#149 How to Be Interesting. Craft a Better Story with Marsha Shandur of Yes Yes Marsha

Marsha Shandur is a story coach, networking mentor, and memory scavenger at Yes Yes Marsha. She helps leaders and entrepreneurs by teaching them how to make instant and powerful emotional connections with collaborators and dream clients. Marsha is also the host of the podcast Marsha Meets . . . On the show, she has interviewed brilliant comedians like Rufus Hound, Greg Davies, Stewart Lee, and Russell Kane. The show has been hailed twice as one of the world's Top Ten Best Comedy Podcasts by The Guardian. Marsha is also the co-author of the book Off The Mic: The World's Best Stand Up Comedians Get Serious About Comedy. The book talks about the mechanics of stand-up comedy and features interviews with 43 comedians including Lewis Black, Marc Maron, Sarah Millican, and Eddie Izzard. The book was nominated for a Chortle Award and The Independent considered it "Fascinating—part textbook, part therapist's notebook." Marsha's Master's degree in Psychology coupled by her more than a decade experience as producer and radio presenter gave her a good and thorough understanding of how connections are made. She now runs True Stories Told Live, Toronto's biggest storytelling show and has told her story in Toronto, London, and in front of 3, 000 people at Portland's World Domination Summit.   This week's episode talks about content mapping and why it's important, what the primacy and recency effects are, and the neurology of storytelling and how it works. Marsha also shares why it pays to practice when it comes to storytelling, her thoughts on brevity when telling a story, and what networking is and why it has a less than desirable connotation. When it comes to storytelling, Gretchen has this to say, "People seem to think that storytelling is the skill that you have or you don't. And it's not. It's a learned set of rules."