What Kamala Harris Reveals About Building a Powerful, Memorable Story | Ep 12

What makes a story unforgettable isn’t a mountain of facts—it’s the feeling those facts ride in on. We break down Kamala Harris’s Diary of a CEO conversation as a living case study for how to craft narrative that people actually remember and repeat. This isn’t political punditry; it’s a toolkit for founders, creators, and leaders who want their message to stick in a noisy world.

We start by tracing how an origin story anchors everything else. Harris ties present-day choices to a childhood steeped in civil rights and community service, giving listeners a durable frame for understanding her values. From there, we examine the role of vulnerability: imposter syndrome, shock on election night, and the unpolished moments that make expertise feel human and believable. You’ll hear how those honest beats aren’t weakness—they’re bridges that carry trust across the gap between speaker and audience.

Then we map the mechanics of narrative tension and stakes. Instead of a flat timeline, Harris moves between hope and fear, control and uncertainty, professionalism and private doubt. That push and pull generates attention and gives outcomes weight. We translate those moves into practical prompts you can use right away: define what’s at risk, name the cost of inaction, and show the before-and-after your audience can feel. Finally, we explore why owning a clear voice—plain language, specific beliefs, and quotable lines—beats trying to please everyone. Clarity drives recall, and recall drives action.

If you’ve been leaning on data alone, this conversation will recalibrate your approach. You’ll walk away knowing how to pair emotion with evidence, connect micro experiences to macro beliefs, and use contrast to hold attention. Subscribe, share this with a friend who’s polishing their founder story, and leave a quick review to tell us which tactic you’re trying first.

Link to Original Diary of A CEO Episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/D3lhrrXb4WI?si=oj2vDmCw45GOjz0r

Chapters

• 0:00 Why Emotion Outranks Facts
• 2:02 Disinformation And The Brain’s Memory
• 4:06 Kamala’s Origin Story As Anchor
• 8:12 From Values To Audience Trust
• 10:24 Vulnerability And Imposter Syndrome
• 13:10 Sharing Messy Moments To Connect
• 15:10 Using Contrast And Stakes

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

What could you possibly learn about storytelling from somebody's failed attempt at gaining the White House? That's what we're going to talk about today, and we're going to learn some things that will help you get your story remembered from Kamala Harris's appearance on the Diary of CEO podcast a couple weeks ago. Today we're diving into Kamala Harris's appearance on Diary of CEO. I watched it and about halfway through it, I was like, there's so much I can share about what she's doing here. There's so much of the storytelling that she's doing, and she's doing it so well that I could not not do a podcast about it. So we're gonna jump right into it. I think that there are several um key moments in this podcast, and I want to share them with you, but there's none more important to me than this first one. And the reason I say that is because this is something I talk about all the time, and it and it highlights the importance of emotional content versus logic and factual-based content. They really break down a very important point here that when you use emotion, when you tell a story with emotion, when you capture that emotion, you're going to connect. Because it's those stories, those emotional stories, those stories that have feeling, those stories that have heart, they're the ones that people remember. And if you're running for office, you need something that people remember.

SPEAKER_01: 1:47

Strengthens that approach is the rapid amount of dis and disinformation that is spreading. It's so much, and it just spreads like wildfire. And trying to stay in front of that with fact, much less, to your point, practical messaging and logic. It is a real challenge.

SPEAKER_03: 2:05

Aaron Powell It's funny, because I I sit here a lot with neuroscientists and psychologists who tell me about how the brain works, and they at a simple level, they talk about these two parts of the brain, which is like the rational prefrontal cortex, and then the emotional center, like the limbic system, the amygdala. And they always tell me that the most memorable, um the part of the brain that holds memories the easiest and the best and that garners the most attention is the emotional center of the brain, the amygdala.

SPEAKER_01: 2:29

So if I say that these people, these brown people are coming over and they're rapists and murderers, it's much it's much more emotionally captivating than you telling me about like Statistics on how America recovered faster than any so-called wealthy country economically from the pandemic.

SPEAKER_00: 2:48

In all honesty, if you look at Donald Trump's campaign, he campaigned on memorable things, on emotional things. And that's probably why he won. Because people remember that emotion. Storytelling in emotion is so important. You have to have emotion in your storytelling. You have to have that so people remember you. And I think that is one of the biggest things that Donald Trump's campaign did. He had storytelling that made people feel something. And when they felt that something, they were more likely to vote for him. Because he was just using the emotions, and they might not have even been real. It doesn't have to be factual. Emotions still land stronger than a logical argument. So I think that's a really important lesson, and I wanted to highlight it because it is one of the lessons that I often find myself sharing with clients because it's so important. You gotta have that emotion in there. The next clip is all about how she grounds her story. And I want to jump right in because when she grounds her story, when she goes into this, she then builds upon this in the rest of the episode. So we understand where she comes from because she grounded her story in her origin story. So we're gonna jump into that clip right now.

SPEAKER_03: 4:07

If we start at the beginning, what is the context that shapes someone to become such an anomaly in their professional career?

SPEAKER_01: 4:14

My parents and the community that raised me. My mother arrived from India in the United States at the age of 19 by herself. My mother naturally, at that young age, became aligned with the civil rights movement in in um Berkeley and Oakland, California. Met my father, who had been a national scholar in Jamaica. They fell in love, and here I am. My sister and I were born, and we were born in an environment where everyone was fighting for justice and for freedom and for equality. Every message we got was you are important and you have a duty to figure out how you're going to participate.

SPEAKER_00: 5:00

When you look at what she did here, she in the first few minutes grounded her story in her origin, in where she came from. And that provides framework for us to understand where she's coming from throughout this entire two-hour podcast. Because when she says something about service, when she says something about serving people, helping people, you immediately go back to her origin. She was born during the civil rights movement. Her family said, you know, you've got to be giving back. How do you make it easier? She saw people that were treated unfairly. It all goes back to that moment and it gives us a much clearer understanding of who Kamala is. So that is an important thing, and we can do this with our own story. She also in this uses the micro element to explain the macro belief. She understood what equality meant her entire life. She was often fighting for those that were underrepresented. These things are core parts of how she shows up. These small things in her life that she understood how people could be treated differently has a major impact in what she's doing as the vice president. What does it mean for you? Hey, we all have values, we all have different things, we all come from something and something that we believe in. Connect the dots for your audience. Show them why you believe something and where it comes from, because that's going to make it more relatable. We all have values in our business, we all have certain upbringings, we all and we take those, and they're many times present in our day-to-day business. Explain them. Highlight them so people get you. Because when people get you, they're more willing to buy from you. When people get you, they're more willing to trust you. When people get you, then you're going to be able to win that campaign. But people gotta get you. And I think this here is one of the biggest changes I've noticed in Kamala's presentation of herself. She's actually talking about herself. And it's not just in reference to Joe Biden and everything that's happened that happened there. Alrighty. Next up, we're gonna talk a little bit about vulnerability and humanity. And this is something that I talk about a lot, and it's important because it plays a big role in whether or not people are gonna connect with you. So here we go.

SPEAKER_03: 7:22

And we we were talking about this idea of like, does imposter syndrome ever leave you? And imposter syndrome is a bit of a loaded term, but you kind of assume that people in higher places than you are have some like genetic or mental or something, some gift. They have all the answers. But the higher you climb, with your own continued naivety, you you start to suspect that no one really is genetically gifted or like has some superpower that you don't have. Right. And I'm wondering if you've experienced that in your career where the higher you've climbed, you realize that actually everybody up here is like I'm like that, like, or I'm at least on their level. Have you had that experience in your career?

SPEAKER_01: 7:58

I have. And but I've also had the imposter syndrome experience. And that was when I was first elected DA. And I challenged then in c the incumbent. Um I started out at six points in the polls, which is six out of one hundred. Uh, you know, people recently asked me, oh about polls, polls. Well, you know, if I listened to polls, I would have never run for my first office, and therefore we wouldn't be having this interview, probably. And I won. And it was, you know, it was not expected that I would, at least when I jumped in the race. And there I was sitting in the office, and I thought, oh my God, I'm I'm now the elected DA of a major city in the United States.

SPEAKER_00: 8:36

This clip goes on, and Kamala speaks about her imposter syndrome throughout um the interview. She also openly shares moments of shock and disappointment and grief, not just wins. And that is something that's very, very important as well, because vulnerability is where connection happens. And she was vulnerable in discussing these things. She also discusses how the untouchable people no longer seem untouchable. Everybody's a bit dusty, which I love that term because it's incredibly relatable. And at some point we felt like these are people that are untouchable. They, you know, they've got this certain something and they're better than us, and they're not. And she does explain everybody's a bit dusty. So I love the way that she's showing up as a human here. She's being open and honest, sharing about the wins and the losses. She shares about election night and what happened on election night and what she was feeling and the ins and outs of that entire experience. She shares it very vulnerably. She shares it like she's a human, and that makes it relatable. So vulnerability is important, and she does it very, very well in this particular podcast episode. So, what does this mean for you? Well, what it means for you is that you've got to show up as a human. You have a permission, you have my permission to be vulnerable. You have my permission to share when things are incomplete. Sometimes the mess is the connection that you need to make. Sometimes people need to see that mess. We're all human. Some of us are a little dusty. So do what you do. Serve the people you serve. Connect with the people you connect with. Vulnerability makes you relatable. And when you're telling stories, that's what makes you human. Now here's one thing vulnerability, imposter syndrome, all those things can stop you from sharing your story. Don't let that happen. It's okay to be vulnerable. It's okay to share your story. It's okay to connect with people that are like you. Because those are the people that are gonna actually buy from you, those are the people that are gonna help you out. Please share your story. Don't let the vulnerability and the and the discomfort with that get in your way. So the next thing I want to talk about really um briefly is the use of contract and stakes. Now, this is really important because throughout the interview, what you notice was that Harris doesn't just tell a flat linear story. I ran for office, I lost. That's boring. Nobody's gonna engage with that. She t she shifts between two emotional poles: stability and chaos. Control versus uncertainty, hope versus fear. This tension adds a lot of interest to the story. This tension grabs people. She talks about feeling grateful and blessed, but also talking about being deeply concerned about the direction of this company. She recalls things that shock her from election night and contrast it with the calm professionalism that she needed to project at the end when she was doing her concession speech. This is tension. This tension makes a good story. I ran for office and I lost is not a good story. It's not. I ran for office, and here's the excitement of running for office, and here's the devastation of what happened when I didn't win. And here's what I had to show up as when I didn't win, and I had to give a concession speech. That keeps you interested, that creates tension that people can feel and it connects with them. Contrast makes the story interesting. You gotta make the story interesting. It keeps people listening. She bans this tension in a very masterful way. And she also does something by pointing out what could have happened if things were different. She quietly raises the stakes. If this hadn't happened, where would we be? Now, I talk about stakes a lot in your founder story. This is something that's important. What would happen if? If you didn't take that leap, what would happen? That's something to remember. Those are the stakes. She did a phenomenal job with that in this interview. All right. Last but not least, on these clips, we're gonna share this one. You gotta own your voice and your opinion. And that's so important.

SPEAKER_01: 12:44

Mothers in particular, whose children have special needs and they can't get an IEP. These are babies, the children who are most in need. They're parents who are struggling. If you know a parent who has a special needs child, what that means to their life emotionally, physically, financially, and and we're not even giving them assistance with their educational program for their children. Meanwhile, you're building a gilded ballroom. So the harm it's extraordinary. All those working people, the tariffs, what this is meaning for people. He he made a promise that on day one he was going to bring down prices. And prices are higher for groceries, inflation is higher, unemployment is higher. And by the way, Stephen, it must be said the failure of the Democratic Party will be going forward to overlook the fact that it is bigger than this one guy.

SPEAKER_00: 13:48

So what I find really important here is she leans into the things that she believes in. She is no longer afraid of saying things. It feels completely natural. And I think one of the things is she has embraced her way of talking. And it makes it so much easier to understand what she's talking about. Her stances may not directly align with those of her party, but she's openly saying it. She's openly uh speaking about what it was like in those hundred and seven days. She's openly speaking about the fact that Joe Biden, she didn't think, had her best interests at heart. And what could have been done differently. She speaks about those things in a very clear manner. That's what I ask all of you to do. It's scary, but now she's out there, she's showing who she is, she's connecting on a human-to-human level, and that makes a huge difference. It makes her more relatable, more likable, more willing to trust her, and that is a huge deal. Those are just a few of the points that you can see in this podcast episode. And I want you to take away from this last one never try to be someone else. Your voice matters. You're here. Show up naturally, be yourself, lean into the things that matter to you, even if they might be slightly unpopular. And it doesn't have to be controversial for twin. You just need to be expressing your opinion, which may be different from everybody else's. That's okay. All right. Well, guess what? That is another episode of the Story Lab. I am excited. I'm hoping that you were able to get something from this. If you haven't already, run on over to your favorite podcast platform and go leave us a review. Let me know what you like. Five stars is greatly appreciated, but if you don't want to do that, that's okay. Just leave us a review, let us know what you like, how we can help you, and all of those things. And of course, we will be back soon with another episode because we are here to help you make your story the one they remember. Take care.