S 02 | Ep 8 Mind Movies for Leaders : Persuade , Inspire , Connect Melissa Reaves is the founder and CEO of Story Fruition , a public speaking and storytelling training company , and the author of The Storyteller ' s Mind Movie . She has spent her career helping founders , executives , and enterprise leaders do something most business communication conspicuously avoids , which is making audiences actually feel something . In this episode , Melissa breaks down the neuroscience behind why charts and statistics rarely stick while a single well - drawn character can carry an entire investor pitch . Her Mind Movie Method is built on the insight that the brain ' s analytical and emotional systems are not the same , and that most business presenters spend all their time in the wrong one . She walks through how to build a story around a character whose problem mirrors the data you want your audience to remember , a technique she calls putting heart behind the chart . She also draws a sharp distinction between three types of decks , the internal data dump , the shared leave - behind , and the speaker ' s deck , and explains why confusing them is one of the most common ways presenters lose their audiences before a single slide lands . The episode includes a live story coaching session where Melissa helps shape a founder narrative in real time , demonstrating how quickly raw material can be turned into something vivid and memorable .