Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth - The power of strategic narrative | Andy Raskin
Episode Date: May 28, 2023Brought to you by Coda—Meet the evolution of docs | Lenny’s Job Board—Hire the best product people. Find the best product gigs | Eco—Your most rewarding app—Andy Raskin helps CEOs align thei...r leadership teams around a strategic narrative—a single story that powers success in sales, marketing, product, fundraising, and recruiting. His clients include Gong, Dropbox, Uber, Salesforce, Square, and IBM. In today’s episode, we discuss:• What a strategic narrative is, and how to craft one• How having a strategic narrative can bring alignment to your entire company• Examples of strategic narratives in action• Who needs a strategic narrative and who doesn’t• Why Andy thinks about movements instead of categories—Find the transcript at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-power-of-strategic-narrative—Where to find Andy Raskin:• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andyraskin/• Website: https://www.andyraskin.com/• Podcast: https://andyraskin.com/podcast/—Where to find Lenny:• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com• Twitter: https://twitter.com/lennysan• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/—In this episode, we cover:(00:00) Andy’s background(08:03) What is a strategic narrative?(10:34) How Salesforce would have pitched the old way(12:02) Examples of a strategic narrative in action (15:23) How one piece of writing skyrocketed Andy’s career(16:40) The power of writing online(17:53) Two paths to writing online(19:27) Naming the old game(20:59) Naming the stakes (23:29) Naming the objective(25:17) Naming the obstacles(26:35) Overcoming the obstacles(26:57) How the strategic narrative parallels the hero’s journey (28:25) Telling one story well vs. being a good storyteller(29:18) The 5-step framework summarized(31:33) An example of the 5-step framework in action(36:12) The impact of shifting to the strategic narrative approach (39:08) Companies that are nailing their strategic narrative (40:36) Why Andy thinks about movements instead of categories(44:15) Should every company have a strategic narrative?(46:33) Signs that something is broken in your strategic narrative(48:53) Steps to get started on your own(51:36) How to reach Andy(51:53) Why the second session is the low point in the process(55:30) Why the CEO needs to be part of the process(57:40) Lightning round—Referenced:• Salesforce: https://www.salesforce.com/• Marc Benioff: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcbenioff/• Zuora: https://www.zuora.com/• The Greatest Sales Deck I’ve Ever Seen: https://medium.com/the-mission/the-greatest-sales-deck-ive-ever-seen-4f4ef3391ba0• Gong: https://www.gong.io/• Tien Tzuo: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tientzuo/• Want a Better Pitch? Master the “Move”: https://medium.com/firm-narrative/want-a-better-pitch-master-the-move-5fbee071ca7f• Star Wars: https://www.starwars.com/• The Hero with a Thousand Faces: https://www.amazon.com/Thousand-Faces-Collected-Joseph-Campbell/dp/1577315936• 360Learning: https://360learning.com/• Nick Hernandez: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicoconut/• Amit Bendov: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amitbendov/• Drift: https://www.drift.com/• OneTrust: https://www.onetrust.com/• “Shitty First Drafts” by Anne Lamott: https://learning.hccs.edu/faculty/pamela.golden/engl2327/shitty-first-drafts-by-anne-lamott/view• Story: https://www.amazon.com/Story-Substance-Structure-Principles-Screenwriting/• Out of Sheer Rage: https://www.amazon.com/Out-Sheer-Rage-Wrestling-Lawrence/• Station Eleven: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10574236/• Fitbit: https://www.fitbit.com/global/us/home• Apple Watch: https://www.apple.com/watch—Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.—Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe
Transcript
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The way I learned how to pitch in business school, I think the way most people did is what I call the arrogant doctor.
So you have a problem, a pain.
I have a solution, you know, a treatment.
And I'm going to tell you why it's better than all the other treatments.
And the structure that I read about in these movies was different.
Every movie starts with some kind of shift in the world.
And I call this shift the shift from the old game to a new game.
And the archetypal example of this, I think, in the business world, is what Benioff.
did with Salesforce. So he comes in and he says, hey, software is over. And there's this new world
called the cloud, a new game, new rules. You know, that's the new way to win. And we're going to help
you if you're in there. This structure really is about defining a movement. And that's very
different from, hey, I'm going to solve your problem. Welcome to Lenny's podcast where I interview
world class product leaders and growth experts to learn from their hard one experiences building
and growing today's most successful products.
Today, my guest is Andy Raskin.
Andy helps CEOs and company leaders
align their teams around something he calls
a strategic narrative,
which, as you'll learn all about in this episode,
is essentially a simple story
that helps people understand
why they need your product,
and with that,
helps you align your sales, marketing, and product teams,
along with your fundraising,
and even your hiring efforts.
Andy has worked closely
with some of the most successful founders
and companies out there,
including companies like God,
Dropbox, Uber, Salesforce, Square, IBM, and many others.
In our conversation, Andy explains why most people are pitching their product completely wrong,
why focusing on the problem you're solving for people is no longer an effective pitch,
and how the strategic narrative helps you frame your solution in a much more effective way.
Andy also shares a ton of examples of the framework of action,
why focusing on categories and category creation is so limiting,
signs your narrative needs work, and so much more,
Enjoy this episode with Andy Raskin after a short word from our sponsors.
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Andy, welcome to the podcast. Oh, thanks, Lenny. So great to talk of you.
So you're quite known as someone that helps CEOs optimize their pitch, their story, their strategy,
which we're going to get deep into. But before we do,
you that can you just give us a little glimpse into how you found your way into this line of work?
So I started as a coder. I was a computer science major, undergrad. A friend and I had an idea
for an app. So this was like during the dot-com years, so Windows app. And we coded a little prototype
and we started, we put it out there. We started getting some users. And we thought, oh, okay,
maybe we can get some investment. So of the two of us, I spoke English fluently. So we just
decided, okay, I'll write the investor pitch. So I wrote the pitch, sent it out, and the reaction
was really bad. And one BC wrote back and said, listen, I rate every plan I get on a scale of
1 to 10, and yours is a 1. And the next to the one, he wrote in parentheses, worst in case we thought
like maybe that was the top of his rating scale. Yeah, brutal. And but then lower down, so this
was back when they would like, you'd send the hard copy of the plan and they might mail it back
with comments written in. And he had written in not a compelling story. And a few weeks later,
I'm walking by this Barnes & Noble. And there's a sign in the window and it says, for anyone who
wants to tell a compelling story. Okay, that's me. And there's an arrow that's pointing to these books.
And he turned out to be screenwriting books. And I didn't know anything about this. So I started
reading these books. And it strikes me like a movie is a pitch. Like, you know, what is Star Wars a
pitch for? It's a pitch for, you know, be good, like care about people, trust the force, you know,
in their terms. But I don't have a couple hours, you know, I'm pitching a business. It's very different,
you know, I'm not writing a three-x screenplay. So like, what applies, what doesn't apply? I mean,
these are questions I think I'm still asking. But I did my best to kind of take some of the learnings
of how the movie was structured.
It was very different from how my pitch was structured and kind of restructure it.
And we did that and we sent the pitch out and we start getting more interest.
Like, he's really clear.
And then we had a term sheet, I think a few months later.
And I'm like, what is this story thing that, you know, we didn't change the product.
It was basically the same.
My business just sort of how we talked about it.
That was really interesting to me.
And I mean, over the next like 10,
15 years, I thought about, like, hey, maybe I could do consulting with this.
Like, CEOs who heard about this would, like, ask me about it.
But I still was like, no CEO's going to, like, budget a line item for the story.
You know, like, that's not a thing.
So I just didn't do it for a really long time until eventually I was proven wrong about that.
And how many years ago was this at this point?
So this was like 98 when I was pitching that company.
Amazing. I think there's a couple interesting tidbits about this. One is that
interesting opportunities arise when you're doing something you're excited about. So you had
the startup. It didn't work out. But like you've you had a problem that you solve for yourself
and that led to another bigger opportunity. Yeah, totally. So that's interesting. And then also
just some of the best opportunities arise from solving your own problem, not having, not planning
to start something with it, but just like I have a problem. Yeah, I think that's same with you.
Right. Like you started writing about stuff and like boom. Like that became the thing.
Absolutely.
It was not quite boom, but eventually became boom.
Feels like boom from outside.
Yeah, that's how it goes.
It always feels overnight for everyone else that isn't here.
Right, exactly.
Yeah.
Okay, so let's get into it.
So you help CEOs at this point come up with what you call a strategic narrative.
And you help them not only come up with this strategic narrative,
but you help their teams align around this strategic narrative.
So let's just start with what is a strategic narrative?
Yeah, you'd think like,
I've been doing this for like 10 years. I'd have a very snappy definition of it.
And I don't know if I'm really happy with like I've ever found one that totally gets at it yet.
The one thing I say is like it's this one story that the CEO uses to drive success in marketing sales,
but also product, that it becomes like a North Star, strategic North Star for product roadmap,
for fundraising, for recruiting really everything.
And what I think it's really interesting is a kind of qualifier is that this story has a
certain structure.
Kind of like I said, like when I found those screenwriting books, I sort of shifted the structure.
And the traditional structure, the way I learned how to pitch in business school, I think
the way most people did is what I call the arrogant doctor.
So you have a problem, a pain.
I have a solution, you know, a treatment, and I'm going to tell you why it's better than all the other treatment.
Not to say it's not better, but just this is the structure of it.
And it kind of sets you up for bragging.
Like, let me tell you why it's so great.
And the structure that I read about in these movies was different.
The movies, every movie starts with some kind of shift in the world.
in the character's world, right?
And I call this shift, the shift from the old game to a new game.
And the archetypal example of this, I think, in the business world, is what Benioff did with
Salesforce.
So he comes in and he says, hey, software is over, like, meaning software in the sense that
we're going to own it and maintain it.
And there's this new world called the cloud.
a new game, like the new rules, everything has changed. And we're going to, you know,
that's the new way to win. And we're going to help you if you're, you're in there.
This structure really is about defining a movement. And, and that's very different from,
hey, I'm going to solve your problem. I think the Salesforce example is an awesome example of
your approach. If they were thinking about it in the old way, what would Salesforce have done?
How would they have pitched it if not for everyone's moving to the cloud?
You're dumb if we're using desktop software.
Well, I think they would have just come out and said like, oh, you know, hey, I mean,
CRM, by the way, was already a category.
I mean, there were already, you know, Siebel was the huge giant of that space.
There were already even companies doing it online, doing it through the web.
And so they would have come and said, oh, you know, we're easier to install than, you know,
faster to get up and running than Siebel.
or we have this much functionality compared to
I think it was it, was it NetSuite
or I don't know,
so there was some early,
early Salesforce-like thing that was out there.
They would have done these sort of comparison things.
And, you know, Benny up, I mean,
he's a pretty proud guy.
I think he did still say like,
hey, we're the number one here.
But that wasn't what they led with.
They led with this story about this fundamental
paradigm shift.
And, you know, are you in or are you not in?
And what they did was instead of just saying, like, hey, we're better.
They said, hey, all those others, those Sebel's, they're part of that old game.
You want to play that software game.
Be my guest.
Go, go by Sebel.
And, you know, of course, we know how it played out.
So the crux of the approach is instead of problem solution, you should go do this.
It's the world is changing.
Here's where it's going.
and we're going to help you get there.
And I want to go in a little more depth of the framework.
But before that, what are some other examples
to give people a sense of like, oh, I see.
I understand what this might be.
So another great example, and no coincidence.
So is Zawarra.
So Zawar is the company I wrote about in this post
called The Greatest Sales like I've ever seen.
The CEO of Zawara, Tien Suo,
was employee number 11 at Salesforce.
So he learns this from Baniop.
And he's pitching, you know,
hey, in the old world, businesses operated on transactions.
You sold things to people outright.
In this new world, he calls it the subscription economy,
where people want the benefits of those things
without necessarily having to pay for them.
And of course, gives all these examples of all the winners, you know,
in this, look at all the winning companies.
They're all basically going to this new model.
And, you know, and so he's pitching someone like,
like Ford. And you can imagine they're going to Ford and pitching, you know, a subscription
for car service, which is quite different from just the lease. And they're starting out with
this. You know, this is the big shift. Another one team I worked with early on, and I think they'd
agree, like their story came out of this work, was Gong. So Gong, you know, everyone probably
knows by now, like they, they, you know, they take the video recordings of all your sales calls and
they stick AI onto it and come out with all these insights.
And that story is, you know, hey, goodbye opinions.
It used to be a world where we sales is run up and it's, hello reality.
That now all the winners are going to are adopting this new mindset where we really have
to see what's really going on.
In the Gong example, let's say, what would they have done if they were going like,
here's the problem, here's the solution, here's what we're going to do for you?
Yeah, I mean, that's kind of what they were doing.
when they started out. And I'm not saying like that that didn't work totally. I mean,
already by the time they started doing this, like they were already starting to become a big
company. I remember Amit Bendov said to me, listen, Andy, you know, they were around like series
B. I think this is around 2018. It's like, we're going to be a huge company. The question is how
huge. And, you know, I think that this narrative, like along the lines of like a Zwarra or sales
or if we get this right, this is going to be a multiplier on our growth.
So, you know, I don't remember exactly the pitch beforehand, but it was very much like,
hey, we're going to record your calls, we're going to get insights from them.
They're better than the insights you could get from Salesforce.
There wasn't this kind of unifying kind of movement ideology that put it all in context.
And what was really interesting was one thing I don't think they'd be upset if I shared
and maybe it's known.
Like, you know, initially they were seen as a tool for like sales operations, you know,
for someone who's going to record the calls.
And what this narrative did for them, I think it was already starting to happen,
but what it really coalesce was this is a tool for sales leadership.
You talked about Zura and the post you wrote.
And I imagine many people listening are like, oh, shit, this is the guy that wrote that post
that everyone's always sharing with me about how to make a deck.
And I wanted to ask how.
impactful was that one piece of writing for you in your career just like as a tangent?
I had written some other posts on Medium in particular. Medium, medium chance changed quite a bit.
But back then, I found that I could write stuff there and get really like a lot of people
who were interested in what I was interested would sort of come in and and create some noise about it.
So I was already doing this kind of work for a couple of years. But that post,
immediately got something like two million views around the world. And I started getting inquiries
from teams all over the world. And it was, I think, what really allowed me to say,
know, okay, I could do this work. That CEOs would budget a line item for this. Because I think
if you really understand that post, it's not really about a sales deck. It's really about
this story that TN and that, you know, the CEO is telling everywhere and that, you know, is showing up
in the sales deck and structuring it that way. I think it's just another example that comes up a
bunch on this podcast. It's just the power of writing and the power of content. And there's,
yeah, and you're shaking your head. Yeah. Totally. I mean, I had a, I had a little mini career as a
journalist as a freelance writer. And I really love that. Actually, I took a class in New York called
how to write a magazine article.
I was sort of mid-career.
I was sort of curious.
And the class wound up being more about
how to sell a magazine article.
And I found I really love that,
like pitching articles.
But one thing that was always a downer for me,
it was like,
there's always this editor,
you know,
sort of like deciding what I'm,
what's going to be out there.
And, you know,
when you work with a great editor,
it's great.
Like,
they make your,
stuff better and they're priceless. But still, there's this intermediary. And what started to
happen, I think, around when I started writing around 2013, 14, you start to see these platforms
like Medium, even LinkedIn, where you can just write and have this audience. And I think no way
I could do the work I do if that development hadn't happened first. I'm taking us off track,
but I want to go a little deeper with this. I find that there's kind of two paths to writing
online. One is your path where you write one piece that just like blows up like crazy. The other path
is more my path where I just write consistently for a long time and both work. And most people
try to go your path and they never succeed. It's really hard to make something get two million views,
but you can go that path. You know, this is like you said earlier like, hey, it seems like boom,
but really it did. So I had, that was that was probably the 30th or 40th piece, you know,
and they were gradually getting more and more traction. There was one I wrote,
before that about it's kind of dissecting Elon Musk's pitch for the power wall, the battery
that they sell. And that one got maybe like a few hundred thousand views and also was a big jump.
And then, you know, the next one got, you know, some paltry number. So there was a, what I find is like,
yeah, there's this, there's this a while where you're writing and it feels like you're talking
to nobody. And then sort of gradually it grows.
And you'll have these peaks and then, but then, you know, over time is where the magic is.
Okay.
I'm really glad you pointed that out.
That it rarely is just you write one thing and boom.
Yeah.
Great.
I'll also say, sorry, because I worked in a magazine, I haven't done a newsletter because
that idea of like having a deadline all the time and like constantly having to,
we used to call the magazine, feed the beast.
Like, I feel so free not to have that.
So for now, at least I haven't done that.
I know that well.
So let me take us back on track
and let's talk about just the high level framework here.
So you talked about it starts with this idea of tell people,
world is changing,
join this movement.
What's like the simple way to think about the pieces of this strategic narrative framework?
A lot of times people,
we say,
hey,
I tried it.
Didn't work.
And well,
one very common thing,
at least earlier,
was they would basically just take the Zwara deck.
They'd get a hold of it and just like put their logo on it.
And so, you know, that's not going to work.
One thing is, you know, we're not just saying, hey, the world is changing.
And sometimes I'll see, the world is changing.
And there'll be used to be, and there's a long list of things.
And then now it is a long list of bullet points, right?
What's really, I think, he is naming it, like naming that old game.
The examples you saw, software, cloud, transactions, subscription, opinions, reality.
this very, very concise naming is really key.
And it's hard because in making it compact, you're losing completeness.
So, you know, you can imagine you're in a meeting.
Someone says, like, hey, how about we do transactions to subscriptions?
And so I says, well, I don't know.
There's a lot of things I don't really subscribe to.
Subscription economy, really?
So we're always kind of overstating it in a way.
But it's not a problem.
I don't think people say like, oh, you know, that's wrong subscription or kind of because I still go to the grocery store and buy things, right?
So anyway, that's the first piece.
The second piece is what I call naming mistakes.
And there's a few ways to do this, but one that's really great if we can do it is to name the winners to show that winners are already playing this new game.
So, for instance, with Zawar, they're saying, hey, look, look at all the, the,
The new winners, like this is like 2015, so like Airbnb, box, you know, all these companies,
they're already doing this subscription thing.
And by the way, overall, like they show this scary stat about the like the longevity of Fortune 500
companies.
It's getting smaller.
And so it's a little disingenuous, but basically they make this case that, hey, companies
are dying.
The ones that are winning are doing this, right?
And so to the extent we can, we want to make this life and death, just like a movie, right?
this is again, I'll make the parallel to Star Wars. So Luke spends like the first 15 minutes of
the movie, belly aching, like he wants to be a pilot. He wants to go out and have adventures and
space. So Obi-Wan comes. He says, hey, we got this mission, this princess, we got to read
and all this stuff. Let's go out. Let's go. I'll teach you to be a pilot. We'll go to have adventures
in space. What does Luke say? He says, oh, you know what? I can't really get it. I can't really
get involved, they got to go home, it's late. Who does this sound like? The reluctant buyer,
you know, so yeah, I want to be innovative and also, ooh, you know what, everyone had budget this
quarter. So how does George Lucas change Luke's mind? He basically kills the aunt and uncle.
Sorry, spoilers. It's been 40 years, though. If you haven't seen it, you're probably not going to
see it. Kills the aunt and uncle, now it's pretty clear they're coming for Luke. Now the stakes are life
in death. Probably he's going to be dead, but there is this other path that Obi-Wan holds out for him.
And whenever I work with teams and I talk about this, so they're like, okay, I guess we got to then
kill the prospects, aunt and uncle. And basically, yes, I mean, like, figuratively, we got to show
them that the future is not going to just be sort of okay, that there are, it's probably, people talk
about, like, making it emotional. And I've always wondered, like, what does that mean? Like, literally,
what is the definition? And this is, for me, the definition is that,
The prospect doesn't see the future as sort of okay.
They see it as split between a very negative outcome and a potentially very positive outcome.
The third piece is what I call naming the object of the new game.
I used to call it the promised land message, but I've changed it to this because I think it's, I found that it's sort of a little more fruitful.
you know, this subscription economy transactions, it can get a little highfalutin and sort of like big, right?
So, you know, but like on the website, when we just have to boil it down to a couple of words that's going to be clear like right away, what can we say?
And I find that, you know, what's the object of the new game really boils it down is kind of the rallying cry of the movement.
So the example with Zvora, the object for a while was turn customers into subscribers.
Very simple, you know, just sort of flows from it.
Airbnb for a while had this one live anywhere.
You know, if you think about, you know, belong anywhere.
Well, actually it was.
Oh, live like a human.
You're right.
It was belong anywhere.
And then it switched to live there.
It was, I may have the chronology wrong, but it was the two of those things.
You know better than I do, right?
But either one, I mean, I think they're saying very similar things.
Hey, there's this new world where you can, you know,
you don't have to live in hotels.
You can stay and people.
What's the object of that game is to belong anywhere,
to live there, right?
And I love it when it works that way where it's almost like an asymptotically
unachievable thing.
Like you're never literally going to live there.
And if you think about it,
this buyer mission statement is this rallying cry.
I think of it really as the mission of the company.
I mean,
what is the mission of Airbnb other than to help people,
live there, you know, if they're going to be customer focused and all that.
The fourth piece is, okay, well, this object of the game, you know, winning this game,
it better be hard, right?
Because if it's not, like, we don't have a, like, why are we even exist?
Just like with the movie, like, if it's, if, if Luke can just go, like, destroy the death
star, then, you know, no movie.
So there's got to be sort of obstacles in the way, things that are preventing them from it.
So she's saying, okay, you want to turn customers into subscribers.
So whereas Zwara, where they go next to say, okay, well, how are you going to measure
lifetime value?
Because now you have this always on thing.
How are you going to measure preferences and how they're changing over?
All these new kind of challenges that didn't exist before.
And then these are like the, these are like the, you know, the monsters and Lord of the Rings
or, you know, the empire and Star Wars.
These are the obstacles.
And I think about them because they sound like problems.
This is what people would normally say, oh, these are the problems we solve.
But by setting up this story thing first, we've got to repackage them as obstacles to a new goal state that we've already positioned as life and death.
So they take on this much more emotional meaning.
We understand why they matter.
And then, of course, the last piece is now talking about, well, how are we going to overcome these?
obstacles. How, you know, what are the, in the narrative people in the movie business, they call
these like the magic gifts that the main character gets to go, you know, help them win. What are the
ways, now we can talk about that and success stories and all the rest of the stuff. So there's
some obvious parallels to the hero's journey here. I imagine that it was a source of inspiration.
And the Star Wars, I think, is like the epitome of that journey. Can you talk about just how
related those two are, how you think about that? Yeah, I mean, so the heroes,
journey is this book that comes from, I think it's Hero of a Thousand Faces, is a book by Joseph Campbell,
sociologist, and he looks at myths over different cultures and different times, and he finds this
kind of common structure that he calls the hero's journey. I mean, there's some controversy about
that, about his book, you know, is it a very male-oriented sort of take on things and a bunch
thing. But, you know, even that aside, I found when I would talk about Heroes Journey and stuff,
it's just like it didn't really tell me what to do. Like, okay, yeah, I got to do this pitch. So,
you know, in the Heroes Journey, there's like refusal of the call. That's actually that one thing
where Luke, like, doesn't, says he doesn't want to go and where the buyer says, you know,
hey, I don't have budget. But I don't know, it was just like too theoretical for me to really,
when I use it, people seem to sort of glass over.
So I just don't really talk about that at all.
But yeah, I mean, that's behind a lot of this stuff for sure.
Yeah, that makes sense because I think people hear about that all the time when they're like,
become better storyteller.
Tell your story in this hero's journey.
And it's like, I don't know what I'm doing.
Yeah.
Also, I would say, you know, there's storytelling as a skill kind of thing, which is a great thing.
You know, you learn how to tell stories better, blah, blah, blah.
I'm not really interested in that in my work.
What I'm interested in is the one story and the structure of that one story.
And this one story, it doesn't really have, you know, the world has moved from transactions to subscriptions.
Like, there's not a main character in that story who's like having a problem and getting, you know,
it's almost as if what's happening is we're presenting, we're turning the person we talk to into the main character by by creating this, by spelling out the shift.
we're like changing their world.
And we're asking and we're saying, hey, you, you got a, you got to change and you want to come
with us.
Yeah.
And it's almost like you're putting them into the hero's journey.
Like you can, here's how you win.
Exactly.
I love that.
So let me just try to summarize what you shared this five step framework.
So you start with here's a new movement that's happening and you want to name it.
You want to name the stakes and there's winners and losers and here's it's already happening
and it's really important.
Then you want to name the object of the new game like turning customers into subscribers and to
subscribers, then show the obstacles.
Here's why it's challenging and then talk about how you're going to overcome these
obstacles.
And by the way, the naming of the object of the new game, I find it often is really nice to do
it as a question.
So, you know, so we asked it.
So, hey, there's this shift from transactions to subscriptions and look, everyone's doing
it.
So we asked a simple question.
What would it take to turn every customer into a subscriber?
And this way we're kind of bringing the person we're pitching to along, almost like they're coming along with us as a co-adventurer in crafting this story.
I love that.
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Lenny. Maybe just to reinforce this even more. What if we go through the five steps and just
with one company as an example and just talk about what each of those were for them?
Okay. Great. So there's a company called 360 learning. So this company, I don't know if folks
know this company has raised like over $200 million. They're in the space of like corporate
training software, you know, so big companies, they have to train their people on all kinds of
stuff. So you want to go through that one?
Yeah, that sounds great.
Okay, great.
So the story, and by the way, Nick Hernandez is the CEO,
and Nick's been on my podcast, so he's talked about this.
So they, for a long time, were pitching themselves as collaborative learning.
So they have, you know, features that let people sort of collaborate on courses and all kinds of stuff.
And Nick is often pitching CEOs, of course, his team is as well.
And he told me that it was sort of like kind of falling a little bit flat.
Like people, collaborative learning, okay, whatever, you know, how are you different from this learning platform, this learning platform?
And so when we work together, you know, this collaborative learning, it's almost like a category name or it's a scriptor or something.
They was so embedded that I decided like, I don't even want to like take it out, but can we define it in terms of like a of the story?
So the story they came to was, hey, you.
used to be that companies train their people through a,
through basically a mindset of top down learning.
There's going to be some like learning guru at the company.
They're going to get all the courses.
They're going to, you know, put it all together and like sort of set out this
training, uh, material to everybody.
And what's happening now is winning companies are,
are, are, are, are approaching this differently in, in, in this,
they're adopting this approach
we might call upskill from within
which is
if you look at like Google
there's this page where I think you can go
it's a public where you can connect with
Google's AI experts
they literally turn their internal experts
into like champions that are educating
not even just the company but even external
people they created this culture
of our own people are going to be the educators
so that's the shift from top down
to this upskill from within.
And of course, I just even started to do the second piece, which was like, hey, there's,
look at the big companies who are doing this.
And then I think they showed, hey, you know, you're not doing this.
Look, training is becoming very expensive.
It's people don't care.
People, you know, so this is the downside.
So we're creating these sort of stake.
And also, I think he has something about, you know, how training now, like companies, like,
if you don't adapt, like, if you can't get these skills to your people, like, if you're a car company
and you can't get these skills around, you know,
electric cars, so you're dead, you know. So Nick was in France and he saw this poster from a recruiting
poster for McDonald's. And it said, hey, if you work at McDonald's, you're going to learn from
everybody else on your team. And it was like, wow, there it is. Right. So it's another example we
used as a kind of winner example. And so then the question became, you know, how, I can't remember
exactly, it was something like, how do you upscale from within? Like, what would it take for you to turn your
experts into like champions of learning in the company and turn them into stars and all this,
right? And then I'm going to forget here what all the obstacles were, but I think it was things
like, well, how are you going to make it possible for anybody to create a course? People who don't
even know how to, you know, might have expertise in electric engines, but, you know, don't know
how to create a course? That happened. How are you going to make sure that there's still like the
learning department? They're going to keep control and can, you know, all this. You can imagine all the
different kind of questions. And then, of course, now 360 learning starts talking about all that
stuff. And what Nick has told me, I'm actually going to be on a, on a, a webinar with Nick.
Someone asked me, like, could you bring in a CEO who could talk about, you know, this stuff,
not just you blabbing on about strategic narrative. And so Nick is going to join it, join it.
And we had a dress rehearsal the other day. And he was telling me, like, it's just like,
when he starts with this now, he doesn't even get the question anymore of like, well, how are you
different from this other learning platform, which used to always be the thing. And it's just a much
more seamless like, okay, yeah, talk to our learning people, get this, get this going. So it just sounds
like it's been really effective for them. That's actually what I was going to ask next is what kind of
impact have you seen with someone shifting their pigeon story from this doc? What was it, the arrogant doctor
approach to the strategic narrative? Yeah, I mean, it's always this kind of thing I hear. I mean,
Of course, it's very difficult to measure this.
I mean, like, what was the value of the strategic narrative for Gong and its growth?
Was it 3x versus one out of two X?
Who knows, right?
But the things I hear from CEOs, a few things.
One is that, yeah, when they're pitching, they're not pitching features out of context.
They're pitching now a movement, which is a lot better place to be, I think.
think, you know, you're in a way, you're not pitching product. Product, product is like a prop
for making the story come true. Very important prop. But there's this higher level overlay that
becomes the focus of a conversation at first. And of course, we're going to get into product.
And that that helps sell. Once we have this story, then everything in marketing can be all about
this story. You know, with Zwara, when they, if you look at their website, well, when they, when they first
started doing this, like maybe 80% of the content is not, hey, let me tell you about how Zawar
is so great or here's our new release or whatever. It's here's how music companies are embracing
subscriptions. Here's how luxury goods companies are embracing subscriptions. You know,
it's like all these kind of almost trend pieces that become unlimited fodder. And again,
you're not touting your, it's less salesy, right? Another thing I just hear always, I just
interviewed a CEO this morning for my podcast. And this is the first thing he actually said was
it becomes the strategic North Star for the product. So what he was telling me, and this was
actually a little unusual, I asked him like, why did you come to me at first? And of course,
I've asked him that before, but he said something that I, this time that was like a little different
from what I heard before. He said, you know, we were constantly getting feature requests through
sales, through customer success. And we had sort of no, like way, bar for to decide, like,
well, what do we take on? What don't we take on? And this clearly has become our bar.
You know, if you think about it for 360 learning, you know, does it help us up skill from within?
It's in. Does it not? Or it's prioritized. Does it not less prioritize?
does. Amit Bendoff told me this directly. He said, you know, we exactly the same thing.
We used to, he said, we get a lot of requests for features, and a lot of them are basically
about opinions, like some way to record opinions. And this is gone? We're not going to do those.
And gone, yeah, we're not going to do those. Are there any companies out there that maybe
are clients that you see as like, wow, these guys are nailing it and they're doing great job of
the strategic narrative? Well, one that really comes to mind is, I mean, it's been out there for a while,
but drift, you know, drift comes out with essentially like a chatbot for your website,
which might be like the 30th chatbot for your website.
And they don't say, hey, here's why our chatbot is the best one.
They start from a completely different place, which is, hey, used to be people would sort of
wait around for you to get back to them.
You know, it was a world of sort of later, they called it the world of,
forms. You know, you put up a web form and you expect someone's going to fill it out and maybe
wait a few days while you take your sweet time deciding if you're going to get back to them.
And David Cancel and David Gerhardt started from right at the beginning saying,
now we're in a world of now where they, where buyers are, I think they showed this woman,
I remember this woman sleeping with our phone. Like that's your, that's your prospect.
But they're just always on.
And they're going to expect you to be engaging with them right away.
And they called this conversational marketing.
And, you know, they really went with that and created, I think, a whole movement.
And they broke away from all of the other, you know, chatbos.
Awesome example.
So earlier you threw out this word category.
And I've noticed you haven't talked about category and category creation too much.
and I think that you're kind of not a fan of this idea of creating a category and focusing on category.
I'd love to hear your perspective on how that all relates to the stuff you recommend.
Lenny, are you trying to get me in trouble like that guy in your podcast who attacked jobs to be done?
Apparently, let's do it.
Let's see what kind of trouble we can you have to.
I would soften it a little bit and not just because I don't want the ire of the category design folks.
but I really would soften to say, I wouldn't say I'm not a fan of creating category.
Look, I think the, you know, if you look, play bigger, which has become kind of the Bible of that category creation thing, you know, if you look behind that, they're going to, what do they say the category is?
They say it's a narrative. It's a story about how the world was to how it is. And so what I find, though, is that when people think about category creation, they tend to just focus on like, okay, well, this category name.
to be that we got? What are these three words that are, or two words, whatever, that are going to
sort of magically make us seem like we're totally different from everybody else? And A, I think
that's not really possible. Like, these three words aren't going to do it. Take Gong. I mean,
already other companies were using this term revenue intelligence, right? With Gong, it suddenly
becomes a thing because I think they have this opinions to reality story,
behind it, you know, at one point, again, I asked him, he said, yeah, because he had really,
I remember he really struggled a what should we call it? What should we call it? He came over with,
that one. But then when I asked him later, he's like, yeah, you know what, in hindsight,
we probably could have called it like strawberry intelligence. It didn't matter. It was really the
story that that was sort of mattered. I think he was exaggerating a little bit. And I think the category
people would actually agree with this. I think they would agree with like, hey, you're,
these three words are it's sort of a
shorthand for this movement
of old game new game narrative
but I guess that I guess
I feel like
still by calling it category and category name
like we're just focusing on those three words
so much and what happens often is
CEOs will they'll kind of come up with this little category
like what happened with Nick at the 360 learning
with collaborative learning we have this name
but we don't know how to tell the story around it.
And that, you know, so my feeling is like, well, let's focus on the story.
So that's why I talk about strategic narrative and movement creation versus category creation.
You know, if someone decides that your movement is a category, great, bonus.
I see.
So essentially, your approach is category can play a part of this, but there's a bigger question
you have. What's the story? What's the movement? What are the obstacles and categories an element of
that potentially? I mean, I always almost see them as orthogonal. Like, you know, with HubSpot. You know,
HubSpod had this narrative around inbound. You know, it used to be just outbound. Still,
now we're going to have inbound. And that wasn't really a category. There's still, I think if you,
back then they were probably known as marketing automation. Now they're probably known as CRM because
they broadened. But this movement is the thing that's sort of the concept.
constant and in some ways orthogonal to whatever category they're in.
Is the strategic narrative framework right for essentially any company or is there like a sweet spot?
I've noticed most of the companies you've been talking about are B2B SaaS.
So I don't know, maybe like if there's a spectrum of perfectly fit for strategic narrative framework and then like not a fit at all.
What's like what's along that spectrum?
Yeah, well, you can see.
I mean, it takes a little time.
I mean, to tell this story, and it's a kind of, you were kind of framing it a little bit,
and we're telling it in lots of different channels, right?
So I think it does really play well in sort of like this enterprise sales context,
because also we have a group buyer there.
So it's not just one person who's, you know, doing some research.
And there's like this whole group has to sort of have a united, a uniting story.
So I think you're right that in noticing that the companies that this tends to resonate with tend to be B to be enterprise sales.
Technology, I think, because often the product is very complicated.
You know, that arrogant doctor stuff, you know, comes from an age when the things people were selling were like products on shelves that didn't change much.
you know, cans of soup at the supermarket or, or like a car in a dealership, even software back
then, you know, shrink wrapped in a box doesn't change.
B2B software, you know, this stuff is changing by the minute.
And does it even make sense to make a claim to say like, oh, we have these features and they
have those features therefore we're better?
I mean, like, does that make any sense?
That said, you know, hey, I was looking for, I was looking for like a sports watch, you know,
like a Fitbit and then, you know, and I'm, yeah, I'm comparing specs and I'm doing all that stuff,
you know, and so that mode of buying is still happening. But I think that's, you know,
so yeah, when like consumer products companies contact me, I usually say no. Occasionally,
they're looking, they still say, okay, yeah, we'll build this. We still want to have this narrative.
But yeah, I think it has the most value, most impactful right away for B2B enterprise technology
companies. Just a few more questions. What is just, what's a sign that you should spend time in
this area that something is broken in your strategic narrative story pitch? Well, I can tell you what I hear
from CEOs when they contact me. Like, why did I? I always ask, like, what, what, what, because
that, that idea I had, no CEO is going to budget a line item for this. I'm basically asking, like,
why was I wrong? Like, what, so a few things they tell me. One is that the company is
maturing from a point, a stage where they've been successful, but that success is,
one CEO put it this way, as like was brute force of the founders.
So the founders are in every meeting.
They're in every product discussion, every sales call.
And that's shifting.
The company is getting bigger.
Usually I'm seeing this around like series B, where the company is getting so they can't
be in every sales call, every market call.
And they're looking to kind of transmit all the good stuff and some direction in a way that people are going to remember and all that.
Everything from how we pitch to what the product should be and all that.
And they see this as that.
There's another kind of point that I see people contacting me at, which is where they're growing.
It's usually a little bit later where they've had, they've skisks.
tremendously successfully. Now we're either acquiring or building out whole new product units.
And that old story we told is just, it's just not big enough. And we got to expand it to
something bigger. This is, this is the example of like one trust, which I was on my, which I'll
have on my, see you all have in my podcast recently. You know, starts out with just sort of, I think
data privacy around, you know, the regulations that people have to be able to say,
don't track me, things like it. And then they buy these other companies. And now we have this
much bigger, bigger offering. So how do we tell the story? And then I guess the third one is
some form of pivot where, hey, we were telling an old story, but we're, you know, whatever,
the market changed or whatever. And we're, we want to go in a different direction.
So SAIF founders listening to this and they're like, okay, I realize I need to do this. I haven't
spend enough time on this.
Someone's not working.
This could be a huge unlock for us.
What are the first couple steps they could take to start to figure this out?
And I imagine at some point it's like, go talk to Andy.
He'll help you through this.
Is there stuff you can do on your own?
How do you go about?
Well, a lot of folks have emailed me over the years like, hey, well, I told you
before there were some who emailed me like, hey, tried it, it didn't work.
But many, many more have emailed me.
Hey, I tried it.
It did work.
Thank you.
And so, yeah, just try to lay out that.
structure and try it. I mean, even when I work with teams, I adapt what my people might call
sort of lean approach. Like, I want to get that thing out there into sales calls. You know, we're not
rolling it out to the whole sales team right away, but getting it out into some sales calls and get a
sense like, hey, is this resonating? Are people like given the nods? Ideally, by the way,
one way I look to test it, you know, is it working? Is like, when we talk about this shift,
and the stakes and the, you know, do they stick, do they kind of say like, yeah, let me tell you
how that's playing out for us and or, or my, yes, I'm seeing that.
Let me, sometimes I'll literally, I'll train salespeople to ask them that question.
Like, am I crazy or are you seeing this?
And what do they say?
And, you know, you can usually tell like if they're in.
And it's qualitative, but I really like that kind of.
kind of testing to see if it's working.
And I think anybody can do that.
Is there a template or guide you have online for folks to follow other than maybe just
listening to this podcast and reading?
Is there a post that's like, here's the framework defined and go follow these steps?
I mean, I guess the closest is that the greatest sales deck I've ever seen post, which is
this warad deck.
But even there, I really, people have asked me like for a framework like and like, you know,
presentation companies.
Could we have your template so we could make it available with people?
We'll revenue share with you or something.
And I am so against this template.
Like every team I work with, it's different.
You know, it's not like the same number of slides.
Sometimes we can lay out this shift in one slide.
Sometimes it just feels better or the team likes it better,
whatever, if it's a few and we're sort of getting people into it.
Sometimes it's no slides.
So I am really.
hesitant to sort of recommend any template. And what I'd say is like these are principles for,
you know, for building it, not, not any prescribed formula. If they do want to reach out to you
while we're on this topic, what's the best way to contact you? Can I move me on LinkedIn? That's
usually a good one. I'm, and I'm usually posting things on LinkedIn that I've learned from working
with other teams. Awesome. Last question, before we get to a very exciting lightning round,
I saw, speaking of LinkedIn, you posted how in a working session with companies that the second session is always this low point they all go through and that everyone's starting to get discouraged and pain.
And first of all, I love the expectation setting.
You're like, this is going to suck initially and it'll get better.
Why is that the low point?
And what is it that they focus on in that second session?
Well, apparently I'm not doing enough of an expectation setting because like what that post was about was like this this woman who, so when I work with a seat.
CEO, I always asked them to create a what they call strategic narrative team of up to four people.
And usually those are leads of like marketing sales, whatever. In this case, the CFO was a really
important person in this company. And so the CEO wanted her as part of this team. And she said to me at
the end, she like, you know, I would love where we got to. I always asked, what worked, what did it
work? And she said, I love where we got to. That worked great. What didn't work was like, you told us
that this second session was going to be bad. But I don't, I think you could have drilled home more like
exactly how bad.
So, and then I asked her, actually, could I, could I have that quote with your face on a
slide that I now present to future team?
She said, she said, yeah, you could do that.
So the way I work it is, I have a kickoff session where essentially I'm asking people
on the team, like, what are these pieces?
What is this old game, new game shift?
How do we talk about when it set the stakes and everything I just took you through?
And, you know, we have like five people in the room.
There's going to be, like, we're going to come out of this with notes and notes,
boards, are boards and boards of ideas of like this stuff, right?
And so then two things happen.
One is I asked the team to start interviewing customers about how they see the shift.
And sometimes the customers will literally give us the words.
And that can be helpful in sort of aligning if we have differences.
But I also start working with the CEO one-on-one.
and we build a first version of this thing.
And it's the second session where we present this first version to the team.
And think about what's happening.
The team has just given us millions of gold ideas.
And truly, they're all.
And in order to make something sort of clean and powerful,
the CEO and I have had to pretty much throw out all of them, you know, save one or two.
And there's going to be feelings about that, first of all.
second of all, you know, if this were easy to just like get all the, you know, do interview everybody come up with it?
They would have done it, right?
So it's going to be wrong.
But the good news is this is where the team gets to weigh in.
I also ask what's working, not working in this thing.
And when we learn how it's not working, that gives us the juice to then me and the CEO go back to the drawing board.
We plan on this in advance we're going to go back to the drawing board.
and then bring up something good.
So, you know, having a shit draft is like a million times more valuable than having all these
great ideas.
But it's also really painful.
It's painful not only for them, but for me, like, no matter how many times I say this,
I want it, I expect they're going to love it in that first one too.
And I'm really pissed off when they don't.
But luckily now I've done enough times, like, I know that's going to happen.
I was just watching a documentary about Annie Lamont, who came up with the shitty first draft concept for writers that I stick to.
I'm a firm believer in that.
Yeah.
As you're talking, one last thought that I had is, so you'd work with CEOs and founders.
I feel like this could be just as useful to product leaders, product managers working on a product that they're launching.
Just like, what is the movement where it's happening?
Here's why this product's important.
Do you find that too?
Absolutely.
landed very frequently, like the product leader or chief product officer is part of this group.
And what I'd say, though, is that, you know, the reason I, so when I looked, after I did this
work for a few years, I looked back and I was like, which were the ones where, which are the
engagements I did where like I can see it? And it just, the narrative is like really this true North
star for everything. And it was always the ones where the CEO was leading it. Not just like in name,
but literally the person who called me
who was like working on the drafts with me
and like going through.
And so initially I didn't insist that it would be the CEO doing that,
but eventually I started to.
And I think even for a product leader,
like you're going to want the support,
you don't want to be just telling that story in product.
You're going to want that supported from, you know,
this war person who gave me the initial deck.
He said, you know, it was like I had,
It was like I had air cover and I was just going down and knocking down deals on the ground.
You're going to want that air cover in marketing, sales, recruiting, everything.
And, you know, how much better is it if it's really driven by the CEO and you have that?
Amazing.
Is there anything else you wanted to touch on or you want to share before we get to a very exciting lightning round?
No, except I love category design people.
and it's really just,
it's really just sort of terms that I like that are,
you know what, forget it, scratch that part.
I thought that's funny.
Oh, yeah, okay.
Okay, yeah, we can leave it in.
We can leave it in.
You could even leave this in where I'm telling you to scratch it.
Sounds good.
I was actually going to joke that I was going to cut this out
and leave you hanging.
Okay, okay.
No, you could do that, yeah.
Categories on people, love you.
Don't hate me.
Thank you.
Great.
I love it.
We're going to be okay, I think.
Okay.
Well, with that, we reached our very exciting lightning round. I've got five questions for you. Are you ready?
I'm ready. I haven't seen the question. I saw the quit. You sent them, but I didn't really look at them. So I'm just going to tell you what I said. I'll go off the outside.
Excellent. The best version of this. What are two or three books that you've recommended most to other people?
One of the books that I read initially in that from that Barnes & Noble, it was Story by Robert McKee. I think a lot of people know about it who are sort of interested in story stuff. But it's it's kind of a bio.
of people who are doing like screenwriting and stuff.
If you know anyone who's in Hollywood who thought about going to Hollywood,
like they know about this book.
I love a book called Out of Shear Rage.
It's really not about what I do or anything,
but the author is Jeff Dyer.
Jeff, he's written a lot of books that are kind of essay, memoir.
And this is a book about him trying to write a book about D.H. Lawrence.
So it's all about procrastinating and like, oh,
like him, I'm supposed to write this book. I think I'm going to, I'm about to go on a trip somewhere. Should I bring the
collected works of D.H. Lawrence on the trip? Because that'll help me start the book, but maybe I shouldn't
because it's not going to, then I could come back refreshed without having, you know, basically it's all
that. It's all this sort of like in the head. I just really enjoy that book. What's a favorite recent
movie or TV show that you really enjoyed? Station 11. Station 11. That was just so beautiful to me.
Trippy. It was a trippy movie.
Did not expect to go where it went.
Yeah.
I usually ask what's a favorite interview question you like to ask, and I don't know how often you're interviewing people, but does anything come to mind when asked that?
Well, I can tell you one thing I ask when I speak with CEOs is I like to ask what role this narrative played in your leadership?
How does it work in your leadership?
It's always really interesting for me to hear that.
I often hear things that I don't expect.
What's a favorite product you've recently discovered that you just really like?
I recently got a Fitbit.
I think I may imagine it earlier.
I was like looking for a product like that.
And so far I'm really loving it.
Amazing.
Have you tried other versions of Fitbits or that's the one that's working?
I also ordered a polar at the same time and wound up returning the polar.
Basically, it was just a little clunkier on my wrist.
So I went with a Fitbit.
Do you have one that you recommend instead?
I just have the Apple Watch and I've never tried a Fitbit
and it gives me all this stuff that seems cool.
But I've never gone further.
I got the Fitbit like a week ago
and I actually still am on the fence
whether I bring it back to return it for the Apple Watch.
So I'm enjoying it, but we'll see.
Okay, final question.
You're expert on presentations
and I imagine you spent a lot of time in decks.
And so just what's like one small change people can make
to how they put together a deck or a presentation
that will make their presentation a lot better.
This is the one thing.
Make the title the takeaway of the slide
so that the person looking at it has to do zero work to take away.
So example, you'll sometimes see like the problem or the team.
Replace the team with our team, you know,
is a veterans of whatever industry or every,
single slide, the takeaway, it's a takeaway, not a label, and it'll make everything flow a lot better.
You did a killer job answering the lightning round questions without having a peek at what they were going to be.
Andy, this was incredibly insightful. I'm going to go start working on my strategic narrative from my
podcast and newsletter. Two final questions. Where can folks find you online if they want to reach out,
learn more, maybe consider working with you? And then how can listeners be useful to you?
So I mentioned LinkedIn as a way to connect with me. That's fine.
My website is Andy Raskin.com.
I also have a podcast where I talk with CEOs.
So if you're interested in hearing more details about actual use of this,
it's called The Bigger Narrative.
My mom introduces every episode.
I call her.
I send her the interviews in advance.
I call her an interview about what she thinks people will get out of it.
And that conversation becomes the intro to the podcast episode.
And what was the last question?
How can listeners be useful to you?
Useful to me.
just, you know, if you try any of this stuff, let me know.
Like, worked, didn't work, you know, have this question.
I would love to hear that stuff.
Amazing.
Andy, thank you again for being here.
Thanks so much for having me, Lenny.
This is really fun.
Bye, everyone.
Thank you so much for listening.
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