Episode 66: Crafting Narratives That Resonate with Bran and Cameron
Hello and welcome to The Thoughtful Realtor Podcast. This is the podcast where we sit down for insight, stories, and conversations about all things real estate, running a top producing real estate team here in California, and how we find our way as leaders and business partners. I'm Brandea Bunnag, one of the partners of Willowmar Real Estate.
Today I have the pleasure of speaking with a good friend and client, Cameron Lehman, who was a ghost and speech writer.
One of the things that you've taught me is the importance of storytelling regardless of who you are, and especially for people who are trying to be of more influence and the importance of message and delivery.
And as a real estate agent, I have had the privilege of meeting people like you, incredible professionals, business owners in San Francisco. And so I'm very happy to have the opportunity to shed light on that and to invite you to see how you can connect with other people in our sphere. So thank you, Cameron, for being here today.
What a pleasure.
I wanna start by sharing more about your background because you have a remarkable résumé.
Cameron Lehman is a writer, editor, and entrepreneur. He started his career at Anheuser-Busch, where he worked on three Budweiser Superbowl campaigns, after which he co-founded Harbory, Illinois's first cannabis dispensary, and the EdTech Marketplace Leland.
Today he runs Editor-in-Chief where he ghosts and speech writes for executives, academics, and politicians with clients ranging from the Stanford University Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence to Sequoia Capital. He holds a BS, BA, and MBA from Stanford University.
Tell us more about your journey to coming to where you are today as a CEO and a founder. I think, our listeners, some of them will be wondering what it means to hire a ghost writer, what it means to be a ghost writer, but I also imagine that we also have aspiring writers. So we'd love to hear about your journey getting to where you are today.
Thanks for that question. I first wanna start by saying you were leading off with a note about, “Why is this relevant to realtors? Why is this something that our community would care about?” And at least from my experience working together, buying a home is extremely personal.
It is very much a journey and to the extent that a realtor can meet a client and understand their journey, and even bring some of their own personal journey to the table. I think that makes the experience not just possible, but so much richer. And so I think having an understanding of what is a story, what is my story and how am I using that to connect with someone else is really, really valuable. So it's not a tangential thing by any means. I really think that this is core to what you're doing because a realtor is very much a guide in that respect so I think it's very germane.
So, as you said, I started my career at Anheuser-Busch. I was on the Budweiser Super Bowl Campaign for a couple of years; that was sort of my first foray into storytelling. I really enjoyed that 62nd story. It was very short, it was very expensive because it was a Super Bowl. But that was a story–it was a story with the beginning and middle and an end.
From there, I sort of leveraged that understanding to better understand the customers who were coming to the cannabis dispensary; and they were bringing their own stories. The first pass at medical cannabis was very strict from the state of Illinois. So the list of qualifying conditions for which you could actually get a card and come into the store was very, very short. The people coming in were genuinely sick and had a story that they suddenly just wanted to share and to tell. And so the reason we succeeded was because we hired former hospice workers and nurses and people who actually had a way with people. That was a big learning too. A story is not just something that you “use horses to talk about beer.” It's a way to connect with customers, even in a retail environment.
And then the EdTech marketplace, Leland, that was helping young adults with coaching opportunities, helping them find someone who could guide them through the college admissions process, the grad school admissions process, getting a better job at Google or at Apple, and that very, very obviously is all about the story, right? And not just the client's story, but also the coach has their own story–why they coach. So all of those things were helping me ultimately triangulate to where I am now. Of course hindsight's 2020, so I didn't understand that that's what was happening at the time, but it helped me to triangulate.
Yes, I really like knowing my story and using that to help someone else articulate theirs. And so that's what I bring to the table. I know how to listen. I ask the right questions, even if I have a very short amount of time, which typically with my clients you do just because they've got more important things to be working on.
But I really enjoy understanding that story, condensing it into the shortest amount of time possible to maximize their potential for positive impact. And that's been my North Star here in the past couple of years is working with clients who really are walking the talk, where they're mission oriented. They're using sharper words to motivate and inspire people to put good into the world.
And that's been the through line through all of the opportunities that you've had in the past, is the importance of understanding that mission and feeling it deeply because I think that, what you've probably learned is that a story is only as powerful as it is authentic; and so the more that that is a lived experience, I think the more powerful that is.
So I really appreciate that about you and I know that another through line for you has been your personal storytelling. Something that you've introduced me to which I love attending, not participating in, is The Moth. And for those listeners that don't know who aren't familiar with The Moth:
The Moth is a global storytelling platform that invites individuals to tell their personal real stories live without notes, which is insane to me but that is something that you, Cameron, do. And I have had the privilege of going to watch on a monthly basis in San Francisco.
I just love that environment at Public works–very intimate, very engaging, very involved. That is something that I know you have been doing for some time, and I am curious how that has shown up in the work that you do, if at all; or if you find them to be very separate and what influence that has had; or how you think that is very different from the work that you do for your clients.
Yeah, totally. I appreciate the question and it's always so great to have you there. We've been building a little community for the month, which is so nice. On the surface it's very different in that the work I do professionally, someone else puts their name on it and they take credit for it, which I'm very happy for because they are the subject matter expert in energy infrastructure or AI, or, fiduciary duty. I am not, and so they deservedly are the ones getting the credit.
On this platform, I'm the one up there on the stage, I'm sharing my story. It's a five-minute little tale of something that's happened to me, as you say, with no notes and it's very raw. I try to really show up and share something real and vulnerable, because I think those are the most connective stories. I think that's really how you connect with someone is by putting something real on the table. So on the surface, they're very different because it's something from my life, but when you get down to the preparation for it and the actual execution when you get into the details, it's pretty similar.
You have a topic with The Moth, right? So as you know, they announce the topic ahead of time. They put it on the website. You have at the very least a month and usually longer than that to prepare your story. So they have given you a topic in advance, there is an audience, you need to stick within five minutes, and there is some light casual judging that happens just from random audience members.
But there are some parameters, there's some constraints, and in that sense, it's very similar to the work I do professionally. Let's say a speech that you're giving at such-and-such a university, and it's X number of minutes long, and they've given you a topic, and you have your audience. So the blocking and the tackling of the two are pretty similar, even if it's my story versus someone else’s.
Okay. So there's the tactical component that's also involved in storytelling. There are parameters and boundaries that, I would guess, also make it more impactful because oftentimes the hardest stories to tell or hardest essays to write are the shortest ones, so tactically very similar. Do you feel that one or the other is more challenging for you?
Yes, the personal storytelling is way more difficult. With a client, it isn't my story. I don't feel as personally vested if there's a personal detail shared. It's not my personal detail. I obviously want there to be a really good outcome and I get to know the client extremely well so I do take that work personally, but it isn't quite the same. There is just a bit of distance when it's someone else's. Ultimately their name is on it when it goes into the Financial Times or goes into Fortune. I am not the one putting that out there.
Even though the stakes are much lower at The Moth–there's a couple hundred people in the audience and that's pretty much as far as the thing goes–it still feels more difficult because I am sharing something really personal. And again, I will never be the person on that stage offering platitudes, offering a fluff piece. I really put stuff out there. So in that sense, you're offering yourself up to the judgment of complete strangers. Public works gets filled up with 300-400 total strangers and so that can be hard.
And for me, the biggest challenge is making sure that I, within the five minutes, am following the parameters and sharing something genuine. It would be so easy to wrap things up in a bow. It would be so easy to just say, oh, and then everything ended nicely, which is kind of what you have to do when you're ghostwriting. You're very incisive. You're very decisive. You're making a point. It's more difficult to be vulnerable and be open-ended and to say, “I don't know,” or “and it didn't end well,” or any of the other true things that we actually experience in life. So in that sense, because it is drawing from real life and it's not just an opinion piece or a speech, the subject matter itself is messier so that can be more difficult.
Yeah, I imagine a very vulnerable process, but good to know that as a part of working with your client and while it might not be as personally vulnerable, you are still having to do the work to get to know them on a deeper level. That goes back to what we said earlier: that the power of the story is you might be the one that's writing the story, but because you understand it so deeply, it comes off very impactfully.
So on that note, I'd love to understand the process. And then we'll talk more about who should be hiring a ghost writer.
I actually really love the name of your company, Editor-in-Chief because it suggests something that's more of a collaborative process, whereas I think some listeners might have a preconception, maybe even a negative association with ghost writing, as in, it is someone else telling your story in their voice. But from what it sounds like, it's more of a two-way street and maybe even more of an art.
So give us more insight into what that process looks like. Let's say someone wants to hire you to write for them or to write a speech for them, what does that look like?
Totally. It's definitely much more collaborative than you might think once you peak under the hood. The very first thing I do when I'm working with a client is I ask for everything that they've ever written, every video that they've ever been in, every podcast that they've ever sat for, and I digest all of it because I'm just a nerd and I'm super curious and I just like learning.
The farther away the field is from my area of expertise, the better. I love learning about police staffing, if that's the topic that you want to learn about. I love learning about anything, especially when it's totally outside of my purview. I digest all that information, and that's doing a couple things.
It's giving me a sort of rough map of the industry that you sit in.
It's helping me capture your voice.
I am picking up on the little ways that you're responding to questions. How aggressive are you? How defensive are you? Are you playing things closer to the chest? Are you using humor? Are you not using humor? When are you using humor? When is the right time to pepper in a joke versus not?
I am gathering all of that by going through all of the things that you've sent me so I'm getting a lay of the industry as well as capturing your voice. That's the very first process. It's an intake. I do all this research before we even work on anything.
The second stage is we're building the working relationship. That's when a client might say, “Hey, I need a LinkedIn post every three months,” or “I am giving the speech in six months. I need it prepared by then.” There can be more topical things like, “The California State Senate has announced this bill on AI and I hate it.” The client might say, “This is awful. Please write something with these three points.” And so we are figuring out how to work together. I'm getting a couple of very discreet assignments and I'm using what I've learned to capture their voice and draft things for them.
The reason I call the company Editor-in-Chief is because I'm not just someone who is drafting and taking the voice out of your mouth. It is extremely collaborative. The person has given me a thesis, they've given me a topic, and they've given me the seed of the idea. My job is to save them from the blank page. Ultimately, that's what people don't like. People hate writing. They hate it. They hate the blank page. It just makes them very desperately uncomfortable.
And so they are saying, “Look, here is this thing that I want,” and I'm very comfortable with that blank page so I will draft, I will get you something that you can react to as a client. Then it becomes a collaboration. They might say the second point isn't quite right, [or] “Actually that's not the right place to use humor and here's why.” There's a lot of back and forth until they're satisfied. It's very collaborative; I am serving as a guide or almost a coach to help you but it is ultimately your voice. I know because I've listened to it, I'm trying to capture it, and I'm constantly taking feedback to improve what I'm delivering.
Then the third phase, once we sort of developed a working relationship, is sort of the I'm there in a sort of low hum capacity where I might be writing a LinkedIn post view on a regular basis. You're a little more hands off because we've established trust. You know that I can capture your voice. You might be giving it a light red pen before it goes out, but I'm doing a lot of the work and things are humming along or. We've developed a cadence where you want an op-ed every however many months, and you may be giving me the topics ahead of time, but I'm in the background doing that legwork, and it's much more of a maintenance thing.
So the goal is to get to that place where I know you well enough, I know your story and your voice well enough that it isn't a lot of hours every single time that you have an assignment.
So probably not as much of importance for something that's more written or digital that's being pushed out onto like a LinkedIn or even an op-ed but for those who need to deliver a speech live, is that something that you also coach them through, the delivery?
Absolutely and I love that actually. I'm very good with just the written form, but I really, really like it when someone has to give a speech because this adds another vector, right? You have to stand there with your mouth and your body. It's the whole thing.
That ranges from, this client might be a non-native English speaker, and so they want some coaching on cadence, tonality, where to emphasize acronyms. There's just so many small things that we might take for granted that they just want to have someone point out for them that would take a long time to do with someone who didn't know you very well. So there's a component of it that's that. There's an understanding of who's in the audience listening to you then, and who is going to see the video or recording of it later. There's a primary audience and then a secondary audience so it's being able to understand the difference between the two. There's all sorts of things now that you've added on because you are in the room delivering it. I'm very comfortable with that kind of work, whether that's a speech at an actual lectern; it could be a keynote address, it could be panel remarks if you're at a conference, just prepping you with, with Q&A, stuff like that. I really enjoy it.
Yeah. Well, I know that you don't yet work with realtors, but that's something that we face on a day-to-day basis, even in one-on-one conversations with our clients. If we ever are trying to give a presentation or maybe we've been invited to speak on a panel or even give a speech, I think something that Willowmar is very mindful of is that while we are salespeople, we don't wanna come off salesy. That is a hard balance to strike when we are salespeople. Again, just this concept of storytelling, delivery, messaging, it comes up in day-to-day life for whichever role you're in and it's something that we all, I think, can optimize to just be more effective.
Okay, let's back up a step and talk more about who would benefit from this. If anyone is maybe listening and thinking, “Should I hire a ghost writer?” What are some of the key pain points they might be facing that would indicate that they'd benefit?
The first thing is the sort of litmus test is do you have something to say or to share? Do you have something–feelings, thoughts, opinions–that you hold that you don't currently feel that you have either the time, as it often is, or the ability to articulate?
Maybe you don't know what the right audience for that message is. You need help discovering what the message is itself, and then you need help finding the right audience and articulating it. So the first question to ask would be, do you have something that you need to say, and want to say, and don't feel like you have the ability to do it? So that would be the first litmus test.
And then the second is maybe you have identified that you do, but maybe now you are struggling to figure out what that message is. Are you struggling to figure out what your story is? Are you expected to be on panels? Are you expected to be giving speeches? Are you expected to be writing on LinkedIn?
You just, either you don't have the time to do it, you haven't found it to be effective, or you just hate it, frankly. Some CEOs just don't want to do that. Their time's better spent. They're, they're very important. They're running a company and their time is better spent doing almost literally anything else except that, but they still need and want to do it. That's when you might think, as you would with any other part of the company, hire someone who is an expert in that field. Is this something where I don't have to be putting my head through a brick wall every time I do it? I can find someone else to help me.
And then the third question is “I am already doing it and how could I do it better?” You're getting some initial positive feedback, but you sort of have a sense that you could improve. Again, if you're running a company, the chances are you don't have time to rehearse and practice and rehab every single thing that's coming out of your office. That's again, where working with someone–of course there's a startup cost to bringing a partner like that but in the long run–saves you a ton of time and costs, and effort, and ultimately is much more effective. So it's, “Do I have something to say? Do I know what I wanna say? How can I say it better?”
Okay. Something that I would think someone in that position might be wary of is starting to use you as a crutch. Do you find that it's an ever evolving opportunity for them to grow when they work with you? As you mentioned, more of like a coaching concept where you see that they experience growth through your collaboration together, or do you feel like it's project after project they're needing you to come in?
That's such a great question. I would say I'm very fortunate to work with extremely strong-willed and opinionated leaders. The reason I get hired is because they are very forceful. They have answered all three of those questions that we just talked about. They have something they want to say, they aren't doing it as well as they'd like but they really know that they wanna say this. I have never been in a situation where a client is leaning on me. It's very much a collaboration to figure out what their message is. I like to say you can't look at your eyeball without a mirror. You can't look at your own eyeball without a mirror. My job is just to play back what I'm seeing to you. It's impossible to do it without that. In fact, I hate doing this for myself. I, as a professional in this field, cannot do that. Yeah. For me, I can't and that's what these leaders find as well but it's never the case that they are relying on me. Rather they are bringing a very opinionated something to the table and my job is to really draw it out in some cases to challenge it and pressure test it and kick the tires and make sure that's really what they wanna say. Obviously there's varying degrees of that depending on how baked the message is and how strong-willed the client is. It's never the case that it's a crutch. It's always sort of an exfoliation down to the essence of what you're trying to say so that that can really get through.
Give us an example of a project so we can have a deeper understanding of what this actually looks like in action of a project that is either very recent or that you're especially proud of that you worked on with a client.
One comes to mind, this is just the most recent, and I was very happy with it. I had a client who was going to a very large global summit. He is a premier thinker and figure in that arena. I'll back up and say I'm so fortunate to work with people who are thought makers and what they have to say changes the conversation and they wanted to, in advance of what they were going to say at the actual forum, wanted to put it in writing so that people could be thinking about it and that could be percolating in even just the four or five days leading up to the summit.
And so we worked together. It was a super quick timeline. It was actually something that we had drafted months and months back, but that never saw the light of day. One day I got a text from the deputy person who was like, “Oh, yeah, like we need this by tomorrow.” I was like, all right, got it. So thankfully I obviously had the old draft on my computer, so I pulled it up and workshopped that to include a lot of details, things that had happened in the probably five or six months between the original and initial draft and the final. But then that ended up being a pretty powerful op-ed that got in a pretty major publication.
I was pleased with that because it was a quick timeline. I'm so grateful to work with them. These people are so much smarter than I am. They are so smart, and so I really like learning from them. It's cool to be a part of a process where people are actually reading that and it's changing their opinions and it's changing their behavior.
Me alone, I can never do that. I have this one particular skill, I can help you get there. You did 40 years in your field to become the preeminent expert on that thing and my job is just to help you better articulate it. I'm most proud when my work is actually invisible. That's how it should be. You shouldn't really know that I'm a part of it because it just comes so clearly through as yours. Your voice.
Well, I know that , your name is invisible but I also am aware that your work can be found on various different platforms. So give us a sense of where some of your work has been in the past.
Yeah. I've had op-eds published in the Financial Times, Fortune Magazine, and the World Economic Forum. There's a couple of examples, major speeches at major universities–there's a video of that. I do some work with politicians here in San Francisco so your local papers here, The SF Standard, for anyone who's in the area will know that.
And then a lot of it does live on LinkedIn. The first time someone asked me to write for LinkedIn, I was like, “Ah, come on.” I was pretty dismissive at first and then I actually did my homework and everyone is reading it. That's where so much thought leadership is built and I was so happy to be proven wrong, and withdraw that. I write a ton now on LinkedIn. There's no shame in building up your thought leadership there. It is flexible enough to accommodate shortform responses to topics of the day, as well as longer-form opinion. And of course everyone aspires to get the big names and that's always great. LinkedIn is a great place.
There's a ton of work that I do that just lives on corporate websites. There's a lot of content that's interviewing people who use the product–it's interviewing employees of the company, it's creating content for that organization. So the bulk of the work is one-on-one, is working with CEOs and, and writing in their voice for LinkedIn, or as we say, one of these platforms. You're going to the World Economic Forum or you're going to publish something online in one of these journals.
But sometimes it's just capturing all of that rich narrative that's inside the company that no one has taken the time to capture yet. Those interviews are just with any old employee which is great. I love getting to know a company from the inside out. It doesn't have to be the C-Suite. I love hearing everything people have to say. That's when you really learn about a company, by the way, talking with everyone else in the company and you get to hear their perspective on what the company's doing and how it relates to their lives. That view from everywhere else in the company is super valuable too.
Amazing. Well, Cameron, thank you so much! Is there anything else that you feel would be important to share to our listeners?
This was such a treat. Thanks so much for asking. It was so fun to connect in this format. Yeah, I would just say for anyone, realtors or not, a story is so vital. It's how you move through the day. It's how we humans connect to one another. It's how we pass information along to our friends and our families and our kids. Being able to capture that–whether it is for someone else in a professional setting, or if you're just talking for five minutes at The Moth, or even just with your friends– and paying attention to how you tell a story, how it makes you feel, and how hearing one makes you feel is really relevant. I think that's why the podcast is so great. You get to hear other people's stories and I just encourage people to continue putting themselves in the way of good stories.
Well, you are incredible! The work that you do is so impactful. As you said before, there's so many people that have the knowledge and the experience to change the landscape of whether that's their industry or on a larger scale, and it just requires some assistance and push to get that narrative and get that influence out there.
It's amazing to hear about the work that you're doing and such a testament to how you operate too as an individual. Why I'm so honored to know you is the humility in which you approach it and the thoroughness and the thoughtfulness behind it. So grateful for you, Cameron. Thank you so much for taking the time. Where can folks find you?
Yes. The website company, as you said, it's called Editor-in-Chief. The website is e-in-c.com, partially because everything else was taken already because that's how website URLs work but I'm sure there's a way to link to it in the notes of the podcast.
Short and sweet. We like it.
Absolutely.
Awesome. Thank you so much, Cameron.
Thank you Bran.
That's a wrap on this week's episode of The Thoughtful Realtor Podcast. I hope today's conversation sparked new ideas, whether about the power of storytelling, the art of ghost writing, or the importance of finding and owning your own voice.
Know someone who could benefit from Cameron's insights and is an aspiring writer, a leader in need of a ghost writer, or just someone who loves a great story? Send them this episode. You can find us at willowmar.com or Instagram at @thoughtfulrealtor.
And if you haven't already, hit that subscribe button and leave us a review. We read and appreciate every single one. Thanks for tuning in and until next time.
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