Ben Pearce (00:01.468)
Hey folks and welcome to the Tech World Human Skills podcast. We have another fine episode for you today. You know what? Data is such an important and growing aspect of the tech world and it's really important to get executive buy-in to support the projects that you wanna do. So today we're gonna be talking about data storytelling. In fact, the telling part of data storytelling.
Now, our guest today is a giant in the data world. He's worked in the industry for years. He's a regular keynote speaker and a successful author. He's known as the Data Whisperer. So please welcome to the show, Scott Taylor.
Scott Taylor (00:51.756)
And great to see you. Thanks for having me today.
Ben Pearce (00:53.946)
It is a pleasure. believe you're... I'm here near London. You're joining us all the way from Florida today, if I'm not mistaken.
Scott Taylor (01:00.544)
Florida here. Yes, we're Airbnb snowbirds. So we're doing our usual stint in Florida during the winter. live in New England, which is lovely except for in the winter. So we hightailed it down here and I'm in a as you can see by the background, that's not a window, but it pretty much looks like the view we've got.
Ben Pearce (01:20.32)
Well, welcome to the show. It's brilliant to have you with us. And for anybody that hasn't come across the Data Whisperer, aka Scott Taylor for, could you tell us a little bit about your background?
Scott Taylor (01:31.054)
So Scott Taylor, I go by this moniker, the data whisperer. And once you get to know me, spoiler alert, I don't do a whole lot of whispering. I'm out there yelling, telling and selling about the power and value, especially of data management and data storytelling for data management, which I characterize as a way to get executive support, stakeholder engagement and funding for the data work you do.
Ben Pearce (01:39.196)
you
Ben Pearce (01:44.008)
Okay.
Ben Pearce (01:55.433)
Okay, okay. And you've been working in the industry for a number of years, I take it.
Scott Taylor (02:00.696)
Since pre-2K, I go way back. started off with Nielsen. I worked at Dun & Bradstreet, Kantar. So all these iconic world-class data companies. And while I'm not an enterprise practitioner, I have spoken to basically every kind of company at every level of maturity in every category all over the earth about their challenges, their problems, their fears, their hopes, their aspirations about what data management can do for their organization.
And from that, and today I'm just a full-time content creator, absolutely living the dream in terms of doing podcasts, videos, events, as you mentioned, I wrote the book and I'm having a ball, helping people tell a better data story, helping them communicate to their leadership and to the rest of their organization about why what they are doing is important.
Ben Pearce (02:50.632)
which starts to get towards the title really which is about this the telling part of data storytelling. So can I ask you what do you mean by data storytelling and by telling?
Scott Taylor (03:07.566)
So I've been in storytelling since it was two words. That's how far I go back. And the ability to communicate, especially business is an absolute superpower. And the way we get ideas done, the way we take action in an enterprise is mostly by talking or presenting things to other people. Some you might know, some you might not know, some you have great relationships with, some you never met before, but that ability to communicate those soft skills.
Data storytelling, huge area in the space, mostly focused on analytics storytelling, how to take input or a metric or some kind of key piece of research and put it in a business context to drive some form of action, super important. But I took a look at the space and said, you know, there's room for another type of data storytelling, stories about the data, about why managing data is so important. And what I was particularly excited to talk to you about today is kind of dividing that
turn them up into three parts. You've got the data part, which everybody on this listening here, I'm sure is some form of expert on, they know what data is, how to use it to help grow their business, improve their business, protect their business, put it in play. You've got the story part, which there's a lot of experts out there helping you put some kind of structure around that. Or what is the data letting us understand? Where is this data taking us? And how do we manage that in our business?
But then there's the third, you've got Danny, you've got story, and then there's the telling part, which for me is exciting. It's the techniques you use to convey that message. The ways you speak, the vocabulary you use, the presence you have in a room, the tactics you use to get attention. Those things which I find really fun, and that's what I really love, the craft of actually telling the story.
is important to everybody as well. Because if you can have great data, you can have a fascinating story. But if people don't listen to it, it doesn't matter.
Ben Pearce (05:04.082)
Yeah.
Ben Pearce (05:10.748)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's how you take that story, which you can have crafted, you know, whenever, you know, you could have crafted the story, the message, but then at some point you've got to get in front of somebody, look them in the eyes, or the digital eyes like we are over the digital airways at the moment. And you've got to tell them and you've got to deliver that effectively. And the way that you tell them, the way you deliver that makes a difference.
on whether you succeed, whether they believe you, whether they buy your product, whether they take your idea, whatever it might be, and that comes from the telling.
Scott Taylor (05:45.166)
If you want to be a leader in an organization, and again, I think a lot of your audience aspires to move up in management, move up in the organization, lead a bigger team, get more responsibility, you've got to be good at the telling part as well. You've got to be good at communicating, of giving people an understanding of what action do you want them to take and how do you deliver that message. And to be great at data,
Ben Pearce (06:02.726)
Yeah.
Scott Taylor (06:13.346)
You don't spend a lot of time on the soft skills. So today we'll spend some time on that soft skill part of being a data leader.
Ben Pearce (06:19.26)
Yeah. Yeah. So maybe if we start at the beginning, how did you get into this storytelling side?
Scott Taylor (06:31.362)
As I mentioned, I've doing this, it's two words. We're all, my whole family is the family of storytellers here. We have, that's our superpower. We're able to convince people of things. And with a background in sales, in marketing, in communications, in strategy, my whole family, most of my family was in PR. So that is all about getting attention and telling a story to someone and getting attraction to a brand or an activity of some sort.
And we just came by naturally. would sit around and just a lot of that kind of interplay with our family was who could tell a better story, who could make the rest of the table laugh, who could come up with that kind of in the moment remark. And I was very encouraged by my parents and all the folks that I grew up with to kind of hone that. That's how we got our positive reinforcement. If you had the best line of the night at dinner, was the kudos you got.
Ben Pearce (07:26.113)
Hahaha!
Scott Taylor (07:28.876)
So it just came by naturally and I loved it. also took, once I got into college, I did a lot of dramatic arts. I wasn't a drama major, but I did a ton of theater and community theater afterwards. I never imagined I'd be an actor, but I will tell you those skills I learned on stage, I draw on every day, probably more than anything else I was trained at in higher education. I draw on those kinds of skills in business constantly.
Ben Pearce (07:56.477)
What sort of skills? So what is it that you take from that kind of theatre side and acting side and you put into day-to-day practice when you're in the tech world?
Scott Taylor (08:07.726)
things around the craft. mean, first of all, you know, being able to present, having a presence in front of folks, whether it's on stage or in a boardroom or just one-on-one, there's this concept I learned very early of just being on, right? I'm on right now, right? You know, just having that energy, having that focus, actively listening to somebody to be able to respond, not just reciting your words. When you're acting in a scene, they talk all about, you you've got to...
Ben Pearce (08:17.842)
Yeah.
Ben Pearce (08:21.768)
Okay. Yeah.
Scott Taylor (08:36.268)
It's not just the memorization of the lines. It's appearing to experience what you are saying right in that moment. And I always felt a great salesperson and a great storyteller can say something that they've said a million times and make it sound like they just came up with it and reverse. They can hear something yesterday and make and say it the next day and make it sound like they've known it all their life. that talent, that technique is certainly something I draw on. And then once I get on stage and do a lot of keynotes and a lot of public speaking,
I tell people I have a fear of not public speaking. That's where I come from. It's pacing, it's timing, it's knowing where the light is, knowing where the sound is. One of my favorite things in life is to hold for laughs. If you get a laugh, hold for it. You there's a lot of things that you learn when you are, have memorized lines and are talking to people you'd never met and trying to convince them you're somebody you aren't, that you can take into business. And when I go to
Data conferences. mean, sometimes I look and just wonder if the person who's speaking has ever even said it once before, much less practiced it. So, you know, rehearsal, the training, the listening to yourself, all those things get you get better and better at the real craft of speaking and presenting.
Ben Pearce (09:50.247)
Yeah. Yeah. And it becomes almost like a performance, doesn't it? so I'm a musician. I like to play guitar and I've used this metaphor many times. But the idea is the more you practice and the more you get better and you practice and you practice and you practice and practice, then when you are in front of somebody, it's about the performance. It's not about whether you remember what note comes next.
it's how's it going to feel in the moment, what's the feeling that I'm going to and then if you get you know a jam you know so you get a bunch of musicians together if you've all practiced and prepped in the background you know your scales you know your chord progressions you know this then suddenly when you get together in a room because you've done all that practice then it's you build the presence you build you you build the performance and I think that's exactly the same here it was it was tech show London last week and I was there last week and I completely agree
a lot of speakers, I was thinking, have you got any idea what's coming next? And it made me feel uncomfortable. Do you know what mean? I'm sat there cringing going, oh, I feel like really uncomfortable sat here as opposed to, and I did come and see you at Big Data London, which I think where's, which is where I'll pass. When I saw you on stage on the keynote stage at Big Data London, there was definitely a performance, wasn't there? There was definitely, I've got a message to say and I'm going to say it well. I never felt awkward like,
Where's this going?
Scott Taylor (11:17.55)
wonderful. Good. And it is, it's absolutely a performance. I mean, that's the way I take it too. So I don't get up and just sort of pontificate ad lib. I mean, I've got to practice sort of act. It's not, you know, a hundred percent memorized, but there's beats of it. I know where I'm going. And I completely agree. If you have a comfort with the content, which a lot of people don't always have, you can spend more time on the delivery. And because I'm, I'm not bragging here. It's just the best thing I do is public speaking.
Ben Pearce (11:32.242)
Yeah.
Scott Taylor (11:46.978)
people come to me a lot and ask me about it. go, at least half of it's technique, at least half of it is delivery. Because what I'm saying isn't that deep. I think it's impactful. I think it's important. I think it's valuable, but I'm not digging into the latest trends. I'm not analyzing certain types of software. I'm talking fairly high level conceptual stuff. And it could lie just flat on the page if it's not.
Ben Pearce (11:51.088)
Yeah. Yeah.
Scott Taylor (12:15.566)
positioned right. So for me, work now, I'm fortunate enough because I know the content so well that I focus most of my time on delivery and you know, tips for, and part of that came from listening to myself. So I don't have a, know, it's not, I'm not in college and theater anymore. I have a director to give me notes. So the only feedback I can really get critical feedback is going to be from my own viewing and listening to my own presentations and performances.
to hear where I can improve, to hear what worked, to hear what didn't work. And that for me is really fun to just get better and better at that. And you can always get better no matter what. You can always get better.
Ben Pearce (12:54.716)
Yeah. Now, I guess what we've been talking a little bit there is like maybe more the conference side, isn't it? You where it is a broadcast, where, you know, people are sat there listening to me. There might be a bit of Q &A, it's, know, broadly speaking, it's a broadcast type mechanism, which some people on him that listening might be thinking, well, I'm not about to get on the stage at Tech Show London or Big Data London or Gartner or whatever it is.
What about when we're in that smaller, more intimate meeting? Have you got any examples where these sorts of skills that we're talking about can be used in that kind of professional context of a smaller meeting room?
Scott Taylor (13:38.744)
They're still there, presence, timing, understanding your content, but it's a lot more.
When you're in those sort of means a lot more, if you're playing music, it's a lot more jazz than it is kind of classical or pop music where you're just, you know the notes and you're to play them through because you got to improvise a little bit and you have to shift left or right or up or down or faster or slower depending on the absolute interaction of the people in the room. When I'm, and this is a great question, a great way to think about it. I've never really thought about this distinctly. When I'm doing my keynote at Big Data London, I've got 30 minutes. The only thing I'm thinking about is the time.
You know, am I I pacing it right? I don't take Q &A, by the way, we can talk about that later just because it well, the biggest reason is because it just destroys the energy you spend all this time. Trying to build and and and and create and then you can just throw it out at the last couple of minutes to some random input that could be good, could be bad. So I've found like it doesn't work for me. But in a meeting.
Ben Pearce (14:20.584)
All right, okay, yeah.
Scott Taylor (14:42.744)
It's a totally different story. You need to take the questions. You need to interact because the point of my keynotes are to just inspire people, entertain them, give them some key takeaways. They're going to sit there. It's more of a passive interaction. In a meeting, your reason to be there is to have people commit to some form of action, period. If it isn't, then the people who are there don't even want to be there. If you have five minutes with your CEO or 40 minutes with your board,
or ten minutes with your team or whatever the context is, you need to have an objective, which is what you do in acting too. You think about your objective in that moment and try to achieve it. And it is always let's come up, let's have them take some form of action on what I am telling them or what I am presenting to them. And that's what you're listening for. It is not to get through your 22 slides or your 57 slides. And that's a big mistake most people make. I'm three slides into it.
Let's talk about dream sequence. You're three slides into it. The CEO goes, this is great. We want to do it. What do we do next? Well, let me show you the other 47 slides. That's not your answer. You forget all the rest of the stuff. know, well, I practice this all weekend and I want to know because that's not the point, right? The point is to have people take action. The flip side, they mean, you you get somebody who throws you off on a tangent. You get somebody who is.
Ben Pearce (15:52.156)
Yeah.
Scott Taylor (16:04.286)
is a naysayer and you know that. So there's a lot of dynamics in that situation that you can react to better with more and more practice, but recognize those. And so for that, I think it takes a lot more skill in some cases to sort of convince a group of people in a room who are sitting there going like, all right, I got a meeting, I got another one of these in 10 minutes and they're looking at their phones and they're not paying attention.
than it is to have everybody sitting up straight in Big Data London ready to be entertained. But it's still, it comes from the same place. It comes from the same place in terms of the intention you need to set, the focus. I said energy 12 times already. you don't have, nobody's going to get more excited about what you're talking about than you. So you have to bring that excitement and you also have to modulate it based on the environment. If you come in like, you know, super high,
And these people are like, whoa, you know, and if you come in super low and you don't even sound like you're interested, they don't care. that only comes through experience, that only comes through practice.
Ben Pearce (17:13.46)
And so have you got any examples of these? You know, it sounds like you've worked for years in lots of these different organisations. Have you got any examples you can share with us or stories you can share with us about where you've ended up in those sorts of boardrooms or those sorts of meetings and you've managed to have an impact?
Scott Taylor (17:30.132)
So a great one for me, goes way back to my days at Nielsen, we had a chance to meet with literally the president of Coca-Cola. So this is about as high up as you can get where it's big boardroom, carpets like this thick, get sample little, those beautiful little souvenir cokes in the lobby. It's a big deal. And it was actually, there were five or six different businesses at Nielsen that had a very eight to 10 minutes to present to the president.
Ben Pearce (17:38.952)
Okay, okay, yeah.
Ben Pearce (17:45.796)
Ha ha ha ha.
Scott Taylor (17:59.508)
and his direct reports around some concepts that could help the Coca-Cola company. And so each, everybody got up, everybody had practiced and all the rest of it. I took kind of a different tact. I didn't start with, here's our business and here's where we came from and here's what we do. I actually started with a series of quotes. And what I did at Nielsen was help people with customer data. That's kind of a quick way to describe it, to show the impact that we made.
some quotes about how important customer relationships were to the Coca-Cola company. And they were just up there. And then I said, and I know you agree with this. And the next slide had his picture with his name on it with the rest of the quote. said, because you said this. And so then we had him like dead to rights, a little bit gutsy, because I'm kind of putting him in a corner. It directly related to the value proposition we had. So it was.
almost a parlor trick to use his own words, like not against him, but to support what I had so directly. And then we went right into to achieve that kind of goal. Here are the things, the problems we know you have, because we've done that research and there's a solution we know that can solve those problems. And of the companies that came in, we were literally the only one that got a callback. And I...
Believe to this day, it wasn't so much the value of the service as it was probably half that and half the delivery. If I go with my formula of just being focused enough and again, having a little bit of guts to just go there with his own words and deliver it in a way that was impactful. And that became a template I use going forward. And it's actually an anecdote or a technique I even share in my book.
Ben Pearce (19:28.476)
Yeah. Yeah.
Scott Taylor (19:51.022)
about how to get the attention of your senior leadership and how to understand where your business is going, know, listen to what they say and use those words rather than coming up with your own stuff.
Ben Pearce (20:02.61)
Yeah. And also, so it's interesting, you know, as you tell me that story, it's about firstly, you understood his perspective. You understood it so much so that actually you built your slides on his perspective because it was literally his words. And therefore you solved his problem, his pain, his challenge, whatever it was. In the very first sentence, you just hit in between the eyes going, there you go, is something that's really important to you. We fixed that. And, and.
Scott Taylor (20:31.98)
And it comes from, you you can boil it all down. We talk about techniques, you know, all through this. But if you start with what your audience's perspective is versus. An introduction that goes on for half the discussion that, you know, hate to break it to everybody, the people listening to you often don't care about you. They care about themselves, not selfishly, but and you're there to help them. So here what they have to say, understand their perspective.
Ben Pearce (20:32.21)
Yeah.
Scott Taylor (21:01.934)
somehow form your narrative around showing that you understand the pain they're going through. And business is all about, a lot of business in business is all about finding pain and fixing it, especially if you're on the sales and marketing side, especially on the vendor side, which I spent my career on. It's going to these enterprises and helping them solve the problems they have, even if you know what they are. And in the data space, we deal with very common things across enterprises.
Ben Pearce (21:24.646)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Scott Taylor (21:31.682)
But hearing them out for hearing in their words and being able to play that back is, you know, the core to the core to this approach.
Ben Pearce (21:37.393)
I think what you said there is playing it back in their words. I was in a sales meeting a few months ago. I'd already spoken to the directors.
I already knew what the customer wanted and now I had that meeting with the UK CEO. So you've got that meeting, you already know everything, you know the problems because the underlings have prepped me well, we've gone through that process and I was thinking about how am going to deliver then this and thankfully it's exactly what you said. thought even though I know the answer to his problems,
I need him to tell me his problems first because what I get from there is really what is the problem from his perspective and all that language that he's going to use and that I can then fire back at him and now it's coming not in my jargon, my language, my acronyms but it's coming in the language that I've just listened to from all the things that he's explained which just ups that kind of impact so much.
Scott Taylor (22:45.292)
It's such a cliche, but if you speak somebody's language, they'll understand you better. And when I started off really early in my career, I was calling on the Procter & Gamble company and I recognized they had a set of terminology I had never heard anywhere else. And I'd called to all kinds of packaged goods companies and actually built sort of like a Procter & Gamble to English dictionary. But they had this lingo and I just fell right into it. And they're like,
Ben Pearce (22:48.742)
Yeah.
Ben Pearce (23:02.83)
Hahaha
Scott Taylor (23:09.568)
I'm using all their acronyms and I'm using their little terminology that they only used and it was kind like, you're sort of one of us or at least you literally you speak our language.
Ben Pearce (23:19.184)
Yeah. Yeah. Has such an impact. Yeah. Such a difference. Well, so I want to just as we start to move through the podcast, let's try maybe break this down into something tangible then for people that like, okay, I get it. It's important that I've got a presence. It's important I've got a story. It's important I tell it well. I get it. I'm bought. I'm sold. How do I do it? So have you got any real tips for people on how they practically do this?
Scott Taylor (23:47.854)
There's a lot of tactical stuff, but to sort of take it at a higher level, I've got this framework in my book I call the three V's of data storytelling for data management. It's obviously a knowing wink to the three V's of big data on purpose, but my V's instead of the velocity, variety and volume are vocabulary, which we just talked about, voice and vision. And so that first V, get the terminology right. Get, learn.
Ben Pearce (24:08.944)
Yeah. Okay.
Scott Taylor (24:16.99)
Use the, if you want to speak to the business, use the language of the business. And that's the audience we're speaking about in most sense for the folks who are listening. You're a data person. You're trying to break through to the business. You want to bring value to the business. You know, your work can help and they don't understand you. That's the situation that a lot of people are in. Part of that is because you use a lot of technical terminology, buzzwords, even
technical words that you know aren't buzzwords, they just, they don't care about, you know, there's not a business person who cares about the latest analytics graph hub fabric mesh and all the work you've done to implement that. Speak in the language of your business and get your vocabulary straight. And there is terminology just like Proctor and Gamble, every enterprise has its own little dialect and you should be fluent in that so you can use the right vocabulary. Voice means just not, you know,
Everybody in your team needs to tell the same kind of story. The way you talk about this needs to be consistent, especially if you're trying to do something innovative or breakthrough at your organization that there's a lot of resistance on. And if you're in data management, you get the resistance all the time.
You want to harmonize to some form of common voice. Harmony doesn't mean everybody sings the same notes, but it does mean they sound good together. practice, what does it sound like? That's where all this kind of rehearsal stuff goes into in the voice. What do you sound like? Have you said it before? Did you say it in the mirror? Does your parents or your pet or your significant other, do they understand what you're talking about? Can you explain this in a?
Ben Pearce (25:40.936)
Okay.
Scott Taylor (26:00.654)
in a way that is consistent. And this is the part that a lot of people fall down on because they don't practice, they don't rehearse, they don't listen to themselves. They find that kind of uncomfortable. It's hard work. So I listen to almost everything I do. I'll listen to the recording of this podcast and find all the little filler words and places where maybe I could have been more succinct. But I've done all that work and a lot of the work I've done to just get rid of that, to clean up that kind of approach and delivery.
Ben Pearce (26:11.526)
Yeah. Yeah.
Scott Taylor (26:30.178)
And then finally, vision. Everything you do in data has got to enable the strategic intentions of your enterprise. Where's your company going and why is data, why is data going to help you get there? Not how yet, but why is it important? And if you don't know the vision of your company, then you're doing a disservice to your own company. You should know and understand the objective and market of your business. And guess what?
I hate to break it to you, even though you're in data, every company is not a data company. Okay, that's not the way you start. You don't start with your CEO and say, we're actually a data company, but we make widgets. What are you talking about here? No, we're a software company. I hate that logic, by the way. For me, the tools you use made you the kind of company you are, then every company is a paperclip company. And we don't hear anybody bragging about that.
Ben Pearce (27:20.218)
Yeah.
Scott Taylor (27:23.298)
But look for that vision and the way you find that is in what your leaders say. If you're a public company, you've got an annual report. I doubt they're talking about what they're doing with data in that annual report very rarely, but they are talking about, they will always talk about what I think are three things. They'll talk about their relationships. They'll talk about their brands and they'll talk about doing things at scale. That's what most companies are trying to do. Provide value to their relationships.
through their brands at scale. Data is the only way to do that. The data you have about your relationships, the data you have about your brands, the way that data can help and enable processes to scale in a way that humans could never do. And it's even more so with AI and agents and all the rest of it. So you have a reason to be in the room and you have an angle to help drive the company vision.
but you've got to be fluent in it first. So vocabulary, get the words right, voice the way you sound, and vision why it's important.
Ben Pearce (28:27.814)
Yeah really good and that's nice and easy to remember isn't it? You three V's. I love little frameworks and the other thing is because what you're saying is that anyone can do this right? Anybody can improve their vocabulary. Anybody can improve the voice and the way they deliver. Anybody can improve the vision of the company and understanding from the company reports they can understand.
this is something that anybody can do and I think sometimes people think that they get a bit hung up on this kind of natural charisma like they're the person down the pub with all the stories and actually it's not about that it's taking those things and if you do a good job with those whether you can tell a good joke down the pub doesn't really matter because those things are compelling when you put them together.
Scott Taylor (29:17.39)
Yeah, you know, going back to my Coca-Cola story originally, even though I didn't come up with those three Vs, I spoke as language, I was consistent about it, and I understood, at least in that context, the vision of that company was able to tie those three things together. You know, I wish I knew what I knew then, right? So, I have, going through this and doing this, and this being my career, I help kind of syndicate it and formalize it in a way that I hope it can help others do a better job of what they're trying to do.
Ben Pearce (29:31.335)
Yeah.
Ben Pearce (29:46.929)
Yeah, any other tangible tips we're heading towards the end of the episode actually, but before we get to key takeaways, any other kind of key things, key bits of advice that you'd give to people on how to do this.
Scott Taylor (29:58.414)
You know, there are a couple of, there are a couple of, you know, tactics I learned from my dad. My dad was one of the greatest salesmen ever. He could sell water to fish is the way I would talk about it, but excellent storyteller. And I was fortunate enough to work with him early in my career and he had some very specific things around focus around, you know, he taught me it's like always stand up at the end of the room. Always stand up when you speak and you're presenting stand up. Why? So people will look at you. Do you want them to look at something else or do you want them look at you and
Ben Pearce (30:06.272)
Yeah
Scott Taylor (30:27.692)
We can be at the end of the table, stand there. Now some people kind of feel like, well, you know, I should sit over. If it's your meeting, it's your meeting. So take that space. They've given you that time. They've given you that space. They expect you to take it. They don't want you to be nervous. They don't want you to be wondering whether you should be there or not, because they'll wonder why they're there, especially if they're more senior than you. Another thing you taught, you know, he was a magazine publisher and there's ways to
sort of extend this now in the digital age, but very early on he would go on to present a magazine to sell advertising. He'd be like, never give them the magazine. The first thing reps always do is they walk in and they hand somebody something. And what that person is now doing is they're now not doing two things. They're not really looking at what you're giving them and they're not really listening to you. And that comes back to, again, a lot of dramatic arts training of just focus of
Don't upstage yourself. Don't distract people unnecessarily because the natural thing to do is to like, you know, lean back and not look at the person you're talking to. Eye contact, presence, voice, energy, all those things, those techniques are super important. But I learned a ton from my dad. Yeah.
Ben Pearce (31:43.737)
It's funny, you're talking about the magazine there and giving them a magazine and not doing that because it splits their attention. I reckon the digital version of that is the slide deck because every time somebody whacks up a slide, right, here we go, I've got my corporate slide or whatever it is with my 4000 bullet points or my really complicated slide diagram and we do, and I call it the split brain and it's what you've described. So whether about focus, you've distracted the focus. So not only are they not
Scott Taylor (31:55.534)
Well, yeah, yeah.
Ben Pearce (32:12.944)
really look read in the slide and maybe they are bits of it but they're not listening to you you you've just broken that focus and so i think that's maybe the slides are maybe the digital version of those magazines
Scott Taylor (32:26.202)
Yeah, whatever, here's our 50 page deck and it's all printed out. We killed a thousand trees and burned all the toner and the printer. And guess what they're looking for? I as soon as you hand it to anybody, if you're a vendor out there and I feel for all of you, because that's what I did most of my career, you hand them a deck, guess what they're looking for? They don't care about your founder history. They're skipping the last page looking for pricing. That's what they're looking for. They're looking for the bottom line at the end. And do you want to skip to that right away?
Ben Pearce (32:29.608)
Even worse.
Ben Pearce (32:49.724)
Yeah. Yeah.
Scott Taylor (32:54.976)
Is that how you would tell the story? No. So this split focus, don't upstage yourself. Focus is key. And if people aren't paying attention, then they're not paying attention.
Ben Pearce (33:03.356)
Yeah.
Ben Pearce (33:11.56)
Yeah yeah yeah. Brilliant. Do know what? I think we've run out of time. I hate to say. So just for people that are, I don't know, walking their poodles or they're swimming or whatever they're doing whilst they're listening to this podcast. What would be the key takeaways that you want people listening to take away from this episode?
Scott Taylor (33:16.802)
gee, okay. I hate to say it too, I'm having a ball here.
Scott Taylor (33:34.702)
Understand that the way you communicate is going to have a disproportionate effect on the outcome of whatever interaction you're having, sometimes even more so than what you're talking about. Another headline I give people when you're working with data and you're trying to implement some kind of data program, you've got to focus on the why, not the how. Business people, especially
They want to, they don't care how you're going to do it. It's important to know how you're going to do it. You got to get it done. I'm not saying you don't do the how, but if you're selling it in and that's the kind of story you are telling when you are doing data storytelling, don't think it's anything else. You are doing some form of selling when you're selling it in. Why it's important is the most critical place to start. If they ask you how to you do it, you've, you've convinced them already because now they're interested, but I never met a CEO or a CFO who cares how you're going to implement stuff until they understand why it's.
Ben Pearce (34:34.162)
Yeah, Yeah, yeah. And I really loved a few of the things that you've said that really resonated with me. First thing about that Coca Cola story that you had about fix their problem quickly in the language that...
Scott Taylor (34:34.478)
So a couple of nuggets in there for you that hopefully will help folks.
Ben Pearce (34:51.184)
they have used. In fact, it was the quotes in the Coca-Cola story, but that I think is so important. It's not about you and your corporate slides, but it's about getting to that story and then you can use their language. I think that's really important. The other thing that I think is been really interesting is just the way you talked about practising it, you know, and therefore, if you know what's coming next, if you know the content well, then you can think about that delivery. And if you can get that delivery really well, that really amplifies the story, amplifies
the product it amplifies everything because you're telling it so well yeah yeah
Scott Taylor (35:26.616)
And you have that confidence. People respond to confidence. They respond instinctively to confidence being exuded. And if you are nervous, that's one thing. But if it looks like you don't know what you're talking about, then they are turning off and wondering why they're in the room and you don't want that. So a way to get confident is to make the mistakes when you're alone or with your team and try it out. There's not, do we know any sports teams that don't practice? No.
Do we know any great actors who don't rehearse? Absolutely not. So they're always out there warming up, rehearsing, practicing, running drills, doing scales if you're, know, and learning your riffs if you're a musician, whatever it is, if you want to be great at it, you've got to practice, practice, practice. And what is that? I heard it from Julie Andrews, but she heard it from, think, early teacher of hers that said the difference between an amateur and a professional is the amateur does it till they can get it right.
professional does it till they can't get it wrong. So that's really the difference there. It's not just about being able to do it once, it's about being confident enough to know that you will always get it done.
Ben Pearce (36:37.97)
Fascinating. Well, for anybody that's been listening to this and wants to talk more about this topic, get in touch with you, how can people get in touch and find out more about this topic with you?
Scott Taylor (36:51.694)
I'm all over LinkedIn. So just look me up, Scott Taylor's Data Whisperer. At this point, I've been doing this long enough that if you Google the Data Whisperer, I should come up above the fold fairly well, which is nice. But find me on LinkedIn, happy to DM me there. I also have my book, which we talked about telling your data story, data storytelling for data management. You can see right on the cover, it's 99 % buzzword free. So I did not want to over promise. But a very simple straight, if I go through the three Vs, I've got the four Cs, the eight eights.
Ben Pearce (37:00.904)
Ha ha ha.
Ben Pearce (37:13.886)
Ha ha ha ha ha.
Scott Taylor (37:21.784)
constructs there that you don't use the program around, can help you convey the value of what you have to offer. And if any of these tips or tricks help you at all, then I've done my job today. So that's, that's available on Amazon. I think it's half off on Amazon these days, which is wonderful or from my publisher. And I've got a ton of videos on YouTube as well. So the data whisperer playlist is on YouTube where I got little
little clips that and if any of my stuff helps somebody, you know, it's there for you to use and share and and help you make a better point in what you're trying to do.
Ben Pearce (38:02.214)
Yeah, brilliant. Well, in which case, think just the last thing for me to say is thank you so much for joining us across the Atlantic Sea. Thank you for your time, your energy, that insight you've given has been brilliant. It's been an absolute pleasure. So thanks for joining us on the show.
Scott Taylor (38:19.374)
Thanks, Ben. It's been great to be here.
