Authentic Storytelling in the Age of AI: Gabrielle Dolan on Making AI Your Creative Partner

In The Business of Marketing Podcast by A. Lee Judge

Why Business Storytelling Matters More When AI Creates Most of the Content

AI-generated content is flooding every channel, and audiences are starting to notice. The writing sounds the same. The ideas feel recycled. The voice behind it could belong to anyone, or no one. On this episode of the Business of Marketing podcast, host A. Lee Judge and co-host Rocio Osuna sit down with Gabrielle Dolan, a global expert on strategic storytelling and bestselling author of seven books, including her latest, Story Intelligence: The Craft of Authentic Storytelling. The conversation covers how to use AI without losing your voice, the types of stories that actually connect with audiences, and how to pull genuine stories out of executives who think their feelings are irrelevant.

AI Slop Is Real, and It’s a Branding Risk

Every software platform has AI baked in. Every conference booth has an AI feature to pitch. That part is unavoidable. The problem starts when businesses use AI to generate content without adding anything human to it. The result is what many marketers are calling “AI slop,” content that reads like it was assembled on a conveyor belt.

Gabrielle was initially skeptical that AI had any role in storytelling. But curiosity led her to test it. As she explains, “I was disarmingly surprised how good AI was with generating stories. And while it was good, it lacks something.” That something is authenticity. AI can structure a story, clean up grammar, and suggest angles. But it cannot tell your story, because it hasn’t lived it.

Lee uses AI daily in his content workflow, but the key distinction is where the human input happens. He uses tools like Whisper to transcribe brain dumps, then lets AI restructure those raw thoughts into clean drafts. The ideas, opinions, and experiences are his. AI handles the editing and formatting. That approach allows for both quality and quantity without producing generic content.

Use AI as a Creative Partner, Not a Ghostwriter

Gabrielle’s new book, Story Intelligence, addresses the question she kept hearing in workshops: “Can you use AI to help with your stories?” Her first reaction was that it would be cheating. After testing it, she found AI is useful in the process, but only if you stay in control of the output.

The biggest trap is accepting what AI gives you because it “sounds good.” Gabrielle shared an example where she fed AI a simple description of her work. It came back with, “I teach people to communicate authentically via stories that bridge the gap between impact and trust.” Her response was blunt: she didn’t even know what that meant. The sentence sounded polished, but it said nothing. And she suspects many people would use it anyway.

Her rule is simple: say it out loud. If it doesn’t sound like something you would actually say, don’t use it. AI can make your content more efficient, but as Gabrielle puts it, “Don’t lose effectiveness through the efficiency.”

The Four Types of Business Stories

Gabrielle breaks business stories into four categories, all starting with P: Personal, Professional, Public, and Parable.

Personal stories are things that happened outside of work but connect to a work-related message. These are the most powerful type, and also the most underused. A story about something your kid said at dinner can communicate a company value like integrity better than a slide deck ever could.

Professional stories come from work experience. These are the most common, especially in job interviews and case study formats. They’re effective, but they tend to stay surface-level unless you push for more depth.

Public stories are well-known examples from the business world, like stories about Steve Jobs or other recognizable figures. They work, but they risk feeling like cliches if overused.

Parables are the fables and teaching stories passed down through culture. Many leaders learned their best lessons this way. And these categories can overlap. A parable your father told you as a child becomes a personal story the moment you share that context.

How to Pull Real Stories Out of Executives

Getting a CEO or subject matter expert to tell a good story is harder than it sounds. Most executives default to case study mode. They describe what happened, what the team did, and what the result was. It’s structured, professional, and forgettable.

Gabrielle’s advice is to ask one question that changes everything: “How did you feel when that happened?” That question pulls executives out of the summary and into the moment. They start remembering details they would have left out, like not sleeping for three nights, or needing to walk around the block to clear their head. They leave out those details because they think they’re irrelevant. But those details are the most powerful part of the story.

Lee connected this to his own POET framework, which stands for Proof, Opinion, Experience, and Trust. When existing content gets run through POET, it generates questions designed to pull human insight out of leaders. The experience and opinion questions naturally lead toward stories, especially when paired with Gabrielle’s approach of asking how someone felt during a key moment.

Vulnerability Works, but It Has a Limit

Personal stories often require some level of vulnerability. But Gabrielle draws a clear line between sharing something meaningful and using emotion as a manipulation tool. Her phrase for it: “Heal before you reveal.”

A difficult experience from 20 years ago that shaped how you lead can be a powerful story. The same experience from two months ago, still raw and unprocessed, can make an audience feel sorry for you instead of learning from you. The goal of any story is to deliver a message, not to chase a specific emotional reaction. When the intention shifts from influence to manipulation, audiences can feel it.

Where to Find Gabrielle Dolan

Gabrielle’s book Story Intelligence: The Craft of Authentic Storytelling is available on Amazon in paperback and ebook, with an audiobook on the way. It hit number one across four categories on Amazon’s hot new releases. Connect with her on LinkedIn, where she’s running a 31 Days of Story Intelligence series, or visit gabrielledolan.com. For more episodes of the Business of Marketing, visit Content Monsta.

Thanks for listening to The Business of Marketing podcast.

Feel free to contact the hosts and ask additional questions, we would love to answer them on the show.

Full Transcript

Gabrielle Dolan [00:00:00]:
There’s so much AI content out there, you don’t even know what’s real and what’s not. That our authentic stories are needed now more than ever. But then I had people ask me, can you use AI to help with your stories? And my initial response was, no, that would be cheating. That would be. It wouldn’t be authentic, it wouldn’t be real. And I thought, if I’m sort of the expert on this, maybe I better actually start to test it. And I was disarmingly surprised how good AI was with. With generating stories.

Gabrielle Dolan [00:00:29]:
And while it was good, it lacks something.

A. Lee Judge [00:00:34]:
Welcome again to the business of marketing. I’m a Lee Judge.

Rocio Osuna [00:00:37]:
And I’m Rocio Osuna.

A. Lee Judge [00:00:39]:
And today we’re going to help you gain some clarity on how to get better at creating content without giving away your company’s soul to AI. So let’s go.

Rocio Osuna [00:00:49]:
So today, topic of AI Slop. It’s prevalent everywhere. It’s prevalent in storytelling to some folks. So I went to a conference, and there was a really good topic that brought up about AI Slop. It talked about AI content sounding the same and the keyword being content, assembly line, reminding me a lot about Fordism and how that really is a structure

Gabrielle Dolan [00:01:11]:
that AI slot follows. What do you think, Leith?

A. Lee Judge [00:01:14]:
You know, it’s interesting. I’m talking about a lot of that coming up. And I had to edit some of the titles of my talks, but because they sound like I’m promoting those assembly lines like AI, like Content at scale or content creation with AI at scale. But I have to back up and explain. No, if you listen to what I’m teaching, it’s about adding in the human part while still having scale. So do any of those articles or what are your thoughts on the possibility and of. I’m strong advocate of this. You can still have quality and quantity at the same time.

Rocio Osuna [00:01:51]:
So I feel like, you know, AI is everywhere. There’s no stopping it. But I’m a firm believer that, you know, we have our own stories, and using AI as ideation is supreme. You know, AI doesn’t know you. You have your own voice. So having it as a. As a way to kind of tease out your ideas, maybe titles that you’re talking about, that’s a great way to really be efficient with your storytelling. Not necessarily use it to tell your story, but more so kind of give you ideas of, okay, I missed something about that story.

Rocio Osuna [00:02:21]:
Maybe put it in.

Gabrielle Dolan [00:02:22]:
Here’s an ideation.

A. Lee Judge [00:02:23]:
Yeah, you use the word efficient because, like, you know, I use an app Called Whisper App. And it’s. There’s so many ways I’m using AI that’s not actually creating the content. I think that’s what people mistake, is that you’re using AI to create. But AI is a wonderful tool. If you’ve been using, whether you use Canva or Photoshop or anything else, they all have AI in them. So even the artists using Photoshop, using AI. But for me, I may use Whisper App, which is transcribing what I’m saying, that’s AI.

A. Lee Judge [00:02:52]:
But I’m able to just brain dump my thoughts. I don’t have to worry about structuring my sentences or my paragraphs or a story arc. I can just brain dump an idea. AI is transcribing it. Then I can say, hey, AI, I know, I was all over the place. Please restructure my story, my thoughts, into a clean story. That, again, is AI. And because of that, all I have to do is brain drum, brain dump my human part into it.

A. Lee Judge [00:03:21]:
And then the efficiency comes in by AI making it better, content, faster. Right. Instead of me having to do the rewriting part and the editing part, that’s AI. And that means at that point, if I do four of those in one day, that gives me quality and quantity at the same time.

Rocio Osuna [00:03:40]:
Yep, that’s a good point. That’s a very good point.

A. Lee Judge [00:03:42]:
Yeah. It’s not slop. I mean, I think that’s what we’re, we’re living through, especially as marketers trying to understand that quantity doesn’t mean slop. To understand that using AI doesn’t mean that we are using AI to do all the creativity for us and realizing that people are going to do it. People are going to cheat, they’re going to make crappy AI slop. But that doesn’t have to be us. It is a productivity tool. And the fact is, no matter what tool you’re using in your creation, whether it be a video tool, audio tool, writing tool, they’re going to all have AI in them or else they won’t survive as a software company.

A. Lee Judge [00:04:24]:
So you’re going to use AI whether you like it or not. If you’re creating anything.

Gabrielle Dolan [00:04:28]:
Yep.

Rocio Osuna [00:04:29]:
You have to adapt. You have to learn how to use them. You know, I feel like, you know, everyone has AI Element. I went to a conference, like I mentioned, and every single software had AI, AI agent, or a dashboard, something AI.

Gabrielle Dolan [00:04:40]:
Right.

Rocio Osuna [00:04:41]:
So as we go on with years, those things, you know, it seems new now, but as you know, five, ten years from now, it’s just going to Be everyone has it in their system. It’s just part of, part of something that we’re all going to have to get used to and used to kind of learning the intricacies of each software.

A. Lee Judge [00:04:57]:
Absolutely. Let me tell you what’s on my mind this week. I did a video that surprisingly was more popular than I expected. And it was also part of an experiment. So I don’t typically make content that’s on trend. I’m working on, you know, educating marketers doing things that are more evergreen, that have a long tail of life of what they’re talking about. They won’t expire in a few days or weeks or months. But I was so blown away with something I achieved with Claude last week, which was moving my memory and all my experiences out of ChatGPT and into Claude.

A. Lee Judge [00:05:36]:
Now, I haven’t canceled either one of them. I haven’t canceled ChatGPT, but I wanted to know, could I make Claude feel like it knew me as well as Chat CBT does? So I did the whole thing and I talked through it in a video to where I ended up taking all my ChatGPT custom GPTs and transferring those into Claude skills. And Claude actually helped me write all the skills in one swoop by looking at a spreadsheet of my prompts that I pulled out of chatgpt. Mind blown. I couldn’t help but share that because it was amazing to me. So I made this video on, you know, and I do a thumbnail that says, you know, before you leave Chat GPT, you know, learn this or re watch this video. And that video had well over a hundred views before 24 hours passed, which to a YouTuber celebrity, that might not be, that might be nothing. But for me, you know, a hundred and some views under, under a day is a lot and it’s still growing.

A. Lee Judge [00:06:35]:
But I realized I was trend jacking. I, I mean, that week was, it was the same day or two when everybody said, oh, leave ChatGPT and it was hashtag quit GPT and all that. I said, you know what, technically I’m trend jacking. Let’s just see how it works. Because, you know, a month from now that video won’t mean much or anything because it’ll be, we’ll be past that. But it was a successful video. I trend jacked. It won’t be evergreen.

A. Lee Judge [00:07:00]:
And so I decided that I’m going to have a mix. I’m going to do some trend jacking from time to time, not so much for the purpose of jacking the trend, but for the purpose of giving my audience some on time, timely, useful information and then mix it in with the evergreen stuff. What are your thoughts on that?

Rocio Osuna [00:07:18]:
Oh, you’re talking my language. Your A B testing. You’re seeing what works and what doesn’t work. I love it. I do the same thing on LinkedIn. I’ll see, you know, trending topics like the one that came out with McDonald’s, right, with biting the burger and how that went, you know, viral for the, you know, burger industry. And so I jumped on that trend as well. I usually don’t, but I said, you know what, I’m going to jump on and see what’s, you know, what happens.

Rocio Osuna [00:07:43]:
So I gave my own take on it, obviously, used the image and that again too. Like you saw the results, I saw a bunch of people commenting, you know, engagement on that and I thought that usually wasn’t the case. But again, I don’t usually, you know, chase trends, but had the same result you did with ChatGPT and, you know, the virality of that.

A. Lee Judge [00:08:03]:
Well, I mean, I guess on that situation, that was a, a story that we all were involved in as marketers. Like you couldn’t be a marketer even outside and not have seen the McDonald’s CEOs eating this hamburger. And then Arby was Burger King jumps on and Arby’s and then all the other restaurants jump on and make their burger eating CEO videos, whatever. And then AI jumps in and makes the whole behind the scenes version of what it must have looked like. That was my favorite. But the greatest thing is, I mean, it gave us what, what I’ve heard called a social object. This thing we’re all related to, we can all talk about. But it also gave those businesses a chance to tell their story.

A. Lee Judge [00:08:42]:
And whether it’s authentic, authentic or not, they began talking and telling their stories and we began learning things about the burger industry we probably never cared to know, but we learned because they were telling their stories, which ties into what we’re talking about today in terms of telling your story as a business and not losing your soul. Creating content using AI, but not letting AI create your content, it all lends into a business that can tell a story. And so we’re gonna get into an interview here in a moment with a person who is a global expert on strategic storytelling and real communication. She’s a successful podcast. She has one called Keeping It Real with Jack and Rich. She is also the bestselling author of seven books, including her new book called Story Intelligence, the Craft of Authentic Storytelling. If you look for her book. Her name is Gabrielle Dolan, but once you know her, you’ll know she goes by Rel.

A. Lee Judge [00:09:41]:
So right now, check out the conversation. Enjoy.

Rocio Osuna [00:09:44]:
So I went down a rabbit hole through your LinkedIn videos and really enjoyed your little. Your campaign that you have going on your, you know, 31 days of storytelling videos there. And there was one in particular that I really enjoyed where you talked about how your niece asked you for advice about her presentation, and you talked about vulnerability. So you said that that’s obviously a very important aspect of storytelling. Is there such a thing as too much vulnerability in a story?

Gabrielle Dolan [00:10:13]:
Yes, there is. Absolutely there is. So I say to people, you know, when you share a personal story, it doesn’t have to be vulnerable. People think, oh, vulnerability. It’s got to be getting people creating crying or you crying, or showing some, you know, really, like, almost inner demons or whatever about yourself. And it doesn’t have to be that. There are some stories that are absolutely more vulnerable than others. I would say most stories are not vulnerable.

Gabrielle Dolan [00:10:40]:
But the fact that you’re revealing just something little about yourself shows some vulnerability. And it actually not even shows vulnerability. You have to be a little bit vulnerable to actually share it. But there are. There are times when it is too much. So I often say to people, heal before you reveal. As in, it could be something quite traumatic that happened to you, but it happened 20 years ago, and you’ve healed from it, and you. And you can share it without people feeling sorry for you.

Gabrielle Dolan [00:11:08]:
But if it happened like a few months ago, it still might be raw. And what that ends up is like, you might be getting too emotional, which impacts the result. And you know what the result is? Probably people start to feel sorry for you, which is probably not what you were doing. I do see people that deliberately share vulnerable stories. It’s almost like a manipulation tool. I read an article once, and this someone said, the four types of stories you need as a leader, and one of them was the tearjerker. And I thought, oh, my God, if you are starting from a place that I’m sharing this story to get people crying, that’s manipulation. And.

Gabrielle Dolan [00:11:52]:
And I think people can sense that. I think people can sense that this. You sort of. That’s the reason you’re sharing it, as opposed to the reason we should be sharing any story is to get the message across.

A. Lee Judge [00:12:02]:
So you’re saying it’s the message and not seeking a certain emotion?

Gabrielle Dolan [00:12:06]:
Yeah, no. And you don’t have to. Like, some people go, what type of emotion do you want? People to feel like, don’t decide on what emotion you want people to feel. People will feel emotion. You decide on the message. So, yeah, in, in my advice to my niece, she sort of said, I hate talking about myself because I feel like I’m bragging. And I just, and, and that my advice to her was have some form of vulnerability in your stories. But that, that could just be the lesson I learned.

Gabrielle Dolan [00:12:34]:
So what I learned from that, or, you know, the regret I have about that. So that, that’s, that’s, you got to have some level of vulnerability, but not vulnerability for vulnerability sake.

A. Lee Judge [00:12:46]:
How does that play into the idea of. I think it was Maya Angelou who said, they won’t remember what you said. They’ll remember how you made them feel. So if those, if we can hold those two things as true, is it about the intention? Like you do want them to leave feeling something, but you don’t want to intentionally go after a goal of trying to make them feel a certain way?

Gabrielle Dolan [00:13:11]:
Yeah, yeah. So to me, that’s the difference between influence and manipulation. I mean, you think as leaders, as brand people, when we’re selling, we want to influence it out. Even as parents, right, we want to influence an outcome. We want people to think, feel or do something different. And we influence throughout every day of our life, manipulation. So influence to me is win, win. Like, this is good for you, but I want you to do it.

Gabrielle Dolan [00:13:36]:
Manipulation is when it’s not. So, yeah, I mean, and that quote ties in beautifully with storytelling because what story does is out in our human brain. It taps into emotion and a good story will do that, whether people, they will have no control over it. A good story taps into emotion and as we know with emotion, it makes us feel something. And that’s, that’s actually why we remember a story. If you, you can sometimes think of great presenters you’ve seen, and I will say to people what. What was. And I’ll go, I remember the story they told.

Gabrielle Dolan [00:14:11]:
And I will say, well, do you remember anything else from that presentation? And I go, no, I just remember the story. So the reason, the reason stories are so sticky, the reason like people remember the message and remember the story is because it taps into emotion. And so, yeah, it’s absolutely. They won’t remember what you said, they won’t remember what you did, but they’ll remember how you made them feel. And that’s, that’s through. I mean, you know, that can be through a gesture or whatever, but a story taps into emotion.

Rocio Osuna [00:14:44]:
I think you brought up another story in that Video series about going to the 911 Museum and not remembering the stats.

Gabrielle Dolan [00:14:52]:
Right.

Rocio Osuna [00:14:53]:
And immediately you remember the stats in that moment. But once you leave, what you remember the most are the traumatic and very inspirational stories that came out of that.

Gabrielle Dolan [00:15:01]:
Yeah, yeah. And that happens. People sort of go, oh, we need, you know, you know, you need to give them all the data. It’s like, Pete, we hear all this information and you sort of go, oh, that’s interesting. And she can’t remember it. But the, yeah, the stories. The stories will. You’ll remember forever.

Gabrielle Dolan [00:15:19]:
And. Yeah, and in that, that video, I talk about taking my daughter to the 911 Memorial Museum. And, you know, she walked out and asked me, mum, how tall did the guy say that column was? And I couldn’t remember what it said, even though it was interesting at the time. But the, you know, there’s some stories I heard there that I’ll remember for the rest of my life.

A. Lee Judge [00:15:37]:
So your, Your book, your latest book goes deeper into, I guess you do a lot of speaking to businesses, and so when you’re talking about storytelling in this context, it’s often, how do businesses do it? So tell us about the books. I have several questions about it, but I want you to give the. Your version, the author’s overview of what the book’s about.

Gabrielle Dolan [00:15:56]:
Yeah, yeah, so. So you’re right. I, the, the work I do is I go into businesses and teach their leaders how to share stories more effectively in business. So whether they’re communicating, communicating values or strategies or purpose, or trying to, you know, connect to their customers or employees better, how they do that through stories. So communicating through stories. I, I think the last time I was on your podcast, I. It was based on my story Magnetic Stories, which was. I wrote.

Gabrielle Dolan [00:16:25]:
That’s. It’s almost five years ago now. And I truly believe that that would be the last book I wrote on storytelling. But what started to happen, and this started to happen probably around about 18 months ago, is I would have more and more people in my workshops ask me, will AI replace storytelling? And I was actually quite horrified with the question. It was like, no, why would you even think that’s the case? But more and more people asked me, and I would go, no, like. And then I started to think, in a world of AI content, there’s so much AI content out there, you don’t even know what’s real and what’s not. That our authentic stories are needed now more than ever. But then, but then I had people ask me, can you use AI to help with your stories? And My initial response was, no.

Gabrielle Dolan [00:17:17]:
Oh, no, that would be cheating. That would be. It wouldn’t be authentic. It wouldn’t be real. And I thought, maybe I better, you know, if I’m. If I’m sort of the expert on this, maybe I better actually start to test it. And I was disarmingly surprised how good AI was with generating stories. And while it was good, it lacks something.

Gabrielle Dolan [00:17:38]:
And what it lacked is authenticity. What it lacked is you sort of read the story and people go, there’s something that’s not quite right there. And because it’s not true, because it’s a written. So the premise of the book is in a world of AI content and in a world of distrust, that our stories are needed now more than ever, but used wisely, you can use AI as your creative partner, but use wisely is the key word here, and you don’t want to lose your voice throughout it. So predominantly, it’s still a storytelling book. You know, it’s called Story Intelligence. So it’s predominantly it’s a storytelling book. But the tagline, the craft of authentic storytelling made smarter with AI shows that it does bring in some elements of how you can use AI in the process.

A. Lee Judge [00:18:27]:
So the timing of this conversation could not be better because I just finished putting together a presentation for a couple of talks I have coming up, and they are on how to use AI to scale content. And that talk has evolved over time because I’m focusing more on the human input part of it to do what you just said, to make sure that it’s not AI slop and there’s human input. And so I had this framework called a POET framework, which is proof, opinion, experience, and trust. And so what we did in using AI is to look at some company’s existing content, and some honestly had AI content they’d written since 2022. They looked. It was fluffy AI content.

Gabrielle Dolan [00:19:12]:
Yep.

A. Lee Judge [00:19:12]:
And so we said, look, let’s take this old content, run it through the POET framework, and develop questions to ask your executives, your leaders. And so when we run it through the framework, their idea, or their existing article, it spits out questions that you take to your CEO or to your SME and say, it’ll give us two questions that are proof, two questions to pull out opinion, two questions to pull out experience, and then questions pull out some. Some trust factors. And so I feel what you’re saying about bringing that human factor, and that allows us to actually, you know, get the human part out. So let me ask you this. When we do that, give us some Tips on creating those questions to help pull out stories. Yeah, because we’re getting opinions and we’re getting experience and sometimes they lead into stories. But how can we do more to nurture those stories out of executives?

Gabrielle Dolan [00:20:13]:
Yeah, okay, that’s, there’s a, there’s a lot in that question. So let, let me, let me unpack some of the thoughts that are going around in my head at the moment. There is no doubt that AI when it comes to content generation can make it more efficient. I use, I use AI right. If I’ve got, you know, I think I want to do some blog ide. Um, you mentioned my 31 days of story intelligence. I used AI to go give me some suggestions for 31 days. Now some of them were like crap and I didn’t use them.

Gabrielle Dolan [00:20:41]:
But I, I use AI. I often say to people, it’s efficient, it definitely is more efficient, but don’t lose effectiveness through the efficiency. So you know, when it comes to communication, I think we should be aiming for effective, over efficient. Some of the things I say when it comes specifically to storytelling. So it’s probably similar when you’re talking about experience here. Like if you’re trying to get people to think of experience and then how you turn that into a well told story is, is through a framework. But I would, I, I, you know, for example, if you were giving a presentation on innovation to your team and you wanted to go, okay, you know, I’ve read Gabriel’s book and she says that a personal story is really good. So I want to think of a personal innovation.

Gabrielle Dolan [00:21:30]:
I would get into AI and say, act as my storytelling coach. You know, I, I need to give a presentation on innovation and I want to share a personal experience or story, whatever, ask me questions that will help me do it. And, and you’re getting AI to ask your questions. Because the reality is if, if you and I were having a coffee and you wanted, wanted a personal story, the first thing I do is ask you questions. So you got to get clear on the message. Like first of all, what does innovation mean to you then? Well, whenever you experience that, when have you done it? And you know, I do talk about the four different types of stories in the book. And one’s personal, which I think are the most powerful, but they’re the most underutilized. And then one of the, the other ones, the professional, which is probably the most used.

Gabrielle Dolan [00:22:17]:
And, and they’re still effective. And, and that’s what your poet thing would be, getting experience. When you ask for experience or opinions, they will Be thinking of work related stories. So it’s helping you find that what AI will do then is say, just give me a few little details of what happened and it will turn it into a story. Now that’s when you got to be really careful because you can fall into the trap of saying, oh, that sounds good. But a. Is it true? Did it really happen? And does it sound like you? So when that happens, what I say is you go through it and go, that actually didn’t happen. So AI just made that up.

Gabrielle Dolan [00:22:56]:
It didn’t happen, but this happened. And so talk about what that happened then and just. And make sure it’s true. And I also say, say it out loud. And if it’s words that you wouldn’t normally use or, you know, if just doesn’t sound like something you would say, then don’t use it and don’t fall into the trap of thinking, oh, that sounds good. It might sound good, but does it sound like you? And whether you is an individual or. Or a company, does it sound like you? I did it just as a quick one. I did something a couple of weeks ago and I had to.

Gabrielle Dolan [00:23:30]:
I was filling out a form actually to go on another podcast and it said, you know, just give me three paragraphs on what, what, what you. So one of the things was, I teach business people how to communicate more effectively through sharing authentic stories. That was one of the things I said. It came back and said, I teach people to communicate authentically via stories that bridge the gap between impact and trust. And I just like, I don’t even know what that means.

A. Lee Judge [00:24:02]:
It’s a word salad.

Rocio Osuna [00:24:03]:
It’s.

Gabrielle Dolan [00:24:04]:
And you know what the plot is? It could be. Yeah, it’s. It’s. But I reckon there’s a lot of people that go, oh, that sounds good. And you know, they would have it as their tagline. I bridge the gap between impact and truth and trust or whatever it’s like.

A. Lee Judge [00:24:18]:
So, yeah, that reminds me of. There’s a book for web designers that came out years ago, and it’s been kind of a bible for web designers. And the book was called Don’t Make Them Think. And so whenever I read that kind of especially AI content, if I have to pause and reread the sentence to figure out what it really meant, it’s not a good sentence if it’s making you think about this. The words instead of the thought. It isn’t a good sentence. So you mentioned the four types of stories. Tell us more about those four.

Gabrielle Dolan [00:24:50]:
Yeah. So the four types, they all start With P. Because I do love it when I can make things start with a soap letter. So personal stories. So these are things that have happened to you personally or you’ve observed, but they didn’t happen at work. So they’re non work related, but you use them to attach to a work message. So if you’re trying to communicate, these are really, really powerful when it comes to communicating company values. So if one of your company values is integrity, for example, I take people through the process to go, well, what does that really mean to you? Don’t worry what the company says it means, what does it mean to you? And then have a personal story for that.

Gabrielle Dolan [00:25:25]:
So it could be a story about when you were growing up or a story about your kids or whatever. So that’s personal story. The professional story is again, it’s happened to you or someone in your team, but you were sort of there and you were firsthand experience. But it’s a work related story. So, so those, those two stories are really powerful. I think the most common story people use are the professional job interviews, for example. That’s your job interviews are going to be a lot of professional stories. But I also say you can absolutely share a personal story in a job interview.

Gabrielle Dolan [00:25:57]:
So personal, professional. And then the other two are public and parable. So public is like, you know, they’re almost like case studies. You know, you, you hear stories about, you know, Steve Jobs and did something and if you just Google it, you’ll find it. So it’s like it’s in the public domain. They’re often well told stories. Now they can, they can have an impact as well. You, you just sort of want to make sure they’re not overused cliche stories.

Gabrielle Dolan [00:26:25]:
And then the parables, they’re like Aesop’s fables, you know, the, the boy who cried wolf type thing. A lot of teachers use parables a lot.

A. Lee Judge [00:26:36]:
So, you know, that’s how my dad taught me. As I think back on what I was taught, all my best lessons from my dad almost were all parables.

Rocio Osuna [00:26:44]:
Why do they rhyme? Sometimes they rhyme. I think the remembering thing that you know, you remember when you rhyme. So I have the same, the same experience.

Gabrielle Dolan [00:26:52]:
Yeah, yeah. And you know what? You can even sometimes, and sometimes you can combine them like it could be. So you could, you could for example, have this parable that you really remember your dad told you and you start, you start sharing the story about. You know, when I was a little kid, my dad would always tell us this parable and you share the parable so it’s. The parable’s got the message in it, but the fact that your dad told you and you remember it from a kid sort of starts to make it a personal story, but it’s got a parable included in it.

A. Lee Judge [00:27:23]:
And the professional and the public, too. We see those. When we ask an executive, tell us about when often our formula will spit out in the experience column. It’ll read some case study or something they did with the client, and that’ll come out as, tell us about the time you did this, or tell us about your company’s pivot or tell us about. And then it’ll pull out something that was. Even if it was a fluff AI version of it, once it goes to a human and says, tell us about your experience in this thing happening. And then we get a wonderful story.

Gabrielle Dolan [00:28:03]:
Yeah, you know what I also find a really powerful question, which you’re welcome to use, is ask them how did you feel when that happened? So, like. Because what that does is, takes it away from what can start to feel like a case study. It was like, well, this happened and this is what we did, and we rallied the troops and we got. And this was the result or whatever. So that’s sort of where they normally start. But if you go. So if you sort of go, well, back up when, when that happens there, like, sometimes executives will go, so we just had to make the decision to do this right? And that. That will be.

Gabrielle Dolan [00:28:39]:
And you go, okay, so that sounds like a pretty big decision. Tell. Tell me how you personally went through that. And they’ll go, oh, it’s. You know what? It was probably one of the really tough decisions. I remember, you know, I couldn’t sleep for three nights. I remember my wife saying, will you just bloody relax? Or. And then they bring in all this stuff and you go, that’s.

Gabrielle Dolan [00:28:59]:
That’s the story. So, you know, saying, sometimes them saying, I actually felt really, really proud of what we achieved can make it start to feel personal. Or I was. To this day, I’m really disappointed that we were never able to achieve what we originally thought we could do. So asking them how they felt and even going, you know, can you. Can you remember going home that night or can you remember what you did, did and that, you know, they’ll say things like, yeah, I remember I had to just go and leave and go for a walk around the block to clear my head and things like that. But they, they leave out those details initially because they think, well, that’s. That’s not business.

Gabrielle Dolan [00:29:41]:
That’s that’s irrelevant. They think it’s irrelevant, but it’s actually the most powerful bit in the story.

Rocio Osuna [00:29:46]:
Yeah. Because a lot of people have gone through it. Maybe they were part of that professional. But everyone has gone through, you know, feeling alienated, whatever the emotion is, they felt that in that specific moment in different, you know, situation for them.

Gabrielle Dolan [00:30:01]:
Yeah, absolutely. And. And you see a lot of leaders and even, like, you know, companies like go, we want to come across as approachable. We want to be more human. Like, you hear that a lot now. Leaders. Leaders need to be more human. And I was like, the only way you can be human is actually to share your feelings.

Gabrielle Dolan [00:30:17]:
Like, it’s like, you know.

A. Lee Judge [00:30:19]:
Yeah.

Gabrielle Dolan [00:30:19]:
And I’ve seen, like, you know, CEOs and senior execs, and they start talking about something that happened when they were a kid, or they start talking about their kids and, you know, the kid turned to me and said, what would you know, mom? Or what would you know, dad? And it was like everyone in the audience goes, oh, wow. They’re. They have to do the same, you know, human stuff we all have to do. And. And the leaders thinking, well, of course I do. Like, what do they think? I don’t. And it was like, no, they don’t think you do because you hold a position of power. So bringing in how you feel, not.

Gabrielle Dolan [00:30:53]:
Not being dramatic. It could literally be one sentence I actually fel proud. It could be as simple as that.

Rocio Osuna [00:30:59]:
Touching on the whole, you know, brandness and being authentic to you. Who do you think is doing it right? What brands stick out to you now for being very authentic and human?

Gabrielle Dolan [00:31:09]:
You know, I don’t. I probably don’t. This may seem political, but the latest, the really latest one with anthropic making, the decision to not use their products, to not allow the American government to use their products for surveillance and for. Wasn’t it going to be they could shoot weapons without human intervention. Yeah. Autonomous weapons. For them to make that decision, could you imagine that? That was a pretty big decision they had to make. But to me, that’s.

Gabrielle Dolan [00:31:39]:
That’s a great example of sticking with their original mission and purpose and values of the company. So that. That when I think of authentic, it’s like, are you sticking true to the values that you, you know, you said it’s. It’s just a congruence between what you say and what you do. And that’s when there’s. That’s when there’s a lack of authenticity, when there’s a disconnect between what you Say our values are and what you actually do.

A. Lee Judge [00:32:07]:
So. So to wrap this up, if you’re talking to a marketer, the marketer. Oh, by the way, I want to go on record to say there’s been a wave in the past, I guess, six or seven months of there was an article. Maybe you could tell me, one of you, where it came from. Was it Wall Street? It says, oh, now the new job is storytelling.

Gabrielle Dolan [00:32:25]:
Wall Street Journal. Yeah, Wall Street Journal.

A. Lee Judge [00:32:27]:
Wall Street Journal. So on the record, you were writing your book long before that, and you have several books on storytelling before that. So I can only imagine as an author, you must have been like, wow, great new Flames to the Fire, what I’m about to release. Right?

Gabrielle Dolan [00:32:40]:
Yeah. That article sparked different thoughts in my head. One of it was, you know, because I’ve been teaching this for 21 years, and 21 years ago, like, people would go, what has storytelling got to do with business? Like, I’m a leader. Why would I need storytelling? So it wasn’t a thing. And now the fact that I read an article that says, I think it was LinkedIn jobs, like, it was a. The grow, like the term storyteller in titles has, is the biggest growing title, right? So part of me went, wow. See, I. It’s like part of me goes, I knew.

Gabrielle Dolan [00:33:14]:
I knew there was something in this story. I knew I was right all along. It’s like, how many times do I have to say, I told you so? Right? So part of me was that my concern was that we’re thinking, okay, so we need to bring storytelling into our organization. Let’s hand that over to the chief storytelling officer. And what I find is it’s marketing people are just now calling themselves storytellers. My thing is, every single one of your employees is a storyteller. All your leaders are storyteller. And especially your, you know, frontline facing staff or partners that deal with clients.

Gabrielle Dolan [00:33:55]:
They’re the storytellers in your organization. And so to me is you need to train all of them to help them find stories but share them more effectively now. Yes. Can you have an internal department that manages that and looks after that and makes sure the stories are being found and heard and heard internally and heard externally and being implemented in induction programs and that you absolutely can have that. But I would say that’s the danger. That’s the danger. When we go, well, we’ve got a chief storytelling officer, so now they’re in charge of stories.

A. Lee Judge [00:34:32]:
So that’s my final question. What does a marketer do? They say, okay, I Get it? We need to tell stories. Where do I start?

Gabrielle Dolan [00:34:39]:
You know, you know, it’s interesting. The, the vast majority of the time I go into organizations, it’s either through the CEO or the head of business that sees it, or the head of communications. Initially it was the head of like internal communications and then the head of people and culture. So organizational development. They’re the ones that normally bring me in. The marketers very rarely bring me in because I think with marketing they see storytelling as the overarching narrative. So that’s what I see with marketers. What’s our overarching narrative? And it does come back to, you know, well, these are, this is our brand.

Gabrielle Dolan [00:35:17]:
And our brand are these values and what we want to be known for and who’s our target audience and what stories we can be telling them. But I think if so, as marketers, I think you can absolutely go, what are the types of stories that we should be sharing both internally and externally that communicates what we want to be known for? And I would say it’s not necessarily about the product. I mean, surely it can be about the product and service, but it’s what we want to be known for. And that to me comes back to values like, do we want to be known as the trusted advisor? Do we want to be known as innovative? Do we want to be known for exceptional customer service? You got to find, you got to find those stories and share them. And I guess finally, it’s not like one or two or three big stories, it’s how you keep finding those day to day stories. If you want to be known for exceptional customer service, you’ve got to be on the lookout for employees that are delivering great service and find that and share the stories about them both internally, but also externally.

A. Lee Judge [00:36:29]:
Wonderful. Well, that about wraps it up. Unless you have another question.

Rocio Osuna [00:36:33]:
No, that was really good. I’m over here. Like, I really want to write notes, but I don’t want to look like I’m not paying attention because I’m a note taker. I love nuggets for me.

A. Lee Judge [00:36:41]:
Hey, you sure show. You have notes.

Gabrielle Dolan [00:36:43]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you can, you can, you can listen back on the episode, go back, take notes then. I lived it.

A. Lee Judge [00:36:49]:
But absolutely, I love to ask, you know, to where do I start? Questions, you know, because that gets, it gives you some meat to actually get some action done. So your book tell us where to find it and where to find you if we want to work with you.

Gabrielle Dolan [00:37:01]:
Yeah. So the book’s available on all, you know, normal Amazon, like all the global online stores. It’s available in paperback and ebook at the moment. Audio version will be coming out in May, but it seems to be it reached number one on four different categories on Amazon’s hot new releases like, you know, workplace communication and presentations and running meetings. So very, very, very happy. I think, as you said, it’s, it’s timely and relevant. LinkedIn is my most active social media platform, so that’s where I’m currently. We’re doing the 31 days of story intelligence over March.

Gabrielle Dolan [00:37:38]:
So just Gabrielle Dolan on LinkedIn and, and yes, my website’s gabrielledolan.com but yeah, the, the book’s a good place to start.

A. Lee Judge [00:37:47]:
Wonderful. Thank you so much for joining us and we really enjoyed it.

Rocio Osuna [00:37:50]:
Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Thank you.

A. Lee Judge [00:37:51]:
Thanks.

Gabrielle Dolan [00:37:52]:
It’s good to be back.

Rocio Osuna [00:37:53]:
Thanks for listening to the Business of Marketing.

A. Lee Judge [00:37:55]:
I’m Rosie Osuna and I’m a Lee judge.

Rocio Osuna [00:37:58]:
Catch you next time.

Gabrielle Dolan [00:38:03]:
Thank you for listening to the Business of Marketing Podcast, a show brought to you by contentmonster.com, the producer of B2B digital marketing content. Show notes can be found on contentmonster.com as well as aleadjudge.com.