You're not breeding pigs

“Aargh, what’s this thing doing here??,” my wife shouts from the kitchen. 

“What thing?”

“You know what thing, this horrible leg!

“Ah, you mean the delicious - and incredibly expensive - Iberico ham I bought. You’re welcome.”

“Francisco, there’s still a disgusting hoof on it! And hairs, lots of pig hairs! I can’t even look at it.”

Patricia can’t look at it, but she can eat it. Everyday. 

But she complains about it. 

She puts a kitchen towel over the hoof and hairs, and she still complains about it. 

But the ham stays where it is - until someone is killed in my kitchen. 

It’s a few weeks later, and I have a bunch of friends over. 

We’re having drinks, tapas and everyone is loving the ham. 

We take turns slicing it off with a special knife, and make fun of each other when we mess it up.

Patricia is not even complaining anymore. 

Later in the evening, I go back in the kitchen for more wine and that’s when I see it: 

The ham knife is on the floor, dripping with blood. 

Next to it are bloody footprints. 

My eyes follow them to the other end of the kitchen. 

Slowly. 

I’m afraid what I find there will change my life forever. 

But it’s not a dead body I see - it’s my friend Dave, next to the sink. 

There’s blood on his clothes. 

He’s wrapping a kitchen towel around his hand. 

He looks at me, and in a voice full of beers he says, 

“Knife slipped and almost took my thumb out! Maybe I should lay off the ham for tonight…”

After that night, all our ham is sliced by a butcher and kept in neat little plastic wraps in the fridge. 

There are no hooves or hairs anywhere to be seen. 

Watch me torture this analogy

Everyone who gets a leg of ham for the first time is surprised by the same thing: how much fat you have to go through before you can eat it.

You slice a couple of inches off, and it’s all fat. You keep going, still fat. You need to go almost a third of the way through the leg before you find that deep, dark meat. And it’s extremely difficult to do. You need a special support, a special knife, and even so slicing it thin is an art form. 

But you absolutely need the fat; without it, the meat wouldn’t have any flavour at all. 

“What does this have to do with storytelling, though??”

You’re not breeding pigs, so the last thing you want is fat. A lean ham would taste awful, but a lean story is always better. 

Before you tell a good story, then, you need to trim the fat. Get rid of everything that’s not needed or your audience will check out before you get to the good stuff. 

What’s fat in a story?

• Irrelevant imagery (what did Patrícia or Dave look like? What’s the layout of my kitchen?) 

• Irrelevant descriptions (what’s Patrícia like normally? Or Dave? What exactly does Iberico ham taste or smell like? What music were we listening to?) 

• Too many characters (other friends in that party, the butcher) 

• Side notes (is this the only food Patrícia finds disgusting? How did I learn to cut ham?) 

None of that stuff is needed. Get your sharpest editing knife and trim that fat. 

But you probably don’t want to do that after a few beers, it’s a real pain cleaning all that blood from the floor 🤘

-Francisco 

Whenever you're ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

1. Getting clarity through your story to stand out from all the other coaches, speakers and entrepreneurs out there 

2. If you dream of speaking at a TED-style conference, we can find your idea, book the talk of your dreams and deliver it with impact

3. If you (or your team) got any storytelling challenges, I’m sure there’s something we can do together ;-)

Thanks for reading! Reply any time.