Deep Story, One Objective: The Secret to BOLD Brands

Starting the conversation:

Find out if your brand is built to last — or just chasing the next trend. Thinking with a longer horizon (even more than 36 months, try 20 years!) is the edge your business needs to withstand today’s high pressure constant change. Bob Rogers, Founder at BRC Imagination Arts and Author of “Deep Story, A Masterclass in Experiential Storytelling,” discusses practicing ruthless focus around one objective.

There is an art to the discipline of editing and removing all except the most essential elements from a project. This includes planning for where you expect to be going in the future and that true hospitality is helping people find the magic within themselves. The emotional heart of your brand and the people you serve are timeless elements, and designing experiences that speak to that will perform better — and last years to decades.

In this episode, you will hear that the first steps are to determine the objective before any ideas or task lists are made (Don’t skip this step. Ever!); to claim your informed intuition then listen to it; and to then be focused to the point of being ruthless as there can only be ONE objective, regardless the size of the project. Jess Dewell talks with Bob Rogers, Founder at BRC Imagination Arts and Author of “Deep Story, A Masterclass in Experiential Storytelling,” about how the secret of BOLD brands is their ability to connect to a shared emotional truth with their customers.

Host: Jess Dewell

Guest: Bob Rogers

What You Will Hear:

02:05 Reciprocal kindness and emotional experience are central to meaningful brand experiences.

• The challenge of expecting mutual kindness in business and marketing, given that reciprocity doesn’t always occur.
• Emotional connection in guest experiences is important and an element that secures lasting positive impressions.
• Authentic hospitality and human connection create more memorable brand interactions.

07:05 Lasting transformational experiences are driven by clear objectives.

• How successful visitor experiences require a precise vision for the desired outcome.
• Understand audience motivations and designing environments that consistently inspire desired actions.
• Establish clear objectives before determining creative or technical details.

11:40 Clear, actionable objectives drive real change — avoid fuzzy words.

• Pitfalls of using vague language when setting goals for projects.
• Difference between understanding a concept and actually motivating desired behavior.
• The importance of articulating specific, observable outcomes as a foundation for transformation.

21:35 People make decisions with their hearts, not just their minds.

• Emotional engagement is more decisive than rational analysis in shaping perceptions and decisions.
• Storytelling is the primary lever for influencing beliefs and behaviors.
• The unpredictable, yet powerful, nature of emotional resonance is a timeless element for successful experiences.

26:45 Make others the star; true hospitality is helping people find magic within themselves.

• How authentic guest service and hospitality place the focus on your guest’s journey rather than your expertise.
• Designing experiences empower participants to discover new capabilities and feel valued.
• Success is measured by the extent to which others leave feeling inspired and supported.

35:35 Building trust is essential for transformational change.

• The long-term value of partnership and collaboration over simply pitching ideas.
• Building a foundation of trust with stakeholders is a requirement for effective change.
• The best results emerge from choosing teams based on compatibility, not just the initial idea.

43:46 It is BOLD to let go of linear planning and instead practice focused, ruthless clarity around one objective.

Resources

• Connect with Bob Rogers
• Author of Deep Story

Transcript

Bob Rogers 00:00
The best RFP process in the world is one that is looking not to choose the idea, but to choose the team. Find the team that works well with us, because we’re going to spend a lot of time with that team. And whatever idea we start with, once we start getting into it, that initial idea will go away.

Announcer 00:26
Every leader needs a trusted partner for the moments that matter. This Bold Business Podcast conversation is that partnership. Here is your host, Jess Dewell, an insightful truth teller who serves as the catalyst for getting the right work done and who asks the questions that truly matter.

Jess Dewell 00:44
Bob Rogers, the founder of BRC Imagination Arts, joins me today on the Bold Business Podcast. And let me just tell you a little bit about his past. He’s been nominated for two Academy Awards. He’s currently a member of the board of directors of the Motion Picture Academy, the Oscars. He holds two patents for his Holavision technology. He has served on NASA advisory committees. He is a magician and found out that he is really good at creating award-winning attractions and visitor experiences that make you remember the experience and how you felt, not necessarily the facts or the thing you’ve got to take home. As you listen, there are three things that will mark your journey through my conversation with Bob Rogers. The first step is to determine the objective before any ideas or task lists are made and don’t skip this step ever. Two, you have informed intuition. Claim it. Learn to listen to it because it’s waiting for you to hear it and be heard. And three, be focused to the point of being ruthless. There can only be one, O-N-E, objective regardless of the size of the project. I’m excited for you to tune in and listen to my conversation with Bob Rogers, author of Deep Story, founder of BRC Imagination Arts. Let’s get to it.

Bob Rogers 02:09
Reciprocal kindness is a cultural assumption that’s not to be always relied upon.

Jess Dewell 02:13
So when we talk about marketing and we talk about experiences and we talk about all of this, there’s an emotional piece of it that makes that caveat you were just talking about, huh? Somewhat. Tell me more.

Bob Rogers 02:23
If you have an afternoon free and you go to the Guinness Storehouse and you enter the House of Guinness and you are a guest in the House of Guinness and the House of Guinness acts as your host and takes care of you, right away, just think a little bit more favorably about Guinness, partly because you know somebody there. There was Andrew that you met and you know somebody who works for Guinness. And he took care of you. And that’s very nice. That’s the Mr. Nice Guy theory of brand centers. Whether that translates to ordering a Guinness instead of whatever your normal go-to drink the next time you go out, that’s another question. And that’s what Deep Story is all about. Creating the difference between, it’s not, of course it has to be world-class entertainment, but it needs to be more. Otherwise, you’ve done world-class entertainment but made no difference that lasts beyond the gift shop. If your ambition is to do something that has some lasting value, then you’re going to need something that causes that lasting value, that Deep Story. One of the things that, according to your website, you’re interested in is helping brands create long-term value. And there I see creating hospitality of the moment is nice. Creating the advertising campaign of the moment is nice. When you go to build a brand center, it forces you into a completely different mindset because the amortization schedule on real estate, which is if you’re building a built environment, is different than an ad campaign. You might amortize an ad campaign over 10 weeks. But if you’re building something like the Johnnie Walker experience in Edinburgh, you’re going to have to amortize that over a 20-year period. And that means that you’d better today try to figure out the essence of what your brand is and always will be. And it says, do not tell me what is new. Tell me what is never old. And when you’re facing the idea of doing a brand experience that you’re going to put some money in, you may be able to figure out how to refresh it, but you can pretty much ignore today’s ad campaign. You have to think about what are the essential things in your brand that are going to appeal to the hearts, and I said the hearts, of your customer this year, next year, five years from now, 10 years from now, 20 years from now, because that building that you’re building has got a 15- or 20-year amortization schedule, and you’d better be doing something that’s going to last for that. And it forces you to, Wayne Gretzky, the ice hockey champion of all time, used to say the difference in how he played was he said, I merely skate to where the puck is going to be. So doing a brand experience, a built brand experience, forces the leader to figure out where the puck is going to be and get our organization oriented toward that point.

Jess Dewell 05:29
So I appreciate that you said heart over brain, especially in the business world. We are in this place where there’s a way to do business, and I’m in the way of breaking business, just so you know, Bob. How do we do it differently? Because you’re right. Most people do not even look at brands today as a long-term opportunity. And what does that brand mean in the future? We can look at brands that are, what, 100, 500 years old. From Remington to Colgate was way less. I think Nintendo is in between the two of them, right? But they have been around. And at their essence, they are still the same companies. They are still working from that same place. Then even though times have changed, even though we have technology, we seem to be moving at the speed of faster than we ever thought possible from Star Trek. Part that comes up for me is this 20 year horizon. One of my biggest pushbacks is we need to think in 12-month or 36-month cycles, even in our business. And I’m thinking, cool, that’s great because that helps people today and in their investment and whatever they’re working on right now. Your job is to make this something that is interesting and connective over time. So what happens at the end of 36 months? Next year, you’re going to have another 30. And if we’re not looking at both of those things at the same time with what you’ve been talking about, what do we do 20 years out? What is the essence of what our experience is to connect to the people we serve and care about? We’re getting in our own way, aren’t we?

Bob Rogers 07:02
You can strategize a visitor experience or a customer experience to last for six months or a year. You can do that. The commitment is that your operating costs go way up because you’re going to have to constantly be refreshing it. Or you can strategize for long term. We work on world’s fairs, which is interesting because a world’s fair is six months. Some world’s fairs are only three months. So you know going in, you only have to be current, contemporary, and meaningful for six months. That frees you up to do a lot of things. If, on the other hand, you think you’re going for 20 years or 10 years, then you’ve got to think very differently. You’ve got to think along classic lines. I’ll contrast two of our recent projects. In the late 1970s, before I formed BRC Imagination Arts, a filmmaking partner of mine, Rick Harper, and I were creating films for Disney that would potentially open at EPCOT when EPCOT first opened. There was dirt when we started there. And what would be the films in it? One of the films that we created was the film that was in the France Pavilion at EPCOT. That film opened on October 1st, 1982. It is still playing right now, today, as we speak, completely unchanged. 44 years later, no changes. It’s in the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest playing film of any kind. And yes, there are some things that are dated. And if you know what you’re trying to do, what was the objective? What were we trying to get people to do differently as a result of looking at that film? We had an answer. People who’ve seen that film will want to take a vacation in France. Okay. So what would make the people want to make a vacation in France? Going and seeing a manufacturing plant? How about castles and great landscapes and great quaint little restaurants and things like that? How about the classic tourist things that tourists like to do in France? And those things don’t change that much over time. And so that’s what it was all about. It’s romantic. It’s lyrical. It’s poetic. Go see it. It doesn’t play every hour, but it plays multiple times every day. Check the schedule. Go see it. Contrast that with last summer, there was a World’s Fair in Osaka. We created the shows that played in the USA Pavilion representing our country. As a result, we can do everything. It can be much more contemporary. we can use contemporary hairstyles, contemporary fashions, contemporary automobiles, contemporary sports stars. So I think that when I think about what might be useful for some of your listeners would be to talk about what makes a transformational visitor experience transformational. That is to say, what causes it to actually have a result that is predictable and desirable for the company that’s sponsoring it. And I think that we ought to get into that.

Jess Dewell 10:17
I want to come back to that because I agree with you. And I know everybody – I’ve read this book. It’s going on my top 10 book list. It will be something that I grab on a regular basis. You’re probably going to hear me reference Bob and his book over time. It is that good, especially for business, even though we’re talking about experiences, like what he was talking about for France. So before we do that, I did want to ask you about this concept of this, the first step before we get into the, and unless this is part of your answer, and then I guess we can just jump ahead to that first step is not fast, is it? What are we going to do?

Bob Rogers 10:53
When it’s done correctly, it is not fast. Yeah. And probably the single biggest mistake that leaders make when they approach something like this is they try to skip over the first step, which is determining the goal. They immediately plunge into the presentation technology. Ooh, there’s this new high-tech, whiz-bang thing that I saw at the electronics show. This is going to be great. We’re going to use this. Or they start thinking about the messages they would like to send. Those are messages that are important to the sender, not necessarily to the receiver. Write this quote down. Your need to tell does not cause in me a need to hear.

Jess Dewell 11:34
Is that a you quote?

Bob Rogers 11:36
That’s a Bob quote. They get preoccupied with design quotes or design concepts. They come up with a great story idea, a great creative idea. So the creative people on your team would love to do something that calls attention to their own creativity. All of these things need to be avoided until you know what it is that you’re trying to do. You need to figure out your end before you start dealing with the means. As an example, my brother wakes up on a Saturday, says today would be a great day to fix something around the house. So he goes out into the garage, he rummages through his tools, and he finds that brand new hammer. Ooh, it just has a great weight to it. It feels good in his hand. So armed with the hammer, he enters the house and starts looking for something that needs to be repaired. If he comes across a picture that needs to be hung, and he’s got a nail in his pocket, then, boy, the hammer’s the perfect tool. But if the first thing he comes across is a clogged sink, and he tries to unclog it with the hammer, he’s going to make a hell of a mess. So before you choose your tool, figure out the task. An A380 aircraft is an amazing piece of transportation gear, but it’s not much good for a trip to the supermarket. So it’s not about the message you want to send. Any fool can send a message. Changing behavior, that’s an entirely different thing, and that’s hard. So the first thing you need to do is figure out exactly what it is that you’re trying to do. And you need to express this very, very clearly. You need to be using terms that are crisp and clear. You need to avoid words like inspire and educate and other soft words that sound like they mean something but really don’t. What does somebody look like when they are appreciating something? What does somebody look like when they understand something? I understand perfectly what I need to do in order to get myself ready to enter an Ironman contest. Understanding that does not get me to the gym at 4 a.m. to start the actual process.

Jess Dewell 13:50
You’ve done an Ironman?

Bob Rogers 13:51
No, that is about the last thing in the world that I would ever do. Doesn’t solve the problem. What you need is something that causes me to think I’m somebody else, causes me to think that I am one of those people who does the Ironman. And that’s what Deep Story is about.

Jess Dewell 14:07
And that’s the start still. That’s not the transformation.

Bob Rogers 14:10
That’s not the transformation. I think it’s a great Yogi Berra quote. If you don’t know where you’re going, you’re likely to end up somewhere else. So figure out where you’re going. Because if you are going someplace and it’s not where you wanted to go, then you just spent a lot of money entertaining people. If you’re a brewery tour, maybe you gave away a lot of free beer. Did you cause anybody to prefer your beer later? Probably not. What’s the difference between entertaining people, informing people, and changing what actually happens – changing the afterward action?

Announcer 14:53
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Jess Dewell 15:28
Bob Rogers, the founder of BRC Imagination Arts, is our guest today on the Bold Business Podcast. Let’s get back to the program. Okay, so I’m going to ask you a question actually about media today. Now, if I set all that aside and I think about what we have for media today, what is a positive for media today when we are stopping to be clear and crisp and avoiding words and following Yogi Berra’s advice to get to that next step, which is what do we want them to feel when they’re done versus what do we want them to do? They’re the same, but my takeaway from your book is actually they’re very different. So how about if we work with that right there?

Bob Rogers 16:12
I’m sorry, your question ended in a train wreck. So I don’t know which piece you want me to pick up there.

Jess Dewell 16:18
What stands out, I think, is the exact right thing.

Bob Rogers 16:21
I would like to go back to the beginnings of Deep Story because it began with my first job in themed experiences, where I was a magician in the Magic Shop at Disneyland. It was the perfect introduction to show business because it was my job as the magician to demonstrate the magic. That was the show part. And then while they were still amazed and dazed, take them over to the cash register and sell them the trick. That was the business part: show, business. And in my mind at that point, I always saw the show as connected to the business, that as a result of the show, you wanted people to do something, and it was usually fairly specific. I later, looking back, figured out that we also were trying to change their identity. There was a part of this that was trying to get my audience to start to think of themselves as possibly a magician. They had to think of themselves as capable of doing the magic. Otherwise, they weren’t going to buy the trick. And so that was a huge thing that stuck with me. There were so many other lessons that I learned in the magic shop. One of the big ones that I think would be interesting to your listeners. One day I was complaining about the big problem at the magic shop is that anybody that you entertained could buy the trick you were demonstrating, go around the corner, read the instructions, and come back and expose you and embarrass you in front of the next group. So I was talking about this with one of the senior magicians in the shop, and he said, let me stop you right there. First of all, who cares about you? It’s absolutely not about you. It’s about them, not you. Wow, that is a universal concept. It applies to everything in business. It is not about you. It’s about the customer. It’s not about you. It’s about the audience. It’s not you. It’s about the consumer. It’s about the person visiting your museum, the student who’s trying to figure out whether they like the science of physics or hate it. It’s all about them. It’s not about you. And then he went on to ask me, ‘Do you invite them to expose you by your performance?’ I said, ‘What? What about my performance invites them to expose me?’ He said, ‘They are locked out of the performance. It’s all you performing everything.’ It’s you being clever. You haven’t given them, you’ve only given them one role to play, and that’s a spoiler. And since that’s the role you gave them, that’s the role they play. I said, ‘How do I prevent that?’ He said, ‘Watch my eyes when I perform. Where are your eyes, Bob, when you perform?’ Are you watching your own hands? Pretty impressed with your own magic, aren’t you? So you think it’s about you? Do you think it’s about your hands? I said, guilty, absolutely. He said, watch me when I perform. I’m not watching my hands. My hands are performing the magic out of total muscle memory. My eyes are on my guest’s eyes. I’m watching every nuance in their reaction. And I’m adjusting my patter, my script, what I’m doing, how I’m going to end the trick, which person I’m going to use as a volunteer. It’s all about them. I’m watching them and catering to them. And he said, ‘After all, we are not the Magic Temple. We are the Magic Shop.’ People do not come here to admire how magical you are. They come here hoping you will help them find some magic within themselves. Wow. That is the heart of all hospitality. It’s the heart of all salesmanship. It’s the heart of entertainment. Next time you’re at a highly themed restaurant, a restaurant with a lot of great decorations, take a look at the people at the tables around you. If all of them are looking away from their people they’re with and looking at the decorations in the restaurant, that’s a signal that you are now sitting in a ‘been there, done that, one time will do it’ restaurant. If instead the combination of the ambiance that the restaurant and the decorations and that the service people are providing is causing those guests to have a wonderful time enjoying each other, then that’s a restaurant that’s going to get a lot of repeat business because you help them find the magic within themselves.

Jess Dewell 20:48
That helped me remember what I forgot earlier. You ready? Now, though, I’m thinking about the speed with which we can create, deliver, and that this concept of a brand authority, and each person has to have their own story because they’re selling themselves all the time, actually feels counterintuitive to this lasting value creation opportunity that we really want. Because if we want people to remember an experience and we want people to find the magic in themselves, is there a way that you have that bridges the gap and works with that friction a little bit? Because I think it’s good friction. It’s just a matter of naming. We have friction here. Yes, there’s a dynamic that we have to work with. And what do we do about it?

Bob Rogers 21:35
Again, the quote: you’re not looking for the thing that’s new. You’re looking for the thing that’s never old. What is always true? One thing that will change is the technology. A lot of media today is using energy as a substitute for thoughtfulness. And by thoughtfulness, just deep intelligence. If you slow down and think about it, what’s the thing that never changes? The thing that never changes is the human heart. It’s just been proven to me to be true over and over again in my work. People make up their minds with their heart. Their heart decides how they feel about something. And after that, they organize, try to organize the facts to agree with what the heart has already decided. My scientist friends and engineering friends will claim that that’s just baloney. And yet I tell them the scientific method, after all, begins with a thesis, which is a made-up story, a leap of faith. And then the investigating scientist or engineer tries to prove that thesis is correct by organizing the facts to support it. And if they fail, if the facts don’t support their thesis, they’re actually very unlikely to give up on their thesis. They will adjust it in some way and try again. They’re not going to give up easily. And if you look through the history of science, you will see what happens to people who come up with a new theory that contradicts the story that the rest of science is bought into. Look what happened to Charles Darwin. He came up with an idea about evolution that disagreed with the established story that animated all of science at that point. And he had a miserable next half century before his ideas finally caught on. So story is what leads thought. Story leads what people believe. If you want to change the world, you do it with story and you access story by the human heart. So start with the heart. That’s where the power lies.

Jess Dewell 23:45
And that’s also elusive because the heart does not have words, logic, description.

Bob Rogers 23:50
No, but there are things that are predictable. There are things that are predictable about the heart. And the same things that manipulated the heart of Elizabethan audiences during Shakespeare’s time still work on us today. We can look at a sappy movie from the 30s and still every once in a while get a lump in our throat. I dare you to look at Bambi and not have a moment when Bambi’s mother gets shot. You’re looking for the emotional trigger that’s involuntary. When you do this, people don’t have a choice. It’s almost a reflex. And Shakespeare and Spielberg and Disney and Pixar have been using these tools for decades. And when it’s done right and done well and done with love, we love them for it. It’s just giving your heart and your emotions a much-needed workout. That stuff is fairly predictable. You need to arrange that in a choreographed emotional cascade that leads people to the change of heart, the change of action that you want them to achieve.

Jess Dewell 25:01
And it does come down to that pause. And I’m curious, how often have you had to tell boards, executive teams, people with projects that want you to work on a project with them and be like, you’re kind of in the way. We haven’t done it right yet. We need more time here. How do you handle it?

Bob Rogers 25:19
I think the right way to approach this, and the reason we’ve had success with this for 45 years, is that we take the attitude that our clients are very often fish out of water. A great corporation may sponsor a great world’s fair pavilion once in any given executive’s lifetime. So there’s some poor guy that was in charge of facilities or he was in charge of public relations. And he now suddenly is in charge of a World’s Fair pavilion. And he’s kind of like, oh, now what? How do I do this? And so it’s up to us to go in and be their guide, be their advisor, be their whisperer, and make them look great in front of their bosses. Because we know the territory, we need to be their scout, their guide. We need to be the wind beneath their wings to turn them into a champion of this thing. That’s the right approach. You don’t want to tell them they’re wrong. You want to say, yes, you could take the sledgehammer and hit the bee’s nest. That’s an option. Let’s talk about some alternative ideas. And then you can make the choice.

Jess Dewell 26:34
And then you can make the choice. And that actually goes back to what you were describing about the magic trick. Where are your eyes? Are you inviting them? How are you inviting them to show up with you?

Bob Rogers 26:44
How do you make them the star of the show? And I watched the senior magician. Then I paid more attention to him. And sure enough, a couple of hours later, somebody came in and exposed him. And instead of berating the guy and scolding him and making him look foolish, what Harold did was he said, wow, you look like you know a lot about magic. Are you a magician also? If you’re not, then you have some real talent. I’d like you to help me with this next trick. And then Harold would pull out some miracle of his own that was not for sale in the shop. Even his fellow magicians – we had no idea how he would do it. And he would do it and make it look like the kid had pulled it off and done it. And then he’d express amazement and ask for a round of applause for the kid. He’d make the kid the star and make the kid feel great. Anyway, just the way he would handle it and make the kid the star. It’s not about you. It’s about them. Help them find the magic within themselves. When we’re working with corporate clients, our job is to make them look good. And along the way, we darn well better make the corporation look good, by the way.

Jess Dewell 27:55
And so there are things that can be measured. And I’m guessing you didn’t know all of this in the first 10 years or so of your career. It took all 50 to not only find them, perfect them, and then be able to pass them on to your team.

Bob Rogers 28:07
There are some things that we knew by intuition and instinct, and I don’t know how we knew it. And there were other things that we learned along the way and got better at or developed the language. Things that we initially did by intuition, we then would have the vocabulary to be able to teach it and to be able to explain it and to be able to share the strategy with others.

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Jess Dewell 28:58
Bob Rogers, founder of BRC Imagination Arts, is our guest today. Let’s get back to that conversation on the Bold Business Podcast. I appreciate this concept of intuition. I talk about business instinct, and that’s actually what you’re talking about, instinct, where you have this knowledge, even if it’s not something that can come out of our word hole clearly yet, that we know fits right here. There’s a reason for it, and it’s because of what we’ve surrounded ourselves with, the conversations that we’re having. Are we open and curious? How do we show up to conflict and friction and support? And can we do it with love and make everybody feel like they belong because we get better creative output, even among constraints in that sense? And that’s where I’m, what I’m hearing you say. And I want to really spend and pick your brain a little bit more about this intuition piece, because I don’t think enough of us claim our intuition. I think we set it aside for the facts, but we don’t actually go, what if we took our intuition and we took our facts and saw what they made together?

Bob Rogers 30:06
It’s not just intuition. It’s also informed intuition. You’ve been doing this over and over again, and you know where the puck is going to be, so to speak. So you go there. My own career might be instructive here. I started out, I wanted to be a magician. And then I found out that magicians starve to death all their lives. They never make any decent money. So then I was also interested in filmmaking. I wanted to be a filmmaker. And I started out as a writer. I tried writing television. I wasn’t fast enough. I tried writing feature films. I wasn’t good enough. Failed at it. That was all the same stupid 12 tricks they sell in every gift shop. But where I did find a magic, a huge magic trick, was outside of the shop. Disneyland itself is a huge magic trick, and I was fascinated. I had a chance because I was an employee to go backstage and wander around and poke my nose in where I didn’t belong and find out how all the dolls in Small World sang together in 1968 before there were computers. How did someone know how many hamburger buns they would need next Tuesday park-wide? Somewhere in that park, you knew that there had to be a maintenance shop that repaired and maintained 19th century steam locomotives. Where was that? What did that look like? I was fascinated and I should have been paying attention to myself. That was the call. The wand was choosing the wizard. And the wizard said, no, that’s not for me. I’m going to go make films. This is not for me. This is all very interesting, but no. And then I wound up at Walt Disney, working on what became the France film. And I discovered while I was there that, in any given meeting, I just knew what should be done. And I thought, that’s mysterious. How is it that the wand chose the wizard? And I said, oh, this is where I was supposed to have been all along. That little nagging voice that says, you might be good at this. You might try this. You ought to pay attention to that voice because sometimes that voice knows more. That voice, which comes from your heart and your intuition and your subconscious, sometimes it knows more about you than your conscious brain does.

Jess Dewell 32:33
How do you work with your team to make sure that you as a team are practicing these internally to your company as much as you are working with your clients to get them what they want?

Bob Rogers 32:48
I guess, once again, it’s not about you. It’s about them. It’s about the work. It’s about the audience. One of our best clients ever was a fellow named John Krug. He worked at General Motors. And he said about executive reviews, he said, if the first audience doesn’t like it, you’ll never get a shot at the second. So you have to please the executives that you’re pitching because they’re the ones that are going to explain this mess to Wall Street. So they deserve a lot of respect for doing that. I don’t want to have to explain anything to Wall Street. But at the same time, you’ve got to convince them because otherwise you’ll never get a shot at the second. And it has to pass both tests. That’s for sure. And your own people, just like that kid who’s the spoiler in the Magic Shop, need to feel respected, engaged, and productive. They’ve got to feel like they’re contributing. You’ve got to let them know that they’re appreciated. And this is all just leadership, nothing particularly special.

Jess Dewell 33:56
Bob, it is easy to say, and it is so hard to do.

Bob Rogers 34:00
Especially when you get in a hurry and you think you know the solution and you just want somebody to be, in our business we call that, ‘I just want a wrist.’ I want somebody to draw what I tell them to draw. I don’t really want to have a big creative discussion here. And that’s hard sometimes if you’re under tremendous time pressure, but you need to juggle that.

Jess Dewell 34:21
It’s hard to discern the difference of the moments where this actually matters and to slow down and to create space for this is different than just getting a solution. Because if we just get a solution after solution, we just end up in a linear mess and we think we’re making forward progress and we probably are. It’s hard to come back from that if we haven’t or we don’t have an environment that we can work well within, right? And so I was thinking about that and I’m thinking about this linear plan piece. We’re listening to our clients and we’re hearing them and we’re inviting them into our process and we’re using our knowledge, our past experience, our processes that we have developed and we’re making them understand their piece of magic and it’s already in them as well. What’s that transition look like? Is there a period of time that you’ve experienced that’s typical? It takes us this long to move a traditional business mindset of we want to do this and this is its output to actually thinking the way that we can think so that the people who are coming to our experience, they’re coming to our brand, they’re coming to this, and the change we want them to make, they can actually make with their hearts, and then the facts come along.

Bob Rogers 35:35
It’s probably one of the mistakes that a lot of companies make and leaders make when they choose a company. They’re looking for the idea. They want you to propose ideas to them, and you don’t have a brief, you don’t have that time with them to talk with them about what is the outcome that they want, what is the goal that they want. It takes a while to develop and articulate that. So you’ve got to go in guessing and you’ve got to come up with a solution to a problem and you’re not sure it’s the right problem. And you’re pitching it to a bunch of people who are just deciding whether they like your solution, but they’re not trying to match it up with a problem. So the whole process of the RFP process is asking the wrong questions and judging based on the wrong things. The best RFP process in the world is one that is looking not to choose the idea, but to choose the team. Find the team that works well with us, because we’re going to spend a lot of time with that team. And whatever idea we start with, once we start getting into it, that idea, that initial idea will go away. It never survives to the end. And so that’s really a key. Sometimes there are clients and we can just smell it right at the RFP stage. Wow, if these people choose us, we are going to make each other absolutely miserable for about a year and then they’ll fire us. You can see that coming. When you get a good match, it’s because, once again, you’ve got somebody who understands what you do and somebody you’re dedicated to making look great. I’m going to make this guy or this lady look great. I’m going to make them look so good in front of their bosses. I’m going to arm them with ideas. I’m going to arm them with presentations. I’m going to arm them with insights. I’m going to make them look good. and you build up a level of trust to the point where they will go along with you because you’ve proven that you really are on their team. And that’s what you need to do in order to get to the other stages.

Jess Dewell 37:45
That’s huge. And that’s a big first step. Is there a common blind spot that companies make somewhere either right before you start that process or right after you know it’s going to work and you’re moving to the next step?

Bob Rogers 38:04
The mistake is born of a sincere attempt to do a good thing, to do a good job. The people who set up that competition of ideas think that they’re protecting their company, think that they’re looking out for their company. So you can’t really blame them. But if you are winning that project, you try to get to that next stage by making the person you’re working for, making him or her a champion, make them look good at every stage. What does their boss need in order for this person to look good? If we can do that, we usually build up the level of trust necessary for us to do our job. Ultimately, what you need to do is in collaboration with the client, you need to set some great objectives. I’m not kidding when I say that there was a brand manager for one of the world’s most famous brands. This is one of the 50 most well-known brands in the world. And the brand manager actually said to us, they’d already chosen us at this point. They actually said these words to us: we don’t know what we want. So design for whatever.

Jess Dewell 39:14
What do you say after that? I think that’s illuminating a little bit on their part that they were feeling so much pressure. The many people involved in this were feeling so much pressure that they were just like, okay, we know we’re fish out of water, but we don’t even know. Okay, you’ve got to help. It almost feels like the ultimate call for help in a way.

Bob Rogers 39:36
And you know how they got there. Somebody from the chairman’s office calls somebody, who calls the person we’re working with, and says, listen, the chairman is going to announce this project next Tuesday. We need three renderings to put in the press kit. So draw something. What? What do you want us to draw? What’s this about? What are we doing? And so it originates from a very understandable place. But somehow you’ve got to get in front of that freight train, slow it down, and get it on the right track, which is first start figuring out what you’re trying to do and then try to figure out a strategy for actually getting you there.

Jess Dewell 40:18
And that linear time is the constant problem in that case then, right? It’s a constraint. There’s usually never enough of it. People don’t have enough time to give you. And so there’s so many places I really want to go. We haven’t even talked about one of the things that I really wanted to hear your take on. I use the word ruthless because at some point we have to start saying no and be ruthless about what we say yes to so we can get to the right end. So I’m hearing you talk about all the stuff at the beginning. We’ve spent a lot of time here. We’ve talked about heart and all of this transformation. Not as much as I would like to, but we are. And somewhere in there, once those objectives are found, once the champion is in place, Once everybody is working together, there is a ruthlessness that comes out to ensure even really awesome ideas that don’t go with this one don’t get put in.

Bob Rogers 41:11
Ruthless comes in two places. It comes in being ruthless with the objective, getting rid of all the fuzzy words, because it’s like all of the fuzzy words that people put in their objectives.

Jess Dewell 41:31
Like the state park sign. I can’t remember what it says, but in your book you use a picture of the state park sign.

Bob Rogers 41:38
It’s like ‘A Land of Many Uses.’ What the hell is that? I don’t know.

Jess Dewell 41:43
You don’t know either.

Bob Rogers 41:45
That ruthlessness comes in getting very specific and limited about what you’re trying to do. The more you try to do, can you get it down to 20 objectives? No, you need to get further. Can you get it down to 10? Can you get it down to five? You need to get it down to one objective, one North Star. You can’t have three North Stars. You’ve got to have one objective. And everything else needs to become second to that. That’s the first place that it’s ruthless. Now you go through what I call the four steps, rather, of Deep Story. The first step we’ve talked about, it’s not about you, it’s about them. It’s always about them, not you. Secondly, you’ve got to find the thing that’s in common with the audience’s heart, with the brand, and you’ve got to find it. You cannot create it. The third step is that you need to start with the heart. And then the fourth step is focus, focus, focus. A machine should have no unnecessary parts. You go through that experience and you edit, edit, and you throw things out until you get it pared down to what absolutely has to be there, and there’s nothing else, nothing else at all. No side ideas, no pet projects, no pet this, nothing decorative. One writer described that as, you must murder your darlings. The wonderful little ideas that you put into something that you wrote that you think is so clever and so nice. But now that you’ve got the whole thing written, it just distracts and boggles. It takes you off of the line. Focus, focus. That’s where you need to get really ruthless. And what’s that line from one of the other writers that I quote in the book that said, try drawing a line through every second word you wrote. You’ll be amazed what it does for the vitality of your writing style. You find out that you didn’t need that.

Jess Dewell 43:46
All of this comes down to the assumptions we have. And it’s because we see the final product. And what you’re doing is you’re giving us this behind the scenes look like you got at Disneyland and showing us what actually goes into this. So are we going to be courageous enough, thoughtful enough, responsible enough to pick one? Probably my suggestion to everybody listening would be the first one. I’m a big proponent of doing a lot of prep work before any action is taken. And it sounds like you are too, Bob. So now I want to know, I want to know what makes it bold to get rid of this concept of linear planning so we can iterate forward and show people along the way and actually claim some other way, your way, the Deep Story way to show up, to thrive through market volatility and actually create a brand that lasts.

Bob Rogers 44:38
One of the speeches I give to students is about project leadership, and I talk about several different types of project leaders. One of them is Captain Checklist. Okay, we’re doing a show, so first we need a script. Look at all those pages. Yes, we have a script. Now we need a production breakdown to see how many days it’s going to take to shoot this. Look, we have a production breakdown. That’s great. Now we turn that into a budget. Oh, that’s too much. It’ll have to be a little less money. We can shave here and there. Now we need a schedule. Now we need this. Now we need that. And you can check off every item in the list and you get down to the last item. The audience loves it. No, actually they don’t because you didn’t produce a show. You produced a budget and a schedule. And yes, you did all the steps in the checklist, but you got lost along the way. And the checklist does not guarantee the emotional connection with the audience. Deep story does. Another management technique is what I call the cheerleader. The cheerleader goes around encouraging everybody, telling everybody they’re doing great. And when they see problems, they think if they’re just encouraging enough that the problems will go away on their own. The cheerleader gets a surprise at the end of their project when it doesn’t turn out well. There’s another that I call the Eeyore. The Eeyore is the opposite of the cheerleader. The Eeyore is just always thinking, oh, this is going to be awful. The Eeyore thinks that if they just point out enough problems, people will rise to the occasion and fix the problem. No, Eeyore just discourages everybody. And finally, my favorite of the bunch, the fourth management technique is the fool killer. And I always pictured this as Clint Eastwood in one of those spaghetti westerns. There was a character in literature, I forget who wrote about it, But the idea was that they would threaten kids with, you’d better straighten up because otherwise when the fool killer comes to town, he’s in charge of killing all, rounding up and killing all the fools. And he just might come for you. And the fool killer just kills every idea before it has a chance to grow. The fifth one is the magician. And I have no idea how the magician does it, but the magician keeps working on it until it’s great. And I haven’t been able to break down the steps that the magician goes through. But I know the four management techniques that he, or she, doesn’t use, and those are the ones I just ticked off. The list checker, the cheerleader, the Eeyore, and the fool killer. Those don’t work. But with a little intuition, with a little magic, you might be able to pull it off.

Announcer 47:30
And that brings us to the close of another powerful and fresh perspective on the Bold Business Podcast In today’s volatile landscape, growth is a double-edged sword. To truly thrive, you must engage with your strategy, not just react to the day-to-day. Without absolute alignment, your company faces a stark choice. Outmaneuver or be outmaneuvered. Grow or get left behind. Thank you for listening, and a special thanks to the Scott Treatment for Technical Production.