EntreLeadership - #148: Nancy Duarte—Igniting Change Through Communication

Episode Date: May 23, 2016

Every leader needs to be a great storyteller, whether they speak publicly or not. And this week’s guest, communication guru Nancy Duarte, joins us to share her tips for creating compelling, persuasive communication. Also on the episode, we’re talking to fellow great communicators Ike and Guy Eastman. The brothers are owners of Eastmans’ Publishing Company and the hosts of Eastmans’ Hunting TV. They’re discussing their journey to debt freedom. entreleadership.com/podcast Guide to Running Your Business Debt Free Infusionsoft's Sales Team Hiring Guide Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

helping business leaders grow themselves, their team, and their profits. This is the Entree Leadership Podcast. Now here is your host, Ken Coleman. Broadcasting from the Music City, this is the podcast of leaders, by leaders, four leaders. Thank you so much for joining our conversation. The theme in May has been small business appreciation, and we've also been really focusing in on this idea that you can actually run a business debt-free. We continue that focus with a business.

fun conversation with two brothers. These guys are debt-free, paid off $1.2 million, third-generation business. Tell you more about that. That's Guy and Ike Eastman. And then our feature conversation is with Nancy Duarte. She's a communication guru, also known as a persuasion specialist. I like that. Because at the end of the day, good communication is, at its core, some type of persuasion.

And she's got a new book out called Illuminate, Ignite Change Through Speeches, Stories, Ceremonies, and symbols. This is really applicable for leaders, especially when you're communicating on purpose. So you're going to love this conversation. And of course, we've got more free stuff. So stay tuned for that. Let's get right to our first conversation. I mentioned Ike and Guy Eastman. Now, these are brothers. I mentioned that they were a third generation company. Now, they really are in the hunting media business, right? Not just hunting. Now, these guys aren't just, you know, out there doing guided hunts. these guys are straight up media moguls. I don't know how many of you watch hunting stuff.

Eric, the producer, have you ever watched a hunting show? You're a musician, you're in your 20s, one time? All right. This is interesting. I am not a big hunter. I've been on like two hunts in my life. Eric is laughing behind the window as though that's the most obvious thing in the world. If you knew me, you'd chuckle as well.

But I love hunting shows. It's fascinating. I really do love them, whether it's bow hunting or using a gun, the whole nine yards. But anyway, I've heard of these guys. And when this popped up as an interview that we were going to do, I was really fascinated to find out more. But here's the context, and we're going to get right to this. They run Eastman's Hunting TV.

That's a show, Eastman's Hunting TV, and they also are in the publishing business with Eastman's Hunting Journal and Eastman's Bow Hunting Journal. And these guys, at some point, woke up one day when they bought the business from their father, third generation. They were like, we've got to get out of debt. and they came across Dave's stuff. You'll hear some about that story in the conversation, but they really figured it out.

And this is going to encourage you folks who have thought, had the fleeting thought, some of you were actually pursuing this. What would our business be like? What could we do? How would it change the game for us if we were debt-free in our business? These guys talk about those emotions and some of the practical things. So here it is, my conversation with Guy and Ike Eastman. Well, Ike and Guy, great to have you with us.

We're loving these stories that we're collecting. of business leaders who are making a concerted effort to get debt-free. You guys had that goal. Took you about just a little less than four years to pay off $1.2 million. So that's the big win. But let's get a little bit of the backstory. A successful TV show, Eastman's Hunting TV. But at what point did you guys get involved in the ownership of the company?

Actually, I'll let guys start that because he started here at the company before I did. I started in the company in 1999. We're third generation. So both went to college. My dad was a pretty big proponent of us going out in the quote-unquote real world for a while. And so both Ike and I had different jobs right out of college for a few years before we came inside the company. So I started in 1999, but I'm five years older than Ike. He was still in college.

Of course, I didn't start as an owner. And Ike came to the company. probably, what, five years after that? It was 2003, so the summer of 2003. Oh, four years. Yeah. So fast forward to 2007, that's when you actually purchased the business from your father. The interesting backstory here is that you guys had both graduated or were at some point going through

Financial Peace University. So you got the whole debt-free thing on a personal level. But what was the catalytic moment if there was one? What made you guys decide, as a business, we need to get debt-free? Well, we went to financial peace in 2005. I don't want to say kicking and screaming, but our mother and father strongly suggested that we would take financial peace through the church. Guy and I both got on it right away and started working through the pieces. And about two years later, my parents came to us and said, okay, we're going to sell this company. You know, either you're going to buy it or we're going to sell it to somebody else. And so Guy and I put a plan together in 2007 to purchase the company. purchased it and then walked for about six months going, oh my gosh, we have a ton of debt on this thing. Now what do we do? All while we're living with Dave Ramsey's principles personally thinking, well, this just doesn't make sense. And so we started doing a bunch of research and I heard about

entre leadership and said, you know what? I am glad that he has something for businesses because this debt is, you know, over a million dollars worth of debt piled on top of us is strangling, not just strangling us, but strangling in the way that we make decisions, strangling the way that we live and lack of sleep, et cetera, et cetera. Guy and I went to the one-day event. Yeah, the one-day event back then. After leaving that, we were directed going straight to a sales meeting, and Guy and I sitting on the airplane were reading as many of those books as you guys sent us as we could

and basically said, okay, this is time. We have to do something. And so we signed up for the event in November. Yeah. And this is fascinating for those of you. you that are listening in here because you really are a multimedia company. So I'm curious, break it down for us. What are a few of the things that you did to tackle this debt? Because you knocked it out pretty quickly. Oh, I don't know. Guy, what would you say? Live like rats is one of the

things we did. Yeah, I mean, I thought, what in the world does my mom have me volunteered for? When she signed me up for the first Dave Ramsey, and I was living paycheck to paycheck, living like a rat. And then this whole thing just, we progressed through this so fast. And then we just kept living like rats. We just used one of Dave's mantras. This is a marathon, not a sprint. And we'll put off the instant gratification for the long-term goal here.

And we just lived, there was employees here making more money than we were for a lot of years. And we just knocked that sucker out. And I just kept it on my computer. And every month, we'd pay those payments and just watched it. go down, down, down, down. And first, it seemed like we were never going to get there. And then it just started to accelerate because, you know, when you pay off dead, you start overpaying and paying extra and it starts knocking off the tail end.

And that's how we ended up paying it off early. And once we saw light at the end of the tunnel and there was hope to do this, it just accelerated. And we just came off the chain with it on getting it out of our lives fast. How has it changed you guys as business leaders, knowing. that the debt is gone. Just curious. Because, you know, we talk a lot about how it feels. I know it feels good, so I'm not going to ask you that. I know it feels great to have the monkey off your back.

But how has it changed the way you run your business? I would say it changes the way that you make decisions. When you don't have an alligator sitting there constantly needing to be fed, you can make decisions a lot faster, a lot more for the long haul than you would if you had that alligator you fed. We had a situation this fall where we had one of our big, sponsors, you know, this is a six-figure contract, come to us and say, well, we're probably going to move into a different direction. And so, you know, by the end of the year, we'll be done.

You know, had this been 2009, we would have probably bent over backwards to keep them around because that is cash. Well, when you have an emergency fund and you don't have that giant alligator, the debt strangling you, you can make the decision, well, that's fine. You know, we'll We'll agree to part ways, and we waited for four or five months until something better came along, and it did. It came along a lot better. Sitting now six months since then, it was the best decision. It was the best decision for us. It's the best decision for them.

You know, it's just better that we didn't have to make that decision or bend over backwards to keep them. Yeah, I got to ask, because I know I've got a bunch of hunters in the audience. To me, the metaphors are so rich. First question is, do you think as hunters? that all that's involved in hunting, I mean, I watch these shows. I watch these hunting shows. I've seen your show. And it's amazing to me, even in a 30-minute show,

you realize how much footage, you know, is actually being cut because you guys will hunt for days on days on end to try to get one shot at an animal. Do you think that that patience as a hunter helped you in this pursuit of becoming debt-free? I think so. Patience is hunters and fishermen know a lot about patience. That's kind of the name of the game. And I think it's maturity, too. Yeah.

You know, that patience really paid off. We weren't afraid of failure as much because as a hunter, a lot of times you come home with nothing. So I think some of that, you're right. I never really thought of it that way, but I think that some of that we've learned to be patient, you know, put the important things off, really ponder on things. You know, we don't let banks make our decisions anymore. We don't have to. We make our own decisions and we live our successes and we own our failures.

It's just what some of the things we've learned along the way. That's good. So what are you dreaming about? What's next in the business? What is there, because this is such a fascinating business with the dawn of, you know, YouTube and I shouldn't say the dawn of YouTube. YouTube's been around, but I mean, what's new in your world? I think one of our biggest goals is to connect to the younger hunters is the media, like you just mentioned, the digital media has changed media as a whole. And how we connect to the younger people is, you know, that's one of our goals, as well as other things.

You know, we all have more than just hunting as an interest. And so some of the other things that we're interested in will probably start popping its head up in our digital side, at least. Guys, you are awesome. This was a lot of fun. I know you're busy, yet you've inspired all of us. We love what you're doing, your true entree leaders, and we appreciate your example.

Thanks for your time, Ken. Yeah, thank you. I really enjoyed that, Eric. I could have kept talking to them, I mean, for hours, asking them about, you know, some of the craziest things that's happened on their hunts, all that kind of stuff. So I'm thinking of myself, maybe Daniel Tarty and John Falcons and I, maybe we can get a hunt scheduled with these guys. And you've got to come too.

And we put the GoPro on us, you know what I mean? Like right on my chest so that you can hear my heart racing if an animal actually walks down the barrel. But hey, if you want to hunt down that debt, you want to kill your debt, we've got the tool for you. In fact, Guy and Ike and their story is included in this great resource. been telling you about it. It's called the Entree Leaders Guide to Running a Debt Free Business. And it is a guide. I think it's fun, by the way, Eric, that we have these hunting guys in this resource is great, because they're guides. So here's the deal. Along with their story, you're going to hear about the three myths around small business debt. We've got a great article

for you on how to motivate your sales team to win. And then another one, how turning down big deals can save your business. So much more in there. It's very easy to get. This is not spam. This is real practical case study stuff that can help you. It's free. So all you've got to do is text the word be debt free. We know those are three words, but you cram them together, no space. Be debt free. Text that phrase, if you will, to 3344.

3344.344. Or you can go to Entreeleadership.com slash podcast for the link in this episode. So two ways to get that. I've known Nancy Duarte or known about Nancy for a while. I've interviewed her a couple times. And Nancy is somebody who literally eats, drinks, and sleeps communication. She's done some amazing thing with her business. If you like to learn more about what she's doing, you can Google her and check out everything she's doing.

But this new book that she wrote with Patty Sanchez is called Illuminate. Ignite change through speeches, stories, ceremonies, and symbols. And this, as I said at the top of the podcast, is a really practical book. The conversation will help you. Whether you're somebody who speaks publicly a lot or not, don't miss the back half of that subtitle, stories, ceremonies, and symbols. You know what I mean? You can use stories just in your staff meetings, in one-on-one meetings, things of that nature. So this really is a great book.

And this is a woman, just to give you an idea. they have helped create more than a quarter million presentations. They're firm. That's what they do. They're global leaders. So here's my conversation with Nancy Duarte. Nancy, such a thrill to have you on the line, and I must tell you, I love what you do

because I think that communication is such a valuable tool for leaders, even those who don't consider themselves great communicators, so much to talk about in your new book, Eluminate. but let's talk about the general idea that you're walking us through in the book. And specifically five stages of transformation, would you give us a summary statement on that as it relates to how you unpack that in the book? Yeah, you know, leaders' role is to see the future and to get others to long to go there. And the way you create longing is through speeches, stories, ceremonies, and symbols. And if you were leading an organization at all, you're usually leading them through

change because a trip into the future is about change. And so there's five different stages that you need to use the speeches, story, ceremonies, and symbols, and you need to communicate differently at each phase. So the stages are dream, leap, fight, climb, arrive. And they do mirror the stages or steps in a transformative story that gets told. And how you communicate at each point is very critical. Depending on what your followers, we call them your travelers, depending on how your travelers feel at each stage is what determines how you would communicate along the way. All right. Now, I want you to give us those one more time, dream leak, because I want folks, a lot of people

are taking notes and wanting to catch that. It's in the form of a three-act structure, and the first act is dream and leap. So in the dream phase, you need to cast your vision of a new future. What is that? And frame it in a way that people long to go there. And then the leap phase is where you create a moment of decision, where people are like, either for you or. or they're against you, and they're jumping in.

Now, the middle of any story, like in a movie, that's where the near-death experience happened. It's hard. Like, we call it entertainment, but the middle of the story is fight, climb. And that's the hardest part. And this is where we need to be really empathetically tuned into the people that we're asking to help drive and go through change.

And even though it's fight climb, it's really like switchbacks. Like if you're scaling the face of a very steep mountain, some people can climb the face, but most have to do switchbacks. So it goes, fight climb, fight, climb, climb, climb, fight, climb. Until finally, you get to reach the third act, which is arrive.

And this is when you need to create a moment of reflection. Sometimes when you arrive, you win, and sometimes when you arrive, you didn't win. You know, you lose, and you need to reflect on the journey, curate and find all the findings and learnings that will give you the strength and energy to do your next venturescape. Okay, I'm so glad you took the time there to lay that out because, folks, this is the context for the conversation we're going to have. And this is about leadership.

And I love what you write. It's chapter one. And I'm going to read this. And then Nancy, I want you to kind of take off on this because I love the way that you define and contextualize leadership in this book. The leader's role, your role, is to light the way for your team through empathetic communications to be a torch bear. I love, we all know that word torch bear. We really do.

But I got to tell you, I really love how you give it such a visual meaning for. leadership. Why torchbearer? Why did you choose that word? Because I know you, of all people, you really care about words. What is so significant about torchbearer? You know, I believe everybody is called to lead, but few except the mantle. And we liked the concept of a bearer, because you do choose to bear it. And leaders in that sense are carrying a torch, and the conditions under which someone would carry a torch, usually it's dark outside. And a torch bearer is someone who casts just enough light into the future to dissipate enough fear so people will want to go there. It's not like a search light. It's not like you can see for miles and miles and miles.

It's like just enough to make the next few steps bearable. And when we were thinking through like the torchbearer, we really liked the concept of the torchbearer and the travelers because that makes it very self-evident that the leader is going through the journey, you know, with their team or with their clients or, you know, whoever is your traveler in this case because it's a different situation all the time. And we really felt like conceptually that was really strong about leaders' ability to dissipate fear and create longing is such an important skill in communication. It makes or breaks the great leaders. It really does.

And we're not talking about when we talk about this communication. We're not talking about being orators, correct? I want to make sure that we clarify that. You don't have to be some wonderful speaker and toastmaster, extraordinary. We're talking about this idea of using speeches, stories, ceremonies, and symbols to cast vision to get people to the next step, correct? Exactly. And if you look at what you're trying to accomplish more like a movement, that's what we did. We studied social movements, business movements, and we studied epic

length tales, not just short anecdotal stories. And we realized that you have to be cognizant of the long game and also what it takes for your travelers to endure. And that was so important to make sure that you sustain momentum. You know, people get tired. That's why in the climb phase, you need to create moments of endurance, in the fight phase you need to have moments of bravery where you're shoring everybody up

and making sure they have the will and the moxie to keep going. And so it could be an impassioned plea. It could be a rally cry. It takes all kinds of forms. It could even be a manifesto distributed as an email. It's just really about giving people the hope they need and dissipating the fear at the right moment in time.

Curious, are there better times than others, specific times, on speeches versus story, ceremony versus symbols? Have you seen how to use that effectively? How could you maybe practically outline how leaders can use these different tools? Yeah, it's just different. It's kind of like listening and understanding what the people are feeling and delivering them the piece of content they need that they can receive at the right time. And stories, are this magical format where it's a three-act structure of transformation, where there's this likable hero who goes through roadblocks and emerges changed. Well, speech is borrow some of the story, the structure and transformative nature of a story, and ceremonies also are a three-act

structure that borrow some of the truths of the power in a story. So they're all kind of nestled in storytelling attributes. So it just depends. You know, it's interesting. I'll follow a leader that's tried and fails and talks about it, then a leader who pretends they never failed. And a lot about storytelling and great speechmaking is an acknowledgement of flaws that creates authenticity. And people are like, what? You went through this before and you didn't do it right? Well, let's do it right this time, you know? And some leaders aren't willing to let their flawed side show, but it does create an endearing connection with your travelers as you experience stories together and are willing to talk about them and share them. And it's been fun because, I mean,

an Admiral in the Navy said for the first time ever, it felt like the scales fell off her eyes and she could actually see how her travelers were feeling when she was making an ask. And she'd never seen it that way before. So it is a model to empathetically understand what it is really as a leader you're asking your travelers to do and how they're going to feel about it. You've mentioned empathy several times. It's woven clearly through the fabric of what you studied and what you're writing about and what you're teaching on. A question for you, for those who may be naturally low on empathy, I'll be honest with you. My wife would laugh here. I mean, she doesn't even hear this and she's somewhere laughing. But I'm low on empathy. I just

am naturally. That's not an excuse. That's not a crutch. But as I listen in here, and I'm asking on behalf of leaders who may feel they're in the same situation, what are your thoughts on how to become more empathetic so that we can then be empathetic in how we communicate. I love this question because it hits such a personal chord with me because I'm actually the daughter of a narcissistic mother and what a narcissist is basically is they are missing the empathy gene. Because I didn't have empathy modeled for me, it's been my lifelong quest to try to see empathetically. So this book resonate. A lot of the models I create are to be honest with you a coping mechanism for myself. So I could actually see things from others' perspective because it doesn't come naturally for me.

My co-author, Patty, she's an empathic that means you have a supernatural ability to be empathetic. So me, like, I'm a seer of the future and she's empathetic in the present. And so I think that's what makes the book more powerful is because it considers both perspectives. Your question kind of hits a really lovely nerve for me that you could see that because that's the most flattering thing you could say that you could see this as a quest through empathy. Yeah. And it is possible. It's doable. I mean, I know that, but we have to really be intentional about it. And I think in this process you're laying out for us, for those who have a little bit less empathy than others, by thinking of how to communicate in this way, can help us be more empathetic, correct? Absolutely. And empathy will lead to stronger results, because once you process things from someone else's perspective, they'll long to go with you. Like, they'll be like, wow, he really understands me or she really gets me. I'm going to go there with that. person. It's just really important. I love that you said it that way. And I think the mistake we make is we try to feel like we've got it under control and come across as leaders who are confident,

which confidence is a wonderful thing. But it's really not as important as people just going, all right, they have some empathy, they're vulnerable, and I'm with you. I'll lock arms with you on this. Exactly. It's very important. I love what you do in the book. You take the five stages of transformation, dream, leap, fight, climb, arrive, and there are case studies for each. And we don't have time to get through all of them. But I really resonated with what you said earlier in our conversation, this idea about the fight. You know, the fight is such a crucial, crucial moment in this scale of transformation. And the case study you give, you call this a moment of bravery, and the case study is a civil right. I'd like you to instruct us and inspire us from that chapter.

Yeah, you know, what we did is focused on a lesser known fight that Dr. King had, you know, his whole fight for civil rights was long, and he had gone actually into Chicago for the war on slums. It was hard. He did a lot of very symbolic things, said a lot of messages, but the city was quite a bit like a tinderbox at the time, and he did such an amazing job at galvanizing the city. One of the things he did is he gave a speech at Soldier Field, and he was very tired at this point, and his speech was angry. And it's very rare. Usually it's kind of eloquent and beautiful, but this was angry and beautiful because he was just fed up with how they were being treated as hard as the people in the city had tried to work to get fair housing and everything. So it started with a big, angry,

beautiful speech at Soldier Field. And then he did a march through the city, which gained steam. And then he took a scroll and he hammered it on the door of City Hall, which is very reminiscent of his namesake, Martin Luther. That right? there is a ceremony. He really encouraged people to not give up, but when he left Chicago, he had felt like in some way he failed. And it wasn't actually until his death that they enacted the Fair Housing Act. So in reality, in the long view, it was victorious, but he did leave very discouraged and beat up. But when you look at his writings about the time, it was all about how hard the fight was. And so it's interesting, you know, we study the, I have a dream speech, which is the dream phase. But this fight phase,

You know, hearing his exhaustion and anger in his words was just fascinating. It really is powerful. I want to read this again, the start of fight case studies is page 161. They write, the fight stage can be brief and focused, or it can be long and expansive. The bigger your dream, the longer the battle may take to win. It may even take decades. And then the next chapter, this is the climb, the moment of endurance. And you write, the journey is bigger and longer than anticipated.

And enthusiasm is waning. In this fourth stage, your travelers start to lose sight of why they started this journey at all. And they need help strengthening their resolve to finish. This is about the climb. I love the case study. It's personal to our audience. I've been friends with Scott Harrison for almost a decade now. I had him on recently.

Our audience knows charity water in the story. You use them as the case study here. Why? I love Scott. He's a friend of everyone. Or at least everyone feels theirs friend. That's part of his story. Yeah.

Yeah. And the climb phase is tricky. In storytelling, this is where the protagonist has to go into their inmost cave. It's called where they really count the cost again and say, is the sacrifice worth the reward? Usually they've been blown some fatal wound and they have to still climb out of a big cave or something. You know, they're like, uh, can I keep going? And recently, Scott had one of those moments where he's doing so well, revolutionizing charity, transforming lives, trying to bring clean water to the entire. entire world. So even with this much forward momentum and even with this much success behind him, he needed to reconnect again with who he was serving. So it was like he himself as the leader of this cause needed to reconnect to why he's doing it and at a very deep and visceral level. So he too

could finish the climb because getting clean water to everyone isn't like it's a decade-long dream. It might not even be realized completely in Scott's lifetime. So what he did is he needed to find a story that would rejuvenate him again. And he'd been hearing rumors of a young gal that had actually carried water all day and dropped the pot and hung herself from a tree. He'd always been hearing about this story. And he decided he was going to go on a personal pilgrimage to figure out who this woman was. He thought, oh, she must be unstable. You know, I want to find out what happened.

So he did. He interviewed the family and come to find out this gal was not insecure or unstable. She was well-beloved by the whole city, and she had carried water all day, but then dropped the pot on the way back and was so embarrassed and devastated that this little village she was in wouldn't have water for the day. She just entered into a state of despair and hung herself from the tree. So he went in, he built relationship with the families, spent, I don't know, a few days there. I don't know exactly the time he spent there. And it was what he needed to, a new story to cling to, that would give him that moment of endurance,

to endure this climb. This climb may last the rest of his life. So that's the case study that we use. We talk about his desire to transform how charity is done and that even though he's had success, he still needed an endurance story of his own. So he could keep going right now. I just think he's remarkable. Yeah, he is. And what they're doing is tremendous work. So we've just given you folks a snapshot of a couple of the chapters. But what I love best about Nancy and her work and her relationship to you folks is that she runs a small business. Her firm, Duarte Inc., 25 years now in existence, been very successful. Many of our listeners, Nancy, are small business owners or leaders within small business. So this is very, very personal to them and to you. And you wrote in the

forward that one of the things that has been a huge part of your success is inventing and reinventing. And that's so vital to small business. Why? And how would you encourage our small business leaders on that topic to make sure that you're staying ahead of the curve and not becoming stagnant. Yeah, you know, the U.S. Department of Labor says that most small businesses are gone within four to five years. And I realize that we actually have been around for 28 years. We have been through seven reinventions, which I think is interesting because that is about every four years. And I think what happens is if you stagnate, you become a pool of foul rot, right? Like a pool of water that just sits there, starts to rot. And somehow,

how early, early on when we started the business, it must have been late 80s, I'd seen a graphic of the S curve of innovation, which I'm sure you guys have seen the vertical axes is innovation, the Y axes is over time, and it's an S, it matures and has an incline. It starts, it grows, and then it matures. And it's about it at the time of maturity where you think, oh, things are going to finally smooth out. The chaos is going to listen. That's when you need to reignite and re-infuse your organization with yet again a new reinvention. So some of the different reinventions, we repositioned ourselves. We changed our services. Some were seasons where we had to change our own internal systems to make ourselves global ready. But literally when I mapped this out,

and my team was like, oh my God, you're right, because I still have people that have been with me since the very, very beginning. And it was really easy to see how each decision that we made about every four years drove us to be the right organization for the future. So my own customer desires change. Some of them, I drove them to change. Some of them changed and I just happen, you know, thank goodness, to always be at the right place in the future. And I met my customers there because their desires change too. Things change so rapidly. Running business today, you're having to run it almost in a state of chaos and fog of war, right? It's just foggy. Everything's changing so fast. And you have to make these bold declarations and say, we're going to be different in four years, and here's exactly what we're going to look like.

Let's all go there. That's what's kept us alive for so long, and I feel like we're unstoppable. A lot of agencies right now, I'm one of the few left standing as independent agencies. They're getting sucked up into corporations, sucked up into conglomerates, and I'm so pleased to be still standing here on my own two feet right in the middle of a new reinvention. As we look at speech, and story, ceremony, symbols, I'm just curious. What ceremonies do you employ at Duarte, Inc., that are significant, that you are very proud of? And maybe we can steal some of them.

Yeah, you know, I loved writing the ceremony section because it is based in the Rites of Passage. And basically what the Rights of Passage is doing is it's saying, we are no longer who we just were, we are now something new. So you look at a bama mitzvah, right? Or a marriage, like 10 minutes ago, I was single. He pronounced me man and wife now. I'm married, right? Something ended in something.

something new began. And as leaders leading transformation, if you're trying to be at a new place in the future, so much of why we can't move forward is because people can't let go with the past. And so it's really important to have ceremonies. It's a different ceremony you would have at each stage. And we have one interesting one that's here that one of my designers actually came up with about 15 years ago. It was an appreciation ceremony. So she went to the local cost plus and bought a little giraffe that kind of sits on the edge of your desk. And she said, you know, I really really, want to stand up and say, hey, thank you for doing this for me. I really appreciated it. And that went on for years. We would pass a giraffe, pass a giraffe. And so it was already this thing going on in my

culture, this little honor that we would do for each other. So the place is just exploded. We have thousands of little giraffes everywhere because people pass them. So what was interesting is that when we went through a season of incredible hardship, which was about two years ago, it was just really hard to get the organization global ready. I had to change my entire MIS system. I had to restructure the whole company, but it is a way so I could copy Duarte and paste it in any other geographies. Very important for this stage. My team was tired. They were exhausted. Some were starting to fall away because we were in that phase that I was talking about, where people go and they're inmost cave and say, is the sacrifice worth the reward? And some people decided to peel away from

Duarte because they didn't think the sacrifice was worth the reward. So everybody spread real thin. And I was traveling with one of my employees, and we were talking about the disarray and just everyone's nerves were afraid because I was asking a lot of everybody. And I thought, you know, what is a herd of giraffes called? So I look it up on my phone. And a herd of giraffes is called a tower. And I thought that was so beautiful that if we could coalesce together, we would be stronger like a tower and a tower is a refuge. And so I plucked this symbol of a giraffe up, amplified it in our. culture. Even that happened every week, people would pass the giraffe, and amplified it in the

culture, made it the official symbol of the organization. Now, it's on T-shirts, it's everywhere, and changed the name of the pass the giraffe to giraffe formations and amplified it into a ceremony and had a demarcation of how it used to happen, the passing of the giraffe, and then from this moment forward, it's giraffe formations and the place, just infusing it with this new meaning. In fact, one of my employees this weekend picked up a 12 foot and 8 foot and a six foot giraffe now that stand in my lobby. Like they just are so affectionate for it. So then they started to apply meaning to the giraffe.

Like, oh, a giraffe is the animal with the largest heart in the whole world. They'll put their necks out for each other. No giraffe has the same spots. We're all unique dwarians, you know. And it was really fun to take this kind of the ceremony, amplify the symbol from it, and use it as a tool to unite our hearts together in a sea. season that was really hard. It gave hope. So that's just like a little long story of what we did. I got to tell you, just transparency here. I thought, well, she'll give us something neat. That's

ten times more inspiring than I thought it was going to be. I'm so glad you shared that. I mean, really, I think that's wonderful because it really does combine ceremony and symbol two of the elements that you share in the book. Last question, Nancy, before we let you go, you've shared so much with us. But speaking to this audience, men and women, small business leaders, personal growth junkies, you know, people of all shape, sizes, ages, occupations, and beyond, if they were to pick up a copy of Illuminate, which I hope they do, what would you want them to walk away with after they have closed the last page? You know, it's really hard to, as a leader, to see yourself. I think I obsess over the future. I'm so future-focused. Sometimes I don't understand the impact

I'm having on the present. And I feel like if one thing happens, it's that they would be able to see things from a perspective they had not considered, and that they would also understand that a lot of times the idea they have won't come to fruition with just one presentation, that it's actually a movement, and it's multimodal and multiple stages, and it takes planning. And I would hope that people feel a sense of hope, like, oh, I was just about to give up on this idea because I myself just didn't have the endurance to keep going. And I'm hoping maybe that people will pick up a lost dream or pick up something that they thought they didn't have the

energy or wherewithal to know how to communicate it to make it come true. And that would be my prayer for the listenership is that they themselves would find hope as their own travelers feel a sense of hope too. She is Nancy Duarte. The book is Illuminate. Ignite Change through speeches, stories, ceremonies, and symbols. Nancy, tell folks how they can connect with you online. Thank you. So my website is Duarte.com. There is a visual summary of the book at Duarte.com slash illuminate. I do connect to anyone who connects to me on LinkedIn. I'm on Twitter at Nancy Duarte. My co-author is on Twitter at Patty San. It's P-A-T-T-I-S-A-N. And that's about it. Awesome. Well, hey, thank you so much. This was really, really great. I know I'm better for it. I know

our audience is. And we appreciate you spending time with us. Oh, thank you so much. I had a great time. All right, folks, I'm going to tell you this. I have highlighted the stew out of that book, illuminate, ignite change through speech, stories, ceremonies, and symbols. I highly recommend you get it. It's wherever books are sold online or in bookstores. It really is a tremendous companion to the leader who cares about how and why you communicate. So dive into that.

Well, InfusionSoft, as always, has an amazing resource this episode. We've been telling you about this. Nothing new, but I want to make sure you've heard about it. Sales team hiring guide. That's right. It's absolutely free. It's called the sales team hiring guide. Here's just a snapshot of the things in this hiring guide. Seven things to look for in a quality resume. Five questions to ask when you're doing a phone interview. Five questions to ask references. You can go to infusionsoft.com slash sales guide. Infusionsoft.com slash sales guide to get this resource. So take advantage of this sales team hiring guide. You know, when we've made,

mention these resources sometimes, I want to make sure you folks don't just check out. Because the context for this is, if you're thinking about what we just heard from Nancy Duarte and how you communicate and how this stuff just needs to literally trickle down to the entire organization, if you think about the importance of your sales team, if they're not going out and killing it, as Dave Ramsey says, and dragging it home, then everybody has a problem. Everybody's important. I'm not saying that the sales team has any more importance than anybody else. But hiring and getting the sales hires right is huge. I mean, think about it. If this Infusionsoft Guide helps you not hire one bonehead, how much time does that save you? How much money does it save you? Why wouldn't you take advantage of this? Infusionsoft.com slash sales guide, jump on it.

These folks know what they're doing. This is a wonderful resource. All right, folks, I wrote a book called One Question, and I never talk about it on this podcast, and I'm not going to talk about it now, But it does make me think, I need to ask you one question. Are you subscribed to this podcast? You're listening to it, but are you subscribed?

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We sure would appreciate it. Let me tell you what's coming up as we wrap up our Small Business Appreciation Month. This is a very, very special episode in that we are going to cover two important topics and really all around the context of thinking through the feelings and the emotions of some of the people that we touch every day. One, this millennial generation, and two, our family, you know, and specifically young people. And we talk about that with two doctors, Dr. Tim Elmore, who is one of the most respected authorities on the younger generations. They wrote a book that I think is a must read for everybody called Generation IY. we discuss that book because many of you leaders that are listening right now are raising or leading

young people. And then after that conversation, which is very practical and will help you, we're going to talk to Dr. Meg Meeker, who Dave Ramsey refers to as America's mom. I mean, she's fantastic. I love her. She wrote strong father, strong daughter, strong mother, strong son. And we really get personal because here's the thing we want to do from time to time on this podcast. We don't want to always be encouraging you and we want to equip you. And part of that is not just in the workplace, but also at home. You men and women are also husbands and wives, fathers and mothers. And we want to encourage your heart in that all-important area because here's the deal.

It's hard to win in life if you're winning at the office but losing at home. In fact, I would say very, very difficult. It certainly makes it much more challenging tool. win in your career when you're not winning at home. I think they go hand in hand if you want to have sustained wins throughout your life. So that's coming up. Don't miss that. We want to thank Nancy Duarte and Guy and Ike Eastman for being our guest on this episode. Again, text the phrase be debt-free-3344-4-4 to get our absolutely free and really helpful Entree leader's guide to running a debt-free business. On behalf of our producer, Eric Anthony, and the entire

entire Entree leadership team. Thank you so much for listening. We appreciate you and we will talk with you again very soon.