Vice and Virtue - The Moral Premise with Stan Williams | The Julia and Gino Show

[00:00:01] Hello and welcome. I'm Julia Barbaro, host of the Julia and Gino podcast. I'm here with the co-founder of Jake and Gino, my husband and co-host, Gina Barbaro. Julia, how are we doing today? Amazing, as usual. We've got a great guest today. This is exciting. An excellent show. It's sort of something that I've been wanting to find out what's going on today nowadays. But let's get into the show. I mean, Stan Williams is an award winning film, video show and music producer, media distributor, author and Hollywood script consultant.

[00:00:30] He's the author of several books, including The Moral Premise, which we're going to be talking about today. Harnessing virtue and vice for box office success that Will Smith calls the most important tool in his toolkit. His memoir, Growing Up Christian, Searching for a Reasonable Faith in the Heartland of America. Welcome Stan. Hi, glad to be here, Gino and Julia. Yeah, we're super excited for this. You know, movies, I mean, my husband and I cannot wait sometimes just to sit at the end of the day and watch something really good on TV.

[00:00:59] We're kind of having a hard time lately to just find something and we don't know why. And we're a little frustrated, to be honest. And after reading The Moral Premise, I know why. So Stan, let's dive into the book, The Moral Premise. Let's talk about the storytelling. What is The Moral Premise? Why did you write the book, first of all? Who did you write it for? Well, I'm a longtime documentary film producer here in the Detroit area.

[00:01:22] I worked for decades with the automobile corporations and other major, you know, Fortune 100 companies as a writer and as a film director and producer and stuff like that. And I got kind of bored doing it about the sixth time that you produce a video to teach salesmen in a dealership how to lease a car or sell a lease instead of selling the car.

[00:01:50] It gets a little boring on my end. And I didn't know quite what to do. So my wife and some, not my wife, because we have 10 grandkids in the area. She did not want me to go to Hollywood. But some other friends said, well, why don't you go to Hollywood and make movies there? And I said, well, now that's a lot different than what I'm doing. I was, stuff I was doing was simple and we had $100,000 budgets in Hollywood. We're talking million dollar budgets and they were a hundred times more difficult.

[00:02:18] So, but I was always interested in, in the story aspect. I thought, what is it that really makes a movie successful or not at the box office? And I had a sense from my Christian upbringing, honestly, that there had something to do with, well, we could use a, most people might understand the Buddhist concept of karma. That if you do something that's good and right, there's going to be good that's going to be returned to you.

[00:02:46] Well, that's obviously a Christian concept as well, that if you follow God's laws, there's going to be some blessings going to come in return. And if you reject it, there's going to be some curse. So I, I said, I need to study this. And I didn't. So anyhow, the local research university is Wayne State University in Detroit.

[00:03:07] And I went down there and talked to the communication guys and said, Hey, can I devise a program to work on my doctorate that would help me study? What is it about stories that make them successful and connect with audiences? And they, they finally agreed. And so I ended up working for five years, part-time on my doctorate and wrote a, a long dissertation about that whole subject.

[00:03:34] And I discovered this concept called the moral premise that wasn't unique with me, but other people have been talking about it in Hollywood for decades. But they didn't explain how to do it. And they didn't use movies so much as much they used Greek plays. In fact, Lagos Agri wrote a book called The Art of Dramatic, The Art of Dramatic Writing. Right.

[00:03:59] And he, he used Greek plays and, and, and Broadway shows that you never heard of to try to explain it. So I couldn't get anybody in Hollywood, some of my friends there to kind of start teaching about this concept. And so I wrote this book in 2000, started in 2005. The book came out in 2006.

[00:04:21] And it was essentially a chance to update Lagos Agri's book, The Art of Dramatic Writing, and talk about motion pictures. And to also talk about how do you do it as a writer or a producer? How do you actually incorporate the concept of a moral premise in a film? And if you want, I can explain what that is, but that's kind of how I got started. So we wrote the book. It got picked up overnight by Michael Wisey Productions in Hollywood.

[00:04:51] And, and, and it kind of snowballed from there because it became popular. It's still, I still get decent royalty checks a long time ago. So what is the moral premise? So let's just, let's define to the audience what the moral premise is. So the moral premise is really a simple, it's a simple sentence that if I do it generically,

[00:05:11] and I kind of want to throw up graphics, but I don't have them here, where it's, it's, if, if your characters embrace some vice or weakness, that will lead to some denigration in their life or some curse or something bad in their life. But if the motivation of your character or characters is embracing some virtue or strength, then that will lead to some betterment in their life.

[00:05:40] So it's like vice leads to detriment, but virtue leads to betterment. Well, that sentence sounds really simple. Now it's a, it's a basic fundamental common sense kind of moral concept. But if you apply it to every character and to every aspect of the creative process and motion picture making, as well as in the marketing, you're going to connect with audiences.

[00:06:05] Now, the other key to this is that the virtue and vice that we're talking about there is, has to be something that's universal, like greed versus generosity. It can't be very narrow or patriarchal or even ideological. It's got to be something broad and understandable, being mean versus being kind or being greed and generosity is really easy for people to understand.

[00:06:34] But then what happens is that every character in your story struggles with this greed versus generosity battle. And some are greedy and some are generous and different things happen to the different characters based on their internal motivations. You know, everything we do in physically first comes out of some mental value that we hold is very important.

[00:07:01] We believe that that value is going to lead us to happiness. So a dictator might believe that greed is going to lead them to happiness, where a saint, we might say, understands that generosity is going to lead them to happiness. And so you have this conflict. And what happens is that the characters make decisions based on those values and certain things and they take action. But then after that, they lose control of what happens.

[00:07:30] And what happens is natural law. In other words, natural law takes over. Is something good going to happen to the character or is something bad going to happen to the character? And that's all a consequence of natural law of which the characters have absolutely no control. And so that's how characters in a movie.

[00:07:50] I mean, and if the movie, if the writer of the movie or the novel is being honest and true to natural law, then the characters through their experience and the audience through their emotional and physical identification with the characters in the story, they're going to learn what actually works. But what happens, and this happens a lot in films and maybe some of the reason you don't like some of the movies and TV shows you watch.

[00:08:17] I know we have the same problem you guys have, is that our internal instinct tells us, you know, he just cheated on that on his wife. And now he's good stuff's happening to him. That doesn't make any sense. And so there's a disconnect. There's a cognitive dissonance. There's a disconnect between the audience and the filmmaker. And the person says, I don't like that. That doesn't make any sense.

[00:08:46] And in fact, my wife and I were watching some Netflix series a couple of years ago. And the first three or four episodes seemed to be really sensible. And then suddenly the main character does something that's absolutely morally wrong. And yet he's still successful. And we said, this doesn't make any sense at all. And this continued for a couple of episodes. We said, that's it. We turned it off. We canceled our Netflix subscription. So that's what happens a lot to motion pictures.

[00:09:15] There is internal to all human beings a moral compass. And it's not necessarily what we've learned in church. It's what God has written on our hearts. And when we see the actions and the decisions play out according to natural law in a motion picture or in a novel, we say, yeah, that's the way it's supposed to work. I kind of like that. And we may not be able to articulate exactly what it is.

[00:09:43] And we may not be able to articulate exactly what it is that makes us kind of agree and identify and emotionally be engaged with those characters. But that's what it is. It's what God has written on our hearts and what makes sense. So when writers get it wrong, they lose audiences. And in fact, I have a moral premise blog that has hundreds of articles on it and film analyses. And finally, I was always talking about successful movies.

[00:10:07] And finally, someone said, hey, you got to write something about why are the really movies with big budgets and big stars failing at the box office? And so I went and I looked at about eight of them and I did an analysis and there's a blog post called Failed Movies. And in every situation, there's a failed moral premise. The moral premise that the filmmakers are trying to promote, it's wrong. It doesn't connect. It disagrees with natural law.

[00:10:35] And the audiences understand that and they stop buying tickets. Can you share one of those stories that have failed? I mean, one that comes to mind right now that just- Well, yeah. In fact, yeah, I'll do that. I worked with Will Smith on a number of projects. And one of the early projects that they called me on, I got a call from his assistant and says, hey, Will and some of the guys don't think this film they're working on, they're getting ready to release really works. And we're not sure why.

[00:11:04] Can you come out and watch the film and give us your notes? So I went out and I met there. I was one story guy. There was three of us. I'm a story guru, they call me. And there was three of us that met at the CBS studios. And we watched it in the edit. We watched this film called Seven Pounds. Perhaps you remember this. And then we watched it in the viewing rooms the next day.

[00:11:30] And all three of us said, you know, this is going to fail at the box office because it valorizes suicide. In other words, this is the story where Will's character, I forget his name right now in the movie. He was texting on a mountain road and he was in a car accident when he was driving. And his wife is killed. And so are so is a family in the van that he had on this curvy mountain road.

[00:11:58] And so the rest of the movie is his attempt to find redemption for his carelessness. And he keeps finding, he keeps searching for people that are worthy of life. And he then donates some part of his body. He donates a kidney. He donates stuff like that, you know, and they help people give a better life. Well, the culmination of the whole movie is that there's this woman who has a bad heart.

[00:12:27] She needs a heart transplant. And he's a donor. And so he commits suicide so that they can, in a very elaborate scheme, remove his heart, give it to the woman and she can live. Well, there's a whole bunch of things that they go on with this. Like Woody Harrelson is a pianist, a blind pianist. And he's a white guy. And everyone ignores him and thinks he's terrible because he's blind and probably white.

[00:12:54] Well, he gets Will's eyes, a black man's eyes, and suddenly he's popular and great. And I said, well, this makes a lot of sense. What about all the wonderful black musical artists that are blind that are doing hits? Does it mean that suddenly if you have a black man's eyes, you can suddenly be popular? That doesn't make any sense. And it doesn't make any sense.

[00:13:18] And we all said, all three of us said that if the audience is going to reject the idea that suicide is noble and good, even if it's saving someone else's life. Because the ultimate value is that your own life is more valuable and that you have to protect your own life. And we were right. They released the movie. They did not make really many any change. We suggested a bunch of changes to Act 3. They made some changes, but not enough. And the movie failed.

[00:13:45] In fact, they pulled the movie from the theaters faster than any other Will Smith movie ever. So that's that's seven pounds. And it's a story I worked on. But that's just one example. Yeah, I try to be positive here. So we went negative and we said how bad that one was. Can you give us an example of a movie? I mean, you've got a lot in the book. There's a lot in the book. I just pick pick something that you really stand out. The audience would make an understanding of why the more premise shines out. You explained the other one very, very well.

[00:14:13] Well, well, the the big example, the what do you call it? The the last chapter in the book. I analyze Braveheart. And so here we have a guy who does not commit suicide, but he gives his life sacrificially for the freedom of Scotland. And of course, the movie is a great hit. Of course, the Passion of the Christ is the same sort of thing.

[00:14:42] We were not committing suicide, but we're giving our life for the sake of someone else's goodness, someone else's freedom. And we're not seeking to get killed, but we are seeking the good of someone else. And so there's a whole bunch of movies where sacrificial love is a key factor that and you don't even have to bring religion into it. You've got all sorts of things where you realize, OK, I'm good at this and this is not what I want to do.

[00:15:11] But what I'm doing here helps others. And so therefore, I'll continue to do it. Jim Carrey's Jim Carrey's movie. Liar Liar, right? Well, Liar Liar is one of them. Myr and Almighty God, Almighty, Bruce Almighty is the other one where he realizes in Bruce Almighty that he wants to be the anchor on news. And he's not good at that. What he's good at is identifying, connecting with people out in the field.

[00:15:41] And when he finally realizes that his life comes together and he's happy and other people are healed. And so he gives up his egotistical goals for the sake of something more humble. But it's what he's really called to do. And it's a sacrificial step that he takes. And so the movie ends well. And his family is brought together. Same thing in Liar Liar. And this may be a tough question to answer.

[00:16:09] But when I watch movies and in the movie there's a scoundrel, a guy who's just like, for instance, FX show, there's a shield years ago. There was the main cop. He's a scoundrel. He's a dirtbag, for lack of a better word. But he has some really good redeeming qualities. And you get to like him, even though it's going against your moral premise. How do the writers do that? How does that happen where this guy's doing bad things, but yet he's doing some really good things. And you get to like him and you're saying to yourself, but that's going against my moral compass. But I still like the guy.

[00:16:38] Can you explain to me, Stan, why that would happen to me? I'm trying to figure that out because in a lot of the shows we watch, a lot of these characters, they're pretty borderline not great. But then you end up liking them anyway. Well, do you know the reason you like him is because you are like him. Thank you. I was going to say that. Don't say that, baby. Come on. Come on. No, that's true.

[00:17:02] You've probably heard the concept in story writing about having a well-rounded character. What that means. Not a flat character. Not someone who is the same all the time. Well, the reason that is, is because the people in the audience, and this is a totally subliminal thing. The audience does not understand this cognitively in a general sense. But it's absolutely true.

[00:17:25] And it's something that we as writers and story gurus, we work to incorporate this stuff into films. Every character, the good guy and the bad guy. The good guy has to have some imperfect characteristics. If he doesn't have those imperfect characteristics, the audience is not going to identify with him. We're going to say, oh, that's just, I don't believe it. You know, no one's like that. Right?

[00:17:50] At the same time, the villain has got to have some noble characteristics for us to identify and say, well, yeah, if I was kind of like in that situation, that sort of makes sense. Hans Gruber in Die Hard is one of my favorite examples. He comes, he's this really villainous character played wonderfully by Alan Rickman. And this was Bruce Willis' coming out film, Die Hard, the first Die Hard.

[00:18:17] And so Bruce Willis, let me talk about Hans Gruber versus Bruce Willis in this wonderful movie. It's a Christmas movie, by the way. And by the way, it's a Christian marriage movie, although there's this violence and there's shooting up sort of stuff. But this is the kind of movie I like. Bruce Willis is trying to reunite with his wife who is separated from him for her job. She's left New York where he's a cop and he's gone out to LA. She's gone out to LA.

[00:18:47] And in Act One, we discover that Bruce Willis is, A, trying to make amends. He's trying to get back with his wife. And we think, okay, here's a hero. Here's a guy. He's not, something happened in their marriage. I wonder what it was that happened. Maybe five minutes later, we find out that Bruce Willis' character, John McClane, is an absolutely egotistical idiot. I mean, he is absolutely so sold on himself. And he's got to be humbled. Who humbles him?

[00:19:17] Hans Gruber. Hans Gruber humbles him. And what is Hans Gruber trying to do? Well, he's pretending to be Robin Hood. He says, I'm going to rob from the rich and give to the poor. And I just happen to be the poor, you know, so I'm going to take the money. So there's this kind of motivation that the rich people shouldn't be rich and the poor should be poor or the poor should have some of those riches. And so there's that kind of that good element.

[00:19:45] The other thing about characters that we like is that we identify with characters if they're smart, if they're entertaining, if they're funny, if they're logically consistent. We really don't like hypocritical people. But if even if the person's a villain, but they make sense. You know, we said, OK, well, I can understand that. And we start identifying with him emotionally.

[00:20:10] Now, at some point, a good writer will show you that, yeah, the logic of this villain is going to break down. And we're going to say, yeah, OK, he deserves what he gets. But we like characters that are bad principally because we know that we're bad and we go to movies. I have this theory that people really go to movies. They say, well, I'm going to escape or to be entertained.

[00:20:32] But they're really going to movies or reading a novel because they want to read about imperfect individuals who learn how to be better. And that's what we as humans, human beings want to be. We want to learn how to be better. And the only way to do that is to experience some bad stuff and realize what do we have to do to get out of it? So what's that? So, you know, we say experience is the best teacher.

[00:20:57] Well, we don't want to go through what Bruce Willis goes through or Jim Carrey goes through or any of these Carrey or Braveheart goes through. OK, we don't want to do that. So what's the next best thing? It's a simulation where we emotionally identify with the characters and we put ourselves up on the screen.

[00:21:21] We go through those things and we start making decisions with them and we see what they do and what they don't do and what works and what doesn't do. And that helps inform our lives and make them better. I don't know about you, but I like keeping my money where I can see it. Unfortunately, traditional big wireless carriers also seem to like keeping my money, too. After years of overpaying for wireless, I finally got fed up from crazy high wireless bills, bogus fees and free perks that actually cost more in the long run.

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[00:22:44] Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. So my wife likes the, she likes the, what would you call it, egotistical? Villainous person. So that's what you call it. I mean, it says a lot about me. I'm trying to put the words kindly. But what I want to ask you, Stan, is as we're watching movies over the last couple of years and you see what's going on with Disney and all. What I'm hearing is that we don't want to be lectured to in a movie.

[00:23:09] We don't want to have things thrown in in the movie just to be thrown in and told that you're a bad person. Am I right in saying that? Because a lot of this. No, go ahead. A lot of the stuff that Disney and all these companies are doing, they're almost like preaching to us. We just want to go enjoy a movie. We want to see some type of redemption. We want to connect with the story. I mean, would you agree with that? I'm trying to understand why Disney and all the other ones are gone off the rail. I'm wondering, too, if people want to be justified.

[00:23:35] Like, I'm doing something wrong and I want the movies, which used to show the troubled person doing something good and coming out positive at the end. Sorry, I hit you there. I'm wondering if nowadays it's like, here, you can do wrong and still come out good in the end. I'm just wondering. Well, that obviously your general audiences are not going to identify with a film that you can keep doing these stupid things and end up with a good life. That just doesn't.

[00:24:05] It doesn't. You don't have to preach to people. You don't have to quote Bible verses. It's just part of natural law. You know, the whole Buddhist concept of karma and Christianity about doing good and loving others and doing unto others as you do unto them. It's all this. It's true. It's part of natural law. The the. Oh, what was your first question, Gino? Well, I was just talking about. Yeah. So at Disney, how their movies are really not doing. Oh, OK.

[00:24:34] The Avengers, the beginning Avengers were great. I mean, maybe the storyline is changing. Maybe they're just trying to interject characters who really shouldn't be there. There's no reason why a character is there. They're just telling you, hey, Gino, you need to. And it's going against natural law. But maybe if you could give me your fee. Well, there's two things are going on here. One is that they're trying to push a invalid or false moral premise.

[00:24:58] In other words, they're trying to say that greed and and sexual immorality are good and OK. And the general audiences just don't buy that because the concept is wrong. OK. It goes against natural law. The other thing that's going on. And this is one of my little bully pulpits is that let me play Socrates here and ask you, why do you do you enjoy?

[00:25:27] This is a loaded question, especially for a Christian audience. But I'm going to be honest here. Would you do you if there was no moral difference between going to church or going to a movie? Which would you choose? And I say you would choose to go to a movie. And the reason is. And I'm separating myself here from the, you know, Christian theology here, obviously. But the reason is that. A movie will show you.

[00:25:58] And use Dale Carnegie's concept of how to influence friends and people and make friends with people. Because the movie is not telling you what to believe in. It's showing you the consequences of your values and what you actually do and what characters believe in. In other words, it's not saying, oh, the character doesn't say I believe in this. The character does something based on their values. And you see the consequence, the natural law consequence. And that teaches you something.

[00:26:28] It teaches you something by you identifying with the character and you making that decision. In a sermon or a didactic, you're being told what to do. And this is why the better, the preachers that you like are preachers that tell stories. Because you get emotionally involved in the story and you see the consequence. And that's why the Bible, if you count up all the chapters and you make, I did this some years back with the Protestant Bible.

[00:26:56] The Bible is 75% narrative and only 25% didactic. And the reason for that, I mean, Jesus, the gospel say Jesus didn't do anything without telling parables. Why is that? Because Jesus wants you to identify with the values and understand the natural law consequences of your actions. If I keep telling you what to do, you don't have any emotional experience. For instance, here's a good example. You have a little kid and you're cooking in the kitchen.

[00:27:25] You say, now, don't put your hand up on the stove. You'll burn yourself. Well, that doesn't mean anything to the kid. Until the kid actually experiences, puts his hand up there and he burns his fingers. Now he emotionally gets it. So the movies will emotionally take you to a certain point. And then you have to go to church to understand why it is that what you learned in the movie is true.

[00:27:51] So the didactic and the sermon will explain to you the shortcut for how to live your life successfully without going through all the experiences. So I say the Bible and Catholic and Christian theology in general are essentially a summation, a boiling down of all the things that we've learned through life.

[00:28:12] And God has helped us that through revelation, various kinds of revelation, to shortcut, define the true moral premise in our life so we can live a better life. But that's why you don't like the current Disney movies because they're didactic, they're preaching at you, and because they're trying to teach you something that's not true.

[00:28:38] This would not be a Julia and Gino show if I didn't interject a little business or real estate. So my wife is usually, when she says, we try to keep it family and relationships. But Sam, this is important for me and maybe to convey to the listeners. A lot of the listeners are real estate investors. They're trying to raise money. And I told you about storytelling. Do you have any tips on maybe creating a nice story, maybe putting the moral premise into a person's pitch? Like your own personal story. Yeah. Into like, I want Stan to invest in my deal.

[00:29:06] How can I create a narrative or a story or a premise through my storytelling? How can I become a better storyteller? Well, okay, off the cuff here. I suppose, like you were talking about earlier, Gino, if you can come to a... Tell me who we're selling. Set up a situation for me. Absolutely. Good. So then I've got this project. And this could be any entrepreneur out there.

[00:29:36] I've got a business. I've got an idea. I've got a project. I've got an apartment building that I need to raise money for. I don't have the money myself. I have to go out and what we call syndicate, raise that money. Well, I typically have to create a pitch deck. I have to create a webinar. And then I have to go out to individual people, individual investors. So I meet Stan. I meet Stan at a coffee shop. The first thing I should do is, Stan, how are you doing? Tell me a little bit about yourself. That's the first thing in storytelling is I need to know what Stan's thoughts are. I want to connect with Stan on a personal level.

[00:30:04] But then at the same time, I may have these high-level concepts like internal rate of return, cap rates, cash on cash. Stan doesn't know what they mean. And if I inundate him with that, I lose him. So I need to create a nice story, a nice narrative, a nice way to hook Stan into what I'm trying to sell. And at the same time, it's almost like a movie. Make Stan see himself becoming an investor and enjoying the opportunity.

[00:30:30] Giving him an idea of your failures and your struggles and what you've overcome. Well, you can't tell too many failures. I'm like, ah, this guy's lost a ton of money. So you can't go there too much on that. You can talk to me about that. I know. I can't write that. I'll tell you something. I got sort of an answer. But I'm not so sure I'm the best guy because I keep trying to raise money for movie projects and I never do it. So I'm not so sure.

[00:30:59] We've got this Angel Quest documentary. Father Dwight Longnecker and I have been trying to raise money for it for two years now. Now, it's not happening. I took some money out of retirement to do it. But anyhow. But the concept is still the same. It's like you say, what's important to you? What are the values? Start with your values. And if you say, well, I want a safe community.

[00:31:25] So let's say I'm trying to sell the idea to get some donations to build, to take this vacant lot in Detroit that's been people have been dumping trash on it. And I need some money to clean it up and build a playground. So it's the idea that, look, we have two values.

[00:31:44] Either you think the values that your neighborhoods needs to be a safe place for kids to play or parents and neighbors need to clean it up themselves. You can either say, I want to contribute and help that if that's the process. And what's valuable to me is a safe neighborhood. Therefore, if you don't invest, we're going to continue to have crime.

[00:32:08] And if you do invest, we're going to be able to change this and make it a safer place. Now, I have to tell you, I'm speaking from experience here in a way. Not that I've invested in it, but I've experienced it. I drive through Detroit and some of the bad parts of Detroit maybe three times a week. I won't go into why, but I'm not selling drugs.

[00:32:36] I'm actually trying to fix up a boat that's down on the Detroit River. And the only way to get there is to go through some of these neighborhoods. In the last 15 years ago, through some of the previous mayors and some of the previous politics in the city of Detroit, Detroit continued to just go downhill. And it was just a horrible place even to drive through. They've got a mayor the last 10 years by the name of Duggan.

[00:33:04] And Duggan has just incorporated some things where they're one of the big things he's asked investors to do. It's to help give money to the city to tear down derelict houses. Not only have they torn down the derelict houses, but they've planted forests, trees in these vacant lots.

[00:33:27] And if you drive through Detroit now, you see these trees that are maturing, hundreds of trees in these vacant lots. And it's like, my goodness, I didn't know Detroit was a greenbelt or a forest. But that's what's happening. And part of the consequence of that is now you're seeing development of homes being built that are very nice, really great developments. And today, just two days, no, last night, we drove through Detroit down to the Boat and Back.

[00:33:55] And we're just looking at all these nice homes and these nice lots. And yes, there's still homes that need to be torn down. There's still work that needs to be done. But the idea is that where do you want the arc of your character? Where the character in this case is Detroit. Do you want the character to arc toward tragedy and continued dereliction? Or do you want to bring it up? So where do you want to put your money? Where do you want to invest? What do you want to happen? So that's kind of... Stan, I like that.

[00:34:24] So I want to recap and I want to add maybe something to that. I think everybody, when they're starting to raise capital, starting to create a story, understand what Stan's values are and try to connect with Stan's values. I think that's the first important thing. The next thing as a leader, share your vision of buying this property, buying this multifamily or buying this apartment complex or whatever project you have. Share the vision of how you're going to transform that. And as far as the values go, if you're a multifamily investor and you're trying to raise capital, well, where is Stan putting his money?

[00:34:53] Stan's putting his money into the stock market. Well, Stan, your values say that you want safety. You want to hedge against inflation. Well, that's not what's happening in the stock market. That's what's happening with my investment. And let me show you how. So I think connecting through the values is so important and telling the story of how you're going to do it through your project or through whatever you're going to do is going to help you connect because it's all about connections because they're not investing in the property. They're not investing in that. They're investing in you.

[00:35:21] That person is not investing ultimately in what you're trying to sell. They're investing in you. They're not investing in your idea. Like when Uber, Airbnb started, they didn't really invest in the concept. So as much as they invested in the person who created the concept. And if you're out there and you're creating a great narrative, a great story, sharing your values and connecting with enough people that have your values, it'll be much easier to collect that money, to raise that money. Can I add a personal side? Add, baby. Because you really went into real estate there for a minute.

[00:35:49] We went into real estate for two minutes, okay? No, it's all good. Movie theater or when I watch a show. But I do apply it to our own storytelling. You know, people in our lives learn from our mistakes, from our stories. And a lot of times we don't want to reveal that we really messed up or we acted a certain way. Maybe it wasn't so good.

[00:36:17] And I've noticed that over the past five or so years, when I started telling stories of my life about the difficult moments, why they were difficult and how I came out of them, that's when I started connecting with people. And that's when I started helping people. People were like, my gosh, I didn't know other people felt that way until you said it. I just want to thank you. And so I think maybe we can just recap our own story about how we can help other people, especially in marriage and family life. It's hard to be a mom. It's hard.

[00:36:46] Full disclosure, my wife likes to share my shortcomings a lot more than her shortcomings. Maybe I have more. I'm all real. Okay. Well, you should see me on the women's call with Jake and Gino. I am real as it gets. And I am so honest. I talk very highly of you. Yeah. But no, I think it's important to maybe read your book and get an understanding of what your story is, in a sense, and where you came from in the difficult moments. And maybe those times that you weren't so virtuous and what came out of it and the lesson

[00:37:15] you learned. Well, that's exactly right. Yeah. And that's exactly how you communicate with anybody. If you want to sell them something, you say, well, I've been there and here's what I learned. Here's what happened to me. But when I changed my behavior and I did this instead, things got better. Yeah. But we still live in an imperfect world. So there's always something to learn. Absolutely. I could end the podcast right now because Stan ended with sales. My wife tried to bring it into the personal, but Stan's like, I'm not having any of that personal stuff. Stan, a little something. I don't know anything about real estate.

[00:37:45] I don't care about it. I love the results. I love what it does for us. But my husband's all about real estate. I'm all about how to be a better wife, how to be a better mom, a support. And I think it goes together so well. And this book definitely helped the both of us in what we're doing. Stan, this book is for anybody out there who's got a podcast, who wants to write a book themselves, who wants to get a message out there, who wants to write a blog, who wants to do YouTube

[00:38:11] videos, who wants to do Instagram shorts, whatever the medium is. If you can understand the narrative, the moral premise, your imperfections, sharing those, knowing how to share those, knowing how to connect with the audience through reading the moral premise. That's why we really wanted to have you on. When I read the book, I'm like, this is great. Now I know why Disney movies suck. And now how can I make my story better? And how can I make my movie better? That's the important thing. Are you the villain in our story? I don't know. Sometimes I could be the villain. I'm a Hans Gruber.

[00:38:41] I'm a good looking dude. I mean, you know, it's a... Does that make me John McLean? No, yeah. You're more the Holly type. You're more the bruising type. You're a tough one out there. So Stan, where can the listeners get more information on you? Where can they find you? Well, my main website is stanwilliams.com, stanwilliams.com. And there you'll see the links to the moral premise, to my production stuff, and also to my distribution things.

[00:39:10] And, but, or you can go straight to moralpremise.com. Thank you. Yeah. And you have a novel. And there's all, yeah. And I've got the most recent novel is The Wizard Clip Haunting. And there's banners there about that. So you can't miss that because that's a banner on some of the pages. But you can also on the moral premise, there are links to my free blog of which there are hundreds of articles about storytelling.

[00:39:37] There's also a webisode. And, but there are also hundreds of articles and stuff there. All kinds of helps for story writing. Free helps on moralpremise.com. We just scratched the surface of what Stan has. And I just wanted to share the storytelling. Once you take a deeper dive, you're going to see all of the different resources and additional resources that Stan has. And from Julie and Gina, we just want to thank you for being on and allowing us to have you as a guest.

[00:40:05] It was really entertaining, enjoyable, educational. And I think people are going to be able to raise more capital for their deals, Jewel. Probably. Thanks, Stan. We appreciate the time. Stan, thank you so much. Thank you, everyone, for listening. This has been amazing. Thank you. Goodbye.