Episode transcript:

Alper:
Welcome back.

Matt:
Thank you.

Alper:
Last week we left at a point of almost mutual understanding. I wouldn’t say 100% mutual understanding, but we left with the promise that you would give some tools to people not to rely so much on on their visuals. So, yeah, I would love to hear today. I would like to hear more about those, what they mean, what what tools can you dispense?

Matt:
There’s there there abouts. There are three or four or five or a half dozen different basic story structures, but there’s one that I consider the king. It works for pretty much anything, whether you’re an entrepreneur selling eggs or you’re describing the need for regulatory changes in the bond market. This this story structure works for them all. And I call that an example.

Alper:
I want to play something I haven’t come across similar.

Matt:
Yeah. So the structure is is called Boy Meets Girl or actually that’s that’s my name for it. And by the way this story structure, it’s it’s not a matt original it’s I’ve stolen it and I stole it from somebody who probably stole it from somebody who probably stole it from somebody. It probably goes back thousands of years of stealing.

Matt:
Personally. My my, my stealing was from a video that I saw from from Kurt Vonnegut, who is is an an American author. You know, I think Slaughterhouse Five is one of his most famous books. Have you heard of that guy? Okay.

Alper:
No, but we can we can put the link in the show notes.

Matt:
Okay. Well, anyway, so. So I stole this from a video I saw of Kurt Vonnegut about ten years ago, and I’m sure he stole the structure from 9 million other people. And it’s so it’s it’s probably not an original of anybody. And that’s that’s why it’s one of the classics that we’re talking about today. So anyway, Boy meets Girl, the structure, it’s basically just three legs and often to tell the story, you can do this whole story in three sentences if all you have is three sentences, if all you have is 20 seconds, you can probably tell the story.

Matt:
Boy meets girl is boy meets girl. Boy loses girl, boy gets girl back. So there’s one up, one down and then and up again. And so how that would work and how that would work, let’s say let’s start with the the corporate bond market in Turkey, for example. Maybe maybe you’re going to the regulator and you’re in the corporate bond market business or whatever, and you’re going to a regulator and you need to figure out how to use this story.

Matt:
So here’s an example of how you would use that story. The corporate bond market rocked the first ten years of its existence. It was great. We we sold bonds in our sleep. It was so easy to sell bonds. But then we ran into this this regulatory problem. And when we ran into this regulatory problem, bond sales tanked. They’re terrible.

Matt:
Now, if we make this one regulatory change, then the bond market will take off again. We’ve seen it take off before and it’ll take off again. That’s that’s the story. One up, one down and the third leg goes up. Yeah.

Alper:
Is a third leg usually higher than the initial the first one.

Matt:
The third leg is usually higher than the initial. Yeah. Because you don’t want to, you don’t want a downward spiral. And that brings me to the second example, the selling eggs. Let’s say selling eggs in Barcelona. You’re an entrepreneur selling it. You’re an expert entrepreneur selling eggs in Barcelona. Let’s say that.

Alper:
It’s not going to be difficult. This is the end of the tortilla, the part that.

Matt:
You.

Alper:
Will have no problems there.

Matt:
Let’s say that. Okay. Let’s say and let’s let’s throw a loop in there because in the first example, the second leg was down and maybe you don’t want to stand in front of your audience and admit that you drove something into the ground. So maybe you maybe, maybe or you can maybe you can do a plateau, you can stay on a plateau.

Matt:
You don’t have to go down. You can stay on a plateau. So, for example, let’s say that you’re this this egg seller entrepreneur guy in Barcelona. So, boy meets girl for you is and you’re an investor meeting. And so some boy meets girl for you is maybe something like when our company first started we were selling eggs to grocery stores and we did great.

Matt:
We sold tons of eggs, we made great profits, things were great. But then we reached all the grocery stores. There were no more grocery stores for us to meet, and so our revenues hit a plateau. So we sat on this plateau for a while and then we realized, okay, well, what if we sold eggs to restaurants? The company would grow again.

Matt:
So if you can help us sell eggs to restaurants, then sales will take off again. There we go. That’s that’s. You’ve you’ve told a boy meets meets girl story sales are great in the grocery store days that was that was your up and then you hit a plateau. You know when we saturated the grocery store markets, we couldn’t sell any more eggs.

Matt:
Our revenues plateaued. And then then we hit the third leg, which is sales grow again when we start selling to restaurants. And then that brings me to one of the Pro Tips of using this boy meets girl structure is that if you can make your audience or if you can involve your audience in the growth of the third leg, then your presentation will be much better.

Matt:
For example, if you’re in the bond market, let’s say that you’re you’re selling bonds and you’re talking to regulators. If you can involve those regulators in the growth of the market again, that’s great. That’s going to help your presentation. So for you that might mean up, down. Oh, okay. So in the first ten years of the bond market in Turkey, sales were great, but then sales tanked.

Matt:
If you can help us tweak the regulations on this one issue, then the bond market will take off again. Boom, That’s your three Lakes story or your three lakes structure. If you’re the entrepreneur, you want to involve your new investors in breaking into the restaurant sales. So you’re boy meets girl structure goes. Things were great in the grocery store days The company took off.

Matt:
We were profitable from the beginning, but then we hit this plateau. There weren’t any more grocery stores. In order to grow again, we need to expand into the restaurant market. If you make us if you help us expand into the restaurant market, the company will grow and grow again. Sales will take off again.

Alper:
Okay. Since we have a couple of more minutes left. Okay. Is it okay? I’m sure you will be. I’m sure he used to them by now. Is it okay to try to play some holes?

Matt:
Yeah, of course.

Alper:
Like we did last week. Okay. About the bonds market, I want to ask you. Okay. It’s a good story. Structure. Boy meets girl. We sold bonds a lot, and now there’s regulation. We go down and then we want to go up again. First of all, I understand this boy. We still story structure is not a recipe for resistance proof arguments, right?

Alper:
I mean, they can come at any point.

Matt:
Correct. And you must always expect pushback. No story is going to flatten all pushback.

Alper:
Okay. And what if in this case, the pushback comes in the shape of, well, we are the regulators, Those regular those regulations are in place for a reason.

Matt:
So in that case.

Alper:
How the how do you respond to those.

Matt:
In that case, you will depend a lot on the fact that you are closer to the market and the fact that the regulators I mean, they’re their regulators. They they they they like to have regulations. It’s their job to make regulations, but they also want to grow the market. They want to be able to go to their boss and say they don’t want to just go to their boss and say, hey, I made 100 new regulations this month.

Matt:
They want to go to their boss and say, I made 100 new good regulations that grew the market. And so because you are closer to the bond market than they are, they look to you as an expert on the fact that if we tweak this regulation, you’re going to hit your goal. You, Mr. Bond market regulator, are going to hit your goal, which is to make a regulation that grows the market.

Alper:
Okay. And the second goal that I’m going to try to punch is how is this story structured or at least what you’re telling with this story, it’s story structure. How is it different from what is evidently out there? For example, in the case of the regulators, don’t they already know that based on their regulations, the market has gone down, not the market, but the sales?

Matt:
They know that the market has gone down. They know that the sales have gone down, hopefully. But you are current, you are an expert in selling and you’re telling them how to do what they need to do. You are able to solve the problem in a way that they can’t, and so they look to you as an expert.

Matt:
You are a guide on how to get that market growing again.

Alper:
Okay. As we come to the close to wrap things up, how about I challenge you to give a boy meets girl So story structure for a 22nd presentation from the eyes of the man with the marketing manager I talked about last week. At the end of the year, he or she is going to present what they did, what they’re going to do, their moment.

Alper:
That conversation.

Matt:
Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Alper:
How would you incorporate that, for example, into the, into the life of that marketing manager?

Matt:
Well, Boy Meets Girl needs to be a very or an interpretation, a very specific event. So if you don’t work inside the company, you probably can’t articulate. And there is no theoretical example of how to use boy meets girl for all marketing presentations, an example of how you might use it for marketing presentations, you might say, When we first started selling this detergent, sales were good.

Matt:
They took off. This is a popular detergent, but in the past couple of years, sales of this detergent, they’ve flattened or they’ve even gone down in some places. And I think the reason that they’ve gone down is that we’ve grown out of touch with our market, our market, the people who buy our product, they’ve grown older and yet we’ve maintained the same marketing.

Matt:
So our marketing doesn’t speak to them anymore. If we tweak our marketing to be more age appropriate, to be to speak to the customer who is now ten years older, then sales of this detergent will take off again.

Alper:
Okay, so the boy meets girl structure is pretty similar to the the problem and the solution, right. What’s the problem? What is the solution that you’re proposing.

Matt:
Is very problem. It’s very similar to problem solution. There’s actually a problem solution is just look, legs two and three of the boy meets girl structure and the that that brings me to one point or one part of the answer to why does this work. This works one, because people like to solve problems. There are some very universal human traits and one of those universal human traits is that humans like to solve problems.

Matt:
If you if you have a problem which is evident in like two of this structure, then they love to be part of the solution that creates Lake three the upward upward trend. Another part of the of basic human traits is that humans tend to like to feel good. If you give humans a choice between would you like to feel good today or would you like to feel bad today?

Matt:
Most most humans will choose the first one. They’ll choose to.

Alper:
Say, Boss.

Matt:
I would like to feel good today. Given the choice between feeling good and feeling bad, I would like to feel good. And so that’s why we have the the first part of this or the first leg of this story, which is the upward the boy meets girl. The upward part of the upward trend of the story is that now when you introduce the problem, the humans already feel good, so you make them feel good.

Matt:
And you also give them an opportunity to help be a solution to a problem. You appeal to two very basic human traits.

Alper:
Well, that’s good. And while we’re running out of time, but I want to leave you with I just took some thought about maybe another thing that I want to ask in the next episode. Since you invoked human tendencies, natural human tendencies, I will want to speak about it. Natural tendency of resisting or pushing back to what the presenter is saying or actually demanding from the audience.

Alper:
I will want to pick your brain on that.

Matt:
So. So we’ll go since we’re running out of time, we’ll dig into that in future episode. But yet, like I said earlier, even having a great story, there is no stories structure in the world. There is absolutely no story structure that is going to steamroll over the human desire to resist. There is nothing you have to be ready as it when you present even the most perfect story structure.

Matt:
You have to go in there ready to be resisted because that’s what humans do. And there is no story structure.

Alper:
It’s almost even if you promise that they will live happily ever after, people will resist that.

Matt:
Yeah, in fact, in fact, sometimes the better your promise, the more resistance you’ll get.

Alper:
All right. I’ll be happy to talk about that. Yeah.

Matt:
All right. So. So that wraps it up for today.

Alper:
And will all great things, as.

Matt:
Will will dig more into this in in future episodes. So thank you very much for your pushback. Talk to you later.