#storytellerjewels Welcome to the telling of story podcast. I’m your host storyteller jewels and along with my guests it’s my endeavor to explore the art and science of storytelling to attract, engage and retain a business audience and to unpack why it works for some and not for the many that try. In this episode I have the pleasure of talking with Rowdy McLean listen in as he talks about what he thinks is the most important thing in storytelling. 

Rowdy Mclean I think the most powerful thing, the most powerful thing of all in storytelling. Is the pause.

#storytellerjewels Australia’s 2,019 keynote speaker of the year, Rowdy has delivered over 1000 keynote presentations to over 700,000 people in 17 countries. A master storyteller, a genuine bloke and someone that people from all walks of life can relate to. Rowdy played professional sport, build a successful startup, turned around a failing company founded five companies and mentors and works with leaders from the world’s top organizations. Daily Rowdy has also climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, kayaked in Antarctica tracked gorillas in Rwanda run marathons and hiked the caco to track the combination of business and personal challenges. Makes his presentations interesting and unique. A best selling author and founder of the Leadership institute Australia Rowdy is the go to speaker on how to shift mindsets, raise the bar, embrace, change and crack the code for extraordinary future success. Rowdy, Welcome to the show. 

Rowdy Mclean Thanks so much for having me

#storytellerjewels Rowdy take me back to where you grew up and what is it famous for? 

Rowdy Mclean I grew up in a little tiny country town on the northern table lands of New south Wales a place called the Ira. Have you ever heard of it? 

#storytellerjewels I have not 

Rowdy Mclean actually, I’m not surprised. Little tiny place built on top of a hill, freezing cold snows there in the winter. And uh about 800 people live there. You know, it’s the sort of place where you don’t lock your car or lock your door where everybody knows everybody else’s business. But a great little community to grow up in. And it’s famous for famous for three things. It’s famous for the guy, a ghost which nobody has ever seen. It’s famous for the highest Caribbean park in Australia which nobody stays in cause it’s too cold. But it’s probably most famous for the most inspiring football team in the world. The Gara football tale is called the mighty spuds. When you run out of the paddock to do battle in the mud and the blood and the sweat and the tears. The emblem that sits over your heart is a potato of leaks doesn’t get any more inspiring than that I don’t think. And I ended up as captain of the football team which made me mr potato head. That was the start of my leadership journey. Fabulous. And that was obviously the start of your sporting career as well. Yeah, it’s one of those country towns where there’s nothing to do. So you played sport that’s all you did. You know. So I played tennis and I play golf, and I played soccer and I played cricket, I played squash and I played rugby league. Rugby league was the sport that I was best at, and it gave me the opportunity to uh go and play football in Sydney with North Sydney and uh well it didn’t give me the opportunity to get a scholarship to go to college, but I got a scholarship to go to college in Sydney at the same time. And that’s how the working life of Rowdy Mclean started 

#storytellerjewels fabulous. And in your bio Rowdy, you described as a master storyteller, what is a master story, telling what makes you particularly good at it. 

Rowdy Mclean Okay, I think there’s so much to storytelling and uh the reason that’s in my bio is every time I worked with the company or with the speakers bureau um the feedback is are really the people loved your stories, they loved the story about this and they loved the story about that. And then I realized that all of my key content was anchored in stories. And so, you know, I just found that knack of conveying messages, two people that were contained within the story. So sometimes there’s a story about me, sometimes there’s a story about something else, but being able to get your content across, or your ideas across through a story, which I just did by the way, by telling you about where I grew up, you know, it’s just it’s my natural way to to default into describing the circumstance or situation and I was pretty naturally good at it, you know, I was the school captain, I was captain of the football team, I was a kid who did the award to the teacher at the end of the year, or the presentation to the footie coach. And so I didn’t mind this idea of speaking and stuff and and telling stories. I was the person who would regale people with stories of parties and stuff. It wasn’t really until about 2004 that I met a guy called Matt Church and he opened me to my eyes to the idea that there was much more depth to storytelling. And the very first thing I used to do it, tell a story about running a marathon and uh and he said to me, you know, that story is really, really good, but it’ll be so much better if you started telling it on the left hand side of the stage and finished it on the right hand stuff state. And I’ve gone why? He said, because people will will move through the journey with with you, like, they’re running the marathon from left to right. And I thought that is so crazy. But the next time I had a speaking gig, I tried it and I was amazed by the difference it made. And then, so then that really got me thinking about telling stories and being better at telling their stories and and so, you know, I still, to this day, try different things, different quiet ways to make the story better or communicate it better, not necessarily the story better, but to communicate it and convey the sentiment behind the story better. 

#storytellerjewels It’s interesting what you’ve just described there. Just even the little nuance of moving across the stage, it’s something I hadn’t really thought about before. I mean, I’ve always thought about the way you told a story, the language you used, you know, the pauses, the loud bits, the quiet bits and all of those kinds of things when you’re telling a story, but tell me a little bit about more about perhaps some of those nuances that also add to the telling of a story, because when you’re on stage, typically you’ve got a pretty flat stage and maybe a screen behind you. How do you how do you do things that also make the story more interesting? Tell me a bit about that. 

Rowdy Mclean Yeah, well, you know, I think it’s easier to tell a story on stage and it is over a podcast, it’s easier to tell a story over a podcast and it is in a book. So, but I think some people forget the value of being able to tell a story from the stage. And so that idea of moving left to right started me thinking about the other ways that I could use the stage, and so there’s, if I’m if I’m going to tell something somebody, there’s something really, really important like the the K 60 seconds of my keynote, I’ll actually walk right to the front of the stage and have my toes hanging just over the edge, like almost stepping into the crowd and the audience knows that whatever you’re going to say, when you’re standing at that point, it’s really, really important, you know, and and then the ability to make yourself small and large, so be able to crouch down a little bit and then lift yourself up and make yourself tall and all of those sorts of things make a massive difference to the way that you communicate a story. And the other thing is being able to, I’m not a big fan of props on the stage, but every now and again there is something that you can use that really helps anchor the story. Like I remember working with a guy who was telling a story about, well he’s telling a story about he was telling people about presenting and the art of presenting, and one of the things he talked about was frozen hand gestures and you know, he would talk about it and you sort of get it right. But then one day he did it and he had one of those snow cones, you know, with a shake up of the snowmen in it. And and he put that in his head and he said so frozen head just because when you can hold one of these and the snow doesn’t move and it really just a great way of visually reinforcing the fact that the frozen hand gesture is, is a solid, you know, thing, not like what I was doing frozen here, just as I tend to, this was my frozen here, just not what you said on the podcast, but the head would bounce up and down. It was until I saw that property to it. And I went, you know, if I’m going to make a point that hand needs to be completely frozen, you know, so little things like that can make a massive difference to the story that you’re telling. 

#storytellerjewels Tell me a bit more about your storytelling journey to attract and retain an audience. You mentioned that you met Matt back in 2014, I think you said um how is that journey evolved? What made you decide to go from? You know, you seem to have run many businesses yourself and and started and turned around businesses. What, where was that turning point? And when did you realize that storytelling was a big part of how to get your message across, 

Rowdy Mclean Look at. I started to speaking journey like so many other speakers and you’re trying to work out where you fit and how your message fits and who you’re right audiences and the best way for you to two be good at your art, you know, And so you’ve chosen this art and for me, I discovered that storytelling was, was my best way of being really good at speaking. And so once I, once I discovered that people, the feedback people were giving me was that they loved my stories. I went, I need to find a way to be better at something that you, I think the most powerful thing, the most powerful thing of all in storytelling is the pause. And uh you know, I say that to people and some of the people that I mentor and coach and they don’t believe me until they give it a go. But you know, that that if you’ve got an audience engaged, you have to have them engaged first. But once you get an audience engaged, the place you pause is the place where they go whatever comes out of his or her mouth next is something that I’m going to really listen to. It. Not only that, but it conveys the fact that that you’re thinking about what you’re gonna say next. You know, we get so guilty. I think of telling stories will be just what I have done. You know what I mean? In fact you should be relaxing to it. And and you know, for me, I every story I tell, I can visualize in my head and you know, I’ve done thousands of keynotes down. So some of the stories I’ve told, I was told hundreds and hundreds of times, but every single time I tell that story, I visualize it in my head. So what the audience is watching or what they’re hearing is me actually reliving that story in my head, and I think that’s one of the reasons that I’m really good at, because because they see the facial expressions that go with the memory, you know, like if you if you’re thinking about a good time, then the smart, your your face conveys that, and then if you’re thinking about a sad time, your face conveys that, but you’re not you’re not thinking about the facial expressions, you’re because you’re actually in the story at the time, and I think that’s the thing that makes the biggest difference for me, is people know that what I’m telling the story, I’m actually in the story, I’m not I’m not, the story is not a third party, like, there’s the audience, there’s to me and there’s a story out here, it’s just me in the story and people watching that unfold, 

#storytellerjewels I think the key to it, great stories being able to feel like you’re standing there side by side with that person, right? So, if if you’re conveying it in such a way that I can feel your empathy, I can feel your pain, I can feel your joy, then I’m drawn into that, right, and so there’s a huge power in reliving and re telling that story in the way that you felt, it doesn’t matter if you’ve told it 100 times, if you can if I can feel that story as you’re saying it, then I’m more inclined to be drawn into that. 

Rowdy Mclean Absolutely spot on. 

#storytellerjewels And I can only imagine the power of the pause would be hugely powerful, combined with the hang your feet over the edge as well. So, coming in really close being really, maybe even lowering your voice a little bit, having that pause and telling that next thing would be a really powerful piece inside any story, I imagine. 

Rowdy Mclean Yeah, absolutely. I think combining some of those things, the empathy, the way you speak, the speed, the quietness, the the position on stage, tell me a bit about other forms of storytelling that you might do outside of the stage. Do you do anything else other than stage work? Oh look, I think what’s the storyteller always a storyteller, you know, and I mentor ceos and business leaders outside of speaking and uh and I worked with big leadership teams and I think all of that mentoring training coaching involves stories. I you’ll sit down with somebody and ask them about the challenges that they’re facing and they’ll tell you about a challenge and then you’ll go, you know, I’ve had a similar experience and you start to tell them the story of that experience, you know? And so I think I think it’s again using something that you talked about. It’s just a fantastic way of relating to people really, really well, you know, that that it destroyed the share of a story of similar experience with a different result allows people to see that there’s a different way forward it, but because you’re because you start telling stories, it’s almost like it’s no longer a mental ship, it’s a friendship. And I think it makes a big difference if if you can see share pertinent personal stories with somebody that you’re mentoring, it engages them far far greater than it would if it was just a purely um commercial relationship. Does that make sense? Like it’s just a transaction rather than they don’t a couple of friends haven’t, You know, for me, my mentors always say to me that when mentoring doesn’t feel like mentoring to them, it feels like having a few beers up with a mate and that’s how I wanted to feel, you know, I want to I want a leader to feel like he’s running up one of his mates and let’s go and have a beer and we go and sit down and he goes, look, there’s something struggling with X. You have the conversation at all or I’ve got this opportunity and I don’t know which way to go. And so that’s the way that I wanted to be. And the reason it can be that way is because of the storytelling the other place that I I’ve written two books that I’ve written a book called play a bigger game, which my, which was the first book. And then I wrote this book, lead ability, Which was my second book. Now this book is written in conjunction with the story of me climbing Mount Kilimanjaro and it’s a leadership book, but not only does it, like it’s the leadership book, I wish I was given the day that I started in leadership. So it’s got 30 mistakes that I made that no leader should ever make, you know? But it’s also written every chapter is written in conjunction with the experience of climbing the mountain with this guy because Stephen Mario and uh so it’s got two elements to it, it’s a bit like bit like a fable, but actually not. So we’ve got the content and then we’ve got the story about the mountain because I’m just so impressed with this uh this guy who was climbing the world’s highest free standing mountain in the world for a living and then his his approach to leadership and getting people to the top of the mountain. And so yeah, There’s a story in that book that lasts the whole 30 chapters as well. 

#storytellerjewels In your keynote rowdy, you talk about four things you’re in control of, can you expand a little bit on those and in particular the one around actions. 

Rowdy Mclean So so there’s four things that all of us control, but most of us don’t control. And uh but if we did the world would change completely, you know, and so those first things are the first one is your attitude and most people, when you ask them the question, are you responsible for the for your attitude? They will say absolutely. But when you ask them, are they in complete control of their attitude at any given time on any given day? Under any given circumstances, very few people put their hand up for that. But when you get to the point in life where you know how you show up is completely at your control. So you don’t blame your customers, You don’t blame your boss, You don’t blame your partner. You don’t blame your kids, the dog, the neighbors, the community. When you go up, I’m completely responsible for how I show up and how I behave in the world. The game changes because you just you do things you would never have done when, when nobody else is to blame anymore. You you set yourself a set of benchmarks, a set of standards and you just do, you know, you don’t you don’t take a lazy approach to life when you because I think, I think that’s the cop out for most people who are not in complete control of their attitude. They’ve got somebody else to blame. I’m allowed to be like, this is okay for me to be like this because it’s that person’s or that circumstances fault. But when you get over that when you go, I’m completely responsible, you just play differently and you play better, you know, and uh you know, I tell a story about that, that includes the death of my father and and I’m not going to tell it now, but uh it’s a long story, but it’s a powerful story about, you know, we had this disconnect with this man alcoholic divorced, hadn’t seen been in contact with him for 78 years and then we decided to Show up when he was at the last few days of his life, me and my little brother and we had the four best days of our life because we turned up in complete control of their attitude and still carrying all the bad stuff into that experience. We carried just ourselves in our in our authentic selves, you know, and so it was just a magnificent experience and even that, you know, I’m not going to tell the story, but even thinking about when I tell that story, one little nuance that I’ve changed. When I tell that story is I used to start off by saying to people, you know, I could tell you stories about attitude, how I became a professional football and became a successful business person ceo startup, all of those things. But the best story is the story I can tell you about the death of my dad changing that one line to a story. I can tell you about the death of my father, change the way people embraced with the story because when you go to the death of my dad, people go, oh it turns out okay because they could you use the word dad, But when you go and tell you a story about the death of my father, they sort of lean forward a little bit because they go, oh I wonder how this turns out, you know? And so it’s just one word and it took me two years to find that one word, you know? And then so it’s just finding those little things that make a story better. So that’s the first thing. Only attitude under any circumstances. The next one is uh make choices with purpose, life is short and one of my pet hates is saying to somebody, why did you do that? They go, I don’t know, it just seemed like a good idea at the time, which is just ridiculous, right? You know, uh if you’re gonna go places in this world and you know, if a little country bumpkin like me can, can achieve everything that I’ve achieved, anybody can achieve just about anything. And one of the things is is not not accepting second best, not accepting the status quo, It’s just making choices, even tiny choices to move forward to make progress to grow a little bit too, to find a way to make things better and instead of just just accepting how things are choosing how you want things to be, the third one is execution. So execution is such a powerful tools, especially for leaders. The execution is doing what you say, you’re going to do the way you said you’re going to do it when you said you were going to do it every single time. That builds massive trust and integrity, right? And and if once it becomes a habit, you just accelerate your progress so much because because you never start out doing something and doing it half way or half good. You know, you go, if we’re going to execute on something and do it with absolute integrity and then what happens is over the course of a few months and then a few years people start to go this guy or this girl, they just, there’s so consistent with the way that they do things the way that they apply themselves or the way that they approach things and you know, that’s how you get off opportunities. That’s how you get promotions, that’s how you get, let’s say you make progress and then the last thing is the ability to stick, the ability to stick at it longer than you think you need to longer than your parents think you need to longer than your partner thinks you need to longer than your boss thinks you need to quite often longer than you think you need to, you know, most for most of us success is just around the corner and we throw in the towel too early, you know, and I think we live in this cotton wool society where where we sort of learned to throw in the towel, that’s okay to give up, it’s okay to pull the pin and but the people that are successful, the Oprah Winfrey, Sir Richard Branson, Elon musk, you know, The, I can’t remember the name of that girl that just won the us open, but at 18 years of age, but they are the people who just keep going and stick at it long enough to make it a success. 

#storytellerjewels I really love that framework, particularly that we’re all four sections of those. But those last three in particular when I talk to people about building a tribe and building an audience and attracting potentially new clients and actually attracting or creating a business around storytelling those last three in particular, you know, the choices of how you show up, you know what you say, who you say it to, followed by actually executing on on that and you know, doing the speaking gigs, writing the blogs, posting on social media, ringing people up, speaking in front of people whenever, whenever you get those chances to actually do those and execute them and do them consistently. And that last one there sticking at it. I mean, I see so many people go, oh yeah, I blogged for, you know, three days and it didn’t work. So I moved on to so sure, and then I did that for a week. And you know, that didn’t work all of these things, a lot of these things in life in general, and particularly in that space there that I speak about consistently is you’ve got to do it for the long term, this is not a in a short term decision, it’s a lifelong decision. It’s a choice. And if you stick at it for long enough, you will start to see those results. You know, it won’t happen overnight, but it will happen kind of thing. And it’s really about those other things, including the attitude in which you show up and actually start to present and be seen is Magnificence. I really love that framework. So thank you for sharing that 

Rowdy Mclean you’re welcome. 

#storytellerjewels I might steal a little bit of it when I talk about it. It’s very good. You also you wrote the book Playing a bigger game and that’s pretty much been your life story as well. Tell me a bit about about that. 

Rowdy Mclean I don’t know what happened to me, you know, growing up in guy or whether whether it was the fact that it was a small country town and I wanted, I don’t know my brothers and sisters didn’t want to get out of, but I didn’t want to get out of jail because I didn’t like Kyra. I was just enthralled by the idea that there’s a bigger world out there and and so, you know, the move to Sydney was a pretty big thing for me, first person, my family to go to college, first person in, in my school to move to Sydney, you know, you get to Sydney and you realize there’s a bigger world than that, you know, there’s all of Australia and then you go, there’s the whole of the south pacific and then there’s the world and uh but that was the beginning of me going, there are so many experiences to be had and yeah, so I try to mark, trying to mark My growth in age with different types of milestones, you know, like back when I was younger, I used to have that, you know, you turn 21 and like every kid in Australia, you pretty much have a party of some description and drink way too much and wake up the next day with a hangover and then yeah, you get to 30 to mark that milestone by going out to a restaurant and drinking way too much red wine and waking up the next day with a hangover, You get to 40 and you start, you’ve made a bit of money and So you go up to Hamilton Island and drink cocktails to 3:00 AM and wake up the next day with a Hangover, so I decided for my 50th, I wasn’t gonna do that. And so for my 50th, I climbed the morning of my 50th birthday, I was standing at the peak of the world’s highest free standing mountain. And that’s just a really short story about the way that I think about things. I look at the patterns that are unfolding in my life and go, which one’s a stale and which ones need to change, you know? And so the reason I go and kayaking in part okay, is because I’ve been having boring holidays in the same place for the last 12, 15 years ago, I’m going to do something different. So if I’m going to do something different, let’s do something remarkably different. And so I went over to South America and made my way down to its way. I hopped on a, an irish irish, a Russian icebreaker and, and went across to Antarctica was a magnificent experience. Um you know, tracking gorillas in Rwanda was the same thing walking the caco to track running a marathon. I woke up one day, uh, went down got the sunday paper and we’re certainly having a cup of coffee reading the sunday paper. I turned the page and there’s this story there about the fact that less than 1% of the entire population has ever run a full marathon. And uh, I thought I’d like to be in that group, you know, and I wasn’t rather or anything, but I thought wouldn’t that be a milestone, a, an achievement to run a full marathon. So I decided I was going to run a full marathon no matter what what it took. So I did all the training and everything turned up and uh ran the marathon thinking that uh, you know, you run a marathon because you want the medal and the photo and the t shirt, but my little boy met me at the halfway mark, he was four years old at the time and he ran about 200 m with me, it nearly killed him, but it was just the boost I needed, you know, and I finished the marathon finished in 3.5 hours, which was pretty good time. And you have an experience with that little four year old boy that has lasted me a lifetime, like he cried Mount Kilimanjaro with me, um you know, we’ve become lifelong friends. So sometimes you go on these journeys of, of trying something that’s a little bit outside the box thinking that this is the result you’re going to get and you get something completely different. And that’s the beauty I think about the world is that you get on a train and moved to Sydney to go to college and play football and end up speaking to business leaders in new york 30 years later, you know, how does that happen? It’s what a wonderful, wonderful world with uh, I think it comes back to some, you know, that part of that framework. You know, it’s your attitude and and some of those decisions on purpose that you make throughout your life, and these stories that you tell that you now tell as part of your your business is actually the experiences that you’ve had personally along your journey and like you say, they don’t often, you know, often they switch and change and they evolve as you’re telling the story, but the experiences and what you get out of it is not what you expected. And therefore those little nuances are the interesting parts of the story. 

#storytellerjewels You know, often it’s the, you know, the truck broke down on the way to uh to trekking in Rwanda looking for the gorillas is part of that story which you didn’t necessarily expect, but it makes it so much more interesting. And I think it’s those decisions to just do and give it a go, which which creates our lives, which creates the story of our lives and which then becomes interesting when you go to tell those stories. 

Rowdy Mclean Yeah, I think so, and I think something else you just mentioned is really important. There are stories within the story. So, like, you know, and I used to do this with a friend of mine where we would sit down and tell a story and then the person would ask questions around the story, right? And then you would find the story about the truck breaking down. They go, you didn’t mention the truck breaking down, what happened when the truck back then. So, you tell the story about the truck breaking down, They go, that’s such a good story, you know, and you hadn’t even thought of it until you start to think about, yeah. How did, how did what happened on the ice breaker on the way to Antarctica, you know, or who were the characters that were there? Tell me more about the characters. What was the boat? Right? You know, that was the weather. Yeah, It’s when you start to dive into it, you go, well, there’s so many stories in here. And uh, and I think the other thing is I discovered that that you don’t have to tell stories exactly as they occurred. And by that, I mean, you’ve got to be authentic to the story. You can’t change the story, but you know, sometimes I’ve got a lot of sporting stories, obviously growing up from the sporting background and so sometimes you’re talking to an audience of people who have no interest in sports whatsoever. And so you go, oh, there goes half my stories, but that’s not actually the case. So, you know, I tell a story about when I played football, there was a guy who got paid like five times more than anybody else. And uh, we’re in the final and the other team scored a try and uh, we were down by a couple of points with about two minutes to go and this guy who’s getting paid for everything more than everybody else is telling us to do this to do this, I want you got to do this and you’re gonna do this and one of the players turned around and said, well you’re getting paid the most, why don’t you do it? So that’s a good story in itself. Simple story and I’ve got a pity, I couldn’t tell that story could be really good for this audience. But then all you need to do is go, I think this experience once where, you know, we were struggling with getting the results that we wanted and the leader was shouting at us and shouting us to do this to do that, you know, in pushing us to to do stuff when in fact the best thing he could have done, he’s got out in front of us and did the stuff and we would have followed him, that’s leadership responsibility. So you see how you take exactly the same story, take the sporting stuff out of it. It’s still the same story, still authentic to the story. You just don’t need to tell the Rugby League part of it. 

#storytellerjewels There’s a lot of lessons in that and I think you’re absolutely correct and I love the flow in which a story can evolve and change and and grabbing a certain nuances within a story and maybe focusing on on that part because it’s contextually it’s correct for the space that you’re in. So if you’re speaking to a certain crowd than the story about the truck, breaking down might be the more interesting part of the story. Whereas if you’re talking to a different crowd, you might be talking about sitting with the gorillas. Right? So choosing the part of the story or emphasizing the part of the story, that makes sense. So I think being contextually aware of what’s right at that moment could be the difference between, you know, a great presentation and an average one, right? 

Rowdy Mclean Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I have, I don’t know whether you’ve heard of this before, but I actually have a story of metrics. So I’m an Excel spreadsheet and down the left hand side, I have all of the stories that that I tell 100 different stories and then along the right hand access, I have all of the places that that story would be suitable. Is it a good customer service story? Is a good leadership story. Is that a good collaboration story is a good trust story? You know, so you’ve got these endless amount of places, but then you go, you’re able to go, you know, you just can’t tell that story about trust, it just doesn’t work there. So, you know, you because when you’re building a presentation, yeah, I’d like to make it as fast as possible. And so instead of wondering whether a story will fit or not, I just look at that metrics and we’ll hear all the stories I could tell about Trust. You know,

#storytellerjewels I think what you’ve described is really interesting too in the sense that I’ve heard speakers speaker presentations and maybe I’ve been lucky enough to hear them more than once and where it falls down a little bit is if for the second time I hear exactly the same presentation um and the same stories and it feels the second time in particular feels very canned and almost inauthentic or is what you’ve just described there is you’ve got a set of stories that you can tell, but I’m pretty sure if I if I watched 234 different presentations of yours. Yes, they might have some some some similarities across them, but the nuances within the stories or the emphasis parts of the stories or the pieces of the story might change in in every presentation. Is that how you treat that? 

Rowdy Mclean Yeah. Look, I don’t think I’ve ever done two presentations the same and yet somebody who’s who’s watching them might go, they were they were pretty similar. But every time I do a presentation, I’m always thinking about, you know, that one word, that one that can I replace the story with a different story, can I, can I change the story? Like changing the words Dead to Father so that it so that it it fits better that you are the best time to do that Is in the 1st 10 minutes after you’ve told you’ve had the presentation or you’ve told the story because that right there, you can feel it, I can feel it in my body, I can feel that something is clunky or it didn’t resonate, you know? And so I want to I’ve got a little notebook with all of my presentations in it and at the bottom I’ve got for every single presentation I’ve ever ever done, I’ve got 3, 3 things that out of that presentation, I could do differently. And sometimes it’s taking a complete story and scrapping and replacing, sometimes it’s taking one word and replacing it. Sometimes it’s thinking about where I am on the stage, sometimes it’s it’s knowing to pause. You know, I should have paused after a pause before I made that point because, you know, I love the pause, it’s uh sometimes you can roll into a really important point in the story too quickly. And the thing about a pause, it just allows you to stop, allows the audience to go and it allows you to deliver that key point in a little microcosm all of its own. And so when when somebody, when somebody goes back to the office and and the ceo says, how was the conference I go, it was fantastic. And they go, you know, what did you see, what did you hear? They go, I heard this guy called round and he told this story and they will use that little microcosm point that you made in between pauses. Can you know, that’s how your point gets conveyed outside of the conference room or outside of the podcast 

#storytellerjewels  rowdy. I could talk to you about this stuff for 34 or five days I think I’ve totally enjoyed it. I do have a final question however, which I do like to ask all of my guests If someone paid you $1 million dollars To pick your brain, but you only had five minutes to share some of your wisdom, what would you say to them? 

Rowdy Mclean Oh, to pick my brains about life, about business? 

#storytellerjewels You choose? 

Rowdy Mclean Look Yeah, that’s a that’s a fantastic question. Here’s what, here’s what I would say, you are capable are far more than you imagine. Yeah, we live in like right now things in the world a little bit crazy, but back in 1900 and 11 people said the world’s a little bit crazy and the whole heap of other times during history, people have said the world’s a little bit crazy. You are the latest greatest model of human being that has ever existed. Your ancestors survived fire and famine and plague and predators and became better and better and better so that you could take your place in this world and you’re the best model yet and you owe it to the next generation to make the best of what’s in front of you. It’s that the world is your oyster and you know, if a little country bumpkin from guy can lean into it and uh have such wonderful experience isn’t and such tremendous growth, I’m sure you can too, you know, you are unbelievably amazing and capable of so much rowdy, 

#storytellerjewels fabulous advice. I’ve enjoyed our chat immensely. If people want to find out a little bit more about you, where can they find you online? 

Rowdy Mclean Yeah, the best place to go is to www.rowdymclean.com . So R O W D Y M C L E A M dot com and you can sign up for my newsletter. I find my books, find my speaking presentations, find my blog, everything’s there. 

#storytellerjewels Rowdy, thank you so much. 

Rowdy Mclean They’ve just been fantastic. 

#storytellerjewels I enjoyed having a chat with Rowdy. There’s no wonder he’s considered a master of storytelling, There’s so much to unpack there, I could have gone on for hours with him. It was such a pleasure and such a joy to have him on a couple of things that really stood out to me, one was his four, four rules to life. Own your attitude, make choices with purpose, execute and stick at it. What a great force set, just listening to those forward, just makes you think and stop and want to just get out and do stuff. And the other one that I really liked was that if you’re going to do something different, why not make it remarkably different. Change it up a little, if it’s getting a little bit style, mix it up, go to the opposite end and that’s where some of the best stories lie, much love chat soon.