In this Marketing Over Coffee:
Learn about Story, Proverb, Simile, Analogy, Metaphor, and more!
Ron Ploof, Master of Story, Scholar of Proverb, now automating his best prompts
After leaving chip design behind, training LLMs on his work
The StoryHow Ptich Deck (Get the deck) – Hear the interview
The Proverb Construction Kit (Get the deck) – Hear the interview
Having the machine write the code for you
What’s new with Proverbs?
How Metaphor completes the trilogy
Metaphor vs. Similie vs. Analogy
Trust Insights latest course: Generative AI Use Cases for Marketers Course
The marketing slogan of the century
Check out the offers for listeners!
Sign up for the text line: 1-617-812-5494
Join John, Chris and Katie on threads, or on LinkedIn: Chris, John, and Katie
Sign up for the Marketing Over Coffee Newsletter to get early access!
Our theme song is Mellow G by Fonkmasters
Speaker 1 – 00:00
Today’s episode is brought to you by Insta360, just released this week, Tuesday, April 22nd. The Insta360X5.8K360
action cam is their new flagship camera. This thing is incredible. 8K360 degree video. We’ll talk about it more, but
let’s get to the show.
Speaker 2 – 00:25
This is Marketing Over Coffee with Christopher Penn and John Wal.
Speaker 1 – 00:33
Good morning. Welcome to Marketing Over Coffee. I’m John Wall. Today on the show, I’m really excited we have.
Ron Plouffe is back with us. He has been in podcasting since day one and we have talked to him over the years a
number of times. We’ve spent a lot of time talking with him. He is the master of story. Nobody knows as much about
storytelling and his system for storytelling. I basically send everybody to go and dig into it. He also did a whole book
on Proverbs, which was the next step on that. And we’re going to talk about where he’s going next. But the big
reason that I’ve got him on today is that last week he called me up and were just catching up as usual, and he was
showing off this new app that he’s been working on.
Speaker 1 – 01:11
And it’s really what I’ve been seeing at Trust Insights over and over again, where people are getting to the point now
where they kind of understand how to do prompts. And now the question is, how do we get to the next level? Like,
what do we do when we have a whole ton of prompts or we have a whole bunch of stuff that needs to be fed into a
prompt? And sitting around all day and cutting and pasting is just not going to happen or be a thing. So with all that,
Ron, welcome back to the show.
Speaker 3 – 01:36
Good morning. It is great to be back. I think 2018 might have been the last time I was here.
Speaker 1 – 01:42
Well, and you’ve gone through a bunch of transitions, too. Last time we talked, I think you were still slaving away in
the workforce and you’ve managed to migrate away from that. So, I mean, catch us up. Since 2018, what the heck
has been going on?
Speaker 3 – 01:54
Well, since 2018, you’re right. I was back in my old industry of chip design and In December of 22, I retired. And so
I’m out of the rat race. But just because I’m retired, it doesn’t mean I’m dead. I’m still working on things. And so I have
been playing around with a bunch of tools and trying to figure out how to help people tell better Stories, right?
Speaker 1 – 02:20
And so I imagine right at the start, because you were doing some stuff with creating LLMs that would automate your
story process or, you know, LLMs that had been trained on your work and so that then they could start answering
and suggesting stuff. But where did it go from there?
Speaker 3 – 02:35
It’s funny, I retired in like 12-1-22, but like the day before is when ChatGPT came out. So it kind of lined up perfectly.
And so, yeah, I have been playing and doing the whole prompt engineering thing, but I really got interested a little
over a year ago when ChatGPT allowed you to start creating custom GPTs. I said, all right, that’s interesting. And
then I was thinking, well, I have the story how pitch deck, which is rules for telling stories or the elements of stories.
And I decided, well, what if I just for kicks, upload the PDF of that as training for model. And I was getting incredible
results that it could analyze a story the way I analyze a story. It could recommend maybe elements to a story that
you didn’t have. And so I was real excited.
Speaker 3 – 03:20
And then I said, wait a minute, I also have this other deck of cards called the Proverb Construction Kit. And so rather
than you having to learn how to create proverbs, the ultimate long story short, what if you had a GPT, a virtual me, if
you will, that could help people and that I was getting really good results out of that. So that’s when I started thinking
about, I’m wondering if there’s a way to, rather than just go through the prompts, is there a way to productize it? And
that’s kind of led me down this road where I could help me program, actually help me write programs. And so it was
a very meta moment, right? You know that I’m using AI models to productize my story, how method or the Proverb
Construction Kit.
Speaker 3 – 04:11
And at the same time I’m using it to help me build a full web app.
Speaker 1 – 04:17
And this is one thing that, because it was amazing, you were showing off some of this stuff that you had been
working on and it was full featured. You totally had it web hosted. People post the data that they have, their content,
and then it’s running the prompts, making it all happen. So where did you get your start with that? I mean, did you
start with ChatGPT and just say, hey, start writing me an app? And how did that process go?
Speaker 3 – 04:39
So it wasn’t that straightforward. I mean, I know that there are these no code coding sites, and I think I started
playing with Those and it gave me some confidence that I could create something. But I was noticing a downside to
the no code coding sites is the fact that a lot of them are token based. Let’s say you start debugging something, you
start using more and more tokens. And at the same time I really wasn’t understanding what was happening
underneath. And so what I decided to do was to try a different approach. And so I started using various LLMs and I
eventually found the O3 mini high was very good from ChatGPT at coding, then I would be very specific. This is what
I want to build. I want it to be just HTML CSS node js. That’s all I want to use.
Speaker 3 – 05:36
I don’t want to use anything big because I understand HTML and CSS and I understand scripting languages. I’m the
Rodney Dangerfield of script writers. But I can understand something. I can hack something together. And I started
rapidly creating something, not only a front end, but back end and then learning about the hosting a database. But
now I understand it. And the other thing is, as the Rodney Dangerfield, I’ve always been able to hack things together
to maybe do a proof of concept. But I’d show it to a friend of mine who knows coding and they’ll say, all right, I’ll fix it
just because I can just hack it together. This code that I’ve created is clean. It’s commented that I would have no
problem handing it over to a real programmer who could then pick it up from there.
Speaker 1 – 06:26
Right. And so what are you thinking is that the deal with this is proof of concept and you’re going to get it to run, but
eventually you would want to hand it off to somebody to optimize it even further and get it ready for production?
Speaker 3 – 06:37
Yeah, I think so. I mean, what would be great is if I did have a product and that maybe people could subscribe to it or
use it somehow. But I really want to stay on the creative side. I want to be able to help people tell stories. I don’t want
to be in the software maintenance business so that if this does become a product, what I’d like to do is be able to
hand it off to somebody and say, all right, you maintain it. But maybe the more innovative things like, gee, I wonder if
I could add this feature, I could still play with that in the development environment using my creativity, as opposed to
maybe hiring somebody and writing a spec and having them work on it and me saying, no, that’s not what I want.
Speaker 3 – 07:19
So I Think I like keeping that architect side going.
Speaker 1 – 07:24
Okay. And so we do have touch back. I’m going to have links to the past interviews because we’ve talked a lot. You’ve
given the full breakdown on story and also on Proverbs. But let’s start with the story 1. Has anything changed since
the initial release of the deck? Are you thinking about things differently and, you know, how has the deck been
running for you?
Speaker 3 – 07:41
So the deck came out in 2015, and so I think that’s when you’re going to link back to that show in 2015. And I’ve been
selling it on Amazon. It’s been sold in 37 countries. But I’ll also tell you that the sales of the deck have plummeted
over the past couple years. It might have been the fact that I was first in and first mover, if you will, but the. The deck
has really kind of tapered off over the past couple of years. I think that there’s now more competition, and there’s a
possibility maybe it’s because of some of the AI stuff. I don’t know. But I want to say it’s probably more competition.
But then that got me to thinking, is there a way to redo the information in the deck so that people can use it?
Speaker 3 – 08:22
I remember someone told me once, John Ron, you have the hardest job in the world, that essentially you’re teaching
something to someone that’s really hard to learn and hard to do. And could there be an easier way to do this? I think
that these custom GPTs are a great way of encapsulating my knowledge and just applying it. And then my hope is
that people will learn storytelling by example, as opposed to having to understand story structure from the beginning
and then applying it to the blank page.
Speaker 1 – 08:53
Yeah. Isn’t it? There’s a lot to. We’ve been seeing this. We were just joking about this last week. This idea that for us
as humans, it tends to be a lot easier to just go play with the thing and get in a lot of trouble and then go back and
read the manual, because then you sort of understand where the pieces all fit together and it helps a whole lot more.
Speaker 3 – 09:12
Yeah. I mean, I learned storytelling at the knee of my grandfather. Right. So I saw all of the examples, and so I kind of
knew how to do it, and it just. I had to deconstruct it on how it worked.
Speaker 1 – 09:24
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Speaker 1 – 10:17
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Speaker 1 – 11:16
We will be able to report on it in a future gear segment. We thank Insta360 for their support of the show. Yeah, I was
psyched when I because this like came in last minute they didn’t want word to get out about this camera in advance.
Just yesterday they said hey these guys are coming in. Their cameras dropped today. We want you to get it in for
Thursday and I was so excited because you’ve done a bunch of 360 camera shooting and you kind of know how
these things work. So yeah, would you be up for an upgrade? Are you looking at a new camera?
Speaker 3 – 11:43
I’m retired now so I typically watch the money but no what I Think is interesting about this camera is it’s 8K. If you’re
looking at 360 video, especially say in a headset or something like that, you can kind of see the pixelization. So my
heart is a little aflutter about the possibility of 8k. That would be pretty cool.
Speaker 1 – 12:02
Yeah, that’s people we’ve talked to, we’ve talked with Tim street in the past and a lot of people said this 8k line is
going to make all the difference as far as getting a, a smooth and better look because, yeah, that was one thing I
noticed in previous rounds is it seems like every time you jump up, it makes the old thing look like you’re looking
through a screen door. You know, the previous stuff, it just is not there. So this is going to be huge. And so, yeah,
grab the free selfie stick code moc. Okay, so we do have touch on the rest of the other stuff too now because you
went from story to proverbs being the next thing. So what’s happened on the proverb front?
Speaker 3 – 12:35
The proverb construction kit was again, selling, did not sell as well as story how pitch deck. But I kind of understood
that because it’s a little more esoteric. I mean, everybody knows what a story is, but, you know, people don’t know
what, what a proverb is. However, now that I have it programmed as a GPT, I’m starting to see as I demo it to people,
they’re seeing that, wow, this is very powerful. Like, imagine if you can take a piece of copy and you push a button
and it can come up with a list of potential titles or taglines or the title to a talk, if you will. And they’re usually very
clever. And so there’s not a lot of work that people have to do. They can actually just say, hey, here’s my final copy.
Speaker 3 – 13:22
Create some proverbs from me and then for me, and then let me choose from them.
Speaker 1 – 13:27
Yeah, that was one thing that it just as soon as you were firing that thing off, I was like, man, this is it. This is all the
taglines and titles. Like, it just keeps throwing them. And it is intelligent enough that it pulls back from everything
else that’s in there, you know, because I think that’s the challenge when people are doing creative copy. You do reach
back to things. But to have the machine be able to reach back to hundreds of thousands of pages of content is just
an entirely different thing that gets you stuff you could never get any other way.
Speaker 3 – 13:54
Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1 – 13:55
Okay, so then the next thing too, that you had going on is metaphor is now the new thing. And it’s even funny in the
book, you talk about how you were, one of your favorite writers was talking about something that was a metaphor
and it was not. It was a simile. And I have to admit, I always botch this. I can never get this straight. But give us the
overview of metaphor. What is it and how is this the next stage of what you’re doing?
Speaker 3 – 14:18
So as I’m working on this app, I’ve got a story button, I’ve got a proverb button. And I realized that the trilogy, my
work, was not complete because I Knew back in 2017 when I was writing the proverb effect, that there was a third
book or there was a third something that had to come. And it’s metaphor. Because if you think about story, you can
then think about the proverbs, the ultimate long story, short story short. And then you have metaphor. And all proverb
is based in metaphor. And so I had all of the research done. I just had to dust off notebooks from 2017 and to go
through it. But essentially what I’m. I say that metaphor is the most important and the most misunderstood
rhetorical tool that a writer has. And it is also confused many people.
Speaker 3 – 15:17
They confuse metaphor, simile, analogy, and they’re all very different. And so what I wanted to do was finish my
research, create a metaphor button for that new tool. And the best way to do that was to just write a book. And so I
have finished a book, a draft. You’re one of the first people to see a copy of the draft. It’s called the metaphor effect,
which is kind of sort of like the proverb effect. And I’m trying to think about what to do with it. At a certain point, I
think I’m just thinking about just giving it away just to help people understand metaphor and then they can learn how
to do metaphor.
Speaker 3 – 15:59
I’m also thinking long term, maybe then if they want to have a tool that does the work for metaphor for them, then
they might be able to use the tool that I’m developing. But right now I’m more interested in giving metaphor the
respect that it’s due. And to help people understand the power of metaphor, it is the way we think, the way we
interpret the world, and that writers can use it to describe the world in essentially a non language that everybody
understands.
Speaker 1 – 16:34
Okay, yeah, so break it down for us because I can never keep any of these straight. As far as metaphor, simile,
analogy, what are the shades of Gray there.
Speaker 3 – 16:43
Yeah. So a simile is just something that is something is like something else. It might be like a single trait. An
example would be the moonlight bounced off of the river like that, off the edge of a knife or something like that.
That’s a simile. An analogy is more deep. You can say that something acted like water, which at the baseline is a
simile. But usually analogies are used to teach because you’re using more properties of water. Like, we know that
water seeks the least path of resistance, or it rolls downhill, things like that. So like a current through a wire run is
like water running through a wire. And so that’s analogy. What happens is when you use metaphor, you’re actually
saying that something is something else. Right. Something that one of the examples is I’ll use.
Speaker 3 – 17:49
And I’ll say, like, you know, all right, my friend Megan is a rock. Now, I’m not saying she’s equivalent to a rock.
Essentially what the metaphor says is that she’s adopting the properties of a rock. She’s strong, right? That all of the
properties of a rock, and maybe it talks about her, you know, her personality and things like that. So it’s when
something is something. And the way it works is it’s a. Is metaphor works with a target and a source. And so Megan
would be the target and the source would be the rock. And so what you’re doing is you’re saying, let’s take all of the
properties, appropriate properties of a rock, and apply them to, say, Megan’s personality. It’s very deep, and you can
get so far with it when trying to convey complicated, complex meaning.
Speaker 1 – 18:45
How else does that tie in? And contrast to proverb, too. So proverb, you’re basically boiling wisdom down, but the
metaphor is you’re kind of connecting that to something else. Am I right with that?
Speaker 3 – 18:58
Yeah. Because all proverbs are based in metaphor. Right. Let’s take the tortoise in the hare, the story. And you then
say that the moral of the story, or the proverb is slow and steady wins the race. And so then you can say that there’s
a metaphor there. Something like persistence is success. And so you’re taking all of the properties of success and
applying them to persistence. So that’s how they all tie together.
Speaker 1 – 19:39
Okay. And the book is still coming along. You said, I’ve been fortunate enough. I’ve got to look at an early glance
here. But I did notice, like, you have a whole chapter on. So here’s the marketing lessons. You know, the Things that
you can take from this and how this stuff can be applied. So what’s the general idea of, you know, how can
marketers start to apply metaphor to make themselves more effective?
Speaker 3 – 19:59
I start off that chapter with what they call the marketing slogan of the century, which is a diamond is forever. And if
you think about De Beers, that a diamond is forever that you’re applying, the brilliance of this is that you’re taking a
word, an infinite word like forever, and you’re applying it to the diamond. And so when someone looks at a diamond,
or let’s say someone receives a diamond, you think of all of the metaphoric meaning that’s behind it. And it could be
tied to love. All right? It’s the strongest material. So maybe your love is strong or it’s forever or it’s sparkly. It has.
Then there’s the infinite, right? The whole idea that it’s infinite and so love is non bounded.
Speaker 3 – 20:58
What’s really cool is you think about all of the properties of forever and applying it to your product in context of say, a
marriage, a diamond, an engagement ring. It’s brilliant. And what I’m trying to do is using that example is telling
people that you can do the same thing with your products and services is what can you find that everybody
understands a really complex term like forever, but using those properties to apply it to say, your product or service.
Speaker 1 – 21:35
So what are the next steps? Are you going to go the standard book release route? You’re going to finish this up and
then basically drop the thing as audio and softcover hardcover on Amazon? Anything else in that?
Speaker 3 – 21:46
Yeah, really, I’m really thinking of this as maybe something as I give away as a PDF and then I will put it on Amazon if
people want the convenience of maybe getting it on their Kindle or being able to purchase it in paper. But right now,
the way I’m thinking about it is I just, it’s not like I’m trying to make a lot of money on this thing. I really want to
spread metaphor. Metaphor has been misunderstood for too long. It’s now time to make sure that we give metaphor
what metaphors do.
Speaker 1 – 22:20
That sounds good. And then you had showed off the product to me. You had mentioned you might be interested in
letting a few more people get kind of closed alpha access to this thing. Is that offers still on the table there?
Speaker 3 – 22:32
Absolutely. I’m really looking for people that want to try this new tool. I really want them to apply it to what they’re
doing. And so I guess what I’m saying is if you want to try this out, send me an email. Send an email to Ron
storyhow.com and you know, tell me, hey, you know how you want to use the tool? I will give you access to the tool
and then I’d love to talk with you afterwards to find out how exactly you’re using it. And then the other thing is, if I can
just, I want to give you a little kind of taste of what it can do, because I’m finding that finding use cases is good. And
so I just have, I have a really short use case that I’d like to show you.
Speaker 3 – 23:15
And essentially it comes down to I was looking for something on LinkedIn and I saw that this woman had posted
something, all right? And she just said, look, we need a copywriter who can work on a bestselling author’s weekly
substack and can manage and develop content on the platform for the brand. It’s a part time. Let me know if you
have any recommendations. A passion for food and cooking space is a must. So I was wondering, is there a
different way to do that? Could this have been done in a more creative way? So I ran it through and it recommended
a metaphor saying, what if copywriter as a sous chef. And I said, you know, I really like that, let’s try it out. So now I
rewrote her words again. Is not push button, just push button.
Speaker 3 – 24:00
I chose that metaphor and rewrote it and here’s what came back. Hello. We’re on the lookout for a talented sous chef
in the world of words who can contribute to a best selling Author’s weekly substack. The part time role involves
crafting and curating content that will elevate the brand’s flavor. If you have any recommendations, please share.
We’re especially eager to find someone with a passion for the vibrant realm of food and cooking. So it just punches
it up. It does the same thing. And then I saw that someone actually responded and it said, hi, writer here. With
experience in copywriting, insights and research into the food cooking space. I said, what if this writer rewrote his
answer based on the fact that copywriter as a sous chef. So what if this writer answered back using the same
metaphor?
Speaker 3 – 24:57
And here’s what came this is what I use the tool for. It says, hi there, I’m a copywriter and you’re a sous chef in the
kitchen of words, bringing a wealth of experience in crafting delicious text along with a dash of insights and a
sprinkle of research. In the food and cooking world. So wouldn’t you want to hire that person? Because they’re kind
of answering in your voice. So. And then the other thing is, so yes, you’re using a tool. You don’t have to use it. I’m
giving you exactly what came out. You are definitely the writer. You’re in control. You can make the changes that you
want. And then the other thing is maybe it’s going to expand your ability to write using metaphor. You can say, oh,
here’s a great example. This worked for me.
Speaker 3 – 25:37
I wonder how I can continue to use metaphor to make my writing better.
Speaker 1 – 25:41
All right, that sounds good. Yeah. If you want to sign up for that, you can feel free to email Ron direct. Or you can
sign up on the Marketing Over Coffee Text line at 617-812-5494. I have a few Marketing Over Coffee airtag keychains
left if you’d like to add one of those, as I was joking. Unfortunately, we don’t have Joe Rogan budget. This is just the
keychain airtag not included, but that’s the way that goes. All right. That’s great, Ron. Thanks for joining us today,
John.
Speaker 3 – 26:07
I’m so glad to come back again. I’m a repeat offender.
Speaker 1 – 26:12
That sounds good. That’ll do it for this week. So until next week, enjoy the coffee.
Speaker 2 – 26:16
You’ve been listening to Marketing Over Coffee. Christopher Penn blogs@christopherspenn.com Read more from
John J. Wall at jw5150.com the marketing over Coffee theme song is called Mellow G by Funk Music Masters and
you can find it at Musically from Mevio or follow the link in our show notes.
