#518: Why Every Lawyer Needs to Master Storytelling—And How to Do It, with Kate Tellers

Episode Notes

Transcript

Announcer: 

Welcome to The Lawyerist Podcast, a series of discussions with entrepreneurs and innovators about building a successful law practice in today’s challenging and constantly changing legal market. Lawyerist supports attorneys, building client-centered, and future-oriented small law firms through community, content, and coaching both online and through the Lawyerist Lab. And now from the team that brought you The Small Firm Roadmap and your podcast hosts 

 

 

Stephanie Everett (00:35): 

Hi, I’m Stephanie Everett. 

  

Zack Glaser (00:36): 

And I’m Zack. And this is episode 518 of the Lawyerist Podcast, part of the Legal Talk Network. Today, Stephanie talks with Kate Tellers about the power of storytelling. Stephanie, so we’re talking about storytelling. We as lawyers are storytellers. I can obviously kind of follow the thread to why we’re talking with somebody about that, but I think a lot of us lawyers think we’re better storytellers than we are or tell different stories. I don’t know. Are you really a good storyteller if people don’t remember it? If it doesn’t really strike people, if it’s not powerful? 

  

Stephanie Everett (01:12): 

Well, maybe. I mean, what’s interesting about Kate’s work and what we’re going to talk about, she works with this organization called The Moth, and I don’t know if people are familiar with it, but it’s a storytelling community and she’s going to describe it more in our interview. And my first experience with that was actually at Lawyerist. I was an attendee of TBD Law three, which was the conference that Sam and Erin put on with another facilitator before we had lab, before we had Lab Con before I joined the company, I found out about this event and I was like, this looks cool. I want to go to that. And it was all about what’s the future of law going to be like? And the person who now kind of does my job, he was the outside facilitator, Sam and Aaron were working with at the time. He was familiar with this concept, and he was like, Hey, we’re going to basically recreate this thing at the event. And so one night we went around the fire and he told us all, you’re going to tell a story of a failure. You’re going to tell a failure story. Oh, 

  

Zack Glaser (02:16): 

Yeah, lawyers telling failure stories. 

  

Stephanie Everett (02:20): 

Yeah. See, you’re laughing. You already know where this is going. I came to this event, I really didn’t know anyone. There were lawyers from all over the country. I was trying to establish myself as a coach and consultant having been a lawyer. So you 

  

Zack Glaser (02:35): 

Want to impress? Yeah, you certainly don’t want to look dumb in front of these people. 

  

Stephanie Everett (02:39): 

And so what ended up happening is the first five or six people who volunteered to tell stories, I mean, one, it was interesting because they were all dudes and I don’t know what that meant, but it was noticeable and they all stood up and kind of told what I would call, were more like humble brags than real failure stories. I don’t remember any specifics, whatever that is, seven or eight years later, I can’t tell you what they were, but I remember at the time, everyone agreed in the audience that they weren’t really failures. It was kind of like guys just trying to make people laugh. It felt more like a comedy act than a, I’m going to tell you the story of failure. 

  

Zack Glaser (03:24): 

Most of the stories that I tell in my life though are that way. You’re not actually telling people a true failure story. You’re not really imparting that. You’re telling people a funny thing that happened. You’re trying to captivate the audience and entertain them for a moment. 

  

Stephanie Everett (03:41): 

Yeah, fair. So I’m a rule follower and I listen to instructions. So after about five 

  

Zack Glaser (03:49): 

Interest Stephanie, 

  

Stephanie Everett (03:50): 

Yeah, about five or six people deep, I’m like, jump up. And I’m like, I think it’s time. We heard from a woman, and I’m going to really tell you a, and basically I even said, this isn’t going to be funny. This is going to be a real failure story to which some people were kind of like, because there might’ve been some adult beverages involved and whatnot, but I was like, I’m going to go for it. I’m going to tell you guys about a real failure. And I proceeded to talk about my law firm and the difficulties I had with my partners. I had just previously left that law firm, and there were some real, I mean issues there. It wasn’t great. And so I got real deep and real personal, real fast to a group of 50, whatever, lawyers from around the country. And then I just remember getting back to my room and being like, oh my God, what did I just do? 

  

Zack Glaser (04:47): 

That would be nerve wracking. Absolutely nerve wracking, but telling a story, telling a truthful story. I think that’s the thing you said about the Moth organization is that when they tell a story, it has to be a truthful story. And so telling a truthful story of failure, do we want to tell those and telling the stories we don’t want to tell how well do we do that? I’m assuming, and I kind of obviously being here, working with you here, I kind of know a little bit of how that ended, but I’m assuming that it impressed people. It was endearing at the very least, but probably said, Hey, this is who this person is. 

  

Stephanie Everett (05:25): 

Yeah. No, I mean, luckily yes, for sure, because I remember the next morning coming in and Sam and Aaron, who are the founders of Lawyerist and now my business partners, but at the time I had just met these guys and guys, they were just guys putting on a conference that I just was like, Hey, sorry, I just got things to be super real up there last night. But no, but they immediately came over in the breakfast the next day and they were just like, thank you, thank you for sharing that. That was what we were hoping it would be. And you certainly, once you did that, it opened the door for others to follow. And I mean, maybe it is the reason I got this job a couple of months later, who knows? It 

  

Zack Glaser (06:08): 

Probably didn’t hurt. 

  

Stephanie Everett (06:10): 

I mean, knowing those guys, I think so. But I think there’s a lesson there about vulnerability, about authenticity, about as lawyers, we often want to, I mean, I think I can say this, we go into rooms and we hold our shoulders back and we put on airs, right? We’ve got to be this persona of our best self. We think that’s what’s going to make people want to send us work and work with us and think highly of us. And maybe sometimes there’s space for authenticity. 

  

Zack Glaser (06:42): 

Yeah. Yeah. I like that. Absolutely. Well, now here is Stephanie’s authentic conversation with Kate. 

  

Kate Tellers (06:54): 

So my name is Kate Tellers. I’m a senior director and the director of Moth Works at the Moth. The Moth is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to personal storytelling, and I’ve been on staff here for over 15 years. 

  

Stephanie Everett (07:08): 

Hi, Kate. Welcome to the show. You also are one of the many authors of how to tell a story, a book on storytelling, which I’ve had the privilege of reading. And so maybe to kick things off so obvious, but I’m curious if you could tell us a little bit about your story. 

  

Kate Tellers (07:24): 

Sure. So I moved to New York City many years ago, and I came here to be an actor, and I was for several years. And while I was there, I started to realize that a lot of the work that I was doing didn’t feel kind of true to what I wanted to do. I wasn’t connecting with audiences. As an actor, you’re a gigger. You go and you do, and particularly in comedy, you make a joke, you make the audience laugh, you leave. And at the same time, my mother was passing away, and when she actually passed away, I had a moment after she died where I thought, what do we have that’s left? And it was stories. It was the way we sat in her living room and told stories about her. And I knew that that would be how I would kind of remember her, but also continue to know her after she was gone. 

  

(08:10): 

So I started on this quest to sort of figure, I don’t think I knew stories was the thing, but I started to listen to a lot of podcasts and I listened to a Moss story on this American life, and they said, there’s a live event. And I went to the live event at the Rican Poetry Cafe. There were hundreds of people in line. It was over fire code. I can say that because the statute of limitations is up. I know you’re all lawyers. And when I went in, people were just standing on stage telling stories from their lives into a microphone, and we all laughed together and we all were silent together. And it was that connection that I’d always been looking for. And now with my vulnerable open heart, I was really able to see it and I’d been on stage hundreds of times and in an audience hundreds of times, and I’d never felt a connection like that. 

  

(08:54): 

So I wrote to The Moth, which was at that point a very small nonprofit and wrote a terrible cover letter and started working there. I started as a volunteer. I was the podcast intern when we started the podcast. I edited it in the free software garage band, and we went to number one on iTunes. We surpassed this American life, which is where I found them. And really at that point when I joined the staff, there were five of us and we were able to build the organization that now has a Peabody Award and five bestselling books and training programs and international presence and into what it is now. 

  

Stephanie Everett (09:32): 

Yeah, amazing. Maybe just for those who aren’t familiar with The Moth, could you just give us a kind of overview of what it is? 

  

Kate Tellers (09:40): 

Sure. So fundamentally, we believe in celebrating the diversity and the commonality of the human experience. And we believe by finding people from all walks of life and helping them to tell their story on stages. We’re based in New York City, but we tour primarily in the US but all over the world. We work with storytellers to help them craft their story on stories, on a lot of our stages, A lot of the work we do both in that program and in our workshop programs, are not just about handing someone a microphone, but by helping them use the craft of storytelling to sort of discover who they are and how they can use story to connect with a larger audience. Our stories are recorded and they’re on our Peabody Award-winning Radio Hour on our podcast, which is downloaded over a hundred million times per year. The stories are in our books. We have four anthologies, and then we also have the How to Tell Story book on telling a story that you mentioned. I coauthored. And we find that stories are the way that we connect with each other, and they are a bridge to empathy, and we find that incredibly rewarding. 

  

Stephanie Everett (10:43): 

I suspect, I mean, in our minds as lawyers, we know we tell stories, and probably my first instinct was a courtroom lawyer, the image of that lawyer standing up in front of a jury telling a story in closing. But then as you take more thoughts, you immediately, you realize stories are so powerful in so many parts of our business. And I wonder if you could speak a little bit more to that, because I think not just our business, I mean our lives, but you guys even have done some research or shared some research on the power of story, and I think sometimes we forget how impactful that is. So I wonder if you could just kind of speak to just that what stories are capable of doing? 

  

Kate Tellers (11:29): 

Yeah. I mean, stories are capable of doing many things. One of the things that I love the most about storytelling and about great storytelling is storytelling is entertaining fundamentally a great, well-told story. We all know that we’ve all been sucked into stories of various forms, but they also allow us to walk in someone else’s shoes. And I think there’s something really interesting about being able to just by listening to someone suddenly understand what it might be to be like someone with a different background who grew up in a different area of the world with a different set of priorities, and they can really change minds. And I love the diversity and the commonality piece because I feel like the more specific you are with telling your story, the more specific your details are, the more in tune you are with your experience, the more your audience can hear sort of the facts of an experience that they’ve never had, but also as a human being connect with you. 

  

(12:18): 

Betrayal means one thing to mean that it does to you, that it does to someone else, but that’s a terrible universal feeling. Joy also. But there are fundamental human feelings that we all have, and to be able to feel that with someone who has had a life totally different than yours, and to be able to see that experience is so much fun. But it also helps us to understand some of these beliefs that we’ve been raised in and understand why do I believe that and how can I challenge that dominant narrative and understand and have context to some of these things that we may have felt so firmly about for many, many years. I find this is something that I talk a lot about when I lead workshops with corporations and businesses and use storytelling as a business tool. A lot of the time, the story is the map to get your audience to understand and believe in what you believe. So I used to believe this XI used to be here where you are, audience, here’s the series of events that changed my mind, and in sharing my experience of those events changing my mind, you have a great potential to change someone else’s mind too. 

  

Stephanie Everett (13:24): 

I mean, I was fascinated in the book, you guys talk about some research that was done that when someone’s sharing a story and the audience is actually listening, that their brain waves sync up so you actually get in tune with somebody in this process, 

  

Kate Tellers (13:41): 

Find control. Yeah, it’s that thing that I was saying is there’s those fundamental feelings and emotions and elements of being, we’re all human beings with hearts and minds, and the ability to connect with someone on that fundamental biological level is so cool and such a, I think rewarding experience too. Something that I discover, and again, I use storytelling and experience storytelling in many contexts, but in one of the ones I think maybe most relevant for your audience is people go to work not expecting that people go to work to do a task. And the idea that you can be actually connected to someone and build trust with them and understand them and be able to communicate with them and have a stake in what is good for them and good for you and good for your larger picture is so, so important. And I think sometimes forgotten or not believed to be a priority, so the way that we can connect and understand our common values and our common or different experiences can be practically really important as well as fundamentally humanly rewarding. 

  

Stephanie Everett (14:46): 

Yeah, I mean, I think everybody wants to be seen and heard and felt, right? And so even just the simple act at work of asking people questions to get to know them, to know their story, that’s how you build a relationship. I mean, we do a lot of leadership training for our managers, and it’s such a easy, I mean, it almost sounds silly that we have to say it, but we’re care about your people, get to know them. That’s step one fundamental. Step one. Do you know your people? Do you know their story? And yet sometimes we get so busy in the day-to-day life, we forget to ask people about their story. 

  

Kate Tellers (15:25): 

Yeah, absolutely. We laughed a lot when we were writing the book. So five of us wrote this book on Zoom during Covid. It was these marathon multi-hour sessions. Anyway, so as we’re jumping on all of these ideas through all of us collectively have worked on hundreds of stories and what is it that we want to put down in this book? We would always say, are we just writing how to be a person? We’d say, is this a storytelling tip or is this just how to be an empathetic human tip? And there’s a tremendous overlap, which is I think why I love storytelling so much is that when I think about what makes a great story, a lot of the questions that I’m asking are real curious and open-minded and questions that elicit a lot of vulnerability and introspection on both the part of myself and any storyteller that I’m working with. And I think that’s really lovely, but it’s also how to be a person. 

  

Stephanie Everett (16:21): 

Yeah. My mother-in-Law is an author and she always says when someone’s story, it’s really hard to hate them. And this idea of the story breaking down barriers, and it makes sense on a human connection, but I mean, if I’m kind of turning it to our audience, it makes sense for business too. I think you use the example of you are working with a client and they had just hundreds of pages of slide deck of material facts and data and information, and nobody was buying. And it wasn’t until you were able to connect that the equipment that they used in their studies was so sensitive that they had to make sure they weren’t running an experiment with a train that was two miles away, that train would vibrate and offset the equipment, that that’s when they were able to tell that story. People were like, oh, we get it. And all that data. I mean, yes, you have it, you back it up. But I mean, the fact that I remember that detail from the book, that also speaks to the fact that that’s what we remember. We remember the stories, not all this data about how sensitive the machine will. I have no idea what that would even measure or read. 

  

Kate Tellers (17:32): 

Right. Thank you so much for pulling examples from the book. I love that. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we get that. The term I’ve been hearing for years is assault by information, death by PowerPoint, and a lot of our clients will say things to us, A lot of our capabilities are similar to our competitors, so how do we stand out? And that’s at the end of the day, who do you want to pick up the phone and have on the other end of the line? I guess we don’t pick up phones anymore, but you know what I mean, who is it that you want to work with and what is their fundamental value system and how can you communicate and have both integrity in that communication but efficiency in it? And that comes from that human element that you can get across with a story or understanding an idea beyond its kind of dry data points. 

  

Stephanie Everett (18:16): 

So I mean, beyond the courtroom, I think lawyers, our audience should be using stories in business with their team, with each other, with clients. I mean, it’s in our marketing. I tell everybody, if you’re writing marketing, you’re writing a story. I mean, that’s what holds the message that you’re trying to convey, I suppose. 

  

Kate Tellers (18:35): 

Yeah, for sure. 

  

Stephanie Everett (18:37): 

But now if we kind of turn, because this book, I got to tell you, for anybody who wants to check it out, it is detailed in a good way in that you walk us, you and your fellow. I can’t imagine having that many co-authors, by the way, I co-authored my first book with three other people, and it is work to do that. 

  

Kate Tellers (18:55): 

Yeah, I don’t know anyone that has co-authored. We are a strange breed us folks over here, but yeah, congratulations. I never hear about teams even close to our size. Yeah. 

  

Stephanie Everett (19:06): 

But it is a lot in that you guys really break down how to tell a story and all the steps from even what to tell a story about. These are the questions you asked, and this is then how you build a story. So I don’t even know if there’s a Reader’s Digest version of telling a good story, but if you had to, I mean, what are the key tips that you kind of share with people? 

  

Kate Tellers (19:31): 

Well, the two things that I always hinge on and that I always look for and then we can build the story out is how has this experience that you’re sharing with me changed you? Who were you in the beginning and who were you at the end? And that doesn’t mean I started as a human and I became a snail a lot of the time. It’s a perspective shift or a life shift or some sort of coming of age or something. So that has the experience changed you? And then why do you care? Because if you don’t care, the audience isn’t going to care and people will, I think a lot of the time when someone says, can you tell me a story about your life? People think, oh, I have to tell the story about the time I faced death or my biggest heartbreak. And it’s really not that we care deeply about things beyond, I mean, obviously we care about being alive and not having our heart shattered, but there are many things we care deeply about. You can tell a story about making dinner for your in-laws, and that can be just as high stakes as someone else’s story about a hike that’s gone wrong. We get a lot of hike that’s gone wrong in our workshops. 

  

Stephanie Everett (20:29): 

Good 

  

Kate Tellers (20:29): 

To know. Lot go out of their league when they’re hiking. Just keep that in mind. Should you take a hike? 

  

Stephanie Everett (20:33): 

Yes, that is good. Yes. I like that. And that resonates because even when I know when we’ve told people about, from a marketing standpoint, if you’re writing a testimonial, you want to ask the client how did they feel before and how do they feel after with you? So that idea of where did you start and where did you end up certainly resonates. 

  

Kate Tellers (20:52): 

Yeah. And it’s, again, it goes back to that specificity thing. It’s not like I wasn’t excited and then I was, it’s I felt trepidatious because of this, or I felt the more specific you can be, the more interesting it is and compelling. 

  

Stephanie Everett (21:07): 

I think one of my other big takeaways after reading the book is to do it right. It can be a lot of work. I mean, maybe obviously if I was going to present on the moth stage, I would want to have you and somebody or somebody coaching me through this whole process. But I mean, there was a moment reading the book where I was like, huh, this almost feels too hard. Do I even want to go there? Do I want to engage? So maybe I just need a little pep talk from you of like, it’s okay. You can do it. 

  

Kate Tellers (21:36): 

It’s okay. You can do it. I do believe that every human being contains a multitude of stories, and I do believe that there is a mo stage or a stage for everyone. For some people that’s less time. For some people it’s more. But my pep talk to you is I find the process to be almost as rewarding if not more rewarding than the product as it were. I rediscover this every time. The idea of looking at your life and looking at a series of events and thinking, how do these relate to each other? Why do I care about them? How have they changed me? Provides perspective, provides simply the validation of these experiences mattered this day that I had that I can’t stop thinking about. But now when I think about telling a story about it, I understand why it stayed in my head is something much more deep than just I need three minutes of something to talk about in two months or something. 

  

(22:27): 

But it is a lot of work. I mean, it’s sometimes emotionally people realize, oh, this is too much for me to tell, or I don’t want to go into this or what have you. Of course it is, but it is deceptively colloquial. A lot of the time. People really put thought into what they share with a larger audience, and I would encourage anyone at work or with any larger audience to really put thought into what you say. And then of course, all of the overachievers in the room hate this when we’re like, now throw your notes away and tell it in your own voice. But that’s all part of the process 

  

Stephanie Everett (22:59): 

And it’s vulnerable. Right. I know whenever I write even just a blog, I mean for business, because we often try to tell a little piece of ourselves in that to make it interesting. It’s scary to put yourself out there in this very specific way. 

  

Kate Tellers (23:16): 

For sure. And again, not to be completely Pollyanna about it, but a lot of the time I find I or other storytellers am surprised about what scares me. It’s like you start to write something and you’re like, why is this so hard to tell? But that’s such a tremendous place for self-discovery too, to be like, oh, I didn’t realize that I would be that resistant to sharing this or that. A lot of the time you hear, I’ve never gotten emotional thinking about this, but that vulnerability unlocks, well, I really care about this. So then how do I make sense of that? Or I find that to be just, I dunno, really magical. 

  

Stephanie Everett (23:52): 

And for people who this concept may be new to them, one of the things that struck me in reading the book, you guys flavor it and all these stories. So there’s not just how to write a story, but then you share snippets of people’s stories to kind of make the point in the storytelling. I was struck, I’m not going to get the quote exactly right, but there was someone who shared a story and he realized, I think it was a crash that he was in, and he realized that after the crash, he was trying to be the person he was before and that he would never get back to that place that is done and now we’re in this new, that story for me, when I read that, I just had this moment where I was like, does that happen in my life? And trying to be the person something that I was before, it doesn’t even really matter when the before was when I can never go back to that before state. I’m always in this new future. I don’t know. I had this weird deep thought and then it struck me. That’s part of the power of story, that this little snippet of this person’s story that I didn’t even hear all the rest of it, but just this little point had me sitting back and also thinking, how does that show up in my life? I was like, wow, how powerful and thoughtful is that? And that we need that sometimes. 

  

Kate Tellers (25:14): 

Yeah. I mean, I’m presuming, and I don’t know that you haven’t been in a comparable crash, so it’s like the plot points are almost irrelevant. It’s the emotional truth of the story. The plot points are engaging and they elevate the emotional truth, but that you were able to connect emotionally, that story is powerful. 

  

Stephanie Everett (25:31): 

So the other thing that struck me too that I do want to tell people about, because I think sometimes we are often placed in a position where we have the ability to tell stories. So maybe it’s not on the moth stage, but I mean maybe it’s in court, maybe it’s public speaking. A lot of us are giving presentations these days. I know for me, I do a lot of public speaking and almost what I walked, no, I did walk away. I’ll just confess. One of my walkaways from this process was that I often don’t prepare enough that I don’t give it enough. I could do more, and I have this opportunity to share something and I’m just not going deep enough with it, which is okay, that’s a good learning lesson from me. But what I really appreciate is I feel like this book specifically and the work you guys are doing makes it, here’s some steps to take. So even if you can’t take every single step in the book, think about this thing differently. Maybe now take away, like you said, what was the before and after? How can I weave that change narrative into the story I’m trying to tell people? 

  

Kate Tellers (26:36): 

Yeah, yeah. Again, it’s deceptively simple, and I think it’s important to know first, drafts are always longer than the final product. So if you don’t give time, you’re going to, it’s generally like the beginning and the ending to get, I spend all this time clearing my throat, then I spend all of this time circling the ending. Whereas if you’re thoughtful, you can really know, this is how I’m starting. This is where I want to land. These are the pieces that it’s quickly, you can get in a short-term, public speaking engagement from something that might be a little unpacked to something that’s really compelling and can really lift the 

  

Stephanie Everett (27:07): 

Roof. Yeah. What big takeaway would you give to people who might be listening and thinking, yeah, actually I tell stories in my life. Maybe I should do it a little bit better or more intentional, or whatever they might be thinking. What advice would you give them to dig in and get started? 

  

Kate Tellers (27:24): 

So to get started, I’m a huge fan of the free write. I love it. I love a time to free write with an open-ended prompt. And we have a lot in the books, and I find those really helpful, not just for the story that if I’m looking for a story for a specific theme or something, all the stuff that you edit then becomes fodder for the next story. So it’s just really good to get yourself in a story brain. Then I’d say once the story that you want to tell, you start to ask the questions, how’s this changed me? Whatever. Really starting to think about scenes that can illustrate the things that you’re talking about. But then I would say fundamentally, get off the page if we write differently than we speak. And if you speak what you’ve written, you will be disconnected. You know what it’s like when someone reads remarks or someone throws the notes aside? 

  

(28:09): 

You’ll see it all the time. It’s completely different. So as soon as you know what I would call the map of your story, start to tell it and just speak it. And what I see happen a lot, and particularly if you’re telling something personal that’s vulnerable, is get an audience. And it could be one person just call your friend and say, I want to tell this to you, because it feels different to be heard and to be heard particularly the first time. And that is where a lot of the emotions come up. And like I said before, emotions can point you towards, I care about this, or I’m not ready to tell this, or This is something that I should dig into or what have you. So getting an audience is really important because it will help you hear yourself, if that makes sense. And then stay off that page as much as you can, but know how you’re getting in and know how you’re getting out so you don’t circle the drain so you don’t throw clear. Make sure that you have some efficiency to that humanity. I know those sound counterintuitive, but to me they’re hand in hand. 

  

Stephanie Everett (29:05): 

Nice. If people want to learn more, if they want to practice storytelling and start the process, what other resources would you share with them? 

  

Kate Tellers (29:14): 

So obviously we have the book, we have open mic series in over 25 cities in the us, also in Melbourne and London. So you can go throw your name in a hat and tell a story. That thing that I was saying before about audience people, first of all, moth Audiences, I’m biased, are the best audiences in the world, but you can edit in front of a moth audience because they’re going to be totally with you or you’ll sort of feel It’s a great way to learn. So tell stories and tell stories and tell stories. You can pitch if you want to tell a story. The Moth is here to develop and discover stories, and I’d love if we got some pitches from this podcast, it would be a delight, and you can find that all on our website. Outside of that, it does go back to that telling stories. 

  

(29:53): 

Telling stories and creating a practice and a culture of telling stories. So we’ve worked with companies who will, if they have a monthly All Hands, a different person tells a story to open the all hands, every time. We have people that do a monthly lunch where it’s someone’s turn to, it’s like a brown bag lunch where someone tells a story or a storytelling club or something like that. Like creating a culture of storytelling creates a better culture and creates better storytellers. There’s the cultural thing, but there’s also just getting your mind in that mindset. Once you have this toolkit, you’ll get better and better and better. And I’ll also say, since I know I’m speaking to some incredibly high achievers, the greatest storytellers in the world, bomb, every once in a while you’re working on a story and it’s not there yet. The term I always use is Cracked it. I haven’t cracked this story yet. Feel free to let go of your perfectionism. You’re a human being. It’s your experience. It’s going to be interesting in some way. Get with a group of people that you trust that can say, I really would’ve wanted to hear more about this, or This detail was confusing, and kind of set ego aside. 

  

Stephanie Everett (30:54): 

Yeah, that is good advice for me. And I’m sure our audience, we do tend to, I know some of the lawyers I coach, we work with them on just even their personal vision. What do they want for their life and their business? And they’ll get stuck on it for months because it’s got to be perfect. And I’m like, okay, just start throwing out bullet points of what you don’t want or just so we can get that process going. So that is really good advice that sometimes just starting and it might be wrong. Like that’s okay. That’s going to get you to, right. 

  

Kate Tellers (31:25): 

Yeah, exactly. 

  

Stephanie Everett (31:26): 

Awesome. Well, this has been so cool to have you here today. I am excited. I’m ready to go practice, so I have a lot of work to do, but I want to practice my storytelling, and I hope that other people who are listening do as well, because I do think stories are just so powerful. 

  

Kate Tellers (31:43): 

Yeah. Oh, well, thank you so much for having me. I’ve loved this conversation. 

  

Zack Glaser (31:48): 

The Lawyerist podcast is edited by Brittany Felix, are you ready to implement the ideas we discussed here into your practice? Wondering what to do next? Here are your first steps. First, if you haven’t read the Small Firm Roadmap yet, grab the initial chapter for free at Lawyerist dot com slash book, looking for help beyond the book. Let’s chat about whether our coaching communities are right for you at the Lawyerist dot com slash community slash lab for more information. The views expressed by the participants are their own and are not endorsed by Legal Talk Network. Nothing said in this podcast is legal advice for you. 

 

 

 

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