What makes a founder’s story truly unforgettable—and why does it matter when pitching to investors? This episode of The Angel Next Door Podcast explores how the art of storytelling can be the determining factor in whether entrepreneurs win support for their ventures. Our guest, Jessica Mastors, is a storytelling coach who leverages neuroscience and practical experience to help founders craft meaningful narratives. Her own journey began with a leap of faith to India and grew into a career guiding others in communicating their motivations and visions with impact. In this engaging conversation, Jessica Mastors and host Marcia Dawood unpack why stories stick in our minds, how to avoid common founder mistakes, and what really builds trust with investors. If you want clear, actionable advice on storytelling that goes far beyond jargon, this episode delivers practical tools and fresh insights for anyone who want to connect, persuade, and inspire.
What makes a founder’s story truly unforgettable—and why does it matter when pitching to investors? This episode of The Angel Next Door Podcast explores how the art of storytelling can be the determining factor in whether entrepreneurs win support for their ventures.
Our guest, Jessica Mastors, is a storytelling coach who leverages neuroscience and practical experience to help founders craft meaningful narratives. Her own journey began with a leap of faith to India and grew into a career guiding others in communicating their motivations and visions with impact.
In this engaging conversation, Jessica Mastors and host Marcia Dawood unpack why stories stick in our minds, how to avoid common founder mistakes, and what really builds trust with investors. If you want clear, actionable advice on storytelling that goes far beyond jargon, this episode delivers practical tools and fresh insights for anyone who want to connect, persuade, and inspire.
To get the latest from Jessica Mastors, you can follow her below!
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessicamastors/
https://www.jessicamastors.com/
https://www.jessicamastors.com/story-studio
Sign up for Marcia's newsletter to receive tips and the latest on Angel Investing!
Website: www.marciadawood.com
Learn more about the documentary Show Her the Money: www.showherthemoneymovie.com
And don't forget to follow us wherever you are!
Apple Podcasts: https://pod.link/1586445642.apple
Spotify: https://pod.link/1586445642.spotify
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/angel-next-door-podcast/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theangelnextdoorpodcast/
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/theangelnextdoorpodcast/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@marciadawood
Marcia Dawood [00:00:02 - 00:00:04]:
Jessica, welcome to the Angel Next Door podcast.
Jessica Mastors [00:00:05 - 00:00:08]:
Thank you, Marcia. Thanks for having me for Glad to be here. Yeah.
Marcia Dawood [00:00:08 - 00:00:43]:
I am so excited to talk to you about this topic of storytelling. We talk about pitches a lot. We hear from entrepreneurs, we hear from angels. They're talking about how they're going to raise money for their company, why they're doing what they're doing. I know, I'm always talking about entrepreneurs need to be able to really tell the story about what problem they're solving. And if the problem isn't big enough, then angels might, might not be interested and all those types of things. But we haven't really touched too much on the art of how to tell a story, how to be really good at your storytelling. I know that is where your expertise comes in.
Marcia Dawood [00:00:43 - 00:00:52]:
So I'm super excited to hear from you about that. So start off, tell us a little bit about your background and how you got to this point of being a storytelling expert.
Jessica Mastors [00:00:54 - 00:01:06]:
Wonderful. I'm happy to. I can tell you the linear career trajectory if you like. Or I could tell you about the moment that I had my light bulb moment around story. Which would you prefer?
Marcia Dawood [00:01:06 - 00:01:08]:
Let's go with the light bulb moment.
Jessica Mastors [00:01:09 - 00:01:38]:
Well, so many moons ago I had graduated from university into the last recession that we experienced and I had studied international development, so not related to communications at all. And on the day of my graduation I encountered my friend, acquaintance really, and he was wearing this black robe and he opened his robe and he was wearing black T shirt, white block letters on his chest and said educated. And I gave him a high five and it was our day.
Marcia Dawood [00:01:39 - 00:01:39]:
Woohoo.
Jessica Mastors [00:01:39 - 00:02:06]:
But inside I was like, what? Like you think that it's over because we have a degree now? We like know what there is to know. And it just struck me as so absurd. I've always been really driven to learn from experience. I feel like that's the real teacher that I was so hungry for. So I did the obvious thing which was I planned. Planned. I booked a one way trip to India, which was the focus area that I had studied. And then I was sitting at this desk job at an insurance agency because I had to make money to fund the trip.
Jessica Mastors [00:02:07 - 00:02:32]:
And I was just typing away and the door to my office opens and the head of sales barges in. And you can imagine he's the money guy, very tall guy, takes up all the space in the room and he comes in and he says, jess, I guess word had circulated around the water cooler that I was leaving. He says, jess, what are you doing going to India? You're done school. It's time for you to get serious and get serious about your career and to get a real job.
Marcia Dawood [00:02:32 - 00:02:33]:
And.
Jessica Mastors [00:02:33 - 00:02:58]:
Come on, you're not joking right? Anymore? That was his vibe, right? And so he's interrupting me at work. What could I have done? I could have been like, excuse me, this is so inappropriate. You're not my father. Like, I'm trying to do my work, et cetera. But instead, for whatever reason, I just heard the question behind his question that he didn't ask. He didn't ask, why. Why are you doing this thing? I don't understand it. I don't see the value of it.
Jessica Mastors [00:02:58 - 00:02:59]:
Help me understand.
Jessica Mastors [00:03:01 - 00:03:35]:
And so I thought about it, and I told him about seeing that shirt and how absurd I found it. It took me all of 20 seconds to tell the story, and I said, so I don't know what India has to teach me, but I imagine that it's what I need to learn. And I'm telling you, Marshall, like, the effect that it had on him was instantaneous. He went from posturing, like, sure, he was right. Total critic, to, like, his whole body softened, his face got soft and far away. And he goes, I always wanted to go to Scotland. I just. I don't know.
Jessica Mastors [00:03:35 - 00:04:06]:
My dad's from Scotland, my grandfather's from Scotland, and I've just always wanted to go. But then you get older and you have family and responsibilities and a whole career, and it's not so simple anymore. So, you know what? Good for you. And he. I swear, he leaves my office, he's promising to follow my blog. He's remembering parts of himself that he had forgotten. And I'm sitting there feeling like, to borrow a phrase that a client would see, like a coconut had fallen on my head. And I was like, he came in here.
Jessica Mastors [00:04:07 - 00:04:38]:
Sure, he was right. Looking at the world one way. And he left here five minutes later, completely transformed into a supporter. And all I gave him was a story. All I gave him was a story. And it just. Something fired my brain. I started learning everything I could about this communication format from a neuroscience perspective, marketing, sales, conflict resolution, like healing, nlp, all the different ways that you can look at story as a universal human activity.
Jessica Mastors [00:04:38 - 00:04:44]:
And, like, the very structure of our brains, what we're. How we're designed to turn information into meaning.
Jessica Mastors [00:04:46 - 00:05:37]:
And then I stumbled onto this definition of magic, which is that magic is the art of changing consciousness at will. And I thought, oh, my goodness, if magic is the art of changing, then story is the most effective magic anyone can practice. Then I Just started experimenting. I moved to San Francisco and experimenting in my own career, like, landed jobs that on paper, I was not qualified for, got bored to activate and host events and donate through story. Started experimenting with other people's careers, my early clients. And then because you're in the Bay Area, you get into the startup scene and founders and fundraising and building teams and aligning around a vision and pivots and growth and all those things. And it just, it's just been a wild, circuitous, amazing journey to get here today.
Marcia Dawood [00:05:37 - 00:05:46]:
Amazing. Okay, so I have so many questions, so tell me, tell us a little bit more about the neuroscience and how it works in the brain and everything first.
Jessica Mastors [00:05:46 - 00:06:20]:
Yeah, okay, amazing. So story is the process that determines how humans remember and communicate and decide and make sense of our lives. It's like our primary meaning making mechanism. And the amazing thing from a neuroscientific point of view is that you have to use the language of story, right, Concrete sensory, in order to activate the imagination. That's what you're doing whenever you start a story. You're like, oh, this one time you're painting a picture in my brain. You're going in through the side door. You're not talking to that prefrontal cortex, which is that critical.
Jessica Mastors [00:06:20 - 00:07:33]:
Yes, no, like me, not like me. Agree, disagree, response that we have logically, right? You're going through the side door of the imagination. You're illustrating you're giving a vicarious experience. And we know that experience is the best teacher. And so the second best teacher is vicarious experience, right? So if I were to say that when I said that the T shirt was black and it had white block letters, if your eyes were closed, your visual cortex would still light up. Or if I said, if I said he left and his cologne smelled like cedar or something, your olfactory cortex would light up, which is responsible for smell. Or if you're sitting still and I said, and then I kicked my chair over, your motor cortex would light up the mirror neurons, which are the foundation of our capacity for empathy, to like, actually put ourselves in another person's shoes and imagine what it's like to have a different experience. And so the amazing thing is that if you're telling a story with that concrete sensory language that activates those mirror neurons, everyone in your audience, assuming they're not looking at their right, listening, right, will be experiencing similar brain activity to each other.
Jessica Mastors [00:07:34 - 00:08:26]:
And that is, I don't know anything else that can do that in the same way, except probably movies, but which are stories. And then at the same time that those mirror neurons are creating that vicarious experience which allows that person to arrive at the conclusion. Right. We'll talk about meaning a lot, I'm sure, by themselves. And so the process called neural coupling is going on where I, as the listener, am relating the events that happen in your story to things that have happened in my life. So I wonder if those listening might be thinking to themselves, huh, when was the last time I was interrupted at work? Or when was the last time a critic came to me and said, I don't get what you're doing, or any number of things, Right. If I told a story about, I don't know, injuring myself, like while skiing the last time when I, oh, cut myself on a coral reef while surfing. Right.
Jessica Mastors [00:08:26 - 00:08:54]:
There's this relating process happening that's so fascinating. And so people are putting themselves into the story through neural coupling. And there's so much I could tell you. It's so fascinating. I could go fast and go forever. But the one more thing I'll say, like attention and decision making, right? As soon as you start a store, you open a loop in my brain. And the brain can't stand an open loop. And so we're motivated as long as you don't abuse my time and attention.
Jessica Mastors [00:08:55 - 00:09:35]:
Right. We're motivated to see where it goes because we don't get the dopamine hit that happens when the story completes and makes meaning. Dopamine is that pleasure chemical reward until it ends and we get to see what the story was about or means for this moment and moments coming up. And so that dopamine hit that we get when we close the loop is so satisfying. And it also aids in memory and recall, which is why facts embedded in story are like 13 times, at least 13 times more memorable when given in a story, as opposed to given as facts alone. And you become more memorable. Right. If you're using the language of story.
Marcia Dawood [00:09:36 - 00:09:37]:
Amazing.
Jessica Mastors [00:09:37 - 00:09:39]:
That's just a few really fun things about.
Marcia Dawood [00:09:39 - 00:10:00]:
That's so fun. Yeah. They teach us in book writing, if you start off a chapter with a story or whatever you're talking about, and then you come back and you close the loop at the end of the chapter. It's so satisfying for the reader because you're like, you've given them what they wanted. You've taken them through the whole journey. If you leave it too open, they. They're kind of like, well, what happened?
Jessica Mastors [00:10:00 - 00:10:04]:
And great speeches. Great speeches on that way, too. There's a full circle effect.
Marcia Dawood [00:10:05 - 00:10:05]:
Yeah.
Jessica Mastors [00:10:05 - 00:10:18]:
Keeping workshops at General assembly in San Francisco I talked about taking the story full circle and just closing that loop. There's so many ways to do it, but it's easy and it's so effective for your audience.
Marcia Dawood [00:10:18 - 00:10:47]:
Yeah. All right, so tell us a little more then, about how do you help entrepreneurs? What are some of the things that they can do in order to help tell their story better? So that really what we want to know is what is the reasoning behind, like, why were you going to India? What is the reasoning behind what you're doing? I always start with that question when I'm talking to entrepreneurs because I really want to know what got you here and what's that passion that drives it? That story, to me is super important.
Jessica Mastors [00:10:48 - 00:10:50]:
Oh, you mean the founder story. Yes.
Marcia Dawood [00:10:51 - 00:10:51]:
Yeah.
Jessica Mastors [00:10:51 - 00:10:59]:
It's so funny. Just the decision to acknowledge that. That whatever you're building, you are building.
Jessica Mastors [00:11:00 - 00:11:18]:
Like, there you are putting yourself into it. Right. It's. They talk about founder product fit, and in reality, like, I. And I wonder how you feel about this. Do you want to be investing in a founder who is building something that like, anybody could build?
Marcia Dawood [00:11:19 - 00:11:19]:
Right.
Jessica Mastors [00:11:19 - 00:11:42]:
Yeah, it's just. Right. And the question is, why don't we feel comfortable investing in a founder when there is not a clear and obvious personal motivation that's driving them to pursue what for many people, it's like a very risky and at times very demoralizing, very lonely, very difficult road.
Marcia Dawood [00:11:42 - 00:11:43]:
Right.
Jessica Mastors [00:11:44 - 00:12:34]:
You need something that's got to get you through those low times. It's a hard roller coaster. And so that personal motivation, that personal why that's driving you is key. Not just because we're meaning making humans and we are all carrying around this like a stone in our pocket, this question of why, like, why you, why this, why not that, why anything, but also because we need to know what's going to keep you going. What is it that is driving you? When we know your motivations and who you are and why you're doing what you're doing, it's so much easier to believe in you and to see you powering through when things get tough. Our motivations are how we build trust as a species. And you have to actively pull those back, pull back the curtain and reveal your motivation. They're not obvious to other people just because you're building this thing.
Marcia Dawood [00:12:35 - 00:12:41]:
Right. So what are some of the common mistakes that you see and what can entrepreneurs do to fix them?
Jessica Mastors [00:12:41 - 00:12:49]:
They get such rich territory here. But I can probably identify three that are super common. Number one is.
Jessica Mastors [00:12:52 - 00:13:40]:
We think that the story is about what happened to get us Here. And you hear this all the time. People say, what's your story? And you hear people go through their whole chronological play by play of well, I went to this school and I did this thing and I worked at this place and I got these results and I learned this thing. And, and you're just getting the, you're getting a history, right? And history is not unbiased, of course, but history and story are so different. Story involves so many choices and subjective points that you're making and truths, like parts of the truth that you're trying to illustrate. So story's not actually about what and how. The what and how is like a very features level, very data kind of approach to sharing about yourself. So the story is actually about that who and why piece.
Jessica Mastors [00:13:40 - 00:13:56]:
And if you know that your story is really about who you are and why you do what you do, then you're going to tell it totally differently than this chronological what I was doing when I discovered this problem and blah, blah. So that's one. The second piece is.
Jessica Mastors [00:13:59 - 00:14:36]:
The story's not really about what happened in the past. We use the way that humans use stories. It's as like 70% of all human learning happens through story. So it's a vehicle for learning, meaning making and action. So in a sense it's helpful to think about how the story's not actually about the past. We're using it as a crutch to decide what do I want to do now, what does this mean for this moment that we're in and what we're entering into. It's actually about what happens next. And so you use stories about the past to tee up this question of what should happen next, what happens now, what happens after this.
Jessica Mastors [00:14:36 - 00:15:19]:
And so illustrating that future is so, so key. And the third one I think is very, a lot of these things are very intuitive, like they make sense to us as humans. But when we get so myopic in the need to convince or persuade or explain or justify what we're building to other people and show, and also wanting to be credible and wanting to be perceived as an expert, we lose track of the things that we know. And one of the things that we know is that human beings are not rational decision makers. Study economics, study investing. We make decisions from our gut. Neuromarketers have proven this. This is one of the neuroscience things that I didn't mention.
Jessica Mastors [00:15:19 - 00:15:49]:
But then we use our logical brains to go back and cross our T's and dot our I's and make sure we're not making a terrible mistake. Right. But that initial inspiration, I want this person to succeed. I want this venture to succeed. I'm gonna put my stake in this. That comes from an emotional, intuitive level. And so when you think about your pitch, you think about your story. The mistake is we think, oh, I need to get the investor to think X, Y, Z.
Jessica Mastors [00:15:49 - 00:16:14]:
I want them to walk away thinking this. I'm going to take them on this journey of thinking. And no, it's yes, in parallel. Right. Because it needs to have substance. But it's much more helpful to think about the investor conversation as an emotional journey for that investor. What do I want them to feel first, second, third, last. Right.
Jessica Mastors [00:16:14 - 00:16:25]:
And maybe it's not. And the thing about emotion is, or any great story is that it's never just one note. It's never empowerment. Empowerment. Yes. Good. There are ups and downs. Right.
Jessica Mastors [00:16:25 - 00:17:03]:
So there are highs and there are lows and there's moments of doubt and there's, oh, what are the risks? And there's a little bit of fear that makes us. And so varying it and making it an emotional roller coaster. What would be the first emotion? Maybe it's just, gosh, how many pitches does this investor listen to? How much are they just expecting to hear the same old thing? And so how can you start with a little surprise? Like a little to make them curious? If you think about the emotional journey that you want to take them through, it can be really transformative in how you structure and approach that conversation.
Marcia Dawood [00:17:03 - 00:17:11]:
Yeah. So take us on that journey. Like, how would somebody even think about getting started to make their story better?
Jessica Mastors [00:17:12 - 00:17:17]:
So I want to differentiate. Maybe it would be helpful to differentiate between story and narrative.
Marcia Dawood [00:17:17 - 00:17:17]:
Okay.
Jessica Mastors [00:17:17 - 00:17:40]:
Because I see them as two different things. Right. Story is this, like, specific communication format requires a time and a place and a character and conflict. That's pretty much it. Right. And it requires that concrete sensory language. So places in your pitch or in your conversations with investors that you could use a story is the founder story.
Jessica Mastors [00:17:42 - 00:18:13]:
Number one. Huge. And by the way, I talked to. I talked to so many angel investors in particular, but also VCs, where they're like, I often have to drag the story out of the founder. Yeah, that's exhausting. So founder story, but also like your product demo. If you're demoing a product or you're showing us how it works, or you're describing how it works, there's a person or an avatar who can go through a set of experiences to demonstrate the impact of that product. What their life was before, what their life is after.
Jessica Mastors [00:18:14 - 00:18:49]:
You don't have to talk about the features and how if you do this, then you can do that. You could put your audience in the seat of being that avatar and say, let's say that you are going through this specific journey and you're having these experiences. Right? So that's another place for story is really effective. And there are a couple others. But from a narrative perspective, narrative is like, where we're most comfortable. And to differentiate them, they're both seeking to make meaning out of chaos. They both require past, present, and future in order to create that arc of meaning. And.
Jessica Mastors [00:18:49 - 00:19:36]:
But with narrative, it's much more meta. It's much more, okay, I've got a lot of information. I've got a lot of anecdotal evidence, I've got a lot of data, I've got a lot of perspectives, and I need to synthesize those all and have them hang together in a way that creates something meaningful and actionable for my audience. But narrative is not story. Narrative is like a collection of stories that you can think of as like, each one is a room in a house, and the house is the narrative, and the narrative is, okay, I know how to make sense. Sense of this very complex subject or opportunity versus the story is. It's a story becomes more effective the more you reduce the scope. You notice how, like, when I told my Inception story, I told.
Jessica Mastors [00:19:36 - 00:20:06]:
It's a moment in time when I saw a T shirt. So not a hero's journey story at all. And a moment in time when somebody interrupted me at work. Very like these specific moments in time, very small scope. And you can illustrate them when you make them small in scope. And that's how you can activate that imagination. And I think a huge mistake. Another one, I'll add a word, one huge mistake that I see people making is just trying to tell a story with a scope that's way too big and not understanding that.
Jessica Mastors [00:20:06 - 00:20:18]:
What you need then is to think about it as a narrative and how can you chunk it down and how can you connect different stories into something bigger to honor the complexity? Yeah.
Marcia Dawood [00:20:19 - 00:20:27]:
Wow. I love it. So, okay, you mentioned hero's journey. So tell us what that is and what it means and how that's different than what you were just describing.
Jessica Mastors [00:20:28 - 00:21:10]:
Yeah, I can do that. So I have to confess, I have a confession to make. I think the hero's journey, if you're not familiar with the hero's journey, Joseph Campbell, the hero is in his normal world. He, like, hears a call to adventure, but he would resist because he liked his comfy world and then goes through this whole adventure where he goes into another world and takes the trophy and comes back. It's this, like, massive mythic structure that is excellent. If you have a TED Talk or if you want to write a book, or if you have a big format, you know, to take 20 to 40 minutes of a person's attention and really illustrate something, it can work.
Jessica Mastors [00:21:12 - 00:21:50]:
And a sales page for a. For something where you expect somebody to have that long attention span, great. But I don't focus on that. I do coach speakers, and that can be effective for a particular type of value proposition. Right. And for a type of experience that you want to put forth. But I have. I really have found for most founders and leaders that it is simple, concrete, concise, like short stories, almost like as a currency, as a language of being able to think to yourself.
Jessica Mastors [00:21:51 - 00:22:30]:
I need to illustrate a very particular point right now. How can I do that? Using an anecdote, like an anecdotal story about something, about nothing, in order to go in through that side door and help shift the way this person is looking at this thing in a very casual way that the audience will. You don't have to be like, let me tell you a story about X. Right. It's just this reminds me what you're saying about X reminds me of this moment when. And you. It's so useful for interfacing with decision makers, with negotiations with critics, like, you can affirm their point of view. I hear you.
Jessica Mastors [00:22:30 - 00:22:43]:
And what you're saying reminds me of this time when we were in a similar situation, facing a similar challenge, and we did what you're suggesting we should do, and it had awful results. And so I'm wondering if we should really go down that same road right now.
Marcia Dawood [00:22:43 - 00:22:43]:
Right.
Jessica Mastors [00:22:43 - 00:23:09]:
Doesn't have to take forever. And so I think of story, the real lever of story, you don't need to have a hero's journey. I think that's very distracting and not always useful for people who are. We all have so many stories to share. You don't need to put it under this umbrella of a hero's journey. You can benefit and use it in so many more dynamic and practical ways. So that's my bias about that.
Marcia Dawood [00:23:09 - 00:23:34]:
No, that. That makes a lot of sense. I learned about it when I was writing speeches, books, things like that. And I did feel like it was very cumbersome. There was a lot. They would be like, you, here's the structure. And if you should put the story in this exact structure. And I always felt, well, that's great if I was like writing a fiction novel maybe with lots of, lots of conflict and ups and downs and sure, you might have that a little bit in nonfiction books, but for the most.
Jessica Mastors [00:23:34 - 00:23:40]:
Part, nearly as much. Yeah, totally. I think it has a place and I think fiction is amazing.
Jessica Mastors [00:23:42 - 00:23:58]:
For certain types of challenges and opportunities. But most of us are just trying to build our businesses to get investment, to get the right people on board. And so it needs to be more fluent, it needs to be more usable. Yeah, totally.
Marcia Dawood [00:23:58 - 00:24:05]:
Yeah. All right, so tell us how you work with people when it comes to story and your. Tell us about your story studio.
Jessica Mastors [00:24:06 - 00:24:55]:
Yeah, great. So. So I work with people in a couple different ways and with founders. I know we're in this, this moment right now where so story is so personal and intimate. And so one thing I have learned is that you, it's a huge honor and privilege to be invited into people's like meaning making architecture. And that's essentially what's happening when you hire a story coach or you go through an experience where you're allowing a facilitator or a guide to help you make the meaning of things. It is, it's a big responsibility and I've gotten an education also from all of my clients. But so there's a one on one coaching model that is usually six months to a year.
Jessica Mastors [00:24:55 - 00:25:22]:
Right. Is to get the full benefit of, of developing that fluency and using it for the business goals. Usually people bring to me like a fundraising challenge, they have a specific challenge. They want to use story for the pitch. The investor pitch is often the place to start. But then you go through the eye of the needle and you go through the other side and you're like, oh, this is applicable to so many things in my business. And that's when the fun really begins. But the coaching model is wonderful.
Jessica Mastors [00:25:22 - 00:26:30]:
The studio, though, is the same sort of material transformation and outcomes, but inside of a really condensed timeline for founders who are really like, I want to, I'm serious about getting these investor meetings and I'm sure that you have opinions about, about this. The rhythm leg of you don't want to start reaching out to investors and getting meetings haphazardly when you, when you think things are generally in good shape, like you want to get everything so tightened up and ready and then schedule all the meetings for a two week blog so that you can generate some competition and some discussion and leverage. Right. In terms of the urgency. So getting all of those foundational pieces in place, your founder story, the narrative of your investor pitch, the flow of that conversation. A lot of people like will say a pitch deck is important. Send ahead versus versus, talk over. Sometimes you just have a conversation.
Jessica Mastors [00:26:30 - 00:27:04]:
Right. And you don't get the structure of having your deck with you. And how do you capitalize on those opportunities and understand story as that two way dialogue with your audience. So to get back to the studio, right. The coaching model and the studio model both focus on those deliverables. Or they can, but the studio happens in six weeks. It's a design sprint and it is for people who are really ready to put their focus on this and get to the other side with those outcomes.
Marcia Dawood [00:27:05 - 00:27:09]:
Nice. So. And how often do you run the studios?
Jessica Mastors [00:27:10 - 00:27:40]:
So the studio runs once a quarter and I usually. It's. So as it's working one on one, I have capacity to work with two or three at a time. But I am thinking about running a cohort model in 2026. So it would depend. It would need. Founders can be a little bit. It's difficult to be vulnerable and creating the safety to really dig into your business and the meaning that you're making with your business.
Jessica Mastors [00:27:40 - 00:28:13]:
It requires a particular set of agreements and a chemistry. But. But I think I'll run a cohort, see if. If you can get the right chemistry of people in Q1 this year and see how that goes. So if you're listening and you know of another founder that you would feel comfortable doing this kind of work with, I think there's huge benefit to see people go through it and having all that context. But you can't force people to want to be. It's hard enough to get people to be vulnerable outside of their comfort zone anyway, so.
Marcia Dawood [00:28:13 - 00:28:13]:
Right. Right.
Jessica Mastors [00:28:13 - 00:28:16]:
Yeah. We'll see if that's a model that works for people.
Marcia Dawood [00:28:16 - 00:28:22]:
Yeah. I love cohort education though, because then you get to learn from others who are doing similar things to you.
Jessica Mastors [00:28:22 - 00:28:38]:
And by example and by analogy, we're just. That's how our brains work. Like the analogical instinct. You're listening to somebody talk about their challenge in another industry or in another vertical or with a different business mod and suddenly something can click about what you're facing. So I think it's a great model.
Marcia Dawood [00:28:39 - 00:28:49]:
Great. Okay, last question before I let you go. So what is one thing that people can do so their audiences don't have? You call it the glazed eye syndrome.
Jessica Mastors [00:28:51 - 00:28:53]:
One thing. There's so many things.
Marcia Dawood [00:28:53 - 00:28:55]:
I know there's so many, but pick one.
Jessica Mastors [00:28:55 - 00:29:43]:
All right. One thing to reduce glazed eye syndrome. Gosh. Just know what your jargon is and stop Using it, just use simple concrete language that an 8 year old could understand. Sensory language, things you can taste and touch and feel and smell. And also, I know I didn't do this in a conversation, but asking questions, even if they're rhetorical questions, can be hugely powerful for controlling the narrative. Does people feel, you know, that they're in control because they're the ones answering the question, but you are actually the one directing attention to a particular topic or activating the imagination around something. So questions are a very powerful way to activate that imagination and get people to think critically.
Jessica Mastors [00:29:43 - 00:30:33]:
Like you're always. Even if your audience is quiet and they've got that dead face on that's designed to get under your skin and make you think that whenever they're judging you and finding you falling short when you ask the question and when you take the time to illustrate something that you're getting in through that side door. And so, so much of this is about having the faith to actually exercise and strengthen the muscles and experiment just enough to start getting those little wins. The eyes lighting up or the leaning in or the, oh, you mentioned this. And suddenly they're more engaged and you're like, oh my God, it works. You get those start to get those little wins and you. And it just snowballs. So, yeah, use that concrete, sensory, simple language and ask questions as a way to tee up whatever topic you want.
Marcia Dawood [00:30:34 - 00:30:40]:
Wow, that's great advice. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Jessica, for being here on the Angel Next Door podcast today.
Jessica Mastors [00:30:40 - 00:30:42]:
Thank you, Marcia. Appreciate it. It's a pleasure.