Paul Smith
Paul Smith is one of the world’s leading experts in business storytelling. He’s one of Inc. Magazine’s Top 100 Leadership Speakers of 2018, a storytelling coach, and bestselling author of the books Sell with a Story (#1 bestseller in Amazon’s Sales and Selling category), Parenting with a Story, and Lead with a Story (#1 bestseller in Amazon’s Business Communication category) already in its 11th printing and available in 7 languages around the world. Paul is also a former consultant at Accenture and former executive and 20-year veteran of The Procter & Gamble Company.
As part of his research on the effectiveness of storytelling, Paul has personally interviewed over 250 CEOs, executives, leaders, and salespeople in 25 countries, documenting over 2,000 individual stories. Leveraging those stories and interviews, Paul identified the components of effective storytelling, and developed templates and tools to apply them in practice. His work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Inc. Magazine, Time, Forbes, Fast Company, The Washington Post, PR News, Success Magazine, and London’s Financial Times, among others.
Paul hosted me as a guest on his podcast The Company I Co-Founded Locked Me Out of the Office.
Paul delivers professional workshops and keynote addresses on effective storytelling for leaders and salespeople. His clients include international giants like Hewlett Packard, Google, Ford Motor Company, Bayer Medical, Abbott, Novartis, Progressive Insurance, Kaiser Permanente, and Procter & Gamble.
Paul holds a bachelor’s degree in economics, and an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He lives with his wife and two sons in the Cincinnati suburb of Mason, Ohio.
286: Paul Smith, part 2: At the edge of my seat
We’ll hear about Paul’s experiences with eating out, eating at movie theaters, using prepared food, and his changing views on waste that came from experience. Involving his wife too.
You’ll also hear me several times feel at the edge of my seat, which I attribute to his story-telling and story-telling-teaching. I asked him if he created that effect on purpose or by accident, and we’ll get to hear his answer.
280: Paul Smith, part 1: How to tell stories to lead
You probably know the value of stories—though it’s probably bigger than you think. You probably could improve your storytelling. Even if you’re improving, I bet you’re focusing on less-important parts of the craft.
Paul Smith teaches storytelling, but as you’ll hear, storytelling to lead people is different than just engaging or entertaining them. You’ll hear tips and techniques to help you in every part of your life stories matter.
Developing yourself as a storyteller to lead others is different than to engage. Not that there isn’t great value in it, but if you want to lead, you’ll learn from Paul how and where to focus. I say this as someone who has worked on parts that aren’t as valuable as what he talks about.
On the environment, Paul showed the pattern many do at first—they play down their knowledge and experience, but when they talk about it more, caring and passion emerge, as when he talked about China and LA.
Then the more he talked about it, the more emerged.