# Bob Rogers - Designing Experiences That Change Behavior
## Meet Bob Rogers and Deep Story
Jonathan Stark: Hello and welcome to Ditching Hourly. I'm Jonathan Stark. Today I am joined by guest Bob Rogers. Bob, welcome to the show.
Bob Rogers: Thank you, Jonathan. Glad to be here.
Jonathan Stark: So today we're going to talk about transformation and Bob's new book. but first, Bob, could you tell folks a little bit about who you are and what you do?
Bob Rogers: Well, my name is Bob Rogers. I'm the founder of BRC Imagination Arts. We've been in business for 45 years, turning things that, uh, corporations and museums want to say into things that cause people to behave differently,
Jonathan Stark: Mm.
Bob Rogers: cause visitors to, uh, actually have an impact, uh, on visitors that lasts further than the gift shop. Uh, a great deal of what museums and corporate visitor centers do does a brilliant job of entertaining. They spend millions of dollars creating experiences that entertain wonderfully, but really don't have a lasting effect. And wasn't that the idea? Didn't you want them to, the visitors to prefer your subject or prefer your, uh, brand? And so that's what we do, the difference between merely entertaining and having a lasting, making a lasting difference. That's what we've been doing for 45 years, and I wrote about it in a deep story. Uh, I think your, uh, listeners are familiar with Joe Pine.
Jonathan Stark: Yes.
Bob Rogers: And not just The Experience Economy, but Joe's latest book, The Transformation Economy.
Jonathan Stark: That's right.
Bob Rogers: Whereas Joe sets the framework for transformation, uh, deep story, uh, gets down to the practical, step-by-step, how to, uh, uh, achieve it information that you need if you're going to go out there and implement it. So that's a little bit about who, who I am and, uh, why we're here.
Jonathan Stark: Great. Well, how did you get started all those years ago in the transformation business?
## Lessons from Disneyland's Magic Shop
Bob Rogers: Uh, my first job in creating experiences in the experience business was as a magician in the magic shop at Disneyland. Uh, and it was, it was a- sounds kind of trivial, but at the same time, it was the perfect introduction to show business, because my job was to demonstrate the magic, that was the show part, and then while my guest was still dazed and amazed, drag them over to the cash register and sell them the trick. That was the business part. Get it? Show business.
Jonathan Stark: Yes.
Bob Rogers: And to me, something stuck from that experience that wherever there was a show, it needed to lead to some business, that when you were putting on a show, you needed to have an effect, and specifically, there was something specific that you wanted your guests to do, in my case, buy the magic. It wasn't until years later that I, looking back, I figured out there was a second thing, that in order to get them to, to buy the magic, I had to cause in them a slight change in their identity, a slight change in who they thought they were. When I got done, they had to think that they could be a magician,
Jonathan Stark: Mm.
Bob Rogers: that that was possible within their personality, and they had to have enough confidence to go ahead and buy the magic and think they were going to be good at it. So it was a great introduction to, uh, themed experiences and experiences with a purpose. That's where it all started, and I learned many, many lessons in that magic shop that became the foundation for BRC Imagination Arts and eventually for the book Deep Story.
Jonathan Stark: That's great. That's amazing. And it sounds like that is the diff- it sounds like that little flip in your mind about trans- or the person needing to believe, changing their identity, needing to believe that they could become a magician. That's kind of the flip from experience to transformation, right?
## It's All About Them
Bob Rogers: You're making, yes, uh, you're making a- a- a permanent, you hope, a permanent emotional connection that changes who they think they could be. Uh, and one of the other things that was a v- big lesson that relates to this that came out of the magic shop, uh, one day, uh, one of the problems with working in a magic shop is that any guest can buy the trick that you're performing and take it around the corner, open it up, read the instructions, and come back and expose you in front of the next group as you perform it again. And I was complaining about this to one of the master magicians, one of the experienced people in the shop that everybody admired, and he- I was complaining about it, and he said- he s- he says, "Stop right there. I don't want to hear about it because, Bob, who cares if you get exposed? It's not about you, it's all about them.
Jonathan Stark: Hmm.
Bob Rogers: You don't matter. Uh, and it was true. He- you couldn't rob him of his dignity because he never pretended to have any. When he was exposed, he just handled it very well. But he, he, he, he, he said, for one thing, your performance invites them to expose you. What? Yes, because they are locked out of the show. You've given, it's you performing the magic. It's all about you. The only role you've given them is of exposure, exposer and, uh, spoiler. And so they play the role that you handed them. I said, wow, how do- how do I avoid that? He says, well, first of all, Bob, where are your eyes while you're performing? Are you watching your own hands perform the trick? Well, yes. He said, watch me when I perform, he says. My- I'm not watching my hands. My hands are performing the magic out of muscle memory. My eyes are on the eyes of my guest. They're- I'm watching for the most subtle reaction, and I'm changing what I'm doing, how I'm doing it, what I'm saying about it, catering to their ever-changing mood. That's what you have to be d- you have to make it all about them. And remember this, he said, and then he said something that's so profound, I think anybody listening to this needs to write this down and put it someplace where they look at it every day. He said, we are not the magic temple, we are the magic shop. People do not come here to admire how magical you are, they come here hoping that you will help them find some magic within themselves. Wow. That is, that is the essence of all hospitality. That's the essence of all salesmanship. You go to a, a restaurant and you see if people are sitting at the table, looking away from the table, looking at all the decorations of the restaurant, that's a been there once, done that restaurant. If instead the restaurant sets the right ambiance and the service sets the right, uh, tone so that the people are profoundly enjoying each other, that's magic. That's the real magic. It's about, it's about them. It's absolutely not about you. So that's where deep story starts. It's going deep into the heart of the audience to figure out what they're about right now, and at the same time, deep into your subject, your brand, or your academic subject if you're a museum, to figure out what, looking for the emotional connection. And now we could talk a little bit more about that. That's the deep part of deep story.
## The Audience Is the Instrument
Jonathan Stark: Mm. That's great, and I- I have parallel experience, uh, in my 20s, I was a guitarist in a rock band, and looking back on my experience of doing that, the- the big mistake that I made back then, and certainly something that contributed to a lack of success, was that I was always looking down at my guitar. I was never looking at the audience. I was always trying to do- be the magician and do the magic trick, and I was never focused on producing an action in the audience, whether it was dancing or crying or, uh, or moshing or whatever it was. I just was not focused on the audience. It was totally self-centered, which was a huge mistake, looking back on it.
Bob Rogers: You'd appreciate this, a- along the same lines. A friend of mine was at one point, uh, in charge of all hiring of anybody that danced, sang, or, uh, played a musical instrument at Disneyland.
Jonathan Stark: Mhm.
Bob Rogers: I went to him and I said, "Hey, Tony, uh, I got a son who's a drummer. How do I get him a job?" He said, Tony said, "It's easy. It's easy. I c- of the- it's- it's 3 things he's got to do, and, uh, everybody gets the first 2, nobody gets the third one." I said, "Well, what are the 3 things?" He said, "Well, the first is you have to have no scary piercings or scary hairdos or anything like that. Secondly, you probably need- I said, oh, we're- we're in time with my son, that's good. Uh, secondly, uh, you need probably to be in your 20s so that you can relate to the demographic that you're trying to en- entertain. And he's- I said, well, we're- we're right there now, that- that's- that's just great. And he said, and third, you need to be ready to play the greatest hits of the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, uh, the first few years of the 20th century and the next 10 years of the t- the 20 teens. And he says, at that point, every group I talk to says, oh, well, we only play our own stuff. You get them in their 30s, and they're a little bit more willing to play all those other things. You get the musicians in the 50s, which are way out of the demographic, and they'll play anything. What do you want? You want jazz? You want classical?
Jonathan Stark: Yeah.
Bob Rogers: Whatever it is,
Jonathan Stark: Yeah, yeah.
Bob Rogers: we'll d- we'll do it. Uh, and, uh, because again, it's not about you.
Jonathan Stark: Right.
Bob Rogers: It's about them. It's about what's in their heart. It's what they would, uh, uh, as one of my mu- musician friends said, said, uh, if you play good music, you can, uh, you can eat. If you play what they like, you'll eat steak.
Jonathan Stark: Yeah. We- the best, when I go to a show and I just am absolutely blown away by the act, it's because the real instrument is the audience, it's not the guitar.
Bob Rogers: Oh, ab- that good point. Absolutely. It's the shared, uh, shared experience. Uh-
## Failing Into the Right Career
Jonathan Stark: Okay. Yeah, so this is s- great, great. So what- I- I'm tempted to go into the next stage of the journey. I'm not sure if it's relevant, you tell me, but how did you go from magic shop to, uh, the starting a- your own company?
Bob Rogers: Interesting story there.
Jonathan Stark: Mhm.
Bob Rogers: I failed at everything I wanted to do.
Jonathan Stark: Okay.
Bob Rogers: I wanted to work for Disney. I was fired by th- Disney 3 times, and each time told I would never, ever be allowed to work for any part of Disney ever again, three times.
Jonathan Stark: Mhm.
Bob Rogers: Uh, I tried my luck writing television, I was not fast enough. I tried my luck writing features, I was too slow. Uh, and then just as a timey over, I got, I landed somehow a job at Walt Disney Imagineering creating con- uh, concepts for films for Epcot before Epcot was built, you- for what would be the films that would, uh, would be there. And in that environment, I just sort of looked around and I figured out, oh my gosh, this is where I was always supposed to be. This was, and it's a case of the wand f- finds the wizard.
Jonathan Stark: Yeah. Yeah.
Bob Rogers: And, and that's, and I haven't looked back. And by the way, one of the films that I created along with a great director, Rick Harper, uh, the film that we, he and I created together is still playing. The original film that opened in 1982 is coming up on its 40, 41st birthday. Is that
Jonathan Stark: Jeez.
Bob Rogers: Is that right? Is no, no, 45th, uh, birthday here in a, in a little bit. Uh, 45 years. It's in the Guinness Book of World Record as the longest playing film of any kind.
Jonathan Stark: Wow.
Bob Rogers: Uh, they're still playing unchanged.
Jonathan Stark: Wow.
Bob Rogers: Multiple times every day in the same theater. So, uh, the wand chooses the wizard, not the other way around sometimes.
## Define the Change Before the Tools
Jonathan Stark: Okay, so how can we take this concept, you know, the folks listening are consultants, they're doing service, mostly service-based business work, you know, software design, branding, marketing, all that sort of thing. So what does it mean to take this concept of
Bob Rogers: Deep story.
Jonathan Stark: Yeah, well, let's just dive into it. So, so what are the key things that people should keep in mind?
Bob Rogers: Well, the first mistake is that most people make is that they start choosing tools before they have designed the task. That is to say, uh, you should not start talking about means until you've figured out the ends. Uh, a lot of people are totally tempted to start to- start choosing the presentation technology. They start identifying messages. They start thinking about what they want to say, irrespective of what the guest wants to hear.
Jonathan Stark: Mhm.
Bob Rogers: Uh, they get fall in love with certain design concepts, certain story concepts, uh, the most dangerous with of which is the clever idea, the idea that the creative people come up with that's sort of a, hey, look at me, look at me, look at the clever thing I came up with that has nothing to do with the guest. All of these things put you on a track to design entertainment that will might be wonderfully entertaining, entertaining, but that's not the objective. The objective is behavior modification in some way, hopefully positive, constructive behavior modification done with love in a way that benefits everyone, the guest, the sponsor, or the corporation or the museum, and the employees who work at that organization. Benefits everybody, but it becomes entertainment rather than, uh, transfer- a transformational experience. That's the first. The second is stop and totally, with great rigor, deeply define what the, uh, change is that you want to achieve. And you want to do this in active language, visible language. What does it look like? How do I know one when I see one? So in that sense, where people go wrong is that they use, uh, words that sound like they mean something but really don't have any meaning at all. And, and I'll, I'll give you some examples. Uh, appreciate. What the hell does that mean? What do we look like when we're appreciating something? Uh, inspire, inform, understand, motivate, engage, educate, understand, or it's it's count it's it's amplified version, really understand. What the hell does that look like? I'd rather it's it's like saying, is your objective to, uh, to cause people to do more test drives with Volvo cars? Is that your objective? No, I don't think so. I think it's much more specific than that. You want people to buy the damn Volvo car, right?
Jonathan Stark: Right.
Bob Rogers: That's... So get real specific about what it is that you want people to do. For example, after visiting, people will be more likely... the- the film that we did, that Rick Harper and I did about France, uh, that's still playing as we speak.
Jonathan Stark: Mm.
Bob Rogers: Uh, after seeing the film, people will be more likely to take a vacation in France. That's pretty simple, pretty observable. I know exactly what that looks like. uh, visitors after visiting the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, visitors will be more permanently more attracted to the life and times of Abraham Lincoln, and this will express itself in behaviors such as, and now you list a bunch of indicators.
Jonathan Stark: Mm-hmm.
Bob Rogers: Uh, a lot of people get, uh, caught up with, uh, KPIs.
Jonathan Stark: Right.
Bob Rogers: KPIs. KPIs are not your objective. They are key performance indicators. They indicate that your objective is being achieved, but they are not the objective. So get real specific about what it is that you're trying to, uh, trying to achieve, and if, uh, if you need more help with that, there's some real good pointers in, uh, Deep Story. Having said, I identified that, the next thing is to go deep into your audience and your subject, but what was your question?
## Look Past the Requested Deliverable
Jonathan Stark: Yeah, so in a, in a situation where a client and a service provider type of situation, where it's not an audience situation, where you have a discussion with, with the prospective client before making a proposal. A lot of s- s- I, I love what you're saying. I totally agree with it. I want to, I want to see what, how you would frame this or what words you'd use to describe this scenario that I talk about with some regularity. Client comes to you and they a lot of times ask for some activities they, or deliverables that they understand are within your capability. They say, oh, we want you to build a website for us. We want you to write a white paper. We want this, this object or thing or whatever. And, and it's, and what I recommend people do is they dig past that thing because it's kind of like an upstream leading indicator of, of something they think is going to lead to an improvement in their business. But they almost, almost never volunteer what the improvement in their business would be. It's, that doesn't occur to them, or it's kind of obvious, so they don't even bring it up. It's like, we need you to write a white paper, it needs to be five pages long. And I tell people to sort of drill in and figure out, find out why they want that white paper, because it they might be asking for a thing that's not the best way to produce the outcome that the client wants.
Bob Rogers: Almost al- almost always.
Jonathan Stark: Yeah, right. They're always, it's like they're always wrong because they're not the expert. So they're an expert of, like, selling shoes, or they're an expert of, of, I don't know, whatever they do, you know, manufacturing plastic things, and they come to you with this weird request, and it's critical, in my opinion, to drill in and find out what, what changed their, what improvement, what's the ROI, like, what do they think this is going to lead to? And then maybe the thing they asked for might contribute to that, but like you said, almost never is it the, the fastest, cheapest way to achieve the thing that they actually want. So it's- here is- okay, so now that's me setting the stage, and now here's the- the pushback I get from- from my people who I'm trying to encourage to do this. They- they'll say the customers will ask for the wrong thing, and they- they don't- they don't- uh, I could give you a concrete example of this, but- but they just d- they're like the client is not asking for the right thing. What they really need is this. And an example would be, so someone someone emailed me the other day and said, you know, I'm a fractional CFO, my skills are around, you know, getting businesses ready to sell, but but right now the industry that I serve is in contraction, and all anybody wants to do is cut costs instead of this thing that would be much better for them that I would prefer to do. And I was like, well, you just told me that everyone in your industry wants to cut costs, so why don't you help them cut costs? So to me, so that's kind of like the oldies, like the audience wants oldies, but this guy wants to play originals. And I was like, well, if you're selling something, you want to sell this particular thing and no one wants it right now, you've kind of got two options. It's like sell the thing they want or, or go after a different audience, I guess. Does that align with-
## Hire the Team, Not the Idea
Bob Rogers: That, that abs- absolutely, we see this all the time.
Jonathan Stark: Okay.
Bob Rogers: Uh, uh, the a poisonous phrase, uh, we'll know it when we see it. Uh, in other words, we want to use the, uh, consultant as a random idea generator.
Jonathan Stark: Uh-huh.
Bob Rogers: Creating a cafeteria lineup of different ideas, and when we're going to pick the one that looks good without knowing what it tastes like.
Jonathan Stark: Yep.
Bob Rogers: Or how it, or how it fits. Uh, the part of the problem is that the, uh, RFP process is generally run not by people at the top of the organization, but by people who have got a, uh, a, a, a tremendous, uh, sincere feeling of responsibility, so they want to have some concrete ideas to choose from. We actually had the brand manager of one of the world's great brands, I'm not going to name it.
Jonathan Stark: Mhm.
Bob Rogers: But, uh, in giving us instructions of what to design after having hired us, she said, literally, these are her exact words, we don't know what we want, so please design for whatever.
Jonathan Stark: That sucks.
Bob Rogers: How- what do you say after that? I don't know.
Jonathan Stark: Mm.
Bob Rogers: The best advice I could give to somebody who's, uh, out looking for a, uh, an organization to help them create a visitor experience or a customer experience is don't- don't try to hire the idea, hire the team. The idea, once you start working on it and developing it, that idea will be washed away and replaced by something else.
Jonathan Stark: Yeah.
Bob Rogers: What's never going to go away is the way you feel about working with these people. Do they get you? Do they, do you have a shorthand between you? That is so much more important.
Jonathan Stark: Mm.
Bob Rogers: Uh, so, so yeah, that's a perpetual problem, uh, a perpetual challenge, and it doesn't come from a bad place. It's just, it's just the people in charge of the RFP are fish out of water, and they're, they're trying to do the responsible thing by asking for you to submit ideas, uh, rather than submit a process or the, the working relationship. And that's, uh, that's, yeah, this is any of your listeners who find themselves in that situation, you're not alone, everybody's there.
## Use Phases and Set Enduring Goals
Jonathan Stark: Yes, that's a good takeaway from there, so, and hopefully people on the client side will listen to this as well, although it's unlikely. Uh, okay, so what, what do you do in a situation like that? So someone comes to you this, you're like, what did you do?
Bob Rogers: Well, what we would like to, what we would like to do is propose a process whereby very often we will, uh, we will propose in multiple phases so that they have little phases where they can sort of get used to the water gradually and don't have to take a- a big, uh, you know, irreversible plunge.
Jonathan Stark: Mhm.
Bob Rogers: So they can figure out if the relationship is working, if the ideas are working, because the most important part for the client in any project like this is not the finish line, it's not the middle, it's before you do anything, setting the goal. Uh, Wayne Gretzky used to say that the secret to his success in ice hockey was that he says, I just skate to where the puck is going to be.
Jonathan Stark: Mhm.
Bob Rogers: That's the most important thing that a leader, a client leader can do, figure out where the puck is going to be. in the words of Thoreau, do not tell me what is new, tell me what is never old. what are the parts of the brand that are still going to be true 10 years from now? one of the things that's very different, especially if you're doing a built environment for that envi- that experience, real estate amortization takes place over 10 and 20 year periods.
Jonathan Stark: Right.
Bob Rogers: So you're going to be stuck with this, what you're building here, for 10 or 20 years. It better be something that's going to last, whereas advertising campaigns might last only a few weeks, or a Super Bowl commercial might run once.
Jonathan Stark: Mm-hmm.
Bob Rogers: Uh, you know that, so the, the time frame is different for this. You want to be, do a really careful job of working with the people that are going to be building the, uh, the, uh, the experience to make sure you're building something that's going to have tremendous value. Now, that doesn't mean that it can't be updated, but it has to have some elements that really last.
## Find the Shared Emotional Trigger
Jonathan Stark: Mhm.
Bob Rogers: One of the ways that we, uh, approach these, and this is the deep part of deep story, we start by going deep, deep, deep into the audience. We're looking for the emotional triggers that- that trigger emotional reactions within the audience.
Jonathan Stark: And this is the client's audience.
Bob Rogers: The client's audience. This is positive emotional, uh, triggers.
Jonathan Stark: Mm-hmm.
Bob Rogers: I don't care whether it's a group of 3 people watching you perform a trick in a magic shop or, uh, uh, 100,000 people, uh, a year at a m- at a minor museum, or maybe it's 7 million people over the 6 months of a World's Fair.
Jonathan Stark: Mhm.
Bob Rogers: Whatever is that, wh- who are th- who are they? What, what animates their heart? Where, what, what moves them? Simultaneously, you're going over to the subject or to the brand, and you're going deep, deep, deep into the subject or the brand, and you're looking there for the same emotional triggers. And what you're looking for is the same exact emotional trigger that pre-exists in both. Not one in the audience and a different one in the brand, but the same one in both. When you find that, you make the whole story or the whole experience about that. And that mean- and what's going to happen when you do that is that the audience is going to find a bit of themselves in your brand or your subject, and they're going to feel that emotional connection. Uh, we- as we were recording this, we're still thinking about the very recent passing of Dolly Parton.
Jonathan Stark: Mm.
Bob Rogers: The reason we love Dolly Parton is not that she sang to us or sang at us. She sang for us. She expressed ideas and feelings and emotions that rhymed with what was inside us. She was saying things that we feel, and she was saying them better than we could say them ourselves. And so our hearts connected to her, and that's what made, that's what made that, that made her, uh, a star, somebody that we, that everybody admired. So that's the effect that you want, and you don't get that by focusing on technology first or focusing on what you want to say. You certainly don't get it by focusing on features and benefits, which takes us to the, the third key. We've had two so, uh, three so far.
Jonathan Stark: Before we move on to the third one, can I, uh, can I ask you to explain? Yeah, so there's one thing you mentioned that I think, um, might be unclear to the listener. It's definitely unclear to me. So you said, look for the emotional triggers inside of the audience, and I can, I can imagine that, but then you said, then you go deep into the brand and find the emotional triggers there. What does that mean?
## A Brand Is What the Audience Says It Is
Bob Rogers: A brand is not what the brand says it is. The brand is what the audience says it is. I don't know if you're a fan of, uh, Disney Parks,
Jonathan Stark: Mhm.
Bob Rogers: but if you've ever been around a true fan of Disney Parks, they think they own those parks. They think those are their parks. If the, uh, Disney company or the Disney Imagineers take away an attraction that is part of my youth, that I remember growing up with, that I remember my- my grandparents or parents took me to, and now I want to take my kids back to it, but it's not there. How dare they mess with my park?
Jonathan Stark: Mhm.
Bob Rogers: It's, uh, and- and so, uh, that brand that, uh, that is not what the company says it is, it's what the audience says it is. What are the emotional triggers or the emotional reactions there? I'll give you a concrete example of this. uh, we were asked to do something for the Milwaukee Brewers because their, uh, founder, Bud Selig, was retiring. Bud had founded the Milwaukee Brewers and then gone on after that to be commissioner of all baseball, and he finally was retiring from that, and they wanted to do something at their stadium that would honor Bud. That's all they had, the only idea they had. Uh, and so we went deep into the fans. You know a lot about the fans, you know a lot about the audience if these things are location based. You probably know that in this case, these are people who are probably, if if the attraction is going to be at the at the stadium, probably they're there to watch a game. Probably they are Brewers fans, uh, or they're with a Brewers fan. Uh, probably they are baseball fans. You know a lot about these people. You also know probably they're in groups of 2, 3, and 4, uh, for the most part. So kind of hold that in your mind. We've kind of identified all the things that might appeal to them emotionally. Now we go into the subject. We look through the life history of Bud Selig. Bud was one of the most amazing people of the 20th century, starting a baseball team from almost nothing, building it up, uh, eventually winding up with a wonderful, uh, stadium, and then going on to be baseball commissioner. He did wonderful things as baseball commissioner, such as invent the wild card system. Uh, he also had some less than completely wonderful, uh, results. The, uh, uh, he was head of the, uh, the owners during the baseball strike in the mid-90s, the result of which was there's one year that's missing a World Series winner.
Jonathan Stark: Mm.
Bob Rogers: Because there was no World Series that year
Jonathan Stark: Wow.
Bob Rogers: due to the strike. So of all the things we could pick out of, out of Bud's history, what's the emotional trigger in there that would rhyme with the emotional trigger in the audience. And we found one little detail, not particularly unusual, not particularly profound, but Bud fell in love originally with baseball because his mother took him to games. She loved baseball. She took him to games hoping that her love of baseball would rub off on him. Well, guess what all of the audience is doing probably today? They are probably with a kid.
Jonathan Stark: Mm-hmm.
Bob Rogers: Or they themselves fell in love with baseball when they were a kid and were taken by a parent or grandparent or some other adult that was, that would love baseball and was sharing that love with them.
Jonathan Stark: Mm.
Bob Rogers: That's conjures up in the audience misty-eyed memories of games long ago, of relatives perhaps gone now, but that, you know, just, just this wonderful, nostalgic, warm, fuzzy feeling.
Jonathan Stark: Mm-hmm.
Bob Rogers: And suddenly the audience is looking at this multi-multimillionaire, super successful, very unusual high achiever person, and they're saying, hey, Bud's just like me.
Jonathan Stark: Yeah. Genius.
Bob Rogers: And, and you connected them emotionally to Bud selling. So now Bud's, Bud's my buddy.
## SCAD's Kitchen Table Story
Jonathan Stark: Mm-hmm.
Bob Rogers: Uh, I'll give you another example just from miles away. Uh, we were asked by, uh, SCAD, the, uh, Savannah College of Art and Design. It's a very, very great, terrific art and design school, very, very good, kind of on the pricey side. Uh, they wanted an experience for students who were doing their survey of colleges, and they wanted to get their, uh, selection rate up. They wanted to have more success getting students to choose, uh, SCAD, uh, to go to.
Jonathan Stark: Mhm.
Bob Rogers: Uh, and so what was the experience we would create there? Well, we looked at the audience, and we looked at the history of the school, and not just the history, not just the literal history, but the legendary history of the school. And in, we found the connection between the two. Once again, not particularly profound, not particularly un- unusual. It was a kitchen table.
Jonathan Stark: Hmm.
Bob Rogers: The, according to the legends, the origin of the school started when Paula Wallace, then in her late 20s and teaching grade school art, came to her parents, sat down at a kitchen table with them, and announced that she was quitting her job. She was going to start a college of the arts.
Jonathan Stark: Wow.
Bob Rogers: And she wanted to sell her Volkswagen bug and her clothing and other things in order to have the money to be able to start a college.
Jonathan Stark: That's so good.
Bob Rogers: Naturally, their par- her parents were initially horrified.
Jonathan Stark: Right.
Bob Rogers: Uh, why don't you just do some volunteering at a college? What do you know about running a college? Uh, how are you going to get accredited? How are you going to get classrooms? How are you going to get blah, blah, blah, blah, blah? And they could see that their child was really, really motivated, really, really was intent on doing, doing this. So eventually, her parents relented. They s- they, they s- they s- decided to throw their fortune in with hers and help her found this school. And it was harder than they ever expected, but it eventually succeeded. Well, guess who's in the audience?
Jonathan Stark: Yeah.
Bob Rogers: It's groups, it's groups of three. It's a kid who wants to go to art school accompanied by two terrified parents.
Jonathan Stark: Mm-hmm.
Bob Rogers: And all those parents can get in, get, they can't get out of their heads the phrase starving artist.
Jonathan Stark: Yep.
Bob Rogers: Dear, wouldn't you rather go to a normal college and maybe on the side studle study to be a dentist and
Jonathan Stark: Yeah.
Bob Rogers: just in case this art thing doesn't work out? Uh, and as a result, the the audience could see themselves reflected in the values and the heritage of the school.
Jonathan Stark: Right, exactly.
Bob Rogers: And and and as a result, we had parents wanting to go to the college.
Jonathan Stark: That is so great.
Bob Rogers: And if you're ever, if you're ever in Savannah, uh, look it up. You can actually go to this. It's, uh, it's free. You need an appointment, but you can actually go to this whether you've got a starving, a potential starving artist with you or not.
Jonathan Stark: Yeah. Yeah, as a kid who went to music school, I saw that coming a mile away as soon as you said the kitchen table thing. So, fantastic. Okay, so that, I think that's, I think that's great. So I kind of interrupted you before you're getting to part three of the
## Start with the Heart, Then Focus
Bob Rogers: Part three, the part three is, start with the heart. Don't, don't go into features and benefits. Don't go talking about, you know, logic. Start with the heart. people, this is, you can take this to the bank. People make up their minds with their heart. They decide what they believe, and then they go around organizing the facts to try to agree with and support what their heart has already decided they believe.
Jonathan Stark: Yep.
Bob Rogers: This is absolutely true. Now, you'll get your scientists and engineers who will say that's absolutely not true, and yet take a look at the scientific method itself. It starts with something called a thesis, which is a made-up story.
Jonathan Stark: Yep.
Bob Rogers: And now you try to prove that that's right, and if the facts don't support it, most i- investigators don't give up on their thesis, they just slightly change their thesis and just go at it again. Uh, and if you've ever seen a scientific revolution that come along that contradicts the story that the rest of science has already bought into, think of Charles Darwin and the trouble he had with his theory of evolution when it contradicted the story that all the rest of science had bought into.
Jonathan Stark: Yeah.
Bob Rogers: Or those 2 guys from Australia that figured out that vi- that, uh, ulcers were caused by viruses. That was not the story everybody had bought into. They had to prove that over and over again before finally people believed them, and it took them quite a long time. So it's start with the heart. You can move later to matters of logic, but start with the heart. If you want to change the world, the key to that is your heart, is the heart. Now, having figured those things out, the fourth key is focus, focus, focus, focus. Go through your concept and your all of your ideas and anything that isn't absolutely right on the money for making the conversion based on what I just talked about. Get rid of it for the same reason that a machine should have no unnecessary parts. A great writer once called that, you once said about that, you must murder your darlings.
Jonathan Stark: Right.
Bob Rogers: Meaning those wonderful little things that you came up with that you think is so clever, but it's just kind of not quite on the main track. Simplify, simplify, simplify, focus, focus, focus. Uh, keep ki- uh, stay right on message, and don't let anything else, uh, get in the way. Those are four of the keys, and those all kind of came out of the magic shop. So that's a- and all of that and a bunch more is all described in- in Deep Story, but I've given you the essence of it. You now don't have to buy the book. It'd be better if you bought the book, but- but, uh, but- but I've given you the basic idea, and if you can implement that, uh, I hope that you can and that it will cause you to have a real competitive advantage.
## Information Is Not Transformation
Jonathan Stark: Uh, that's, uh, I think that is great advice. Um, I, uh, there's something, you know, geez, this time is flying by so fast. Um, we're almost to the end of our time, but there's something that I wanted to, uh, pull out of the, um, of your, your press kit. There's a line that says the difference between sharing information and prompting action. And we've talked, we've talked about a lot of things that relate to this in, but for consultants in particular, I want to drill into it a little bit if you can, because I was definitely guilty of this in my early consulting phase. I would get called in as the expert at a particular thing, and they would come in and they'd say, here's our situation, and I would, I would work on it, and I would give them the answer, and then they would take the answer, and they'd put it on a shelf, and they'd say thanks, and we'd go our separate ways, and they would never do anything about it. And that got so frustrating to me over the years that I ended up moving in a different direction because I would, you know, here's the right answer, here's the right answer, here's the right answer, and then, you know, they wouldn't integrate it, it wouldn't be adopted for whatever reason, and only, only after I stopped consulting did I learn what I was doing wrong in a book called Flawless Consulting by Peter Block. Uh, and long story short, people should probably listen to that, but I feel like you're getting at the same thing with this, the difference between sharing information and prompting action. So could you talk a little bit about that?
Bob Rogers: Sure, uh, having the right answer and having your client believe it are two entirely different things. Uh, it- the easiest, the easiest profession to learn has to be nutritionist, because you've got about maybe a one minute speech that you have to memorize, and you're going to be giving that over and over and over again, and nobody's ever going to listen to it or obey it. Uh, uh, less red meat, more chicken and fish, more leafy vegetables, more, uh, green leafy vegetables, more, uh, fruit, more, uh, ve- vegetables in general, uh, nothing deep fried, blah, blah, blah. It's about a minute's worth, and you're going to give that speech over and over and over again, and none of your people, none of your, uh, clients will get thinner because you- they understood that.
Jonathan Stark: Right.
Bob Rogers: I can explain to you very clearly what you have to do to be competitive in an Ironman competition.
Jonathan Stark: Mhm.
Bob Rogers: But understanding those facts is not going to cause you to be up at 4 in the morning, you know,
Jonathan Stark: Mm.
Bob Rogers: uh, doing road work.
Jonathan Stark: Right.
Bob Rogers: That's, uh, you know, the- the- the- the- the information by itself does nothing. It's the experience. It's you emotionalizing it. It's causing the- causing the- the- your client or the, uh, uh, the person you're working for, your audience, it's causing them to think that, not that I ought to be, but rather I am the type of person that gets up at 4 in the morning because that's who I am,
Jonathan Stark: Yep.
Bob Rogers: because I want to be in shape, and I- that's- I am a person that's in shape
Jonathan Stark: I'm a runner.
Bob Rogers: for that reason, et cetera, et cetera. You know, that's, uh, uh, it has to become their identity. They have to, uh, just like saying that I need to convince the, uh, customer that they might be a magician.
Jonathan Stark: Exactly. So how does that s- is there anything in the book or anything you could share with us that bridges that gap, or is that basically the whole book?
Bob Rogers: Uh, that's basically the whole book, and it's a simple idea.
Jonathan Stark: Mhm.
Bob Rogers: You don't need to go into too much detail. It's like either you're- either you're motivated to, uh, to do it, you- you've caused a change in identity, a change in who you think you are and how you relate. Uh, you either cha- making that change or, uh, uh, or not. There's some clues in, uh, in deep story, uh, and there's some put- I'll admit there's some art to it. Some people do it better than others.
Jonathan Stark: Mhm.
Bob Rogers: But the basics of- the basics are there.
## Books and Where to Find Bob
Jonathan Stark: Mm. Great. Well, on that note, folks, go out and get Deep Story because that, it's a key capability for consultants who actually want to improve the condition of their clients. I would also recommend Flawless Consulting. It's specifically about consulting, obviously.
Bob Rogers: I'd also say that, uh, the Joe Pine book, uh, The Transformation Economy, great companion piece with, uh, Deep Story. So, uh, read them together. They, uh, one provides the framework, the other gets down in the trenches and, and gives you the step-by-step how-to.
Jonathan Stark: Exactly, and Joe came on to talk about Transformation Economy, so folks can scroll back in your podcast history, and you can find that interview as well. So, Bob, where can people go to find out more about you and maybe buy a copy of Deep Story?
Bob Rogers: Well, they could buy a copy of Deep Story by going to Amazon, uh, so it's easy to find, Deep Story and, uh, Bob Rogers, R-O-G-E-R-S, uh, uh, and you can find out more about our company, uh, B- BRC Imagination Arts. Uh, the website is pretty easy, it's BRCWEB.com, and uh, we're pretty easy to find on Google.
Jonathan Stark: Yeah, check out the website, folks. It's wild. Uh, the work is amazing.
Bob Rogers: Yeah, we've done some, we've done some real variety. We've done outer space and First Nations and rock and roll and uh, the presidential libraries and everything in between.
Jonathan Stark: Well, thanks again, Bob. Really appreciate it. All right, folks, that's it for this week. I'm Jonathan Stark, and I hope you join me again next time on Ditching Hourly. Bye.
