#42 TELLING YOUR STORY with best selling author & legal veteran Norman Bacal

Do you know how to tell your story effectively? The story you tell could be at work in conversation with your boss, in a job interview, or perhaps you seek to write a novel? Best-selling author and legal veteran Norman Bacal shares how stories are impactful because they connect us through our emotions and life experiences, how the best lawyers are the best storytellers, why we should all have a rehearsed 60 second infomercial about ourselves, the process of writing fiction and non-fiction, how to address the media, and the power of metaphors.

References & Links

Norman Bacal

* Website – https://normanbacal.com/

* LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/norman-bacal-16772a23/

* “Breakdown” by Norman Bacal – https://amzn.to/2Rk4DHd

* “Odell’s Fall” by Norman Bacal – https://amzn.to/36ndGet

* Recommended book: “TRUE FIT: How to Find the Right Job by Being You” by Jim Beqaj- https://amzn.to/2R8rd5e

Talk About Talk & Dr. Andrea Wojnicki

* ? LISTENING with author, consultant & best-selling author Norman Bacal (podcast episode #41) – https://talkabouttalk.com/41-listening-with-norman-bacal/

* ? STORYTELLING with Harvard professor & author Jerry Zaltman (podcast episode #11) – https://talkabouttalk.com/11-storytelling-with-harvard-professor-author-jerry-zaltman/

* ? Subscribe to the Podcast: https://talkabouttalk.com/podcasts/#subscribe

* ? Andrea’s email – [email protected]

* ? Free Weekly Email Newsletter – https://talkabouttalk.com/blog/#newsletter-signup

* ? Website – https://talkabouttalk.com

* ? Private Facebook group – https://www.facebook.com/groups/2512948625658629/

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

Dr. Andrea Wojnicki: Thank you so much for joining us, Norman.

Norman Bacal: Oh, thank you for having me.

AW: If you don’t mind, I’d like to start with some background. I’m curious. Were you always a writer?

NB: It’s an interesting question, because it’s got two answers to it. If you had asked me before my 40th birthday or earlier, did I ever think I would write a book? The answer was never. But I actually started my career doing a lot of writing, particularly as a student and young lawyer. My boss was asked to give many speeches, and he had to publish articles and I pretty much wrote all of them for him. So I did a lot of writing early in my career. I wrote my first technical article when I was about a fifth year lawyer. It had to do with actors coming to Canada. So I did a fair amount of writing in the first – probably 10 years of my career. And then as my career advanced, as I became more successful, I discovered what successful lawyers discover, and that is your phone never stops ringing. You spend most of your time either in meetings or on the phone. And all the writing is now done by junior lawyers who are working for you. Then as I advanced forward into management that continued even further, so the higher up I got in the organization, the shorter my attention span got, the less writing I did.