A Spanish professional communication specialist for the corporate world. Owner of Storyteller & CO and newly Professor for Storytelling, Design thinking at two online Universities.
He is helping small and bigger companies to effectively communicate with their customers.
Follows his passion, his heart and was not satisfied to do what others told him to do.
We met in the summer of 2019 at the IoT Week in Aarhus DK where I got very curious about him and wanted to know more. For a good reason as this episode shows.
Mario has held a limiting belief that he won’t be able to earn money with his own company until he had no choice than start one.
Around the same time he decided to listen more to his heart and create an environment that enabled him to do so. The ripple effect of this was that he was asked to teach for not one but two online universities in the same time.
3 best things about Mario.
- 100% introvert. Not necessary shy, just needing to be more with himself to refill the batteries. Not because he dislikes the company of others,
- more because his source of his strength lies in his reflections within himself. Mario prefers to listens more than speaking, to writing rather than do calculus.
- In his professional work his is precise and has rigour
- Privately he is the opposite; Not always on time
- Mario considers himself a writer. So far he wrote 20 books as ghost writer. For tourism, sports, HR management and so on.
- He has not yet managed to write his own book. In 2-3 years he wants to write his own thing. I’ll follow up on him
We all have the skills to write stories. Mankind has arrived to the world with the skills to listen, process and tell stories.
More and more corporates want to involve more stories and emotions to their communication with the customers, and show less numbers.
If you want to convince and motivate people to follow you and buy your product you need to tell stories.
Create love stories with your customers. Make them your advocates.
What colour describes Mario?
His favourite colour as a kid was yellow like the banana and other tasty fruits he liked.
His first apartment was all white and it stayed like that for many years, until a psychology friend told him that the lack of colour was a proof that something wrong.
After this message he started to feel and listen more to his heart and add colours depending on the situation.
The choice of colours represents his adaptive mind similar to a chameleon that adapts to the situations. Like a good diplomat.
He enjoys helping people to communicate and as a good diplomat you need to adjust to your customers.
Colours coming to his mind are following:
- Strong RED when he is Angry
- Very Sky Blue when he feels FREE
- Yellow for the Child inside.
His secret not many know about:
- One big thing is his love for Science fiction and especially Star Trek. He is a big Fan and will recite and play parts from the old series.
About his Company:
Storytelling & CO is his company and is so far a one man show with a good network of partners and corporations to help him with the tasks he has.
Many come in and out depending on the projects. It is important that he has created a good network and good contacts.
A reason for his success is that he made sure that everyone around him knows that he is the storytelling guy. He wanted to make sure that if anyone
in his network would think of him when they have a storytelling project. And so far this has worked perfectly. Most of his clients so far come through friends of his.
“The biggest success of storytelling is; that others are convinced of your story and tell your story as if it was their own story!”
People are proud to have the product from their favourite brand. Shoes, t-shirt, house etc and tell everyone about it.
His latest work at the Online Universities:
For Mario it has been a long dream to become a professor of something. It is a big joy to be able to share his knowledge with other people.
It’s not about making money or the position, but to be able to teach about something. “When you TEACH YOU LEARN TWICE”.
He got the job offer through his work at Storytelling&CO. It is a master program from the Online Business School from Barcelona (OBS).
They offer a master-program that is 100% online and in Spanish or English with focus on innovation and business topics.
Focusing on people that have no time to go to a university or can’t afford to move to Europe to obtain a good EU university degree.
He was asked to create a workshop on storytelling. After he accepted the position another online university contacted him as they urgently needed a professor of storytelling to teach design thinking and storytelling.
It took him about one year to prepare for the courses as his knowledge of design thinking was not up to date and he needed to prepare. Through this exercise of improving his design thinking a new horizon was opened for him
and he has an extra skill in his back-bag for his work.
Everything went stronger than expected and instead of 1month he ended up giving classes for 4 months every night.
A challenging experience as this was his first time to be teacher at this level but a very satisfying one.
What did Mario do to get the job at the University?
Working hard.
There was a time when he strongly believed in the power of the Universe. That if you believed strong enough those things will happen. Now he is more skeptical and practical.
He really worked hard on becoming good in what he does. When those nice things happen in life he feels blessed because he takes those gifts like a genuine American dream.
Europe is not a place of opportunity like the US.
- How to go around to make sure that people knew he was the storyteller?
- Writing small reports for businesses and on his Blog for his Spanish webpage.
- Whenever he was drafting a story, participated on a conference, conducted a class, he made sure his networks knows what he is working on.
- Subtle informations such as.
-
- “Hey I will be giving a speech in that place. Would be glad that you come” or
- “I have written this, can you give me feedback?” or
- “I wrote this book, I think you’d like it…”
Two, three tips on how to tell a story better.
The answer depends on the context. For his case it’s to persuade customers of a product.
Firstly. “The Best kept secret in story telling” is:
- To learn to listen before speaking!!!
- 1st advice is. Speak half as much as usually and listen twice as much as you do now.
- Think of and understand the person you want to persuade, inform, or entertain.
- You need to know that your story is interesting anyone else than you.
- Your story is normally sh… for mostly anyone but you. We have all our own story, which is most interesting to us.
- If you tell your own story as a company, no one cares as everyone has their own story that is more important to them.
- The best is to listen and to understand and empathise with people.
- Find out what are their problems, how is their lives, what issues do they have, what happens in their head and heart.
- Only then can you take your story to your customers. Filled with the words and feelings. Now they have a connection to your story.
- You don’t have only one storytelling of yours. But many for all the people you want to reach.
Mario’s favourite business story is
From Booking.com in Spain.
They have quite a huge amount of data from all types of clients, users from around the world to draw from.
Data on how they behave, feel, think and so on. With this knowledge they created two stories for 2018 and
spread them simultaneously on social media and other channels before the summer vacation.
- One version: A party person, exploring, curious and finding new things
- Second version: A conservative person, afraid of the world, concerned about kids, that needed everything under control etc.
The first commercial addressed to the extravert people and the second the introverts.
The funny thing is that the introverts did not remember the first advertisement and the extroverts have not realised that there was a second version.
This is as we are selective in our perception.
This is such a good storytelling example as booking.com realised that extraverts and introverts see holidays and the experience differently.
If you want to know and learn more on “Targeted Communication” what the movie BREXIT. Containing lot’s of science and based on the English Management Cambridge analytics.
One Idea that no one would accept in the beginning.
What is creativity for Mario?
Mario considers himself a creative person. Yes as he works with it and he would like to be more creative.
Creativity is the Fuel for him.
Not all creativity comes from scratch or innovation thinking.
It can be an old thing that is put into a new situation, or a reorganising of knowledge.
For Mario it is important to be proactively and train the creativity.
So what are his creative powers?
Imagination.
Science fiction is a good source of inspiration for him. There are no boundaries and all is welcome.
It is good to know that almost everything has been invented. That removes a bit of the stress.
If you are interested and open in ideas from others, then you are more adaptable and able to improve as you stay flexible.
Mario loves to read and learn. Knowing what other people did in a similar situation as your own can help you to improve your current situation.
And where would he love to be better?
He gets exhausted from one or two weeks thinking of a problem. He would like to be faster and more productive.
This explains why he is hungry to read about methods, tools and to learn new approaches. He is always looking for new and better approaches…
When are you most creative?
It s hard for him in a bad mood to be innovative.
When he is relatively peaceful he his creative and innovative.
Last article he read on the creative
Good food, good sleep, and exercise is good for general state of being and feeling is better and so is his creativity….
He has a lot of situations where he is in places he doesn’t know or has long working days. Where food and sleep and exercise is less than optimal.
He wished he would wish for having a better control over those elements
The smallest and best thing is to say NO to small things… That gives you a bit extra time in your calendar, time to do exercises, food and be creative.
Hell YES or no. Tim Ferris’s
“If you adapt to a system that is sick; you will become sick!” Psychologist friend of Mario.
A big psychology network with clients and friends.
The Storytelling&CO started when he started listening to his heart.
Around the age of 43 he had the opportunity to listen more to his heart. By doing so he created better conditions to get to where he is now.
Change something in the School system.
New design of the classroom in Spanish system.
The conclusion. Centre of teacher and students in rows. Creates a status. A problem the teacher tends to repeat a behaviour pattern they have seen in their childhood. Some kids are not seen. No one takes care of them. They are looked at that they will fail and will not be able to achieve anything in live. They only get the feeling that they are the ones not achieving and failing…. Everyone tells them that he or she will fail in live.
INSTEAD they decided to change to a new aura. That all the kids could walk freely, flexible human genetics for the classroom also for the teacher to avoid the invisibility of some of the kids.
He would like to change this structure.
Hospital Operating Room. How it was WWI 1914 and how is it today. They changed a lot. New techniques and hygiene.
But how is it with the classrooms. It is still the same.
Not only the physical appearance and system of relationships.
The space should help the people to relate to themselves.
Wall marts they do understand the logic of spaces and movements. When and where people move faster or stand still. But schools have not adapted. Heard that they are restructuring the curriculum to a more flexible one.
Project that is most significant career accomplishment to date?
- Professor. Wish to stay for many years.
- Making a living on his own. Before Storytelling&CO he worked for other companies. Had a limiting belief that he can’t earn his money by himself.
Get rid of the limiting belief. He got fired. Found himself on the street to keep going. So there was no other option than believing and working. And so he was reducing.
The biggest Dream as Kid.
- Part of teacher and storyteller. At 8 he wrote his first novels. Trying to convince other people of what he saw like a professor.
- Secret Agent. Impressed by James Bond movies.
- Child as a cartoon. Fat Albert (and the Cosby kids )eating all day long Hamburger. Doing all kind of things of not doing any sport and being lazy.
- Never had a good fitness level. Eats more than he should do. Not being keen at sports, watching movies, reading cartoons and talking a lot…. Not super man
Motivate people that don’t think to be creative
- They don’t have time for being creative => Therefore they call him :-)
- One of the most powerful things is to sit with the clients to emphasise with they vision and problems. He learns a lot from their problems… So he can help them. He gets good feedback after meeting. New ideas suggestion set. Butterflies in the stomach. He feels posher having time with clients.
He helps his clients to get ideas and be creative
Advice..
Looking at his network. The ones that love him
“You should take more time for you. Say more NO to things so you have more time.” He instead said YES to too many things as an over accomplisher.
Now he learns to say more NO.
He took the advice at the convenient time.
Now he tries to listen to all advices. The good advice comes always from the ones that love you.
Call For Action:
Go regular out for a 1hr walk in nature. Once a month, a week or every day is up to you.
Choose your favourite place, be it at the seaside, up the mountain or in the forest. Find a place you enjoy and stay there in silence.
This helps you to connect with nature, the environment and yourself. When you connect to yourself you’ll find doors that open up and reveal things and ideas that want to come out.
When you come home after 1 hour you’ll be a different person then when you left. And you’ll feel more creative.
Links:
Webpage: http://www.mariosorribas.com/
Blog: http://storytellingdigital.com/
LinkedIN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariosorribas/
Online Universities:
Master Program OBS “Online Business School”. Barcelona Rio Planeta
Booking.com => Spain advertisement.
Brexit: The Movie (2016): https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5724616/
Tim Ferriss Show: Sivers “Hell YES”
Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids:https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068072/
Operation Room WWI vs. New Operation Room
School Room 1880 vs. New Class Room
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