Thought Leadership Studio Podcast Episodes:
Storytelling for Thought Leadership with Andrea Sampson
Episode 93 - Crafting Impactful Narratives: How Storytelling Elevates Influence, Engagement, and Thought Leadership Success
#coaching, #communication, #consulting, #contentmarketing, #creativity, #imagination, #influence, #insight, #inspiration, #interviews, #marketingstrategy, #personalbranding, #persuasion, #speaking, #storytelling, #tedtalks, #thoughtleadership
Or Click here to listen or subscribe on appWhat this episode will do for you
:- Andrea Sampson’s Journey to Thought Leadership: Learn how Andrea transitioned from advertising and strategy to coaching TEDx speakers and thought leaders in crafting compelling narratives.
- The Power of Storytelling in Thought Leadership: Discover how storytelling makes complex ideas more accessible, memorable, and impactful for diverse audiences.
- Distilling Complex Ideas into a Core Message: Understand Andrea’s process for helping experts refine their message into a clear, engaging, and influential narrative.
- Engaging Audiences with Emotional Connection: Learn how to structure messages that resonate deeply and inspire action.
- Three Essential Storytelling Strategies: Get actionable insights on crafting and delivering thought leadership messages with clarity and impact.
Andrea Sampson.
In this episode, I am excited to introduce Andrea Sampson, co-founder of Talk Boutique and a renowned speaker’s coach who has spent over 25 years helping leaders, TEDx speakers, and experts refine their message and craft narratives that resonate. With a background in advertising and strategy, she transitioned into coaching thought leaders to distill their complex insights into clear, engaging, and transformative messages.
It's all about effective storytelling, making this episode especially relevant to Strategic Thought Leadership, which includes making complex ideas accessible, inspiring change, and shaping the future with impactful communication. Storytelling is the bridge between expertise and influence—it makes ideas memorable, relatable, and actionable.
In this fascinating conversation, Andrea shares her journey from advertising to thought leadership coaching, emphasizing the importance of making your voice heard, the role of inclusivity in shaping the future, and the process of distilling deep knowledge into a compelling core message. We discuss the challenges experts face in communicating their ideas and the power of storytelling in overcoming those barriers.
Andrea also provides actionable insights on how thought leaders can structure their message, engage audiences emotionally, and create lasting impact through storytelling.
Some of Andrea's coordinates:
Curated Transcript of Interview with Andrea Sampson
The following partial transcript is lightly edited for clarity - the full interview is on audio. Click here to listen.
Chris McNeil: I'm Chris McNeil, with Thought Leadership Studio, and I am sitting across Zoom with Andrea Sampson, a transformative force in storytelling and co-founder of Talk Boutique.
So how can storytelling drive meaningful change in business of all sizes? Well, Andrea's expertise lies in guiding TEDx speakers and business leaders to craft impactful narratives that enhanced communication and inspire growth. Her work has empowered leaders across diverse industries to harness the power of storytelling as a strategic tool for transformation. Great to have you here.
Andrea Sampson: Well, thanks so much, Chris. I'm excited to be here. .
Chris McNeil: Yes, great to have you. And to give our listener who may not yet be familiar with your work, a little context, was there a pivotal moment or an event or a shift in thinking that set you on the path to doing what you're doing now with this type of work and coaching and transformative storytelling?
From Advertising to Impact: a Journey into Transformative Storytelling
Andrea Sampson: Yes. Yeah, absolutely was. I spent most of my career in advertising. I worked in strategy and planning, and I had gone into advertising early on in my career with sort of an idealist mindset, thinking that in some way using this powerful medium of advertising, I could influence some of the policies or the ways in which society sees things. So because advertising is a powerful medium, and after about 25 years of working in the medium, I realized I was an idealist in a capitalist world, and it is absolutely a medium that is driving capitalist consumption and nothing wrong with that, but it wasn't helping me in terms of making impact.
And I decided I needed to leave the industry, but I didn't know what I was going to do. And so I started doing just a little bit of sort of exploring and I was still working in advertising at the time. I was a senior vice president of strategy for a very large agency and I started going to conferences and just doing some personal development work. And one of the things that I ended up doing was being "volunt-hired" by TEDx Toronto as a speaker's coach.
And at the time, this was in the early days of the TEDx movement, and I didn't know what a speaker's coach was. I had never heard of it, but I mean, given the work that I was doing, I presented all day every day and thought, oh yeah, I got this. But that was a moment for me that first year, I ended up working with TEDx Toronto for five years, then went on to work with, created my own TEDx brand. And I've worked with TEDx speakers all over the world now and even worked with some TED speakers.
And what it did for me in going into that world was I saw something that I didn't realize. So first of all, when you work with people who are TED speakers, they're often scientists or academics or technologists or even artists. That's sort of what is the profile of a TED speaker. And these are people who are often doing big work in the world. They are doing work to change our world, but they're so busy doing the work that they're forgetting to tell anyone about it. And why that's important is that the work they're doing is actually shaping your and my futures.
And we are never learning about it because the media isn't all that interested in telling us about the good work that's happening. It's often more interested in telling us about what isn't happening Or what's going wrong. And so that was the first discovery I had. The second was that everything I had been doing in advertising had been the perfect training ground for me as a speaker's coach and as a thought leader coach, because one of the things that I had to do in advertising as a strategist and planner was to be able to distill information down into a single idea.
And that is the exact skill that these scientists and academics and technologists and thought leaders needed was to help them take their entire life's work and turn it into one idea that could be then built into a 15 minute TED talk. And so these two things sort of happened at the same moment and I realized that this was the work that I actually really wanted to do because this is how I can actually create change and impact in our world.
A Future for Everyone: The Power of Inclusive Thought Leadership
Chris McNeil: And is it this creating change and impact? Is that what you do this for? Is that your why?
Andrea Sampson: So my why is really about co-creating a future that's representative of all who are living within it. And what that means is that today when we look out at the world at the thought leaders who are actually creating the future for us, often those thought leaders don't look like me. They are and don't look like many of the people who are going to be living in those futures.
And so what happens is our voices are not being represented and thought leaders. The challenge I think that most people have is that they go, well, how do I become a thought leader? That's a hard thing, except that's not really true anymore. It might've been once that was true. But the reality is thought leadership is really about making your voice your point of view heard.
If you've got some sort of a background or training that is enabling you to see the world in a different way, you have the ability to help others to see a different way of being. And by doing that, you're creating thought leadership. Now, it might be in your family or it might be in your neighborhood, or it might be in your community, or maybe it's in your industry or country.
Your reach is not as important as your voice because if your voice is being heard, the reach will find its place and it'll inspire others. So for me, I do what I do so that I could create a diversity of thought leadership because that is what co-create a future that is inclusive of everyone which creates sustainability for us all.
Chris McNeil: I love the principles of inclusivity and including people, and that thought leadership isn't necessarily what some think it is. I've run into the same thing where many think it's about just demonstrating expertise or the size of your social media audience.
And I've always said, if you can change one person's thinking because our experience of the world is our thinking, then you've changed the world for that person and you're doing thought leadership for that person.
Andrea Sampson: That's it. And I think that that is the piece that's for so many of us we have to come and step into because when we are using our voice and influencing that one person, we're actually influencing hundreds, maybe thousands.
And that's what we don't really understand. And like I said, I think inclusivity is such an important thing in our world today because we are a world of such vast diversity. And that's everything from diversity of culture or gender, but it's also diversity of thinking. And even the way in which we think neurodivergent thinking, I mean we're learning how different we are while how similar we are.
This is I guess the one of the benefits of being human. We can be of the same species, but so very diverse in how we approach the things we do and how we think.
Chris McNeil: And that's a strength.
Making Your Ideas Heard
Andrea Sampson: That is a strength.
Chris McNeil: And somehow we miss it. And I think I love the distinction you made between the mainstream media negativity because you're going to get more clicks with a negative message. So it leans in that direction. And I would even point to the small number of companies and on a large number of mainstream media companies limiting diversity of message.
And it becomes about the agenda of the stockholders And the more independent media where we can build our own platforms as thought leaders. And something that really intrigued me was your work with people who are experts in a particular field but may not know how to package their expertise for influence.
What if you have the world's greatest innovation, but nobody buys into it because you haven't led anybody to appreciate the benefits of that innovation and contextualize it into their lives? How do you help people do that? What are the beginning steps of someone who might have deep knowledge but maybe not be so skilled in articulating that knowledge or empowerment?
Andrea Sampson: Well, the first thing is to create what I call their core thought leadership, their core idea. And it is a complex and nuanced process, but really what we're doing is we're developing a one sentence of what it is that they're putting out in the world, and it's really through the lens of what topic or category within which they operate.
So where is your expertise? Are you in science? And what type of science are you in medicine? What type of medicine? So categorically, what is it you're addressing? And then we look at, okay, now within that, what is it you're contributing to that category or topic? What is it that's unique that only you do, that you think that you believe that you've proven?
And there are many different ways that that activation of that topic can come about, but that's where it becomes unique because we take the more ubiquitous topic, but we narrow it down to how that individual is addressing that topic. Now those two things are usually a big part of that core thought leadership. And for the thought leader, they'll often feel very complete, but we have to add in the reason why they're doing it, the why, which often feels really obvious because when you hear that work, and especially when the person who's doing that work hears it, it's like, yes, that's exactly it, and it's obvious why I'm doing it, except it's your audience who needs to hear the why.
And so we bring the why in it, what's the impact or outcome when your topic and the way in which you activate or address that topic are true, what comes from it? What is the thing that changes or the outcome or the result that you're putting out into the world? And so putting those three things together, we come up with core thought leadership. And what that usually does for somebody who's struggled to make themselves heard or understood is it gives them a foundation.
What we're not trying to do is to develop a tagline or a marketing speak. What we're doing is we're developing a foundational platform upon which all of the marketing and stories and everything can live on top of. So often when we develop that core thought leadership, it feels very right, but it often needs more pizazz as we hear. I hear that a lot. Oh, it's boring. Well sure it's boring because it's literal, because we want it to be literal. Because what we want for the speaker, the thought leader, is to really very specifically capture what they're doing, how they are contributing.
And we don't want to leave that up to nuance or to metaphor where it can be misunderstood or interpreted in different ways by different people. So we ideally first paint that picture very literally, and then we can turn it into lots of metaphors, bring story in, create a way for people to access it that is more engaging and meaningful for others.
But we have to first start with what is true for the thought leader. And so that process is always where we start with the thought leader. And once we have that, then we start looking out and saying, alright, now how do you want to get that message out? Who's your target audience for that message? And now let's start to build out stories and messages so that others understand it, engage with it and want to support you in some way in it.
Chris McNeil: That's powerful. And I'm getting a few threads that might be worth diving deeper into. One of them is the empathy for the audience perspective. And we're not always good as entrepreneurs or leaders or founders or inventors or scientists or musicians, artists and stepping out of our creative process and seeing it from the outside in and how it looks, and there's unique thinking as part of that, contrasting that with the thinking we're leading people from, so we're starting from where they're at.
That's one piece. Another is, in my language, I would differentiate in terms of a thought leadership position, which is a very simple statement, more like your core message and if then statement. So it's an structure of a belief system versus a thought leadership model. All the things you wrap it in to make it attractive and lead people to it.
Bridging the Gap: Translating Expertise for Greater Impact
Andrea Sampson: And I think it's an interesting way, I've never really thought of it as an if then versus a model, but I can see where you're going with that. It is powerful. I mean because of the way that we do it and the way that I look at it, I'm really trying to get at that what is it you do? How do you do it, and why is it important? That's the framework of the model that I use in terms of the idea itself.
And then we get into the making accessible through stories. And so what that does with the audience, so getting into, okay, who is it that we're really talking to and how can we, the thing about, regardless of how you come to that core thought leadership, it is somebody's work, it's their belief set, and it's layered and it's deep and it's very tightly packed because it has to be.
And so what we want to do is be able to unpack it in a way that's understandable by people who aren't as close to it and who don't have an understanding of it, but if they did, they would actually think and behave differently. And so that's what we're really doing. And so the unpacking of it is so important for that audience.
Chris McNeil: How do you lead these leaders to unpack things? What kinds of questions do you ask or what kinds of information do you draw out of them to build this out this way?
Andrea Sampson: We'll usually start with why they believe what they believe. What is it you believe? What is it you do? First of all, for me, I always start with tell me about yourself. Because regardless of what you do for a living, who we are at our core always is what drives us. And so I start with the human, who are you? What? What do you believe? And then within that, now, what is it that you have chosen to dedicate your life to in whatever way that means? And so now we're starting to get into the translation of the human to the ways in which they're contributing.
And so by unpacking both of those things, it allows me as the receiver of that information to start to build up some models for them to be able to say it back to them. So I'm saying, well, what you've told me about you is this, and the thing you do is that. So for me, as I listen to that, here's what I'm hearing. Tell me, does that make sense to you? And so now what we're doing is almost a call in response of you tell me something, I tell it back to you, mirror it back to you in a way that maybe you've not heard before. Sometimes it's your own words.
In fact, I do that a lot and I do that very specifically because what I find is that we don't listen to ourselves. And so we're saying things and yet because our brain, those beautiful brains that we have fills in so much for us. So the words we use are usually very layered with lots of information that's already in our brain. But what the receiver me is hearing is the words without the benefit of everything that's in the teller's brain.
And so when I say it back to them and they hear only their words, not all the meaning that was in their head, they'll often say things to me like, no, no, that's not what I meant at all. Except I might even be using the exact words they're using. But it's because their brain can no longer fill in the blanks because it's coming from somebody else. It's not coming from them even though it was their words.
So that kind of a call and response is a really important part. And the questioning, the questioning of why do you believe what you believe? What is your background, what's your history, what brought you to this? And then we get into the what is it that you do that no one else does in that category, in that area, or what is it you believe or what change do you want to see that no one else really knows about because of your culture or your background or your history or your training or your experience or your experiments.
We all bring things very uniquely to our areas of expertise, but we don't always appreciate how unique they are because we, again, are seeing through our own biased lens. But as I ask some of those questions, I'm able to start to parse them apart, pull them apart and go, oh, well you told me this and this and it means this. Have you ever thought about it that way? And now that person is thinking about it, they're realizing how uniquely they do approach something that they thought everybody knew.
And I think again, this is the filter we put on ourselves as humans because we like to think that we're just like everyone else when in fact each and every one of us brings a unique lens.
Becoming the Audience’s Advocate: Thought Leadership with Impact
Chris McNeil: I love that. To me, it's like you're acting like the advocate of the audience member, the advocate of the crowd who could benefit from this to help them extract value from this core message that needs a lot of context to be appealing, attractive, magnetic and relatable.
Andrea Sampson: Yeah, that's it exactly.
Chris McNeil: Maybe teach people how this is relevant to their values.
Andrea Sampson: Maybe.
Chris McNeil: The way you looked at this field of profession or form of art before wasn't fulfilling this value that's important to you and here's a perspective that could, if you just want to take a little time to engage in this new world of thinking.
Andrea Sampson: Yeah, and that's exactly it. I mean the advocate for the audience. When I worked in the agency world, because I was a planner and a strategist, my role was to be the consumer inside of the agency That was, I played that role with our creative teams and even with our clients, that was my role of always having the consumer viewpoint.
So that trying to get through the biases that happen when you're working very deeply on creative campaigns, and so always keeping that consumer orientation in mind. And it's the same with an audience. It's one of the things that we talk a lot about when we're working with thought leaders because they get very caught up in the message or the idea of it being right.
And what I often will say is, it's not about you, it's about your audience. And so we have to let go of this idea of it being right, because that idea of right is only right within our own minds because it's through our filters. What we really have to go is, is it understandable, is what you're saying, accessible by the audience. So if you are an expert in nanotechnology, let's just say, and you are now helping all of us to understand the power and the impact of this very advanced technology, and you're choosing to do that by giving us the technological makeup of the work that you're doing.
Now, that might be right. You might be a hundred percent right with that, But your audience is never going to understand it. So I'm not suggesting that you say something that's fictional, but what we do is we go, alright, so what is it? Your audience absolutely has to know about this. Do they need to know how it was built? They actually don't. Even though yes, you're right in that a hundred percent you are, what they really need to know is that the impact of it is this.
And yes, they need to know that it's evidence backed, but you don't need to tell them about the 12 studies that were done in order to get there. You can simply say, through research and testing, here's where we've ended up. Now, is there a way for the audience to discover what that research and testing is? Sure, there's lots of things we can do to make sure that that's the case, but do you need to have to put that into everything you're doing?
And so again, this is where you know your audience because often again, we do work with a lot of scientists and academics and technologists and what they're often wanting because they're often presenting to their own peers. And the belief is, well, if I don't have proof, well then I'm going to be called out scientifically. And there is some truth in that totally. But the reality is even when you're presenting in front of your peers what is different from what they know.
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The transcript is lightly edited for clarity and is a partial transcript- the full interview is on audio. Click here to listen.
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