still asking uh but I did my best to kind of take some of the learnings of of How the movie was structured it was very different from how my pitch was structured and kind of restructure it and we did that and we sent the pitch out and we start getting more interest like he's really clear and then we we had a

term sheet I think a few months later and I'm like what is this story thing that you know we didn't change the product uh it was basically the same I business just sort of how we talked about it that Was really interesting to me and I mean over the next like 10 15 years I I thought about like hey maybe I could do Consulting with this like CEOs have heard about this would like ask me about it but I still was like no no CEO is gonna like budget a line item for the story you

know like that's not a thing so I just didn't do it for a really long time until eventually I was proven wrong about that and how many years ago was this at this point so this was.com this Was like 98 when I was pitching that company amazing I think there's a couple interesting tidbits about this one is that interesting opportunities arise when you're doing something you're excited about so yeah the startup it didn't work out but like you've you had a problem that you saw for yourself and that led to another a bigger opportunity yeah

so that's interesting and then also just some of the best opportunities arise From solving your own problem not having not planning to start something with it but just like I have a problem yeah I think that's same with you right like you started writing about stuff and like boom like that became the thing absolutely it was not quite boom but uh eventually eventually it became boom feels like boom from outside that's yeah that's that's how it goes it always feels it always feels uh uh overnight for everyone else that isn't here right Exactly yeah okay

so so let's get into it so you help CEOs at this point come up with what you call a strategic narrative and you help them not only come up with this strategic narrative but you help their teams align around this strategic narrative so let's just start with what is a strategic narrative yeah you'd think like I've been doing this for like 10 years I'd have a very Snappy definition of it uh there and and I Don't know if I'm really happy with like I've ever found one that totally gets at it yet the one thing

I say is like it's this one story that the CEO uses to drive success in in Marketing sales but also product that it that it becomes like a North star strategic North Star for for product roadmap for fundraising for uh recruiting really everything and what I think it's really interesting is a kind of qualifier is that this story has A certain structure kind of like I said like when I found those screenwriting books I sort of shifted the structure and the traditional structure of the way I learned how to pitch in business school I think

the way most people did is what I call the Arrogant doctor so you have a problem a pain I have a solution you know a treatment and I'm going to tell you why it's better than all the other treatment not not to say it's not better But just this is the structure of it and it kind of sets you up for for bragging like or let me tell you why it's so great and the structure that I read about in these movies was was different um in the movies every movie starts with some kind of

shift in the world in the in the in the characters world right and I call this shift this the shift from the old game to new game and the archetypal example of this I think in The business world is what benioff did with Salesforce so he comes in and he says Hey software is over like uh meeting software in the sense that we're gonna own it and and maintain it and uh and there's this new world called the cloud a new game like the new new rules everything has changed and we're gonna you know that's

the new way to win and we're gonna help you if you're you're in there this structure really is about Defining a movement and and that's very different from hey I'm gonna solve your problem I think the Salesforce example is an awesome example of your approach if they were thinking about it in the old way what would Salesforce have done how would they have pitched it if not for everyone's moving to the cloud you're done for using desktop software well I think they would have just come out and said like oh you know hey I mean

CRM by the way was Already a category I mean they're already you know siebel was the huge giant of that space uh there were already even companies doing it online you know doing it through the web and so they would have come and said oh you know where easier to install than you know faster to get up and running than siebel or we have this much functionality compared to what I think was was it netsuite or so it was some early uh early Salesforce like thing That was out there they would have done these sort

of comparison things and you know Benny I mean he's he is a pretty proud guy I think he did still say like Hey we're the number one here but that wasn't what they LED with they they LED with this this story about this fundamental paradigm shift and you know are you in or are you not in and what they did was instead of just saying like Hey we're better than they They said hey all those others those those sea Bulls no they're part of that old game you want to play that software game be my

guest go go buy siebel and you know of course we know how it played out so the Crux of the uh approach is instead of problem solution you should go do this it's the world is changing here's where it's going and we're gonna help you get there and I want to go in a little more depth of the framework but Before that what are some other examples to give people a sense of like oh I see I understand what this might be so another great example and no coincidence so it is Zora uh says war

is the company I wrote about in this this post called the greatest sales like I've ever seen the CEO of Zora Tien suo was employee number 11 at Salesforce so he learns this from Benny up and he's pitching you know hey in the old world businesses operated on transactions you sold things To people outright in this new world he calls it the subscription economy where we people want the benefits of those things without necessarily having to pay for them and of course gives all these examples of all the winners you know in this look at

all the winning companies they're all basically going to this new model and you know and so he's pitching someone like Ford and you can imagine they're going to forward and pitching you know a Subscription for car service which is quite different from just the lease and they're starting out with this you know this is the big shift another one um Team I worked with early on and I think I think they'd agree like their story came out of this work was gone uh so gong you know everyone probably knows by now like they they you

know they take the video recordings of all your sales calls and they stick AI onto it and come out with all these insights and that Story is you know hey goodbye opinions it used to be a world where we we sales was running pants hello reality that now all the winners are gonna uh are are adopting this new mindset where we really have to see what's really going on in the gong example let's say what would they have done if they were going like here's the problem here's the solution here's what we're gonna do for

you yeah I mean that's kind of what they were doing when they started out and and I'm not saying like that that didn't work totally I mean already by the time they started doing this like they they were starting to become a big company I remember said to me listen Andy you know they were around like series B I think this is around 2018. it's like we're gonna be a huge company the question is how huge and you know I think that this narrative like along the lines of like a zoir sales or if we

get This right this is going to be a multiplier on our growth so you know I I don't remember exactly the pitch before him but it was very much like Hey we're gonna record your calls uh we're gonna get insights from them they're better than the insights you could get sales for it from Salesforce there wasn't this kind of unifying kind of movement ideology that put it all in context and what was really interesting was one thing I I don't think they'd be upset if I shared them maybe it's known like you know initially they

were seen as a tool for like sales operations you know for someone who's going to record the calls and what this narrative did for them and I think it was already starting to happen but what it really uh coalesced was this is a tool for sales leadership you talked about zura and the post you wrote and I imagine many people listening are like oh this is the guy that wrote that post that everyone's Always sharing with me about how to make a deck and I wanted to ask how impactful was that one piece of writing

for you and your career just like as a tangent I had written some other posts on medium in particular medium uh medium chance changed quite a bit Yeah but back then I found that I could write stuff there and get really like a lot of people who were interested in what I was interested would sort of come in and and uh and create Some Noise about it so I was Already doing this kind of work for a couple of years but that post immediately got something like two million views around the world and I started

getting uh inquiries from teams all over the world and it was I think what really allowed me to say no okay I could do this work that that CEO's would budget a line item for this because I think if you really understand that post it's not really about a sales deck it's Really about this story that Tien and that you know the CEO is telling everywhere and that you know is showing up in the sales deck and structuring it that way I think it's just another example that comes up a bunch on this podcast just

the power of writing the power of content and there's yeah and you're shaking your head yeah totally I mean I had a I had a little mini career as a journalist as a freelance writer um and I I really love that I actually I Took a class in New York called how to write a magazine article um because I was you know a certain mid-careers sort of curious and the class will end up being more about like how to sell a magazine article and I found I really love that like pitching articles and you know

but one thing that was always a downer for me it was like there's always this editor you know sort of like deciding what what I'm what's gonna be out there and Um you know when you work with a great editor it's great like if they make yourself better and you you they're Priceless but still there's this intermediate and and what started to happen I think around when I started writing around 2013 14. you start to see these platforms like medium uh even LinkedIn where you can just write and have this audience and I think no

way I could do this what the work I do if that Development hadn't happened first I'm taking us off track but I want to go a little deeper with this I find that there's kind of two paths so writing online one is what is your path where you write one piece that just like blows up like crazy the other path is more my path where I just write consistently for a long time and both work and most people try to go your path and they never succeed it's really hard to make something gets two million

views but you Can go that path you know this is like you said earlier like hey it seems like boom but really so I had that was that was probably the 30th or 40th piece you know and they were gradually getting more and more traction there was one I wrote before that about it's kind of dissecting Elon musk's pitch for the power wall the battery that they sell and that one got maybe like a few hundred thousand views and also was a big jump and and then you know the next This one got you know

some paltry number so there was a it what I find is like yeah there's this there's this a while where you're writing and it feels like you're talking to nobody and then sort of gradually it grows and and you'll have these Peaks and then but then you know over time is is where the magic is okay I'm really glad you pointed that out that it rarely is just you write one thing and boom yeah great I'll also say sorry because I worked in a magazine I haven't done a newsletter because that idea of like having

a deadline all the time and like constantly having to we used to call the magazine Feed the Beast like I feel so free not to have that so for now uh at least I haven't done that I know that well so let me take us back on track and yeah let's talk about just the high level framework here so you talked about like it starts with this idea of tell People world's changing during this movement what's like the simple way to think about this the pieces of this uh strategic narrative framework a lot of times

people contact me say hey I tried it didn't work and well one one very common thing at least earlier was they would basically just take this war a deck they'd get a hold of it and just like put their logo on it and so you know that's not gonna work one thing is you know we're not just Saying hey the world is changing and there's sometimes I'll see the world is changing and they'll be used to be and there's a long list of things and then now it is a long list of bullet points right

what's really I think key is naming it like naming that old game the examples you saw software Cloud transactions uh subscription opinions reality this very very concise naming um is really key and it's hard because In making it compact you're losing completeness so you know you can imagine you're in a meeting someone says like hey how about we do transactions to subscriptions and so it says well I don't know there's a lot of things I don't really subscribe to subscription economy really so we're always kind of overstating it in a way but it's not a

problem like you know I don't think people say like oh you know that's wrong Subscription account because I I still go to the grocery store and buy things right so anyway that that's the first piece the second piece is what I call uh naming the stakes and there's a few ways to do this but one that's really great if we can do it is is to name the winners to show that winners are already playing this new game so for instance with uh it's War they're saying hey look uh look at all the the new

winners like this is Like 2015 so like Airbnb box you know all these coming they're already doing this subscription thing and by the way overall like they show this scary stat about the like the the longevity of Fortune 500 companies it's getting smaller and so it's a little disingenuous but basically they make this case that hey companies are dying the ones that are winning are are doing this right and so to the extent we can we want to we want to make this life and Death just like a movie right and this is again uh

I'll I'll make the ref the parallel to Star Wars so Luke spends like the first 15 minutes of the movie belly aching like he wants to be a pilot he wants to go out and have adventures in space so Obi-Wan comes he says hey we got this Mission this princess we gotta and all the steps let's go on let's go I'll teach you to be a pilot we'll go have adventures in space what is Luke say He says oh you know what I can't really get involved they gotta go home it's late who does this

sound like The Reluctant buyer you know so yeah I want to be Innovative and also oh you know what I don't have budget this quarter so so how does how does George Lucas change Luke's mind he basically kills the aunt and uncle sorry spoilers um it's been 40 years though if you haven't seen it it's Probably you're probably not going to see it Kelsey and Uncle now it's it's pretty clear they're coming for Luke now the stakes are life and death probably he's going to be dead but there is this other path that Obi-Wan holds

out for him and you know whenever I work with teams and I talk about this so they're like okay I guess we gotta then for kill the prospect's aunt and uncle and basically yes I mean like figuratively we gotta show them that the future is Not going to just be sort of okay that there are it's probably people talk about like making it emotional and I've always wondered like what does that mean like literally what is the definition and this is for me the definition is that the prospect doesn't see the future as sort of

okay they see it as split between a very negative outcome and a potentially very positive outcome the third piece is what I call um Naming the object of the new game I used to call the promised land message but I've changed it to this because I think it's it's I've found that it's sort of a little more fruitful you know this subscription economy transactions it can get a little highfalutin and and sort of like big right so you know but like on the website when we just have to boil it down to a couple of

words that's going to be clear like right away what can we say and I find that you know What's the object of the new game it really boils it down is kind of the rallying Cry of the movement so the example with zvora the object for a while was turn customers into subscribers very simple you know just sort of flows from it Airbnb for a while had this one uh live anywhere you know if you think about you know you don't belong anywhere well well actually it was uh you're right it was belonging anywhere and

then it switched to live There it was it was I may have the the chronology wrong but it was the two of those things you know better than I do right um but either one I mean I think they're saying very similar things uh hey there's this new world where you can you know you don't have to you don't have to live in hotels you can stay in people what's the what's the object of that game is to to belong anywhere but live there right and it's a I love it when it works that Way

where it's almost like an asymptotically unachievable thing like you're never literally gonna live there but and and if you think about it this this buyer mission statement is this rallying cry I think of it really as the mission of the company I mean what what is the mission of Airbnb other than to help people live there you know if they're going to be customer focused and all that the fourth piece is okay well this Object of the game you know winning this game it better be hard right because if it's not like we don't have

a like why are we even exist just like with the movie like if it's if if Luke can just go like destroy the Death Star then you know no movie so there's got to be sort of obstacles in the way things that are preventing them from which so saying okay you wanna you wanna turn customers into subscribers so whereas Zora where they go next and say okay well how are You gonna measure lifetime value because now you have this always on things how are you going to measure preferences and how they're changing over all these

new kind of challenges that didn't exist before and then and these are like the Ops these are like the you know the the monsters in Lord of the Rings or you know the the empire in in Star Wars these are the obstacles and I think about them because they sound like problems you know this Is what people would normally say oh these are the problems we solve but by setting up this story thing first we've got to re-package them as obstacles to a to a a new goal state that we've already uh positioned as life

and death so they take on this much more emotional meaning we understand why they matter and then of course the last piece is uh is is now talking about well how are we going to overcome these obstacles how you know what are the in the narrative People in the movie business they call these like the magic gifts that the main character gets to go you know help them win what are the ways now we can talk about that and success stories and all the rest of the stuff so there's some obvious parallels to the hero's

journey here I imagine that was a source of inspiration and the Star Wars I think is like the epitome of that Journey can you talk about just how related those two are how you think about that yeah I mean So hero's journey is this uh this book that comes from uh um I think it's Hero Of A Thousand Faces uh is a book by Joseph Campbell sociologist and he uh looks at myths over different cultures and different times and he finds this kind of common structure that he calls the hero's journey I mean it's there's

some controversy about that about his book you know is it very male oriented uh sort of take on things and a bunch of Things but you know even on the other side I found one I would talk about hero's journey and stuff it's just like it didn't really tell me what to do yeah um like okay yeah I gotta do this pitch so uh you know in the heroes there's like refusal of the call that's actually that what thing where Luke like doesn't uh says he doesn't want to go and where the buyer says you

know hey I'm I don't have budget but I don't know it was just like Too theoretical for me to really uh when I used it people seem to sort of glass over so yeah I just don't really talk about that at all but yeah I mean that's behind a lot of this stuff for sure yeah that makes sense because I think people hear about that all the time when they're like become a better Storyteller tell your story in this hero's journey and it's like I don't know what I'm doing yeah also I would say you

know there's storytelling as a skill kind of Thing which is a great thing you know you learn how to tell stories better blah blah I'm not really interested in that in my work what I'm interested in is the one story and the structure of that one story and this one story it doesn't really have a you know the world has moved from transactions to subscriptions like there's not a main character in that story who's like having a problem and getting sick you know it's it's Almost as if what's happening is we're present we're turning the

person we talk to into the main character by by creating this by by spelling out the shift we're like changing their world and we're asking and we're saying hey you you gotta you gotta change and you want to come with us yeah and it's almost like you're putting them into the hero's journey like you can exactly win exactly I love that so let me just try to summarize what you shared this Five-step framework so you start with here's a new movement that's happening and you want to name it you want to name the stakes and

there's winners and losers and here's what's already happening and it's really important then you want to name the object of the new game like turning customers into subscribers then show show the obstacles here's why it's challenging and then talk about how you're going to overcome these obstacles yeah and by the way the Naming of the uh the object of the new game I find it often is really nice to do it as a question so you know so we asked so so hey there's this shift from transactions to subscriptions and look everyone's doing it so

we asked a simple question what would it take to turn every customer into a subscriber you know and this way we're kind of bringing the the person we're pitching to along almost like they're coming along with us as a CO I don't know Adventurer uh in in Crafting this story I love that this episode is brought to you by Eco last month Eco users earned an average of 84 dollars in cash back rewards how with Eco the future of personal finance Eco is the update to a misaligned financial system providing an app that works just

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one company as an example and just talk about what each of those were for them okay great so there's a company called um 360 learning uh so this kind of I don't know if folks know this company has raised like over 200 million dollars they're in the space of like um corporate training software you know so big companies they have to train their people on all kinds of stuff uh so you want to go through that one yeah that sounds great okay great So the story and and by the way uh Nick Hernandez is the

CEO and Nick's been on my podcast so he's talked about this so they for a long time were pitching themselves as Collaborative Learning so they have you know features that let people sort of collaborate on courses and uh all kinds of stuff and Nick is often pitching CEOs of course his team is as well and he told me that it was sort of like kind of falling a little Bit flat like people Cloud are learning okay whatever you know how are you different from this learning platform this learning platform and so when we work together

you know this Collaborative Learning it's almost like a category name or a descriptor or something they were so embedded that I decided like I don't I don't even want to like take it out but can we Define it in terms of Like a of the story so the story they came to was hey used to be that companies uh train their people through a through a basically a mindset of top-down learning there's gonna be some like learning Guru at the company they're gonna get all the courses they're gonna you know put it all together and

like sort of set out this training uh material to everybody and what's happening now is winning companies or Or are approaching this differently in in this that they're they're adopting this approach we might call upskill from within which is you know if you look at like Google like there's this page where I think you can go it's a public you can like connect with like Google's AI experts they literally turn their internal experts into like Champions that are educating not even just the company but even external people they Created this culture of our own people

are going to be the Educators so that's the shift from top down to this upskill from within and of course I just even started to to do the second piece which was like hey there's there's look at the big companies who are doing this and then I think they showed hey you know you're not doing this look training is becoming very expensive it's people don't care people you know so this is the downside so we're creating these These sort of state and and also I think he had something about you know how training now like

companies like if you don't adapt like if you can't get these skills to your people like if you're a car company and you can't get these skills around you know elect cars you're dead you know so Nick was in France and he saw this poster from a recruiting poster from McDonald's and it said hey if you work at McDonald's you're going to learn from everybody else on your Team and it was like Wow there there it is right so there's another example we used as a kind of winner example and so then the question became

you know how I can't remember exactly it was something like how do you upskill from within like what would it take for you to turn your experts into like champions of learning in the company and turn them into stars and all this right and then I'm gonna forget here what all the obstacles were but I think it was things Like well how you gonna make it possible for anybody to create a course you know people who don't even know how to you know might have expertise in in electric engines but you know don't know how

to create a course that haven't how are you gonna make sure that there's still like the learning Department they're gonna keep control and and can you know all this you can imagine all the different kind of questions and then of course now 360 learning starts talking about all That stuff and what Nick has told me I'm actually going to be on a on a a webinar with Nick someone asked me like could you bring in a CEO who could talk about you know this stuff not just you blabbing on about strategic narrative and so Nick

is gonna uh join it join it and we had a dress rehearsal the other day and he was telling me like it's just like when he starts with this now he doesn't even get the question Anymore of like well how you different from this other learning platform you know which all used to always be the thing and it's just a much more seamless like okay yeah talk to our learning people get this get this going so it it just sounds like it's been really effective for them that's actually was what I was going to ask

next is what kind of impact have you seen with someone shifting their pitch and story from this doc what was it the Arrogant Doctor approach too yeah the Strategic narrative yeah I mean it's always this kind of thing I hear I mean of course it's very difficult to say to to measure this I mean like what was the value of the Strategic narrative for gong and its growth you know was it was it 3x versus 1 2X or who knows right um but the things I hear from CEOs a few things one is that yeah

when they're pitching they're not pitching features out of context they're pitching now a Movement you know which is a lot better place to be I think you know you're in a way you're not pitching product product your product is like a prop for making the story come true very important prop but there's this higher level overlay that becomes the focus of the conversation at first and of course we're going to get into product and and that that helps sell once we have this story then everything in marketing can be all about this story You know

with zwora when they if you look at their website well when they when they first started doing this like maybe eighty percent of the the content is not hey let me tell you about how Zora is so great or or here's our new release or whatever it's here's how music companies are embracing subscriptions here's how luxury goods companies are embracing some security you know it's like all these kind of almost Trend pieces that become Unlimited fodder and again you're not touting your it's less salesy right another thing I I just hear always I just interviewed

a CEO this morning for for my podcast and and uh this is the first thing he actually said was it becomes a strategic North Star for the product so uh what he was telling me and this was actually a little unusual I asked him like what did you come to me at first And of course I've asked him that before but he said something that I this time that was like a little different from what I heard before he said you know we're constantly getting feature requests through sales through customer success and we had sort

of no uh like way bar for to decide like well what do we take on what don't we take on and this clearly has become our bar you know if you think about it for 360 Learning you know does it help us up skill from within it's in does it not or it's prioritized you know does it not less prioritized Amit Bend off told me this directly he said you know we exactly the same thing we used to we he's we get a lot of requests for features and a lot of them are basically about

opinions like some some way to cut to record opinions and this is gone we're not going to do those and got it gone yeah we're not going to do those Are there any companies out there that maybe aren't clients that you see as like wow these guys are nailing it and they're doing great job of the Strategic narrative well one that really comes to mind is I mean it's been out there for a while but drift you know drift comes out with a with essentially like a chat bot for your website which might be like

the 30th chat bot for your website and they don't Say hey here's why our chatbot is the best one they come they they start from a completely different place which is hey used to be people would sort of wait around for you to get back to them you know it was a world of sort of later of they called it the world of forms you know you put up a web form and you expect someone's gonna fill it out and maybe wait a few days while you take your sweet time deciding if they're Gonna you're

gonna get back to them and this and and David cancel and Dave Gerhart uh started from right the beginning saying now we're in a world of of now where they where buyers are they I think they showed this woman I remember this woman sleeping with her phone like that's your that's your cross your prospect like there's always on and they're gonna expect you to be engaging with them right away and they called this Conversational marketing and you know they really went with that and created I think a whole movement and they broke away from all

of the other you know chat boss awesome example so earlier you throughout this word category and I've noticed you haven't talked about category and category creation too much and I think that you're kind of uh not a fan of this idea of creating a category and focusing on category I'd love to hear your Perspective on how that all relates to the stuff you recommend Lenny are you trying to get me in trouble like that guy who that that guy on your podcast who uh who attacked uh jobs to be done apparently and let's do it

let's see what kind of trouble too I would I would soften it a little bit and not just uh because I don't want the ire of the category design folks but I really would solve it and say I I wouldn't say I'm not a fan of creating category oh look I Think the um you know if you look play bigger which is being become kind of the the Bible of that category creation thing you know if you look behind that they're gonna what what do they say the category is they say it's a narrative it's

a a story about how the world was to to how how it is and and and so what I find though is that when people think about category creation they tend to just focus on like okay well it's this category name gonna Be that we got what are these three words that are or two words whatever that are going to sort of magically make us seem like we're totally different from everybody else and and a I think that's not really possible like these three words aren't going to do it take gong I mean already other

companies were using this term Revenue intelligence right with gong it suddenly it becomes a thing because I think they have this Opinions to reality story behind it you know one point I again I asked Amit he said yeah in it he because he had really I remember he really struggled what should we call it which we call it he came up with with that one but then when I asked him later he's like yeah you know what in hindsight we probably could have called it like strawberry intelligence it didn't matter it was really the story

that that was sort of mattered I think it was exaggerating a Little bit but and I think the category people would actually agree with this I think they would agree with like hey you're these three words are it's sort of a a shorthand for this movement for of old game new game narrative but I guess that I I guess I feel like uh still by calling it category and category neem like we're just focusing on those three words so much and what happens often is is CEOs will they'll Kind of come up with this little

category like like what happened with uh with Nick at the 360 learning with Collaborative Learning we have this name but we don't know how to tell the story around it and um that you know so my feeling is like well let's let's focus on the story so uh that's why I talk about strategic narrative and and movement creation versus category creation you know if someone decides that your movement is a Category great bonus I see so essentially your approach is category can play a part of this but there's a bigger question you have what's the

story what's the movement what are the obstacles and categories an element of that potentially I mean I always almost see them as orthogonal like you know with uh HubSpot you know HubSpot had this narrative around inbound you know used to be just outbound still now we're Gonna have inbound and that that wasn't really a category is still I think if you back then they were probably known as marketing automation now they're probably known as CRM because they broadened but this movement is the thing that's sort of the constant uh and in some ways orthogonal to

whatever category they're they're in you know is the Strategic narrative framework right for essentially any company or is there like a sweet spot and I've noticed most Of the companies you've been talking about are B2B SAS so I don't know maybe like if there's a spectrum of perfect fit for strategic nerd framework and then like not a fit at all what's like what's along that Spectrum yeah well you can see I mean it takes a little time I mean uh to tell this story uh and it's a kind of you were kind of framing it

a little bit and we're telling it in lots of different channels right so I think it Does really um play well in sort of like this Enterprise sales context because also we have a group buyer there so it's not just one person who's you know doing some research and like there's there's like this whole group has to sort of have a a United a uniting story so I think you're right that in noticing that the companies that this tends to you know resonate with tend to be B2B Enterprise sales Uh technology I think because often

the product is very complicated you know that arrogant doctor stuff you know comes from an age when the the things people were selling were like products on shelves that didn't change much you know cans of soup at the supermarket or or like a car and a dealership even software back then you know shrink wrapped in a box doesn't change um soft B2B software you know this stuff Is changing by the minute and does it even make sense to make a claim to say like oh we have these features and they have those features therefore but

I mean like does that can you even does that make any sense that said you know hey I was looking for um I was looking for like a sports watch you know like a Fitbit and then you know and I'm yeah I'm comparing specs and I'm doing all that stuff you know uh and so that mode of of buying is still happening but I Think that's you know in that so yeah when like consumer products companies contact me I usually say no uh occasionally they're they're look they still say okay yeah we'll build this we

still want to have this narrative but yeah I think it it has the most value most impactful right away for a B2B uh Enterprise technology companies just a few more questions one is just what's a sign that you should spend time in this area that something is broken in your Strategic narrative story pitch well I can tell you what I hear from CEOs when they contact me like why did I I always ask like what's happening like because that that idea I had no CEO is going to budget a line item for this I'm basically

asking like why was I wrong like what what so a few things they tell me one is that the company is maturing from a point a stage where they've been successful but that success is one person you open it this way as Like was brute force of the founders so the founders are in every meeting they're in every in every product discussion every sales call and that's Shifting the company's getting bigger usually I'm seeing this around like series B where the company is getting so they can't be in every every sales call every Marco and

they're looking to kind of transmit all the good stuff and some direction in a way that people are going To remember and all and and all that everything from how we pitch to what the product should be and all that and they see this as as that there's another kind of point that I see people contacting me at which is where they're growing it's usually a bit later where they've they've had they've scaled tremendously successfully now we're either acquiring or building out a whole new product units and that old story we told is just it's

Just not big enough and we gotta expand it to something bigger this is this is the example of like one trust which uh was on my uh which I'll have on my see all have my podcast recently you know it starts out with just uh sort of I think data privacy around you know the regulations that people have to be able to say don't track me things like it and then there they buy these other company and now we have this much bigger bigger offering so how do we tell the story and Then I guess

the third one is some form of pivot where hey we were telling an old story but we're you know whatever the market changed or whatever and we're we want to go in a different direction so say a Founder is listening to this and they're like okay I realize I need to do this I haven't spent enough time on this something's not working this could be a huge unlock for us what are the first couple steps they could take to start to figure this out and I Imagine at some point it's like go talk to Andy

he'll help you through this is there stuff you can do on your own how do you go about well a lot of folks have have emailed me uh over the years like hey well I told you before there were some who emailed me like hey tried it didn't work but many many more have have emailed me hey I tried it it did work thank you and so yeah just try to lay out that structure and try it I mean even when I work with teams I I adopt what what my people might call sort of

lean approach like I want to get that thing out there into sales calls you know we're not rolling it out to the whole sales team right away but getting it out into some sales calls and get a sense like hey is this resonating are people like given the nods ideally by the way one way I I Look to test it you know is is it working is like when we talk about this shift and the stakes and the you know Do they stick do they kind of say like yeah let me tell you how that's

playing out for us and or yes I'm seeing that let me uh sometimes I'll literally I'll I'll train sales people to ask them that question like am I crazy or are you seeing this and and what do they say and you know you can usually tell like if they're in and it's qualitative but I really like that kind of kind of testing uh to see if it's working and I think anybody can Do that is there a template or guide you have online for folks to follow other than maybe just listening to this podcast and

reading is there a post that's like here's the framework to find and go follow these steps I mean I guess the closest is that the greatest sales deck I've ever seen post which is this war a deck but even there I I really people have asked me like for a framework like and and like um you know presentation companies that could we Have your your template so we could like make it available to people will Revenue share with you or something and I am so against this template like every team I work with it's different

you know it's not like the same number of slides sometimes we can lay out this shift in one slide sometimes it just feels better or the team likes it better whatever if it's a few and we're sort of getting people into it sometimes there's no slides Um so I am really uh hesitant to sort of recommend any template and what I'd say is like these are principles for you know for for building it not not any prescribed formula if they do want to reach out to you while we're on this topic what's the best way

to contact you um connect with me on LinkedIn that's usually a good one um I I and I'm usually posting things on LinkedIn that I've learned from working With other teams awesome last question before we get to a very exciting exciting round I saw speaking of LinkedIn you posted how in a working session with companies that the second session is always this like low point they all go through and everyone's starting to get discouraged and pain and uh first of all I love the expectation setting you're like this is gonna suck initially and it'll get

better why is that the low Planet what is it that they Focus on in that second session well apparently I'm not doing enough of an expectation setting because like what what that post was about was like this this woman who would so when I worked with a CEO I always ask them to create a what they call Strategic narrative team of up to four people and usually those are leads of like Marketing sales whatever in this case the CFO was a really important person in this company and and so the CEO wanted her as part

of This team and she said said to me at the end she's like you know I would love where we got to I always asked what worked what did it work and she's like I love where we got to that worked great what didn't work was like you told us that this second session was going to be bad but I don't I think you could have drilled home more like exactly how bad so and then I asked her actually could I could I have that quote with your face on a slide that I now present

to Future Teams she said she said yeah you could do that so the way the way I work it is in I have a kickoff session where essentially I'm I'm I'm asking people on the team like what are these pieces what is this old game new game shift what what how do we talk about winter set the stakes and everything I just talked took you through and you know we have like five people in the room there's gonna be like we're gonna come out of this with notes and notes and Boards or boards and Boards

of ideas of like this stuff right and so then two things happen one is I asked the team to start interviewing customers about how how they see the shift and and and sometimes the customers will literally give us the words and and that can be helpful in sort of aligning if we have differences but but I also start working with the CEO one-on-one and we start when we build a first version of this thing and it's the second session where we present This first version to the team and think about what's happening like the team

has just given us like millions of gold ideas and like truly very all and in order to make something sort of clean and Powerful the CEO and I have had to pretty much throw out all of them you know save one or two right and there's going to be feelings about that first of all second of all you know if this were easy to just like get all the you know Interview everybody come up with it they would have done it right so it's gonna be wrong but the good news is this is where the

team gets to weigh in I also ask what's working not working in this thing and when we learn how it's not working that gives us the juice to then me and the CEO go back to the drawing board right we plan on this in advance we're going to go back to the drawing it and then Bring up something good so I you know having a draft is like a million times more valuable than having all these great ideas but it's also really painful uh it's painful not only for them but for me like no matter

how many times I say this I wanna I expect they're gonna love it in that first one too uh and I'm really pissed off when they don't but but luckily now I've done enough times like I know that's gonna happen I was Just watching a documentary about Annie Lamont who came up with the shitty first draft uh concept for writers that I I stick to I'm a firm believer in that yeah as you're talking one last thought that I had is so you'd work with CEOs and Founders I feel like this could be just as

useful to product leaders product managers working on a product that they're launching just like what is the movement where it's happening here's why this product's important do you find That too absolutely and very frequently like the product leader Chief product officer is part of this group and and what I'd say though is that you know the reason I so when I looked after I did this work for a few years I looked back and I was like which were the ones where which are of the engagements I did wear like I can see it and

it just the narrative is like really this true north star for everything and it was always the ones where the CEO was was leading It um not just like in name but like literally the person who called me who was like in you know working on the drafts with me and like going through like and so initially I didn't I didn't insist that it would be the CEO doing that but eventually I started to and I think even for a product leader like you're gonna want the support you don't want to be Just telling that

story in product you're gonna want that supported from you know uh this war person who gave me their initial deck he said you know it was like I had was like I I had air cover and I was just going down and knocking down deals on the ground you're gonna want that air cover in Marketing sales recruiting everything and you know how much better is it if it's if it's really driven by the CEO and you have that amazing is there anything else you Wanted to touch on or you want to share before we get

to a very exciting lightning round uh no except uh I I love category design people and uh uh it's really just it's really just sort of terms that I like that are you know what forget it scratch that part uh I thought that was funny oh yeah okay okay yeah we can leave it in we could leave it in you could even leave this in where I'm telling you to scratch it sounds good I was actually gonna joke that I was gonna Cut this out and leave you hanging but okay okay no you could do

that yeah category design people love you uh don't don't hate me thank you great I love it we're gonna be okay I think okay well with that we reached our very exciting lightning round I've got uh five questions for you are you ready I'm ready I haven't seen the quest I saw the quit you sent them but I didn't really look at them so I'm I'm just going to tell you what I said well I'll go Perfect excellent the best version of this what are two or three books that you've recommended most to other people

one of the books that I read initially in that from that Barnes Noble it was Story by Robert McKee I think a lot of people know about it who are sort of interested in story stuff but it's it's kind of a Bible of people who are doing like screenwriting and stuff pretty much if you know anyone who's in Hollywood or thought about going to Hollywood like They they know about this book uh I love a book called out of sheer rage it's really not about what I do or anything but it's uh the author is

Jeff Dyer Jeff he's a he's written a lot of books that are kind of essay Memoir and this is a book about him trying to write a book about D.H Lawrence so it's all about procrastinating and like oh like him I'm supposed to write this book I think I'm gonna I'm about to go on a trip somewhere should I bring the Collected works of D.H Lawrence and the on the trip because that'll help me start the book but maybe I shouldn't because it's not gonna then I I could come back refreshed without having you know

basically it's all that it's all this sort of like in the head I just really enjoy that book what's a favorite recent movie or TV show they really enjoyed uh station 11 station 11. that was just so beautiful to me trippy It was a Trippy movie did not expect to go where it went yeah uh I usually ask what's a favorite interview question you'd like to ask and I don't know how often you're interviewing people but does anything come to mind when asked that well I can tell you one thing I asked when I speak

with CEOs um is I like to ask uh what role this narrative played in your leadership what is it playing how does it work in your leadership it's always really Interesting for me to hear that uh so I often hear things that I don't expect what's a favorite product you've recently discovered that you just really like I recently got a Fitbit I think I made mentioned it earlier I was like looking for a product like that and so far I'm really loving it amazing have you tried other versions of fitbits or that's the the one

that's working I also ordered a polar uh at the same Time and wound up returning the polar uh basically it it was just a little clunkier on My Wrist so I I went with the Fitbit well I do have one that you recommend instead I I just have the Apple watch and I've never tried a Fitbit and it gives me all the stuff that seems cool but uh have you ever gone never gone further I got the Fitbit like a week ago and I actually still am on the fence whether I bring it back to

return it for the Apple watch so I'm Enjoying it but we'll see okay final question you're an expert on presentations and I imagine you spent a lot of time in decks and so just what's like one small change people can make to how they put together a deck or a presentation that will make their presentation a lot better this is the one thing make the title The takeaway of the slide so that the person looking at it has to do zero work to take away so example You'll sometimes see like the problem or uh the

team replace like the team with our team you know is a Veterans of whatever industry or every single slide the takeaway it's a takeaway not a label and it'll make everything flow a lot better you did a killer job answering the lightning round questions without having a peek at what they were going to be Andy this was incredibly insightful I'm gonna go start working on my strategic Narrative on my podcast in newsletter two final questions where can folks find you online if they want to reach out learn more maybe consider working with you and then

how can listeners be useful to you uh so I mentioned LinkedIn is a way to connect with me that's that's fine uh my website is Andy raskin.com I also have a podcast where I talk with CEOs so if you're interested in hearing like more details about you know actual use of this it's called the bigger Narrative uh I my mom introduces every episode I call her I send her the interviews in advance I call her an interview about what she thinks people get out of it and that conversation becomes the intro to the the podcast

episode and what was the last question how can listeners be useful to you useful to me uh just you know if you try any of this stuff uh let me know like worked didn't work uh you know have this question I would love to hear that stuff Amazing Andy thank you again for being here thanks so much for having me Lenny this is really fun bye everyone thank you so much for listening if you found this valuable you can subscribe to the show on Apple podcast Spotify or your favorite podcast app also please consider giving

us a rating or leaving a review as that really helps other listeners find the podcast you can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at lennyspodcast.com See you in the next episode