Dr. Seuss's Influence On Modern Business Storytelling

Andy Goram (left) and Kelly Meerbott (right) discuss why storytelling in business today hits different.

What if the future of leadership communication looked a little less like bullet points… and fely a little more like bedtime stories?

That’s the powerful question at the heart of my conversation with this week’s Sticky From The Inside guest: the brilliant, bold, and bright Kelly Meerbott. Kelly is a trauma-informed leadership coach, TEDx speaker, and author of Meerbott’s Fables—a modern set of business fables inspired by the animal kingdom, infused with a deep understanding of psychological safety, DEI, burnout… and yes, even Dr. Seuss.

In this episode, we explore the serious power of playful storytelling—and why fables might just be the leadership tool most organisations didn’t know they were missing.

What We Talked About

👉 Why storytelling strikes such a deep chord with people today

👉 How Kelly’s experience working with high-ranking military officers led her to write about a cat called Pablo Escobar (seriously)

👉 What Dr. Seuss teaches us about clarity, rhythm, and emotional impact

👉 How storytelling cuts through fear, fatigue, and even political division

👉 The challenges organisations face when trying to engage through stories—and how to overcome them

👉 Sneak peeks from Kelly’s next fables: featuring unicorns, mockingbirds, bees, zebras… and meerkats on a mission

This isn’t just a fluffy chat about metaphors. It’s a heartfelt, deeply human look at what it really takes to get important messages to land—especially in a world full of noise, fear, and resistance. And if you’re someone who leads others, creates content, facilitates workshops, or simply wants to get better at getting through to people—this one’s well worth your time. Remember as Kelly says,

“If they’re not moved, they will not move. Your job isn’t to inform—it’s to inspire.”

You can listen to the full episode via the player below, or read along with the full transcript too.

Listen Here

Read The Full Transcript Here

[Andy Goram] (0:10 - 3:22)

Hello and welcome to Sticky from the Inside, the employee engagement podcast that looks at how to build stickier, competition smashing, consistently successful organisations from the inside out. I'm your host Andy Goram and I'm on a mission to help more businesses turn the lights on behind the eyes of their employees, light the fires within them and create tons more success for everyone. This podcast is for all those who believe that's something worth going after and would like a little help and guidance in achieving that.

Each episode we dive into the topics that can help create what I call stickier businesses, the sort of businesses where people thrive and love to work and where more customers stay with you and recommend you to others because they love what you do and why you do it. So if you want to take the tricky out of being sticky, listen on.

What’s Wrong With Communication Today?

Okay then, have you ever sat in a meeting, your mind in a fog,

with a vision explained like a technical blog,

with bullets marching all stiff and all flat,

and you've thought to yourself,

what the heck was all that?

You nod and you smile, pretend that you know,

but deep down inside you're thinking, “Oh no!”.

Now why have I got all Dr Seuss on you at the start of today's show? Well, let's face it, a lot of internal communications inside businesses just doesn't cut through today.

It gets drowned out in jargon, it gets forgotten within a sea of slides, lost in a tsunami of other messages or worse, still ignored completely. But what if we took a different approach, one rooted in rhythm, metaphor, connection and humanity? My guest today is the wonderful Kelly Meerbott.

She's a TEDx speaker, trauma-informed leadership coach and author of Meerbott's Fables, which is a refreshingly human set of modern business stories inspired by the animal kingdom and behind the scenes, none other than Dr Seuss himself. Now in this episode, we're going to be talking about why stories, not so much strategies, might be the thing that finally helps employees understand where we're going, what we stand for, why that matters and what we're going to do about it. They may also be the way to get across the real meaning of what we're talking about without ramming it down people's throats.

We'll explore why Kelly's stories are striking such a chord right now, how leaders can use their stories to build trust and psychological safety and then what we can all learn from Dr Seuss's ability to say hard things in simple, unforgettable ways. So if you want to lead with more heart, more clarity and better understanding, stick around because I reckon we've got a story to tell you. Kelly, welcome to the show.

[Kelly Meerbott] (3:23 - 3:37)

Thank you, what a great intro and I love Dr Seuss nod and of course I'm gonna have to like plug my book a little bit. So okay, you want to hit me with the questions, Danny?

[Andy Goram] (3:39 - 3:59)

Not so fast, Kel, straight in with the questions. We're gonna chat, we're gonna explore this stuff. I do want to get into the book actually and what sparked all that sort of stuff but do me a favour, I gave you a tiny little intro there about you.

Introduce yourself to the audience, let them know who you are and what you're working on today.

Who is Kelly Meerbott? The Coach, the Catalyst & the Fables

[Kelly Meerbott] (4:00 - 4:49)

Yeah, so I'm Kelly Meerbott, I'm a professional certified coach through the International Coaching Federation but I really like to say I'm a catalyst for change who walks alongside anybody navigating a pivotal change in their lives, their careers, their businesses and aren't afraid to get really real, you know, I mean stripped bare and like facing everything. I don't come to change anybody, I'm there really to amplify what's magnificent about them and hold up a mirror, you know, so we can really look at ourselves as leaders and improve upon who we are as humans to make ourselves better leaders, whatever that looks like in your mind.

[Andy Goram] (4:50 - 5:24)

Well and you're also a hugely positive person, I confess. I have spoken to Kelly before, we did an episode of Engage for Success Radio quite a while ago now and this is where I first heard about the fables, right, because we were talking about how to get communications landing with people in organisations and you introduced this whole thing about the fables. So we will dig into this but give everybody a flavour about what am I talking about, what is this fable thing, what is the book, where's the inspiration for what it is?

Animal Wisdom, Pablo Escobar the Cat & Storytelling with Heart

[Kelly Meerbott] (5:25 - 8:51)

So honestly it started as an act of rebellion because I was so fed up with everybody screaming at each other, you know, like looking at these interviews or Instagram, any social media where somebody would ask a question who had a polar opposite view of the person asking the question and then the person answering would like talk over them or shout or, you know, people shouting each other down. It's almost, it felt like verbal like flagellation over the head, you know what I mean, until you either concede or it shuts down the communication. So I had read a bunch of business fables, whether it was Patrick Lencioni who does some great work or Ken Sherd and for me those fables were so visual and then I grew up of course with Aesop's fables who, I mean, I don't even know what version is out now in terms of, you know, what version of print it's in but basically I wanted people to understand high-level concepts in a very digestible form and the other thing is when I was working with like high-ranking officers in the military, especially during the pandemic, my Cavalier King Charles Daniel Tess who is on the cover, that's her right there, I would have these stoic leaders who I couldn't get to their soft underbelly which is really where the rubber meets the road in leadership. You have to drop the armor, drop the performativeness and really connect with that and she would come on camera and I would see these really like tough guys go, oh my god, who is that, oh my god, she's so cute, can I see her and just like, oh there you are.

So I thought to myself, okay, humans often relate to animals better than they do other humans. The other thing is watching our animals react to our friends or different people however they manifested whether it was somebody who, you know, occupied a wheelchair or, you know, a gentleman that walked in the bar with long dreads and black sunglasses who may have looked strange to humans, they're going right up to him and just loving on him because they don't see race, they don't see gender, they don't see religion, they don't see politics, they just see the human. So how could I leverage those things to create 10 short stories to give people lessons on burnout, paternity leave, diversity in the boardroom, following your own path, not conforming to corporate jargon or corporate culture, all of those things, you know, and it's that's really how Mirabot's Fables was born. I mean it's like that.

[Andy Goram] (8:51 - 9:41)

I think it's also interesting just to sort of like just dig into what you were doing and you just casually mentioned, oh yeah, just working with high ranking military officials. You were dealing with some pretty tough situations with some of these guys like serious burnout, fatigue, mental anguish going on with some of the things that they were dealing with, right? And I think it's so interesting that you mention about Tess in that there's something about an animal that will spark some kind of emotional response, good or bad, but in most of us.

And I think this is the thing about stories and particularly the fables that we'll get on to talk about is that the very, very best stories connect to some kind of emotional reaction or they create that kind of memory, right? And that's what we're looking at here. That's why this stuff can be really powerful.

From Seuss to Boardrooms: Why Simplicity & Rhythm Work

[Kelly Meerbott] (9:43 - 10:36)

And you hit on something really important that a publisher said to me one time. He said, no tears for the writer, no tears for the reader. Meaning if you're not pouring your heart onto the page, the reader is not going to feel that, right?

And I will tell you, so the one called The Prestigious Stray, which the first part is true, it's about our stray cat, Pablo Escobar. Yes, I did name him after the deadly. I mean, like, you know, and I will tell you there when I was on Facebook, there was a little bit of a war in my feed about why would you name him after that?

And I was like, because it's funny. I mean, really, that's it.

[Andy Goram] (10:37 - 10:47)

There's something wonderful about the image of you stepping out to your porch at night, shouting out Pablo Escobar to come back in the house. I mean, that that has to have caused some interesting neighborhood conversations.

[Kelly Meerbott] (10:48 - 11:02)

Oh, my gosh, especially when he gets out. I was looking for him one day and I'm running around with my phone. And I'm like, this is our cat.

His name is Pablo Escobar. People be like, what?

[Andy Goram] (11:02 - 11:03)

All right, Kelly. Yeah.

[Kelly Meerbott] (11:03 - 12:34)

You know, and you would think he would kill mice. Nope, just plays with them. Just, you know, it's a whole thing.

But yeah, I mean, the story about him, the first part of the story was true, where he came to us the second part of the story, which is about him creating a mouse control company where the rest see and my friends were all like, when they read it, they go, we know you were at the keyboard like he and that's exactly what it was. And I would and the process I think really is is interesting. So I would think about an animal, whether it was our cat or Midas, the mouse.

I mean, I studied mice. So I would go on to Nat Geo Kids, and I would look at little known facts about the animal. Now, why would I go to Nat Geo Kids and not to National Geographic?

Because the average American reads at a between a fifth and seventh grade reading level. Okay, so I wanted it to be inclusive of anybody, no matter what their reading level was. And the idea was to follow the Dr. Seuss model. Right. So going back to Dr. Seuss, I wrote my thesis on him. And I did, I wrote a topic.

It was about the social implications of Dr. Seuss's writing.

[Andy Goram] (12:34 - 12:37)

Of course it was. I mean, that sounds like the most natural title for that.

[Kelly Meerbott] (12:38 - 13:41)

Of course, right. But I got to read all of his books. And the interesting thing was, first of all, he was in advertising.

First, right. So he had that marketing kind of mindset, which is brilliant. But when he wrote the books, he thought to himself, okay, I want to reach kids.

But who's reading the books to the kids, the parents. So he's hitting both of those demographics. I wanted to do the same thing.

Well, ironically, is if you read his books, typically, it's after a major event. So Horton Hears the Who is all about Hiroshima. He visited Hiroshima.

And that's what it's based on. The Lorax, when we started killing the rainforest, that's where that came out of. The Butter Battle book is about the arms race between the United States and Russia.

I mean, it's so no idea about that.

[Andy Goram] (13:41 - 13:42)

Yeah.

[Kelly Meerbott] (13:42 - 14:03)

Yeah. He's teaching all of these major concepts. But in a way that is not only fun, it's got this beautiful rhythm and cadence.

I mean, Dr. Seuss, man, he loved that guy, obviously. And, you know, again, it's teaching valuable lessons to parents and their children.

The Power of Emotional Access & Unexpected Praise

[Andy Goram] (14:03 - 14:33)

It's that accessible thing, though, isn't it? And I think this is the interesting thing. This is why I wanted to get you on the show, because when we talked last time out, I think I asked you the sort of impertinent, rude questions like, how on earth is this going down with business people?

People inside companies are going, oh, yeah, a book about fables. Do me a favour. But it's having some real impact, right?

Because I think because of the accessibility, the inclusivity of it.

[Kelly Meerbott] (14:34 - 15:49)

Yeah. And the reaction to it has been surprising to me. It's what I hoped.

But people will pick up that book and go, this is genius. I've never seen anything like that. And of course, like, genius for sure.

You know, it's I'm not great with accepting compliments. It's something I'm working on. But, you know, I have this big health care system that I'm working with right now.

And that the person that hired me bought 15 copies of the fables to give away to people, you know, because she loved it so much. And then I think I told you the story on the last podcast about the gentleman who was on the exact opposite end of the spectrum for me politically and the things. And he asked for a signed copy of the book.

And I honestly, Andy was a little nervous. How are we going to accept this? And he came back and I'm laughing because it's such a I think it's such a funny story.

He was like, this book was great. I read it five times. I can't believe the way you put it.

You changed the way I think. And by the way, you're really smart.

[Andy Goram] (15:50 - 15:51)

That's nice, isn't it?

[Kelly Meerbott] (15:52 - 15:52)

Thank you.

[Andy Goram] (15:53 - 18:35)

Yeah, I think this is what's really interesting, though, Kel, is that the way you can tell a story, and I don't mean you, but the way that we tell stories and we get information across gives somebody a chance to reflect, reassess and maybe change some things for the positive. I mean, this is why I find this really interesting. Like recently, I've been in quite a few rooms with various companies, people being put through a kind of development, leadership development type course, which I'm not trying to make it feel like that.

I'm trying to make it feel human and real. As always with these things, when you're forced to go on a program, there's the bell curve in the room of people who are bang up for it. Right.

And the vast majority sitting in the middle going, I'm not so sure about this. Go on then, teach me something. And they bring, you know, I guess not intentionally, but quite a negative energy.

But dropping a load of different ways to get some of this stuff, particularly around the big generational shifts we're seeing at the moment within business with boomers going and the skill gap being left behind and the people being frustrated by different attitudes from the younger generations. I shared a slide that had a wonderful piece of news clippings from 1894 to like 2018 from around the globe with people talking about the previous generations through that. They just don't know what work is.

They don't like to work. They haven't got a clue what hard work. We've been talking about this sort of stuff for years.

Humour, Humanity & Making Generational Gaps Melt

And by bringing a bit of fun and humour to it and then kind of parodying some of the generational stuff, you can begin to see people melt, consider, change their views. Right. Which is why I think it's so fascinating about the effect that thinking about serious cultural business issues like you are, like DEI and all those sorts of good things, which I know is an interesting topic in the States at the moment.

I'm not going to do that to you today. But do you think that kind of reframing and humor and maybe levity and even simplicity, because I think that's the joy of someone like Dr. Seuss, the simplicity of it. Do you think those are kind of undervalued, underutilized tools in a leadership kit bag today?

Do you think we just got wrapped up in this have to be serious, have to be credible from the serious side of life rather than the life side of life?

[Kelly Meerbott] (18:36 - 20:22)

Yes, I agree. Yes. And I will tell you, in my coaching with clients, the first part, the first phase is storytelling.

Why? Because it bonds us. It gives me an overview of what happened in your life to create the essence that's sitting in front of me.

It tells me what inspires them, because you cannot motivate anybody. You can only inspire them. So I'm going to weave that into my coaching.

I want to know what triggered you because I'm not here to trigger you. But if I notice behaviours coming up that are coming out of that trigger, then I can call them out and you can make a different choice. But also, storytelling penetrates the right hemisphere of the brain, right?

The hemisphere of the brain. There's no resistance. So if you're in sales and you tell a story, there is no sales resistance here.

So you're closer to the close. Right. But to your point in this, in Gen Z, Gen Alpha, Millennials, they are not, these things are not a nice to have, like the human essence of it, the humanity.

It is a demand. It is a demand. And the great thing about storytelling is no matter how you process, whether you're ADHD, neurodivergent, on the autism spectrum, it will penetrate their brain and they'll be able to process it.

And it's just, I mean, I start all of the fables with once upon a time, because it primes your brain for that. Oh, here. I mean, even as I was saying it, I could feel my central nervous system go, oh, it's time for a story.

Okay.

Neurodiversity, Sales, and the Once Upon A Time Effect

[Andy Goram] (20:23 - 21:20)

Comes back to that emotional exchange again, you know, as kids, back of the brain, emotional reaction to stuff. This is why once upon a time evokes such a strong feeling in many, many, many people. I think I watched, God knows, years ago, some YouTube video by some top speaker asking, you know, what's the first words you should use to engage an audience in a presentation and how many people just get it completely wrong.

And his words were once upon a time, because it just goes, hey, well, this is okay. I'm drawn in now. This is something different.

Something as simple as that changes the paradigm in what you expect. Helps you see yourself in that story, right? Position yourself in that story, which is when you think about the messages you're trying to get across here, you're using the metaphor of animals and all that kind of stuff to help people see themselves from an emotional perspective in key situations, right?

[Kelly Meerbott] (21:21 - 23:58)

Yeah. And I love that you said you see yourself in them because I've had people and it's everybody from, I don't know, students who, you know, eighth grade students, I didn't realize it was going to resonate with them, but they loved it. But I've had people email me and say, I'm the turtle or I'm the cheetah, or I'm the unicorn.

And all of these, each of the fables is a composite of real human experiences. I've had like the unicorn one is based on one of my friends who worked in a very, very big pharma company. She is Afro Latina.

She is gorgeous, genius, love her, right? She would get these evaluations or reviews and they would say, you're great. You're hitting all your numbers, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

But you need to straighten your hair because it's unruly and distracting. Yeah, exactly. And so I said to her, can I, can I tell a fable about it?

Meet the Unicorn: Fables as Real-Life Composite Stories

And the fable is a unicorn that is born with a black tourmaline horn and she has a curly black mane and tail when all the other unicorns have gold horns and a white straight mane and tail. And the corporate stall space made her paint her horn, her tourmaline horn gold and straighten her mane and tail. And what ended up happening was the horn started to chip off.

She became angry. She became frustrated and she ended up quitting and starting her own company. And that's true.

All of this is true, even though it's in fable form to come into corporations, to help belonging, we'll call it belonging, right? And inclusion. And that's what she does now.

And it's, it's inspiring. And I wanted to put that and memorialize that because it's an important story. I mean, why does it matter what her hair looks like if she's doing the job?

It doesn't matter. But how insulting is that to her, her, her mental real estate and all the good that she was bringing to the company? And how do I know that?

Everything else in the review was top marks. So, yeah, it's storytelling is way underutilized.

[Andy Goram] (23:58 - 24:43)

I think that's the, that's the thing I wanted to sort of ask you in your extensive work in different organizations. I don't want to make the swooping statement that all organizations are bad at storytelling, because that's rubbish. That's stupid.

That's not, that's not true either. But what do you see? Do you see real intent behind this communication method?

Storytelling? Do you see people kind of falling upon it? Or do you just sort of people just saying, it's got no place here.

You must see a full range of things in your work. What stands out for you as to why perhaps more organizations than we would perhaps think about, just don't get this or are struggling to use that, that form?

[Kelly Meerbott] (24:44 - 25:45)

Fear and conditioning. Right? So it's, it's uncomfortable.

How could a fable teach a lesson? Moral, every single one is a moral. But the other piece, the conditioning, like, and I'll speak to what you said, you know, you went in, you were facilitating something that the company mandated, or the company forced to check a box, because we have to do a certain number of hours of professional development, check, check, check, right.

But they create these curriculums where they're not talking to their people. Right? I mean, that's the first thing I always say is, when a company asks me how to engage your employees, I'm like, have you talked to them?

Have you asked them? Because they'll come up with these silly programs, Andy, and you know, where they'll give like $5 coffee cards. And really what these people want is a paid time off.

Why Storytelling Beats Slide Decks for Lasting Learning

[Andy Goram] (25:46 - 27:14)

Yeah, I think the things I sort of see in the room, and I'm very lucky, you know, I associate with a few companies that give me the opportunity to go into rooms and do things with people. And by far and away, the thing that I have seen the most is people preconditioned to what a facilitation or training session is going to be, it's going to be a succession of slides with somebody up front, whacking through a load of models, and then having a break, and then whacking through a whole bunch more models. Well, they're not normally used to is people stood up in front of them, telling real life stories about how these things have failed for them, works for them, caused them anguish, made them look stupid, lessons that they've learned in life.

And I would say 90%, I think of the change learning and the behaviour change that happens, happens from two pieces. Either a story I tell, and most of them are famous stories. That's the reality of it.

But that's where I think you get your best learning. And the other half is when they all start to exchange their own stories on the table. You know, the model is a stimulus.

It's the conversations is the stories provoke a conversation. I think this is the important thing here, right?

[Kelly Meerbott] (27:14 - 27:41)

I agree 100%. It's, you know, and as I was thinking and listening to you, I was thinking about how people resonate more with our failures than they do with our successes. I mean, I just put up a post, actually, two weeks ago on LinkedIn, two weeks ago today.

The headline is every morning before work, I'd vomit.

[Andy Goram] (27:43 - 27:45)

There are the post I saw the post.

[Kelly Meerbott] (27:45 - 28:50)

Yeah, there are over like, almost 60,000 impressions. There are, I mean, the my DMS have been lighting up. There's, I think 450 people, 50 re shares.

And the comments in the post are, I've been there, I escaped corporate. You know, I resonate with this, I had that moment, blah, blah, blah. And that's what we want.

We really want to engage thoughtful and intentional conversation because that art of civil discourse has been gone. Right? It's like we started.

People are shouting over each other. We're not listening. We're not challenging.

We're not thinking critically. We're not people talk about doing research, but the research they're doing is the headlines from Facebook, which is a cesspool. So let's, you know, check our sources here and go to credible sources that really educate us.

[Andy Goram] (28:50 - 30:10)

But that's, that's, I think that's so hard today. Because I think I know I'm use the generic term, the lazy term, Kelly, you know, me, the algorithm, by the algorithm, just kind of like feeds you, I have a theory, it feeds you what you love to get a reaction and feeds you what you hate to get a reaction, which is why we've lost the things you're talking about, the grey in the middle, the ability to have a disagreement without falling out, have a difference of opinion. Now, you're either with me or against me. There was a shocking stat on the news the other day, I won't remember the numbers, specifically, but I wonder if I social pressure and young kids on social media at night spending an hour or two, literally responding to messages, not furthering the conversation, just being seen to respond to messages for like an hour or two at night.

So that they don't have the fallout the next day of being in the you're not with me, or actually, for not being in the you're not with me camp. I mean, that's, that's mad. I mean, communication has polarised, I think.

Fear, Algorithms & Why Polarisation Silences Discourse

[Kelly Meerbott] (30:10 - 30:30)

Absolutely. And unfortunately, it's been politicised to which is, you know, and things like the, these topics are not there's, it's not a binary, right? Like I remember, I was reading one of Brene Brown's books, which if you don't know her, she's amazing.

[Andy Goram] (30:30 - 30:31)

I love Brene Brown.

[Kelly Meerbott] (30:32 - 31:27)

Right? She's a shame and vulnerability researcher, but she's also from Texas. So she's a gun toting Texan.

Right? And this woman came up to her at a at a convention, and was like, Okay, are you for a responsible gun ownership or not? And she was like, well, first of all, this is not the place to have a discussion.

But about this, but it's also not black or white, there are shades of grey. And I really believe people have forgotten that. And as far as the young people go, what you have to remember as a human, is these algorithms and these platforms, especially TikTok, Instagram, were programmed by the same engineers that programmed slot machines in Las Vegas.

[Andy Goram] (31:29 - 31:32)

Addiction. Addiction motion. Yeah.

[Kelly Meerbott] (31:33 - 31:33)

Right.

[Andy Goram] (31:33 - 31:35)

Swipe up, swipe right. Yep.

[Kelly Meerbott] (31:35 - 31:54)

Yeah. And it's, it's so sad. I mean, there was an I can't remember the name of the documentary, but they were talking about tween girls.

So tween girls, if that's not a term you use on your side of the world. It's 11. It's the between.

Think about it, right?

[Andy Goram] (31:55 - 31:57)

Tweenagers, we call them tweenagers.

[Kelly Meerbott] (31:57 - 32:57)

Tweenagers. Yeah, exactly. That there was a mass rush of those young women to go to the plastic surgeon to make their faces look like the filters.

And I'm like, Oh my god, these poor babies, they, they can't even enjoy their formative years in a way where they can play and have fun and make mistakes and develop without, Oh, how many hearts do I have? How many likes do I have? How, you know, and it's also ruining, ruining critical thinking.

It really is. It's, and it's sad and it's a sad state of our society. But I also know that everything's a pendulum swing.

Like you were talking about the articles from the 1800s. This is not a new story. It's so we're just waiting to find the middle and hopefully it'll come soon.

Volume Two Sneak Peek: Meerkats, Mockingbirds & Zebras

[Andy Goram] (32:58 - 34:14)

Yeah. No surprise to me, Kelly, we start talking about stuff and it zings, zongs all over the place. But that's great.

That's what conversations do. That's what they do. I think what's, I think my, what was my, even my point here, I think my point was the way that you're telling these stories or the way that businesses can maybe augment how they get communication and get points across the way you're trying to tell these stories is it's open for a little bit of interpretation, which means it's open for discussion.

What did you take from that? What's your interpretation of that? And that's, I think the thing that's sort of missing or conflated sometimes in business communications.

There's, there's clearly misinterpretation when things aren't communicated properly, right? But that doesn't necessarily cause communication and discourse. It just causes problems.

Whereas I think if you tell a story like you're, like you're doing or people take on a different sort of approach to communication, it can open up the channels for discussion, right? And that can breed better understanding, better trust, disagreements, but positively, right? You know?

[Kelly Meerbott] (34:15 - 34:54)

Exactly. And we don't have to walk away from a conversation that gets heated and hate each other and never talk again. I mean, not, that's unfortunate.

I mean, that's an unfortunate collateral damage of what is going on in the US right now, right? Families are broken up because one believes one side and the other believes another side. And actually, volume two, you'll love this.

So my last name is Meerbott, right? And so my husband said to me, would you write a fable about meerkats?

[Andy Goram] (34:55 - 34:57)

And I said- A natural choice. Come on.

[Kelly Meerbott] (34:58 - 35:11)

Absolutely. So went on Nat Geo Kids and I said, give me some little known facts about meerkats. So here are some fun ones, right?

They're mob, they're called mobs or gangs. That's the group.

[Andy Goram] (35:11 - 35:12)

Yes.

[Kelly Meerbott] (35:12 - 35:39)

One of the few animals that teach their young, they're also immune to certain venoms. So one of the things that they teach their young is how to capture a scorpion, which my husband's a Scorpio. So there you go, right?

Oh, I get you. Is to hold down the scorpion, they pull out its stinger and crack its back and eat the meat. Hang on.

[Andy Goram] (35:39 - 35:42)

Are we still talking about your relationship with your husband at this point?

[Kelly Meerbott] (35:43 - 38:21)

No. I mean, it is kind of an indirect love letter to him because my best friend, I've been with him 20 years. There's nobody who knows me better.

So what I came up with is that there are these opposing gangs, red and blue meerkats who would fight against each other, but they heard about an army of scorpions that was coming to kill them by throwing venom in the form of insults at them. So these two warring gangs had to come together to fight the army of scorpions. And that that's again, red and blue, right?

We could go floods and crypts, Republicans, Democrats, I don't care. It's just about pulling together as two disparate groups that are arguing to fight something that is going to be damaging to anybody. And that came out of that.

It came out of watching what's going on in our country, watching what's going on in your country. And the outcome that I'm hoping will happen is discourse. I want to start conversations or shift somebody's way of thinking, give them, expand their mental horizon a little bit to consider other things.

There's a fable about clownfish. It's the last fable in the first volume. And it came out of the fact that I kept hearing people say, transgender does not occur in nature.

Well, yes, it does. All clownfish are born male. And then when they organize into a school, the dominant male stays male and the next dominant male turns female so they can procreate and create more clownfish.

So what I simply did was, you know, really give it fins, four paws, feathers, fur, so that people could understand these concepts and that there are different facets to life in humans that are acceptable. And in my mind, Andy, if you're living and existing in peace in a way that doesn't impact mine, and you're not forcing your beliefs, go with God, my friend, because it's just everybody just wants to live in peace and exist in a way that honors them no matter how they manifest in life. And I think these disparate groups aren't seeing that they're not seeing that they all want the same thing.

[Andy Goram] (38:23 - 39:09)

Yes, tough times, tough times at the moment, lots of polarity, too much polarity in these things. And I'm not clever enough to know lots of information about it all, or have solutions for these things. It just feels more combative than perhaps it's been for a good while.

But I want to stay in the, I'm with you, so I want to stay in the positive, right? So we know in your first volume, you've talked about topics like psychological safety, ED&I, burnout, stress, all these kind of things. You've just dropped in there that there's another volume.

So what sort of topics are you attacking in a very polite, rhythmical way, with prose, in volume two? What are you having a go at?

[Kelly Meerbott] (39:09 - 39:52)

Yeah, and again, just to kind of loop back to what you were saying, I think part of what we're seeing right now is violent rhetoric, and the fables is the antidote. It's gentle. So the other topics, I'm dealing with sexism in the workplace.

And that's all about mockingbirds. So mockingbirds basically mock other birds by repeating what they say, right? So I've been in corporate boardrooms where I've said something, and the idea has been shunned.

And then, I don't know, three people later, a white male counterpart will say exactly the same thing. And all of a sudden, it's trot out the Nobel Peace Prize.

[Andy Goram] (39:52 - 40:00)

You know what I mean? It's a much better idea coming from them, Kelly. You just, you're too much of a silly little bobblehead, really, for that sort of stuff.

[Kelly Meerbott] (40:00 - 40:55)

Exactly. If you're too much, or you're too aggressive, too abrasive, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The other one, and I actually weaved a Beyonce lyric into this one, is all about bees, because bees are a matriarchal society.

And it is about how we need to lift each other up as women, because the old trope is women against women. And it's a function of patriarchy. It's, if you and I are against each other, or we're pitted against each other, we're distracted from what's going on behind the scenes.

So, it's all about bees, and how the queen bee, Marigold, lifts everybody else up. And then, the other one I love is, it's about a dazzle of zebra. And when I found out they were called a dazzle, I was like- Is that the collective noun for zebras, is it?

Yeah, it's a dazzle.

[Andy Goram] (40:55 - 40:58)

I would use herd. I mean, dazzle's so much better.

[Kelly Meerbott] (40:58 - 41:38)

Yeah, well, here's something else that I didn't know about zebra, but every zebra's stripes is different. It's like a fingerprint, right? So, that fable is about a zebra that gets made fun of because she has some weird stripes, right?

And the dazzle makes fun of her. Her name is Zephyr. She, well, what happens is a major windstorm in the Sahara, the dazzle can't find its way out, and they realize that Zephyr's stripes are actually an escape route, and they follow the escape route and survive this huge sandstorm.

[Andy Goram] (41:38 - 41:45)

It's like prison break all over again. Beautiful. I love that.

That's fantastic. Prison break in the animal world.

[Kelly Meerbott] (41:45 - 41:59)

Right? That's exactly it. So, all of these things, I mean, a lot of times I am sitting at my desk that's really funny.

When I found out about zebra being a dazzle, I was like, okay, here we go.

[Andy Goram] (41:59 - 42:23)

Oh, listen, maybe no last for the writer, no last for the reader, a similar sort of thing, you know? So, we come back to that thing. Kelly, every conversation I have with you starts in one direction and finishes in lots of others, right?

Which I absolutely love. I want us to try and, between us both, pull it back for some summary on today's conversation, if we can even do that, right?

[Kelly Meerbott] (42:23 - 42:24)

Sure, absolutely.

Sticky Notes: Kelly’s 3-Point Advice for Better Storytelling

[Andy Goram] (42:25 - 42:49)

Because our time has run away with us. And so, I would like to come to this part of the show I call Sticky Notes, Kelly, right? So, I would like you to think about your storytelling.

And if you were giving advice to people trying to up their storytelling game or try a different method to get their messages across, what would your three little sticky notes of advice be?

[Kelly Meerbott] (42:50 - 44:04)

Okay. First one, which Kelly practices but is not always great at, say less, mean more. And what I mean by that is skip the jargon, skip the corporate buzzwords, speak like a human.

People don't need more words, they need clarity, they need courage and connection. The second one is tell the story only you can tell. Tell your story, right?

Because somebody can resonate with that. I mean, vulnerability is a superpower. Share the messy, share the real stuff, share the failures, not just the polished wins, right?

But the magic lives in the messy, sticky middle. And then the last sticky note is if they are not moved, they will not move. So, let me say that again.

If they're not moved, they will not be moved. No tears for the writer, no tears for the reader. Your job isn't to inform, it's to inspire, right?

And words don't teach. So, if your message doesn't touch people emotionally, it won't create the behaviour shift that you want. Like that gentleman I told you that in our own inner spectrum, it changed the way he thinks.

[Andy Goram] (44:05 - 44:23)

I love it. Three super duper sticky notes that I will whack up on the Instagram channel, so they'll be there for posterity. Kelly, as always, super to speak to you, crazy and off the wall at times, but that is something I cherish.

[Kelly Meerbott] (44:24 - 44:29)

Oh, yeah. I love you. Thanks for letting me be my like nutty self on your podcast.

Final Thoughts, Contact Details & Goodbye

[Andy Goram] (44:30 - 44:37)

It's beautiful stuff, mate. Now, before I let you go, Kelly, where can people track you down, find you, find the book? Tell us.

[Kelly Meerbott] (44:38 - 45:12)

So, kellymeerbott.com. It's K-E-L-L-Y-M-E-E-R-B-O-T-T dot com. That's everything.

You can contact me. All of my channels are there, LinkedIn, TikTok, Instagram. I think X, that's all on there.

And then there is a contact form. I would love to hear from you. And I always gift people a complimentary leadership coaching session because it hones my craft.

It creates connection. If you become a client, yay. Otherwise, we walk away better acquainted with each other and maybe friends.

[Andy Goram] (45:13 - 45:16)

Love it. I mean, who wouldn't want you as a friend, Kelly?

[Kelly Meerbott] (45:16 - 45:18)

Same. Same. Ditto.

Ditto.

[Andy Goram] (45:20 - 45:30)

Listen, it's been wonderful to have you on. Thank you so much for giving me your time and your energy and your passion for this topic. I really appreciate it.

And I look forward to chatting to you again soon.

[Kelly Meerbott] (45:31 - 45:36)

Thank you, Andy. And thank you to your listeners. And you have my heart, mate.

I love you.

[Andy Goram] (45:37 - 45:38)

You take care, lovely.

[Kelly Meerbott] (45:38 - 45:39)

All right. You too.

[Andy Goram] (45:40 - 46:21)

Okay, everyone. That was the fabulous Kelly Meerbot. And if you'd like to find out more about any of the things we've talked about today or where to find Kelly, please check out the show notes.

So that concludes today's episode. I hope you've enjoyed it, found it interesting and heard something maybe that will help you become a stickier, more successful business from the inside going forward. If you have, please like, comment and subscribe.

It really helps. I'm Andy Goram, and you've been listening to the Sticky from the Inside podcast. Until next time, thanks for listening.

Andy Goram is the owner of Bizjuicer, an employee engagement and workplace culture consultancy that's on a mission to help people have more fulfilling work lives. He's also the host of the Sticky From The Inside Podcast, which talks to experts on these topics from around the world.