In a “turnaround is fair play”, Dr. Stephie Althouse interviews Robert Steven Kramarz as they discuss Story Pitching and how taking a different approach can help raise much needed capital.
Hi, all you Vision masters out there. This is Robert Steven Kramarz, executive director of Intelliversity, the innovation accelerator for the real world. And this is your Vision Master podcast, where you, as a Vision Master, accelerate your progress in raising capital for your company. Well, today we’ve got something a little bit different where I’ll be interviewed by Dr. Stephanie Althouse, creator of The Brilliance Mine and Top Notch CEO because she helped me develop the course on story pitching. This topic is a very innovative, very cool, and effective method of rapidly raising capital without boring the hell out of your investors.
So without further ado, here is Dr. Stephanie’s (brilliant) interview with me on how we developed the story pitching course.
Stephie:
Hello, everybody. Welcome to The Brilliance Cafe, which is sponsored by The Brilliance Mind. My name is Dr. Stephie Althouse, and we have an exceptional guest today, Robert Steven Kramarz. He is the executive director of Intelliversity. Hi, Rob, how are you?
Rob:
Hello, Stephie.
Stephie:
So what is Intelliversity? Tell us real quick.
Rob:
Well, it’s the innovation accelerator for the real world, and I don’t want to make this an ad, but we believe we help companies get funding. Fund your vision. And we do it in a very innovative, different way because we found that if we do it the same way as everybody else does, you get the same result everybody else gets, which is very little. Very few companies get funding.
So you’ve got to break the mold in your pitching and product.
Stephie:
Right. Today, one thing you do differently than other companies claiming to help innovators get funding from investors is this concept of story pitching.
Rob:
Yes.
Stephie:
Now my first question is what happened in your life that brought you to the idea of story pitching, and what is it anyway?
Rob:
Well, first of all, when I started pitching, I was a great sleeping pill and couldn’t keep my audience awake. So I knew there was something wrong, but at the same time, about ten years ago, I started writing fiction as a pastime. I’m writing a novel right now, for example, and in that process, I was also a horrible writer at the beginning, and trust me, it was not going well. I had to learn how to tell stories.
Stephie:
Right.
Rob:
At some point, Stephie, it dawned upon me that, oh, maybe I can apply this to pitching for funding. There’s something here.
Stephie:
Yeah.
Rob:
Because, after all, stories are how people have communicated for thousands of years and kept each other awake around a fire while the wolves were outside. So there’s something here that’s built-in.
When we want to put the kids to sleep, we also tell stories. So I don’t know. But you can tell a story when you want to communicate throughout history.
Stephie:
Right.
Rob:
And it works.
Stephie:
So story pitching is done instead of giving investors the standard pitch deck that provides information that may not be believable or interesting. Instead, you’re telling them a series of stories. That’s essentially the idea of story pitching.
Rob:
We restructure the data you typically use in a pitch deck and as a series of dramatic, exciting stories. And boy, that changes everything.
Stephie:
Right. There’s a method to the madness of storytelling with three parts and all of those good things that speak to the brain in compelling ways. So once you created the idea of story pitching, you realized that storytelling is a powerful way to create trust with investors and arouse their interest. What did you do from there? How did you create an impact with that idea?
Rob:
The first problem we had to solve was this trust problem you talked about because I have a degree in psychology and a lot of experience with people, and I’m an investor. I remember listening to hundreds, 700 pitches as Tech Coast Angels.
Stephie:
Whoa.
Rob:
The primary thought that went through my head every time I listened to a pitch was can I trust this person?
Stephie:
Right.
Rob:
Are they telling me actual data, or is it exaggerated, made up, delusional, full of errors, lies, and exaggerations, just mistakes? How can I evaluate the information I’m getting without answering that question? Then I turn to other investors and ask them, is that a process going through their heads too? And they confirmed that before they even took the material seriously, the investor had to decide if they could trust. Here’s the problem. After you’ve invested a while and things don’t work out well, most of the time, you realize, unfortunately, you can’t trust the entrepreneur who’s making a pitch.
Stephie:
Oops.
Rob:
Oops is right. A severe prejudice. So as soon as the entrepreneur walks in the room and sits down or stands up and makes a pitch, they’re already doomed because the listener doesn’t trust them.
Stephie:
I see. The odds are vastly stacked against them.
Rob:
They are severely stacked against them. So this is when I put two and two together and said, okay, I have this method of story pitching or this kind of nascent idea that stories can be used and keep people awake. Then it occurred to me that stories would also kind of, because they’re pre-wired into our brains, immediately generate rapport and trust.
Stephie:
That was the breakthrough.
Rob:
Yes, a breakthrough. Then there was one more piece that we realized that investors were doing that we didn’t know. I didn’t know, until I became one, that we talked between ourselves after the pitch was over. So whether it’s formally or informally, a Tech Coast Angels, we used to have a formal debrief after the entrepreneur left the room. We talked to each other; then, we’d also talk to our spouses, colleagues, and friends. If we couldn’t repeat the business’s basic premise, we would never even think about investing. We had to be able to replicate it.
Stephie:
Wow. That’s powerful because how often have we met entrepreneurs who talk for a long time and then, in the end, you go, okay? So, what would I say if I had to repeat this in one or two sentences?
You’re scratching your head.
Rob:
And if you can’t, you don’t invest.
Stephie:
Right.
Rob:
That’s the psychology of it. You have to be able to convince yourself that it’s repeatable or it’s not investible. Okay. So then stories would have three functions, keep people awake or wake them up. Two, evoke trust that the storyteller is not lying or exaggerating. And three, create something repeatable that they can turn around and tell somebody else and sustain the interest. Maybe even build a syndicate of investors.
Stephie:
Perfect. So then what happens? You started to work with some clients and got some fantastic wow type of results. Isn’t that right?
Rob:
Yeah. I was working with George Kenny at Shepherd Ventures by this point. He was also starting to learn and master this concept of storytelling. We both read a book called Pitch Anything, which kind of tipped our interest further towards story pitching. But it was I who developed the concept further. Now the first story we developed was the vision story, which is essential to turn around and tell somebody else an abridged, sweet, compact version of the company’s vision, almost like a poem, like a haiku.
Stephie:
But as a story.
Rob:
Yes, as a story. That had an incredible impact because the listener could repeat it and knew they understood it. It also created intrigue and excitement and started the process of building trust. So I went on to a second story and added this to my client’s pitches. All this time, I was working with clients. As we added each piece, they were getting better and better results and more meaning.
Stephie:
So you converted more and more of the information that generally would be in the pitch deck in some bullets and made them into stories, and you got better, or your clients got better and better results.
Rob:
Yep. At the same time, the pitch decks became less critical because they’d be helpful for a later second meeting. But the information on the pitch deck became much less important than the story. That was important because we didn’t want the listener to be reading while they were listening.
Stephie:
Right.
Rob:
So you wouldn’t want too much detail on the slide. You want that investor to be focused on the storyteller and their mouth, eyes, and face and connect.
Because it’s all about connection and trust.
Stephie:
Right. Connection and trust.
Rob:
So then we went to the second story, the trust store. I think this was the second big breakthrough because we’d always been telling some version of the team story or what my background is. But I discovered that the investors were not impressed by hearing the backgrounds and resumes because they’re all exaggerated and hide all kinds of stuff. We all know. We all know that. So why confirm what we already know, that you’re leaving stuff out? So I decided to do the opposite of conventional wisdom and asked the entrepreneur to tell about the biggest mistake they made in life that led them to start this business.
Stephie:
So, yeah, vulnerability. You asked the Vision Master to be vulnerable and, low and behold, that creates trust.
Rob:
Immediately instantly. So Story Pitching replaced the conventional wisdom you have to brag about your past by telling you about your mistakes and how you corrected them. Investors love that. It wakes them up. They become alive, alert, and interested because they don’t hear it often. All they hear is a bunch of bragging about how great you are.
Stephie:
Right.
Rob:
Well, this was like a magic wand. Suddenly presentations and pitches were starting to work. People were getting more and more second meetings with investors. I think at that point, that’s when I realized we had to systematize. I had something here.
Stephie:
Yeah.
Rob:
And it was not enough just to do it one by one, one client at a time. We had something that could benefit thousands.
Stephie:
Right. Because of how you were doing it, there was a lot of handholding, and it was basically one-on-one.
Rob:
Yeah. Frankly, that led that was a career mistake that I made at first. I’m still making that mistake. I’m working on correcting, thinking that I can be successful and fulfill my mission in the world by only working with clients one-on-one.
Stephie:
Right. Well, there is a time and a place for that. But yeah, when one wants to increase one’s impact, one has to do something beyond one on one. That’s what you realized, right?
Rob:
I realized that kicking and screaming into the new world because I love working with people one on one, and it’s very natural, and I can kind of innovate as we go and adapt, and that’s fun. Writing it down and making a course out of it is hard work.
Stephie:
So this is where we-
Rob:
It’s labor. Yeah.
Stephie:
Yeah. We started to work together when you realized you wanted to leverage this idea more and create a more significant impact. Share a little bit, how did that happen? So we call it Brilliance Mining. What was this experience like for you?
Rob:
First of all, Stephie, I’ve known you for; I don’t know, ten years, eight years. Other work that we did together and so on. So I knew that you were in parallel developing your methodology of mining the brilliance hidden inside each expert’s brain, which doesn’t come out until it needs to be applied but is not well organized. It’s not systematized packaged. So I knew that you were developing this. I don’t remember exactly how it came up, but I said, I’m going to try you out because I trusted you and try out your new method. And it worked out well. But my first experience was naturally frustrating because there was so much that just bubbled out while we began working. It was like a gusher.
Stephie:
Yeah. You became aware of how much knowledge you had inside you that you weren’t even aware you had. Right? Exactly. So I call that unconscious competence. That’s what happens with many people who have all this expertise, which I call brilliance, and it’s inside of them. They use it automatically. So when you were coaching your clients about how to put this story together, a lot of that was when it sounds right, I know it, and if it sounds wrong, I know it. But how do I explain the right way and what’s not?
Rob:
Well, I would have to deal with a hundred clients for all the knowledge to be applied because it’s in pieces. One piece helps one client, and another piece helps another client. And it was not going to be a very efficient process, just doing a client by client. But you were cracking the code; you were doing brain fracking. You were cracking the sandstone and making the oil come out.
Stephie:
Okay. Before everyone runs away, now there were no physical tools involved.
Rob:
There were no chemicals involved.
Stephie:
Just through conversation, she was asking a lot of questions.
Rob:
Yeah. Yeah.
Stephie:
Then also we made some graphics, didn’t we?
Rob:
Well, that came after. Come back to that in a second. It was frustrating how much oil was coming out of the well. It was like, oh my God, this will be a lot of work, systematizing it. But once we got it under control, that’s like putting the cap on the well, and now the oil is coming out. You can pump it out each time gradually. So now we have a functioning oil well. You were pulling the oil, systematically mining the wisdom. We were able to develop the whole course in a relatively short amount of time. It took a month or two. We ended up with some 350 slides. I found the results to be way more than I expected at that point.
Stephie:
In what way was it way more than you expected?
Rob:
Well, that’s what you would allude to, because first of all, there was a lot of knowledge I didn’t even know.
Stephie:
Yes.
Rob:
Frankly, it’s not just tacit knowledge. It’s integrating it and applying it in new ways. So, for example, I took an old scorecard concept that I had developed ten years ago, how to score a company for investment purposes, and applied it to how I score a story to see if the story is working.
Stephie:
I remember we had a lot of conversations with that scorecard because, so far, the scoring was easy for me to say, of stories were done intuitively.
Rob:
Intuitively.
Stephie:
And it was not visible to anybody else how exactly you scored it. How would you tell that the story was good, bad, or somewhere in between?
Rob:
You pulled out all these points that have to be scored.
Stephie:
Criteria, yes.
Rob:
Criteria that have to be scored would be a list of five to 10 items. That’s when we realized, well, I realized that we could apply this old method that we use for assessing companies, using colors, color coding, instead of numbers, and then apply that to the story, and we created this scorecard for stories. It worked well. It’s straightforward.
Stephie:
Then we discussed whether we needed a different scorecard for different stories. It’s a process of not just pulling the knowledge out of your brain, in this case, but then organizing it and making it as complex as necessary and as simple as possible.
The outcome was reasonably-powerful.
Rob:
It was an iterative process because, at first, we had different scorecards for each story. Then we realized that we don’t really need to have a different scorecard for each story. It’s the same. So we reduced it down to two versions. So it was a process of refining and simplifying.
Stephie:
Now that you have that course, what are you doing with it? How are you now leveraging the course?
Rob:
So there are two versions. One’s the group that I deliver to a group. So the slides are an adjunct because there’s also interaction with the entrepreneurs, each telling each other’s stories during the meetings. It’s all done by Zoom, and they get to critique each other, use the scorecard, assess each other, and give feedback. So the stories evolve through this interaction between the cohort members, the mastermind, and the workshop members. Having a group is valuable. Call it a cohort. They loved it. They kept complimenting me on how I put this brilliant group together. Well, they’re just clients, but they were able to help each other was quite exciting and unexpected. They took an interest in each other.
Stephie:
So you had that extracted brilliance in the form of the slides.
Rob:
Right.
Stephie:
As a foundation, based on that foundation, they were able to jump into creating their stories and then discussing how they could make them even better so much faster.
Rob:
Yes. I expected each individual to be focused on their own story, and that’s it. But they took an interest in each other, which was an unexpected little bonus for everybody.
Stephie:
Yes.
Rob:
Now I’m packaging that, and it’s nearly done as a self-guided program, which is less expensive. Same material and I’m recording my presentation that goes with each lesson. So the whole thing as a self-guided course will be available within a few weeks from our website using the Lifter LMS learning management system so that users can step through the lessons on their own. They won’t have the advantages of the group, but this way, they can pace it at their pace.
Stephie:
Yeah. I think the direction you’re going in is that, once the course is available in the Lifter LMS, you’ll have two ways of offering it. One is an unfacilitated, do-it-yourself, very affordable course, with a higher-end version where people can re-access the information through Lifter LMS and have the facilitated cohort sessions.
Which is the higher-end version of it, but it combines the best of both worlds, which is where you can do some studying on your own time, whether that’s at lunchtime or midnight, or whenever you have 10 minutes here, and 10 minutes there, you can consume the material, and then do some assignments like writing a draft of a story and then bringing that to the cohort.
Rob:
Yes.
Stephie:
Where then, the participants can discuss it using the concept of the inverse classroom. So, for example, Khan Academy also does this if you think of math. So in standard teaching, you have a teacher who teaches the same concept to batch up the students. Here’s how you do this math. Or in your case, here are the principles behind story pitching. That’s the teaching, but then there comes the applying. So the idea of the inverse classroom is that the material that is presented over and over again the same way on how you do something, in general terms, the principles of it, the foundation for what comes next, that is recorded and available for the student, for the learner to consume at their leisure.
Rob:
Yeah.
Stephie:
But it’s paced by the cohort meetings. So that means it gives them accountability and some [inaudible 00:26:43].
Rob:
It’s a hybrid style of teaching where you have both the cohort and the self-guided material available. You synchronize yourself with the cohort. You can catch up at the off hour. But here’s the exciting thing. This course is not just an intellectual exercise. This program is designed to help raise capital.
So it’s fast and furious. Because when a company needs capital, they need it now.
Stephie:
Right.
Rob:
They need it in the next two months, three months. So we don’t drag this out. It’s one month to get the basics, do an advanced course, and get another month. But one month and you’re rocking. Since the courses are taught in sequence, the story is you’re rocking and rolling from day one, modifying your pitching. If you have to pitch the next day, you’ve already improved on the first day.
Stephie:
Well, that’s one of the advantages.
Rob:
Action-oriented.
Stephie:
Yes. One of the advantages of pulling that brilliance out of your brain and systematizing it, too, is that the teaching takes less time because it’s even more well thought out and graphically presented in all of this.
Rob:
Yes.
Stephie:
So what is next for you? Where are you taking it from here? You’ve already said you’re going to record. [crosstalk 00:28:11]
Rob:
I got to record that and put it in the LMS. Frankly, I’m now thinking, how can I possibly get all this done in the next year? But I’ve got 22 other topics that I’ve outlined. The top 12 are the ones that are being motivated to do to help companies raise capital more efficiently and effectively, and profitably.
Stephie:
Yeah. Some people call you Mister Funding.
Rob:
What’s that?
Stephie:
Some call you Mister Funding because you are so good at helping entrepreneurs get funding. So story pitching is just one of them.
Rob:
That’s only one way; there are more compelling ways of helping the cause because getting funding is not easy.
There’s much more to it than just pitching, but that is the place to start.
Stephie:
Yes. Well, it’s been delightful to have you here. Is there anything that I should have asked you about but didn’t?
Rob:
I think that about covers it. We can keep talking, but I think we ought to discuss how people can reach us.
Stephie:
Well, you can find me at TheBrillianceMine.com with all the contract information. Then how did I find you, Rob?
Rob:
Well, you go to the Intelliversity Connect page and create an appointment with me on my calendar. So, of course, you can just go there and buy story pitching, which is on the courses page.
Stephie:
Fabulous. Well, thank you so much, Robert. So you all, this was Robert Steven Kramarz about story pitching and his experience with brilliance mining. It was a pleasure. Thank you.
Rob:
Thank you very much. Stephie.