From the Headlines What It Takes to Tell Stories That Hit Home with Melanie Marshall

 

If you want to learn more about Melanie, connect with her on LinkedIn, visit her website here, and learn more about Imrama Media here.

 

00:24 Show Intro

01:03 introducing Melanie
03:03 Her journey to BBC journalism
04:33 Falling in love with journalism
04:57 story of getting placed in Africa instead of entertainment journalism
06:10 Early experiences of going to Africa
06:16 The kindness of other people to teach you
07:46 Coming back to Canada and Tech boom
07:59 Foray into setting up a media company
08:29 Won a venture capital competition
09:03 When it all blew up - I took it hard
09:13 Ended up on "Venture"
09:43 When the venture failed - took it as a personal failure
09:56 Going back to BBC
10:29 Learning to tell stories...
10:49 Firefighting
11:40 Differentiating yourself (including from AI slop)
12:01 Integrity and authenticity on the ground
12:30 How to behave like a human being
12:47 Logging in Brazil story
13:15 Telling abstract stories that reach people
13:51 Finding the human element to bring a story to life
14:33 Really listen to what's happening on the ground
15:02 "bring people there
16:08 Audiences can sense "phoney"
16:34 Next phase of career - from conflict zones
16:52 Those times in life when you have to make a move
17:32 Learning to tell stories in different formats
17:55 Building a narrative arc when you are competing for attention
18:07 Tell the same story in a million ways
20:06 Afgan maternal mortality story + lesson learned
24:13 What is a powerful story?
24:52 3rd phase in her career - Leadership role
27:46 How to teach others to tell stories
27:58 Understand what they are good at
28:27 Journalist Tom's story
30:31 One of Tom Bateman's stories
32:45 What 3 pieces of advice would Melanie give
33:07 start with something you have in common
33:23 Look for details!
34:21 Give people somewhere to go - Hero's Journey
35:09 How to find out more about Melanie
35:42 Thank yous
36:04 Outro

 

Show Transcript

Melanie Marshall: Look, the hero's journey is the hero's journey for a reason. Give people somewhere to go. Whenever you are telling a great story, take people with you all the way home. It doesn't mean that there's a forever happy ending, but you have to give them a conclusion that allows them to take some sort of action of some kind.

Bart Egnal: Welcome to the Inspire Podcast, where we examine what it takes to intentionally inspire. I'm your host, bar Deel president and CEO of the Humphrey Group, and if you've ever asked yourself, how can you develop an authentic leadership presence, or how can you tell stories that. Have people hanging off every word.

Well, then this podcast is for you, and it's not just for executives. This is a podcast for anyone who

Melanie Marshall: wants to influence and inspire others in their work, but also in their life.[00:01:00]

Bart Egnal: My guest on today's episode of the Inspire Podcast is Melanie Marshall and Melanie's an award-winning journalist. You got a lot. You got a lot going for you. You're a Peabody Award winner. You have been nominated for multiple Emmys, and you did not come by these and other credentials cheaply. You did it the hard way.

You've spent over 20 years in hostile environments. Hopefully this isn't a hostile environment working for the BBC, and you have, you know, after a long and illustrious career. Move back to Canada, you're, you're in Toronto and I welcome you to the Inspire podcast.

Melanie Marshall: Well, thank you so much, Barbara. I'm thrilled to be here, uh, Toronto this January feels a little like a hostile environment, I'm not gonna lie.

Bart Egnal: Yeah, your timing was impeccable. Our worst, our worst January in, uh, in history for, for Snow. But hey, would wouldn't it be Canada without it? And, and I, and I know that not only have you moved back, you've, you've kind of. Enter the new phase of your career and you're a speaker. [00:02:00] You do work around helping people and organizations navigate uncertainty, and you also run RAA Studio, a content impact studio.

So Melanie, I thank you for taking time out of your incredibly busy schedule to join me on the podcast.

Melanie Marshall: I could not be happier to do this with you 'cause you have an incredibly busy schedule as well. So we are both people who like to have many things on the go. I know

Bart Egnal: we do. We do. And I'm glad we, we found time for each other.

And look, when, when we got to know each other, we were introduced by. A great mutual friend, and we had a couple conversations, you know, and what really stood out to me about your career and your journey is you are in the business of helping tell great stories. Mm-hmm. And you've done that yourself. You've done that for the BBC, uh, and you've done it over, you know, as a producer, as a journalist.

And so I thought, you know, look, in this day and age of AI, slop and content, people are looking to tell. Great stories. They wanna understand how to connect, uh, in a way that is authentic [00:03:00] and resonates. So we're gonna talk, we're gonna, I'm gonna extract from you in a very compact period, all of those great lessons that you put to work.

Um, and maybe we'll even have a few stories, uh, from you, but let's wind it back first and I want you to take people, uh, listening in to the journey that led you to the BBC. So. Take me back to childhood. Take me back to where you grew up and how it all started.

Melanie Marshall: So, I was born in Alberta, but I grew up all across Canada.

I lived in Halifax for a lot of my childhood. I bounced around to Waterloo, back to Lethbridge. I always had this sense of rootlessness and I loved it. When other kids might have been dreaming about, I don't know, marriage or cars, I was buying the Let's Go Global travel book, like highlight the countries I wanted to see in the world.

I always wanted to see the world and have adventures, [00:04:00] and I did. But I realized at one point nobody made enough money to marry me. Not one single friend of mine made enough money to marry me and make me European, and I thought, I'm gonna go back to school. I thought, well, what do I want to do? Well, I want to tell stories.

I wanna travel the world. So I went back to school to become a journalist.

Bart Egnal: Okay, so this is what year?

Melanie Marshall: This was 1990. Oh, you really aging me here, Bart. In 1996.

Bart Egnal: So you're there. So you've decided, you've had this epiphany. I wanted to be a journalist. You're studying journalism and you fell in love with it.

You told me

Melanie Marshall: this was, yeah. I fell in love with it and I thought, I always thought I'd be a writer.

Bart Egnal: Hmm.

Melanie Marshall: You know, I loved writing and what I discovered was I loved. All the mediums of telling a story. It turned out I really loved helping tell stories visually, and that's what I started doing and I really wanted to get out there and do foreign news.

I just always wanted to, [00:05:00] and I had to do part of practical work experience. It's part of the degree I. I had a choice. I could either take what was offered to me, which was to go be an entertainment reporter in Montreal.

Bart Egnal: Mm-hmm.

Melanie Marshall: Very glamorous.

Bart Egnal: Mm-hmm.

Melanie Marshall: Or I could continue to get up late at night every night and call this man named Martin Turner, who was the bureau chief for the Africas, then for BBC News and try to get 'em to take my phone call.

And I would just call and call and I would chat away to whoever answered, which was never back when people

Bart Egnal: answered the phone.

Melanie Marshall: Yeah. Back when. Yeah. Back when people answered the phone. But not Martin. 'cause he knew, and I would chat away. I would tell them what was happening in Canada. I would tell them why I was interested.

I would talk about how much I wanted to come to Africa. Mm-hmm. And they made him take my call.

Bart Egnal: Hmm.

Melanie Marshall: And I still remember aging myself, being in the email lab. Then Ryerson. Mm-hmm. Now TMU, when after talking to Martin and making my very earnest pitch [00:06:00] Earnest, then Earnest, now I got an email from him saying the answer is yes.

Bart Egnal: Okay. So you, so you got this, you talked to Wayne, you went to Africa, and what, and what was it like? What was your early experience with journalism?

Melanie Marshall: My early experience was the kindness of other people to teach you what you don't know, and it will always be a lot. And that goes for now, right? I'm fighting that now as I shift careers.

Mm-hmm. But I was a kid still in, living in Johannesburg, working with some of the best journalists in the world at a time when Nelson Mandela was peacefully handing over power and. I remember Martin coming up to me one day and saying to me, you said you could shoot, right? And I looked at him sort of terrified and I was so, and I just said yes.

And he put a plane ticket down. He'd been waiting to see what I would say and said, you're leaving in the morning. And it was to go on a road trip across South Africa [00:07:00] with two wonderful journalists, one of whom has passed away now, Kate Peyton, and, um. I learned so much. I still remember driving across the Cape listening to Young Hearts Run Free by Candy.

Stan and I. I pitched and pitched and worked and worked. But then it was those moments of freedom when you know you have something special happening. And when you are also in this place of total privilege, I was in a little plane flying over the Vega Delta in Botswana, which a lot of your listeners will be like, I can't afford to go there yet, right?

Mm-hmm. And I remember looking down and seeing the wild dogs running across, and it's that Joan Novar quote. It's, but I only have the latter part. I was born to do this.

Bart Egnal: Now you come back to Canada and you actually, we are right on the cusp of the tech boom, the emergence.com. And so you do what everyone does is you're like, how am I gonna monetize this?

I'm gonna set up a media company, [00:08:00] tell, tell us what happened.

Melanie Marshall: Uh, unfair. Unfair, to be fair to me, to be fair to me, okay. I did sort of think, what could I do? Because I always wanted to create something that saw the world the way I do. To connect people to it. And I sat at dinner with someone and told them all about this much like anyone who would answer the phone.

And they said, if you write that up in a business plan, we'll give you a quarter of a million dollars. So I won this venture capital competition to set up HIPA cat, which was my vision for what online media could be. And it was amazing looking back now, but we didn't have the technology could do it.

Mm-hmm. Like the idea of how we would connect local and global news, make it actionable, bringing in video and text, all these things, a lot of it wasn't being done then bringing in opinion and humor. But I also a. Didn't have the business experience I did about an MBA in four months. [00:09:00] I say I partnered with a VC incubator that was going public rather than a media company, and when it all blew up in my face, which it did, I took it very hard.

So I ended up on venture. Because I had said on, and for anyone listening who's not Canadian, it's a business program that you probably don't wanna be on. They've been following me around and I wanted to keep them happy. This is what gonna come into tips of don't try to keep producers happy. And I said, I've written a pretty big check with my mouth.

Let's see if my bleep can cache it. Hmm,

Bart Egnal: Hmm. Sounds like Top Gun.

Melanie Marshall: Oh my God. I dunno what I was thinking, but I'll tell

Bart Egnal: you that You were, you were 20 though. It's it's neuro.

Melanie Marshall: Yeah. Yeah. But they used that in the end. And, and when that failed, I took it as a personal failure. I took it as a, I can't ever do this.

I could never do this again.

Bart Egnal: So you decide the business world's not for you, and [00:10:00] you go back to the B, B, C, right? Mm-hmm. So this is really the beginning, and, and I think we move like. If we're thinking about your career when we talked about how should we, you know, organize your career, right? We talked about this, this fir this is now career starts, and it really begins you become an, I could say, maybe an individual journalist and storyteller, right?

And it's really about, you described as firefighting, feisty firefighting. What was this phase and what did you learn about telling stories during that time?

Melanie Marshall: Okay, so this phase is. Nine 11.

Bart Egnal: Mm-hmm.

Melanie Marshall: Roughly to 2006.

Bart Egnal: Okay.

Melanie Marshall: And I was based outta New York, traveling around the Americas, starting to travel to the Middle East, starting to travel to the tsunami.

These are the types of things I'm doing. Firefighting is when literally you look out, the world is on fire. You have to go quickly. This [00:11:00] is crisis response. Get on the ground, get the logistics of a team in place, and deliver a story immediately that is going to make sense to your audience, and that frankly is gonna beat the competition,

Bart Egnal: right?

Melanie Marshall: That's always the goal.

Bart Egnal: It's like the ambulance chasing of journalism. Get there first and sign them up.

Melanie Marshall: Yeah, it can be a little,

Bart Egnal: maybe BBC wouldn't like that, but

Melanie Marshall: Well, they wouldn't like the term, I don't know if it's untrue. Right. They wouldn't like the term, I don't know if it's unfair

Bart Egnal: or a higher quality personal injury.

Law firm.

Melanie Marshall: Yeah, exactly. That's why you can trust us, right.

Bart Egnal: Lion Huts, attorney of law for Simpsons.

Melanie Marshall: But you know, that's one of the things, if we're talking about differentiating ourselves from mm-hmm. AI swap or from any of this that I would say about that time that I learned two things. One, yes, you have to move fast and be logistically smart and don't wait.

When you see a fire, don't sit and think, maybe I'll do something about that next week. 'cause go, the [00:12:00] fire's burning. Right. Right. However. If you want to do something that is a higher quality, it is all going to depend on the integrity and the authenticity that you bring on the ground.

Bart Egnal: Hmm.

Melanie Marshall: The reason that I generally did beat the competition mm-hmm.

Wasn't because I was blood thirsty.

Bart Egnal: Hmm.

Melanie Marshall: It was because I treated the people I was working with on the ground as part of the unit, and because I was taught. I mean, I like to think I knew, but I was taught how to behave like a human being, no matter the circumstance by my work dad cookie.

Bart Egnal: And so when, so let's, let's take an example.

There's a

Melanie Marshall: mm-hmm.

Bart Egnal: Story we were talking about around logging in Brazil. Te tell us about that story. What was the story and how did that humanity lead to a more compelling story that people could connect with?

Melanie Marshall: I mean, illegal logging. So these stories keep coming around [00:13:00] again, right? Which is why you do have to respond to a crisis.

But fun fact, you'll probably respond to it again. Uh, so save your notes

Bart Egnal: here. We're again,

Melanie Marshall: here we're, again, it's a

Bart Egnal: gift that keeps on giving.

Melanie Marshall: It's a gift that keeps on giving. So, illegal logging was a big story in Brazil, the. Destruction of the Amazon, but that's a hard story for people to connect with if you're trying to talk to an audience about resources.

Bart Egnal: Mm-hmm. It's

Melanie Marshall: too

Bart Egnal: abstract.

Melanie Marshall: It's too abstract. But in this case, there was a nun named Dorothy Stang who had worked very closely with the communities in the Amazon. To protect them from illegal logging. And these illegal loggers get really rough to try and get territory, and they shot her dead. Wow. They killed her.

And it shocked that community. And there was something in that that I just found incredibly powerful. The idea of one woman unprotected. Right? No army, no nothing. [00:14:00] Who had been murdered in the middle of the Amazon. And for me, I knew that was something that people could connect to as an access point to understanding everything else that was happening there.

And that was the bit and basis on which I sold it. Because we have to sell inside. You have to sell inside a building. Mm-hmm. I sold it and we got somebody behind it and off we went. We're lucky. I mean, I would say lucky and I guess luck is something you do, but we made the effort because of how we operate, and that was with Cookie, the magical cookie of you sit down, the first thing you sit down is you, and you listen even if you don't think you have time.

You sit down and you listen to what is happening right on the ground for safety, but also just to understand.

Bart Egnal: Mm-hmm.

Melanie Marshall: These are people who are traumatized, go in and listen and so many more things open up. Right, right. And I think I told you, uh uh, I'll tell this, you know, it's how do you tell the story in a [00:15:00] way that's compelling?

Well, you know, part of it is to bring people there. You know, we got stuck in the mud. For four hours, like literally hours, literal,

Bart Egnal: literally stuck

Melanie Marshall: in the mud, stuck in the mud, like we were stuck in the mud. We had great stuff, but we were not going anywhere.

Bart Egnal: Hmm.

Melanie Marshall: And we had to, and then, except somebody had obviously gone to get help, because then magically at a certain point, people appeared out of the woods with axes and then a great guy appeared with a chainsaw and they cut things up to help us get out of the mud.

That's something people can connect to the idea of like think about driving out in Toronto snow right now and getting stuck and your neighbors come and rock you back and forth. That is how you take something that connects and is concrete and then you make a little bit of the difference.

Bart Egnal: So you've gotta go when you see the fire, but once you get there, you really have to start with the listing.

You have to start with the human element.

Melanie Marshall: Start with the human element. [00:16:00] Always. Always start with the human element and. And be willing to leave stuff on the table. I'm happy to get into that a little bit, but you know, if you don't have that, especially you talk about what audiences read now and how they feel it.

Bart Egnal: Mm-hmm.

Melanie Marshall: They know if you're being phony. They just know it. In the same way that if you or I are at a party, we can feel somebody looking over our shoulder.

Bart Egnal: That's

Melanie Marshall: true for something else, right? Mm-hmm.

Bart Egnal: So you've had this first phase of your career. You're in New York, you're this firefighter. And then we fast forward to 2006 and you move across the pond.

I mean, I guess when you're working for the BB, C, it's inevitable. You have to get closer to the, the mothership. Um, and then you entered this new chapter, the second phase of your career, where you're learning to tell stories from the conflict, from the zones of conflict. Te tell us about that move and what this, what the next kind of phase of learning for you that this brought.

Melanie Marshall: Um, so yeah, you, you put the nail on it that I think we all reach points in our career where we know we have to move because the [00:17:00] story that is being told about us is not going to change unless we do, unless we add something markedly different. And in my case, that was it, right? I was a firefighter, they call me Little Miss Natural disaster.

But if I did, I had a hoodie with it on it. But if I didn't go to. The mothership and show that I was capable of understanding the nitty gritty of how all the sausage gets made,

Bart Egnal: right?

Melanie Marshall: I wasn't gonna get further. Hmm. So I packed up everything and left, went to London, and that phase started with learning to tell stories in different ways and opening myself up to different formats.

So I was outputting live tv. I was, you know, if you're sitting and watching a half hour news channel, I was the person sitting saying, okay, we're going to this story, we're going to that story. I was you, Bart. I was like, wrap it up. Wrap it up. And that taught me about the narrative arc in a slightly different way.

It taught me about how [00:18:00] you build a narrative arc when you are competing for attention. Across everything. You can tell the same story in a million different ways.

Bart Egnal: Mm-hmm.

Melanie Marshall: But yeah, so my learning there initially, that was my initial learning was to kind of, to broaden that out and to deepen my understanding of the product.

Right. What was, and the different ways that stories were told, different ways, stories were told, different things we're competing against. And then I wanted to get back out again as quickly as I could.

Bart Egnal: And you wanted to go with some. You know what? What is it they call Kinetic zones?

Melanie Marshall: Oh yeah. Kinetic zones.

I know, but I always think of them as, you know, fun zones.

Bart Egnal: Fun zones. Yes.

Melanie Marshall: Let's

Bart Egnal: think of them as fun zone zones. Give us like, give us the lightning round list of all the places you went to to do stories during this time.

Melanie Marshall: I still remember a beautiful Christmas in Ramallah with militants shooting their guns in the air and me thinking, boy, I hope that doesn't come down.

Um, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan. [00:19:00] Where else is, where else is rough? Were

Bart Egnal: you ever

Melanie Marshall: shot at? So yeah, I was shot at lots of times. Hmm. I remember being in Libya and, um. We thought all of the Gaddafi loyalists were gone. And so we had, we were chatting, we were standing around chatting, and all of a sudden we heard the unmistakable of a bullet go right between myself and the cameraman.

Whoa. And we just dropped. 'cause your instincts are good, right? Your, your reflexes are good. And I just dropped and like, I literally start burrowing into the ground in my flack jacket and then he and I look at each other and we start laughing and we're like, well, not so clear. Like, but that's,

Bart Egnal: what else can he do?

Just laugh. Right? Drop

Melanie Marshall: and

Bart Egnal: laugh. Yeah. Yeah.

Melanie Marshall: Drop and laugh. Alright. So I guess I was in a lot of those connect zone, but I do think that's difference between, it was, my focus was always on what were we trying to get to and how were we trying to tell it?

Bart Egnal: And I know on that topic what we talked about was in our prep was the big takeaway for you is how to tell.[00:20:00]

Stories in these conflict zones that were deeply human and connecting. And, and if you could, the one that resonated for me was the story that you told around, um, Afghan maternal mortality. So maybe you could just talk a bit about that story and the lesson that you, that you shared with me.

Melanie Marshall: It's funny, I saw Lee's, uh, I saw Lee's two nights ago and leads Ette, who I, I went on this trip with, and we were talking about this story and it's one of the most meaningful ones in my life because.

A AI pushed for this trip. Basically, we were, there was a very abstract goal, right? Oh, how do we talk about the millennium development goals? Does anyone remember those? When we were gonna eliminate all the bad stuff in the world? Mm-hmm. Do you remember those? Oh, I do

Bart Egnal: remember them. I remember them.

Melanie Marshall: Yeah. So we were, I

Bart Egnal: couldn't, I couldn't say them back to you, but I remember them.

Melanie Marshall: It was basically, let's eliminate all things bad. Yes. In the world. So somebody noble,

Bart Egnal: mm-hmm.

Melanie Marshall: Noble, but not there yet. We were tasked with looking at maternal [00:21:00] mortality and I thought, well, let's go to the worst place in the world to give birth if you wanted to live. Which happened to be in the most remote, remote province of Afghanistan.

But Han, which is, and when I say remote in Afghanistan, it means really remote, you know, like. We're not talking roads, we're talking donkeys.

Bart Egnal: Hmm.

Melanie Marshall: Uh, although we had what kind of roads? Sand track on the side of a hill and we had to go really far to get to this one clinic that was staffed by an NGO, doing great work and some midwives and we'd waited there all day.

Nobody came and I had pushed so hard for. Us to go, 'cause it cost a lot of money. And bosses are thinking, why couldn't you have gone to a slightly less deadly place? Why couldn't you have gone somewhere,

Bart Egnal: do the second deadliest place to give birth? I know we're making lay of this, but that's No, but especially what they're saying.

Right? [00:22:00]

Melanie Marshall: It was exactly what they were

Bart Egnal: saying. The price 98% is deadly.

Melanie Marshall: And at the time there was an Afghan election going on. And what they also really wanted was to have Lees and Lees and team, which was me around to do that sort of churning, making sausage, you know, daily stuff. So they didn't want us to go as far as we could to be impactful, but I remember sitting there and thinking, well, what do we do?

Like we can't make people make it here like that. The whole point of this clinic is people have to travel for days, and as we're sitting there waiting. A woman arrives with blood staining her burka like she was being carried, and she had blood staining the front of her burka. I was able to go in because I was a woman, so I went in to film and she was pregnant with her third child.

She'd been bleeding heavily for days. They had had to take her from a very remote village [00:23:00] and when the baby was born. I mean, they were working diligently. They were preparing the baby clothes, but when the baby was born, the baby was dead. Baby was still born. And for me, that just hung in the, like, it was so sad.

Mm-hmm. Like you, I think of like all the times to be there with

Bart Egnal: that, to

Melanie Marshall: be there. And normally babies are joy, right?

Bart Egnal: Mm-hmm.

Melanie Marshall: And, um, when the nurses had stabilized, they'd wrapped the baby up, they'd stabilized her, given her a little what blood that they could 'cause she needed blood. And she pulled one of them down and whispered, thank you for saving my life.

Bart Egnal: Hmm.

Melanie Marshall: We were all sad. And she was grateful because most women in her situation right, wouldn't have lived

Bart Egnal: right.

Melanie Marshall: And for me that was the power of spending the time to do that properly.

Bart Egnal: Right? It turns, turns a goal and [00:24:00] statistics into the reality of it.

Melanie Marshall: And the reality of it is longer lasting than the daily dream of one or two things happening because it is about the rhythms and the patterns of how we live our life.

And when we are talking about how to tell stories. If you wanna tell a powerful story, it has to be about more than what has just happened that day or that week, or that quarter. Hmm. It has to be something that deeply resonates. And in that case, the power of that was, it is something that anyone can connect with.

Bart Egnal: Right.

Melanie Marshall: And then when you're open to it, you can, you are ready to understand the difference.

Bart Egnal: Right.

Melanie Marshall: Which is what so much of our communication is, right? It's, we're trying to help people understand mm-hmm. What's different between us.

Bart Egnal: So, great example, powerful example, and, and, um, yeah, it's certainly an impactful one.

Let, let's jump ahead in your career to the third phase where [00:25:00] we've talked about now you've moved to London, you've learned, now you move from being, you know, a producer, a storyteller. To a leadership role. Yes. And you take on leadership in the BBC's, uh, Israel West Bank, Gaza coverage, um, and also become a filmmaker.

So tell me about this phase and what did you take away? How did you learn and grow as a storyteller? Then?

Melanie Marshall: That move was one I didn't see coming. I had really wanted to go back to Africa because that was, you know, my roots.

Bart Egnal: Mm-hmm.

Melanie Marshall: However, however, I was more and more feeling the call to leadership. I wanted to pass on a lot of what I'd learned and I had done a film.

In Qatar of all places about how they were flying in dairy cows to try and basic, they were flying in jumbo jets, filled with cows to try [00:26:00] and say, I'm trying to find a good way to put this, to try and thumb their noses at the Saudis. So it was another example of a geopolitical story nobody cared about.

Right. But if you say, look, a 7 47 of cows just arrived still with

Bart Egnal: cows.

Melanie Marshall: Yeah. I did that piece and I loved it so much, and I had this moment of, you know what? Instead of just chasing war or letting other people decide what stories I'm going to tell, I'm gonna go where I'm wanted and needed. Because I had edited this piece with her and with a wonderful cameraman, Jimmy, that I worked with a lot, and they were like, oh, this was amazing.

You helped us so much. You made a real difference and. My view was I had so much fun. I had so much fun with them. And so then when they said, you know, the job to be the boss here is coming up, what do you think? I suddenly had this moment of why don't I try doing the thing that feels good and would be really challenging and interesting?

Mm-hmm. And I've been going to the Middle East over the years, like for 20 years. Right. So I love the Middle [00:27:00] East. And what did I learn from that, aside from you might have to be slightly nuts to say, you know what, go to Jerusalem. It'll be fun. They said, uh,

Bart Egnal: yeah. I think, uh, it might not be people's definition of fun.

Nor nor a lot of you in the corporate role. Also wouldn't say managing people is fun.

Melanie Marshall: Look, I love managing people. So

Bart Egnal: it worked for you.

Melanie Marshall: It worked. Both worked for me. Absolutely loved it. I loved my time, uh, in that role. I loved living in Jerusalem. I absolutely loved both because for me, the gift of that.

As a storyteller is you have the ability to build capacity and pass on what you've learned.

Bart Egnal: And so when you look at that and you're telling, you're helping others tell stories and pass on.

Melanie Marshall: Mm-hmm.

Bart Egnal: Like what is the key to helping others tell stories effectively?

Melanie Marshall: So the key to helping other people tell an effective story is one, to [00:28:00] understand what they are good at.

To make sure they understand what they are good at. Don't try and focus on the box they should be in.

Bart Egnal: Hmm.

Melanie Marshall: Don't try and like, don't try and cookie cutter them until you really, really know what their skills are.

Bart Egnal: And, and think of the most like unique storyteller who worked for you, and explain how you help that person, you know, develop their authentic storytelling style.

Melanie Marshall: So when I arrived, there's this great correspondent named Tom who had largely been radio and who had been a political correspondent before. Okay. He had sort of decided that he would just live his life rogue, meaning he would do what he wanted, do it how he wanted, and he wasn't gonna bother to try and learn any of the other grammars of storytelling.

Bart Egnal: Mm-hmm.

Melanie Marshall: Because he hadn't been given very good feedback. People had tried to change him fundamentally, and nobody had supported him on the [00:29:00] process of getting that message out.

Bart Egnal: Okay.

Melanie Marshall: I came in and was like, look, you cannot go rogue. Like I cannot have one Middle East correspondent who has disappeared off to do a radio documentary for God knows how long.

Like we are too busy. 'cause at that time, hilariously, this was, you know, 2019 up to early 20, 23, people were like the Middle East. That's not a story anymore. And I was like, funny. And Tom was a great example of somebody who. If you looked at what he did when he arrived somewhere, he just. Threw himself into the scene.

That was his gift. He threw himself into the scene and he treated all politicians as if they were Westminster politicians.

Bart Egnal: Mm-hmm.

Melanie Marshall: Okay. He threw two of his great strengths. Okay. And his third strength is the fact that he will go rogue and follow a story until the end. So

Bart Egnal: it was a feature, not a bug,

Melanie Marshall: it was a feature, not a bug.

Right. So it was just learning to channel that.

Bart Egnal: Hmm.

Melanie Marshall: And it [00:30:00] took sitting with him and telling him that I saw that as a featured on a bug. And that it was possible for us to bring that out for him to start to trust me because you have to build trust with people. Right, right. It was, it wasn't enough for him to see what I'd done with, you know, whoever else he needed to trust that I saw the features, not the bugs.

Bart Egnal: Hmm.

Melanie Marshall: And then we started to experiment.

Bart Egnal: What was this, the culmination? If you think about all the stories that he did working for you, what's one that took all of those qualities? And showcase them. What's his last name? We gotta give him credit here.

I

Melanie Marshall: know. Let's give Tom Bateman a shout out. Okay. Let's give Tom Bateman a shout out.

When we were in Jerusalem, he wanted to do, there was a jailbreak from one of the high security prisons, and he came to me and he said, you know, I think there's something really interesting in this story. And these guys had escaped from this prison, Gilboa, which is a really high security prison, and the, the manhunt for [00:31:00] them went all over Israel.

It went into the West Bank. It was, had everything, it had characters, uh, inside the jail. It had the prison service, you know, officials, it had the prisoners families. And it was such a different way to look at anything to do with Israel that I was like, you know what, people will be interested in this. Yeah.

And I knew he had it. Hmm. And so that's an example of where I said like, I'm gonna cover this. I don't care what, I wanna read

Bart Egnal: that story. That sounds

Melanie Marshall: great. Oh, you know what? I'll send you, I'll send you the link. Yeah. 'cause it's really good.

Bart Egnal: Let's put, we'll put it in the show notes too, because I think everyone's like, did they catch them?

What

Melanie Marshall: happened? They did. Why They did get them. Okay. They did. Yeah. Yeah. They weren't gonna, I mean, they were never gonna stay like free forever. That was never happening. But, but how they had gotten out and what the prison service like, basically everybody played their role, but it was a perfect example of him doing.

A kind of a different lens on a known story.

Bart Egnal: Hmm.

Melanie Marshall: And digging, digging, digging. I mean, he just went at it and when I would say, surely you have to be [00:32:00] almost finished now, he would say, not quite yet. And I would say, oh my God. Okay. I'm gonna pretend you're doing something else and tell the bosses that,

Bart Egnal: right.

Melanie Marshall: You're, you know, doing this. And,

Bart Egnal: and so, so this was that, this was that example of you.

Mm-hmm.

Bart Egnal: Enabled him to tell, to lean into his authenticity for his storytelling. Mm-hmm. And produce amazing results

Melanie Marshall: and my result, then my job then was to support that and then to come back and say, okay, how do we shape this?

And how do I get it right? So we did, and it was, and I mean, I love it. Look, he did the work, but I, but it's still, it's a great piece. I will send it to you. Love it. Yeah.

Bart Egnal: So Melanie, we are, we could talk about these stories forever, but I think, you know, we do have to kind bring this story soon to a close.

But before we do, you know, people listening say, oh, I wish I worked for Melanie. What would she tell me? What would be her three pieces of advice to me about how to tell great stories? People listening, you know, they're not journalists, but the power of a story is increasingly important to their [00:33:00] success or future success.

Okay, so here we go. I'm gonna put you on the spot, tip one to telling great stories.

Melanie Marshall: Start with something you have in common with your audience.

Bart Egnal: Mm-hmm.

Melanie Marshall: That really means something to you.

Bart Egnal: Okay? So you've gotta find that authentic connection.

Melanie Marshall: Yeah. Cannot be a fake. Okay.

Bart Egnal: Okay. Point two.

Melanie Marshall: Point two. Look for details.

Bart Egnal: Hmm.

Melanie Marshall: People love details. So if you are to, if you are trying to connect with somebody and you wanna talk to them about gold mining

Bart Egnal: mm-hmm.

Melanie Marshall: Tell the story about you and the CEO being out trying to find tidbits in a northern town at 6:30 AM

Bart Egnal: Hmm.

Melanie Marshall: People connect to detail,

Bart Egnal: right?

Melanie Marshall: Weirdly. They do. They do. And you can do that even if you're, you can do that, even if you're talking about, look, we had this [00:34:00] conversation around the boardroom and I was watching the sunset and I thought, we're not leaving here.

Until there's an answer. And when I watched the cleaner go by with the vacuum, I thought, we're not there yet. We're staying. You know, you can do it in ways like that. They don't have to be war stories,

Bart Egnal: right?

Melanie Marshall: To use details.

Bart Egnal: Okay, what's

Melanie Marshall: my third?

Bart Egnal: That's point, 0.2, and third point.

Melanie Marshall: Look, the hero's journey is the hero's journey for a reason.

Give people somewhere to go. Whenever you are telling a great story, take people with you all the way home. It doesn't mean that there's a forever happy ending, but you have to give them a conclusion that allows them to take some sort of action of some kind.

Bart Egnal: I love it and I think it's, it's a great point for leaders, you know that you really do have to have a journey and a vision, and you combine it with that detail and you combine it with that connection and it's powerful.

Mm-hmm. Melanie, this has been great. I [00:35:00] really appreciate you coming on the pod. For people listening who want to connect with you, who wanna learn more about what you do, who want to book you for an event, where should they go? How can they contact you?

Melanie Marshall: Well, you can get in touch with me on my website, uh, melanie marshall.com.

I also have a YouTube channel where I'm posting a lot of content just about how I see the world, and I'm always on there in the comments. Uh, or you can feel free to come visit me on LinkedIn where a lot of us business folks are always happy. Happy, happy to chat

Bart Egnal: and, and I'll be waiting for that article.

I was nearly, oh, it's

Melanie Marshall: coming.

Bart Egnal: I was nearly killed and I learned five things that can implement better business processes from it. God, help me if I see that I'm un following you.

Melanie Marshall: No, listen, listen. Have me at your event if you want. Why wearing a flak jacket is not the way.

Bart Egnal: Ooh.

Melanie Marshall: To survive.

Bart Egnal: There we go.

Alright, there's clickbait. Melanie, thanks for coming on.

Melanie Marshall: Thanks for having me

Bart Egnal: and, uh, keep telling great stories.

Melanie Marshall: Thanks so much. [00:36:00] Part.

Bart Egnal: I hope you enjoyed that episode of the Inspire Podcast and the conversation that I had, uh, with our guests, and hopefully you left with some really practical, tangible tools and tips that you can use to be more consistently inspirational. If you're enjoying the pod, I'll ask you a favor. Please rate and review it.

I love the comments, appreciate the reviews, and the visibility allows. Others to discover the paw. It's really how word of mouth has spread the Inspire Podcast to so many listeners and helped us keep making this great content. Stay tuned. We'll be back in two weeks with another inspiring conversation.

Thanks so much for listening. Go forth and [00:37:00] inspire.