Latest / Scrappy but Successful [Consultant's Personalities When No One's Watching] / 20. Scrappy by Design: How an Anthropologist Became the World's Innovation Storytelling Expert with Susan Linder

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20. Scrappy by Design: How an Anthropologist Became the World's Innovation Storytelling Expert with Susan Linder · Scrappy but Successful [Consultant's Personalities When No One's Watching]

• 0:03
  What's going on everybody? Welcome to Scrappy But Successful.
• 0:07
  It's a show where I sit down with your favorite consultants and we take
• 0:11
  the comedic route through their life, find out if they're successful today
• 0:15
  because they're sophisticated or because they're a little bit scrappy.
• 0:20
  I'm your host, Jack Tompkins, the CEO of Pineapple Consulting Firm.
• 0:25
  The fun fact of the day - koalas have fingerprints. Not that funny,
• 0:30
  but it's interesting if they wind up at a crime scene.
• 0:35
  Today I'm joined by my friend Susan Lindner, the founder of Innovation Storytellers.
• 0:40
  She's spoken to over 700 companies including ones like GE and AT&T,
• 0:44
  across 89 different countries. She's a cultural anthropologist,
• 0:48
  brand marketer, and disruptor. Susan, are you sophisticated or scrappy?
• 0:54
  I am all scraps all the time.
• 0:58
  All scraps all the time. We'll see if the data agrees with you.
• 1:01
  Where'd you grow up? Did you have entrepreneurs in the family?
• 1:06
  That word didn't exist when I was growing up. My dad was a not-successful small business owner.
• 1:12
  He was a manufacturer's rep for large hardware companies - Ryobi, Makita.
• 1:17
  He'd pack samples in the back of his wood-paneled station wagon and drive
• 1:22
  from mom-and-pop hardware store to mom-and-pop hardware store.
• 1:27
  I doubt he ever cleared 40, maybe 50K a year growing up.
• 1:33
  My parents are both immigrants - World War II refugees from Germany who came to the US
• 1:38
  and scrapped it when they got here, bringing that scrappy sensation to us.
• 1:43
  He was more relationship than sales. When he passed, people at the supermarket
• 1:48
  would ask where's Henry - he talked to anyone, anywhere, making conversation.
• 1:53
  That's amazing. I'm fairly extroverted for a data nerd but I can't strike up
• 1:58
  a conversation like that. That's why I'm terrible at sales.
• 2:02
  Isn't that the joke? How do you tell an extroverted engineer?
• 2:07
  You look at the other guy's shoes instead of your own.
• 2:11
  So you've built this whole brand around storytelling. Were stories a big part
• 2:16
  of everyday life growing up?
• 2:20
  Absolutely. When you have immigrant parents, there's a constant comparison
• 2:25
  between the old country and the new. My mom just turned 98 last week.
• 2:30
  She's seen a hundred years of history. I was always sitting with the old folks,
• 2:35
  seeking out those stories. I was the interviewer around the table.
• 2:40
  No kids table for you. You're just writing things down like a journalist.
• 2:45
  Exactly. I was not having the little kids table, not even for a minute.
• 2:50
  When does that start - are you like six years old thinking these seven-year-olds
• 2:55
  are so immature?
• 3:00
  Completely. I was like, what's in your lunch box? Peanut butter and jelly?
• 3:05
  We have aged Gouda. We're a European family that values cheeses.
• 3:10
  Pretty sophisticated. The school lunch story is traumatic - I'll have a call with my
• 3:16
  therapist later. It was gray Lithuanian bread hard as a rock.
• 3:21
  My dad was convinced soldiers were losing their teeth from eating soft white bread.
• 3:26
  I begged my mom for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich once. She thought it was
• 3:32
  a dessert, not a lunch. She put it on that horrible Lithuanian bread,
• 3:37
  which absorbed everything but never got soft. One jar of peanut butter,
• 3:42
  and it never entered the house again.
• 3:47
  Did you have an entrepreneurial spirit as a kid? Like a lemonade stand?
• 3:52
  I manned the phones for my dad's business - the Henry F. Lindner Company.
• 3:58
  I was eight or ten years old, picking up the phone and placing orders for his customers.
• 4:03
  I knew the difference between a 10-inch and a 12-inch diamond-tipped carbide blade.
• 4:08
  Customers thought it was a hoot - some second-grade voice answering
• 4:13
  and asking the right questions. I became quite sophisticated on the phone,
• 4:18
  but it was a very scrappy enterprise.
• 4:23
  That's the relationship guy who can't do it himself but sells the crap out of it.
• 4:28
  Exactly. Who would have known I'd be a great telemarketer putting myself
• 4:33
  through college ten years later.
• 4:38
  Are you all people-facing or do you have any back-office IT side?
• 4:43
  You definitely don't want me there. I waited tables, worked retail at a flea market.
• 4:48
  Selling cheesecakes Friday, diet pills Sunday, men's underwear in between.
• 4:54
  All sales all the time. Very comfortable place.
• 4:59
  Were these side hustles or W-2 jobs?
• 5:04
  Everything was under the table. I was 14, lied on my working papers to get jobs.
• 5:09
  I had a paper route from age 12. I knew that if I wanted to go to
• 5:15
  the college of my choice, I was going to have to pay for it myself.
• 5:20
  I was probably buying my own clothes from high school on - from 14 forward.
• 5:25
  How were the grades in high school?
• 5:30
  Great - with the exception of math. I took five languages in high school
• 5:35
  to avoid science and math.
• 5:40
  Are you still fluent in any of them?
• 5:45
  My parents are German, so German is right there. I lived in Central America, so Spanish is top tier.
• 5:50
  My Thai, French, and Italian - not so great. I sat in the eighth chair in Italian class
• 5:56
  so I learned to count to eight. Eight was my number. Very lucky number.
• 6:01
  Did you sell candy in high school?
• 6:06
  I sold everything there was to sell. Greeting cards with Junior Achievement,
• 6:11
  Brownie cookies - anything to get money in the bank.
• 6:16
  Does this all lead to cultural anthropology? You're like, I've sold all this stuff,
• 6:22
  let me learn about culture a bit more.
• 6:27
  I got to Dickinson College and tried to develop my own major - International
• 6:32
  Human Development. I put together a 20-minute presentation for a panel of professors.
• 6:38
  I wanted to study the revolution of societal structures - politics, religion,
• 6:43
  gender, workforce, economy, all of it.
• 6:48
  When I finished, a sociology professor said: have you ever heard of the science of anthropology?
• 6:53
  It's a social science we've been teaching at this college for over a hundred years.
• 6:58
  I did the slow backwards walk out of the room and went to talk to the department head.
• 7:03
  We're a very small tribe. They said, you want to study this? Welcome.
• 7:08
  Did you do anthropology internships in college?
• 7:13
  Have you ever heard of an anthropology internship? My dad's doctor said, Harry,
• 7:18
  Susie's just bought herself a one-way ticket to the poorhouse.
• 7:23
  That's why it gave me so much joy when my sister and I bought my parents
• 7:28
  their house. Take that, Dr. Steinfeld.
• 7:33
  There were no anthropology jobs, especially for an undergrad.
• 7:38
  Development work and living abroad was the next closest thing.
• 7:43
  I did my junior year abroad in Costa Rica, studied anthropology and liberation theology
• 7:49
  at the University of Costa Rica. Then two girlfriends and I hitchhiked
• 7:54
  from Costa Rica to Nicaragua to the war. I was thinking about joining but
• 7:59
  war is terrifying and I chickened out. We continued through five countries
• 8:04
  up through Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala - wars in different parts
• 8:09
  of that journey - right to the border of Mexico.
• 8:14
  Hitchhiking into a war zone is a whole other level of scrappy.
• 8:19
  50 drivers, no incidents. My girlfriend Teresa was the blonde bombshell on the highway.
• 8:25
  Polly and I would hide in a bush. Teresa got the ride, but I spoke the best Spanish.
• 8:30
  I'd sit next to the driver and always begin: excuse me, are you Catholic?
• 8:35
  In Central America, pretty much everyone is. I'd ask about their mother, grandmother, sisters -
• 8:40
  all the women in their family. I always say it was the Virgin Mary that got us through.
• 8:46
  I'm a Buddhist, but I know what team to play on when I'm local.
• 8:52
  Will you pick up a hitchhiker today?
• 8:57
  I was fostering kittens, saw a man in the rain carrying supplies
• 9:02
  to a homeless shelter - canned goods from a food pantry. I was happy to help.
• 9:07
  Back to your roots. When does the first business come into play?
• 9:12
  In Thailand. I worked for the Population and Community Development Association,
• 9:18
  the biggest nonprofit in Thailand. Initially focused on family planning,
• 9:23
  but HIV had completely infiltrated the culture by the time I got there.
• 9:28
  I wrote my senior thesis on HIV and AIDS in Thailand and went to work for that nonprofit.
• 9:34
  My job was AIDS educator to sex workers and their customers - trying to compel
• 9:39
  them to use condoms in an era where one in six sexually active people
• 9:44
  in my province were HIV positive.
• 9:50
  What's the US rate at that time? Probably one in a hundred thousand.
• 9:55
  One in six. That's crazy. You'd see people with symptoms in line
• 10:00
  at the bank. It was really quite prevalent.
• 10:05
  The approach at the time was get AIDS and die. That's actually highly effective
• 10:11
  but only works for about six months. We saw it with COVID - wear a mask or die,
• 10:16
  and people still rebelled. We want to believe it won't happen to us.
• 10:21
  Fear is a powerful motivator but it's very ephemeral.
• 10:27
  It doesn't last long enough to create behavior change. In innovation,
• 10:32
  you have to force people out of the status quo. How do you get people to change long term?
• 10:38
  That requires a different kind of story. So we started asking:
• 10:43
  what would it mean if you were the hero of this story?
• 10:49
  The mamasan said: I would have a reputation as the cleanest brothel in town,
• 10:54
  where people could come and feel safe. The customer said: I would be able to protect
• 11:00
  my wife and future children from HIV. The sex worker said: I would be in charge
• 11:05
  of my own destiny. And I thought: I'm an aid worker. How do I help
• 11:11
  you take charge of your own destiny? The answer was entrepreneurship.
• 11:16
  So this girl from the Bronx is teaching chicken raising, pig raising, duck raising,
• 11:22
  computer skills, secretarial skills, and gem cutting - the Golden Triangle
• 11:27
  is one of the richest areas in the world for emeralds, rubies, and sapphires.
• 11:33
  After ten years in HIV work - Thailand, then the CDC tracking resistant strains -
• 11:39
  I had a blind date with a senior editor of Forbes Magazine who told me about
• 11:44
  annoying PR people pitching stories while he was trying to write about cybersecurity.
• 11:50
  I said: introduce me to the PR firm you hate the least. He did.
• 11:55
  Job interview on Christmas Eve, got the job on Christmas. Off to the races.
• 12:01
  My interview question was: you've never worked in PR, how will you do this?
• 12:06
  I said: if I can convince a customer at two in the morning to put on a condom,
• 12:12
  I'm pretty sure I can convince a journalist to write a story about two nerds in a shed
• 12:17
  who are changing the internet. He said: you have the job.
• 12:23
  Lady who knows nothing about IT is now innovation-focused and deep into AI today.
• 12:28
  I worked with that small company, then started my own agency two years later.
• 12:34
  That's when my entrepreneurial journey began - a boutique agency, about 15 employees at our height.
• 12:39
  I worked with startups for 15 years, then became fascinated with the complexity
• 12:45
  of Fortune 500 companies. When I go into a new company, I think of them as a country.
• 12:50
  GE has its own language, its own religion - core values next to the elevator.
• 12:55
  Its own hierarchy. What does the economy inside look like? Every company is a country.
• 13:01
  How do you handle corporate pet peeves?
• 13:07
  Curiosity wins every time. I just got back from working with the Air Force.
• 13:12
  Every acronym - I was like, every time I hear another one, you owe me a dollar.
• 13:18
  Training innovation leaders of the Air Force who are pitching to the Joint Chiefs
• 13:23
  and the Chief of the Air Force - that's a whole different scenario than pitching a VC.
• 13:28
  Helping innovation teams talk to the CEO and CFO and get millions in funding for something
• 13:34
  that's going to change the future. That's the thrill of my day.
• 13:39
  How do you define success there?
• 13:45
  It depends on the stage. Maybe at first it's just: do a pilot, come back with results.
• 13:50
  The pilot might fail miserably - and the answer is thank God. Now we know we didn't invest
• 13:56
  a year and millions of dollars before finding out it won't work. On to the next.
• 14:01
  The only challenge is that the innovator who starts the process gets forgotten.
• 14:07
  The sales team, marketing team, CEO - they wind up taking credit for the cool new thing.
• 14:12
  The innovation team is back in the ditches failing on the next thing.
• 14:18
  That's why eight out of ten VC investments fail.
• 14:23
  Did you say "a pilot died" - do you mean a pilot program or a human pilot?
• 14:29
  A program! Not the pilot. My bad. Like a new missile defense or
• 14:34
  web-fired communication system. You're being awfully cavalier, but okay.
• 14:40
  Lightning round - have you ever gotten sassy with ChatGPT?
• 14:45
  I do improv and stand-up comedy just for fun. Have you ever asked ChatGPT to be funny?
• 14:51
  It is excruciating. I just write back: you suck. These are the worst dad jokes ever.
• 14:56
  I keep having hope it's gonna get a sense of humor, but it's not working.
• 15:02
  If it does one day, maybe it takes all of our jobs.
• 15:07
  100%. I'm out. Me and Elon are going to Mars.
• 15:13
  Do you make a reservation for a lunch meeting?
• 15:18
  If it's a meeting, yes. If it's just me and others, no.
• 15:24
  If a meeting goes long, do you fake another meeting to get out?
• 15:29
  At my age, probably yes - I'd excuse myself. Twenty years ago I would have stuck it out.
• 15:35
  In your business, do you launch a new offering at 50% ready?
• 15:40
  You get clear about the constraints. We're not looking for success or failure -
• 15:46
  we're looking for data. Make sure we've set the parameters so we know why it failed.
• 15:51
  What are the questions we want to ask? What problem are we trying to solve?
• 15:57
  At phase one I'm looking for data. As more is invested, then we look for success
• 16:02
  and it becomes about tweaking rather than big data dumps.
• 16:08
  How many unread emails is too many?
• 16:13
  One.
• 16:19
  Wow. Do you thank people for quick replies?
• 16:24
  No - it's my expectation.
• 16:30
  If you copy something and paste it into an email, do you reformat to match?
• 16:35
  Yes - match formatting of the newly pasted thing. Mismatched fonts are a no-no.
• 16:41
  Have you ever sent an email with everything in the subject line?
• 16:46
  No - I'm more apt to forget the subject line. Never done that.
• 16:52
  How do you answer the phone?
• 16:57
  I know who's calling and I have to decide whether I pick up.
• 17:03
  Do you recommend books or podcasts?
• 17:08
  I recommend everything. I have three books going at any given time.
• 17:14
  I should be meditating, I should be journaling, but instead I'm a consummate consumer
• 17:19
  of information. Multiple books and multiple podcasts going all at once.
• 17:25
  That's scrappy, but sophisticated - throw it all at me, I'll figure it out.
• 17:30
  I'm not sure it's always great. I just went for ADHD testing last week,
• 17:36
  so we'll see how the results come in. I'm not exactly sure this is the best way.
• 17:41
  But it works and that is the core of it. Susan, what do you want the folks out there to know?
• 17:47
  Anthropic just hired a corporate storyteller at a half-million-dollar annual salary -
• 17:52
  all the AI companies are hiring storytellers. McKinsey says it's one of the top 40
• 17:58
  most important skills for any leader. If you need help with your storytelling,
• 18:03
  go to innovationstorytellers.com. Check out my weekly newsletter too -
• 18:09
  storytelling tips every week. I'll also be speaking at WebExpo in
• 18:14
  the Czech Republic in May, at innovators.co in Toronto in June,
• 18:19
  and heading to Serbia to work with startups next week.
• 18:25
  I love it. We covered maybe one one-hundredth of your story. Susan, scrappy to your core.
• 18:30
  Thank you so much for coming on.
• 18:36
  Jack, thanks for having me and all the best as you grow your amazing consulting network.
• 18:41
  As long as it comes with a good story. Take care everyone.