Storytelling In Business Quotes

I got this story from someone who had no business in the telling of it.

How easily we forget-we in the business of storytelling- that life was the point all along.

Scratch the surface in a typical boardroom and we're all just cavemen with briefcases, hungry for a wise person to tell us stories.

He too had watched as the outer limits of his life had narrowed from the world at large, to the island of Manhattan, to that book-lined office in which he awaited with a philosophical resignation the closing of the finger and thumb. And then this... This! A little boy from Nebraska appears at his doorstep with a gentle demeanor and a fantastical tale. A tale not from a leather-bound tome mind you... But from life itself. How easily we forget-we in the business of storytelling- that life was the point all along.

Storytelling sells a vision of the future.

If we all work together there is no telling how we can change the world through the impact of promoting positivity online.

Having all the information in the world at our fingertips doesn’t make it easier to communicate: it makes it harder.

As I quietly stare off into space, eyes glazed over and brow thoughtfully taut, know that I am going about my business.  I am a storyteller.  Daydreaming is the best part of my job.

My grandmother lived a remarkable life. She watched her nation fall to pieces; and even when she became collateral damage, she believed in the power of the human spirit. She gave when she had nothing; she fought when she could barely stand; she clung to tomorrow when she couldn’t find footing on the rock ledge of yesterday. She was a chameleon, slipping into the personae of a privileged young girl, a frightened teen, a dreamy novelist, a proud prisoner, an army wife, a mother hen. She became whomever she needed to be to survive, but she never let anyone else define her. By anyone’s account, her existence had been full, rich, important—even if she chose not to shout about her past, but rather to keep it hidden. It had been nobody’s business but her own; it was still nobody’s business.

The first business of a story is to be a good story. When Our Lord made a wheel in the carpenter shop, depend upon it: It was first and foremost a good wheel. Don’t try to ‘bring in’ specifically Christian bits: if God wants you to serve him in that way (He may not: there are different vocations) you will find it coming in of its own accord. Any honest workmanship (whether making stories, shoes, or rabbit hutches) can be done to the glory of God.

The business of stories is not enchantment. The business of stories is not escape. The business of stories is waking up.

I can see how I could write a bold account of myself as a passionate man who rose from humble beginnings to cut a wide swath in the world, whose crimes along the way might be written off to extravagance and love and art, and could even almost believe some of it myself on certain days after the sun went down if I’d had a snort or two and was in Los Angeles and it was February and I was twenty-four, but I find a truer account in the Herald-Star, where it says: “Mr. Gary Keillor visited at the home of Al and Florence Crandall on Monday and after lunch returned to St. Paul, where he is currently employed in the radio show business… Lunch was fried chicken with gravy and creamed peas”.

All of the great mythologies and much of the mythic story-telling of the world are from the male point of view. When I was writing The Hero with a Thousand Faces and wanted to bring female heroes in, I had to go to the fairy tales. These were told by women to children, you know, and you get a different perspective. It was the men who got involved in spinning most of the great myths. The women were too busy; they had too damn much to do to sit around thinking about stories. [...] In the Odyssey, you'll see three journeys. One is that of Telemachus, the son, going in quest of his father. The second is that of the father, Odysseus, becoming reconciled and related to the female principle in the sense of male-female relationship, rather than the male mastery of the female that was at the center of the Iliad. And the third is of Penelope herself, whose journey is [...] endurance. Out in Nantucket, you see all those cottages with the widow's walk up on the roof: when my husband comes back from the sea. Two journeys through space and one through time.

We are all storytellers. We all live in a network of stories. There isn’t a stronger connection between people than storytelling.

As Isabel Allende said, “You are the storyteller of your own life, and you can create your own legend or not.” Step

People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

Nobody wants a sales pitch. So instead of trying a hard sell, focus on telling a story that captivates your audience by painting a vivid picture of your vision. When you get good at storytelling, people want to be part of that story, and they’ll want to help others become part of that story too.

I once interviewed a New Age guru who spoke about how unfinished business from ancestors can trickle down to generations twice, even three times, removed. Actions in the present can help to correct the mistakes made in the past. And even if there is no absolution to be had, an understanding may help keep the same mistake from being repeated.

Stories nowadays are put in to squares, just like everything else. Stories are ever changing. They are like rivers that flow, but mankind is busy trying to dam them up and as a result, they become stagnant. They divert the water into square swimming pools, and then add chemicals to it in order to keep it sterile.

As your business is unique, your statement also needs to be. It has to reflect who you are and how you are different from others.

Life is hard and we need people who’ve been in the thick of it to tell us a little something of how to survive and, also, thrive.

The beauty of ideas is that many can co-exist at the same time and propel new leaps in our personal and collective evolution.

You know you’ve achieved perfection, not when you have nothing more to add, but when you have nothing to take away

Experience shows that, once you start using the business storytelling process, you are unlikely to return to your old methods.

When you have just a number or two that you want to communicate: use the numbers directly.

The focus of your presentation is the audience. You are missing the point if you focus on a product or your company.

Your entire presentation is the story.

When you acknowledge the audience's shadow you become their hero.

Leadership is essentially a task of persuasion—of winning people's minds and hearts.

the most compelling business presentations are a form of strategic storytelling leading listeners down a controlled path.

Today’s availability of technology means that any business in any industry can develop an audience through consistent storytelling.

Since the opposition (shadow) is capable of preventing the audience (hero) from achieving success, the goal of a business narrative is to defeat the opposition (shadow).

Using a table in a live presentation is rarely a good idea. As your audience reads it, you lose their ears and attention to make your point verbally. When

When developing a business story, keep in mind that the opposition character (shadow) is just as important as the audience character (hero) is.

Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.

When prioritizing, it is common to use a two-by-two matrix –

You should always want your audience to know or do something. If you can't concisely articulate that, you should revisit whether you need to communicate in the first place.

Communicators begin with generous intent and then surrender the work to the audience to do with as they will, including identifying and resonating with the work in their own unique ways.

Our imagination tells us that being as connected as we are—the ease of travel, technological advances and pooled intelligence—should have produced better results for more people than we’re now seeing.

The sequence that made Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Dream Speech” the greatest speech of the twentieth century had all been improvised. The words “I have a dream” are not in the original copy of the speech!

If you have ever experienced that feeling of being "stuck" with writing, it is not because you haven't put your butt in a chair. It's because you are suffering from emotional procrastination toward writing.

Will you be encountering each other for the first time through this communication, or do you have an established relationship? Do they already trust you as an expert, or do you need to work to establish credibility? These are important considerations when it comes to determining how to structure your communication and whether and when to use data, and may impact the order and flow of the overall story you aim to tell.

Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love, but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.” —Khalil Gibran

When you’re trying to communicate a big, audacious concept, it’s helpful to remember that where data falls short, a story might close the gap, and where story alone is not persuasive enough, data can make up the difference.

While someone might attempt a feeble carbon copy of those ideas you’ve spent years developing, they can never match the undeniably distinctive aspect of your work. Especially if it resonates across multiple platforms and in multiple formats.

Those who are resonating the most with your work, who recognize themselves in your vision, will naturally crave language that speaks to that you-and-me kind of 'we.' They’ll want to identify with your ideas personally and keep talking about them.

Oh, you mean fairy gossip, Eric,” she giggled. “I get the picture,” she said fluttering her lacy wings. “Don’t look so sad, Eric. There isn’t a day that passes when your nosy beak doesn’t find its way into someone’s business. I’m sure you’ll find the best-ever story before

It’s a revolution of storytelling that’s being launched, folks – each of us coming out of our closets to share what we’ve learned – not to preach, explain, impress, manipulate, educate, or bend others to our will, but to fan the flames of wisdom in a world that sorely needs it.

Our digital devices and the outlooks they inspired allowed us to break free of the often repressive timelines of our storytellers, turning us from creatures led about by future expectations into more fully present-oriented human beings. The actual experience of this now-ness, however, is a bit more distracted, peripheral, even schizophrenic than that of being fully present. For many, the collapse of narrative led initially to a kind of post-traumatic stress disorder—a disillusionment, and the vague unease of having no direction from above, no plan or story. But like a dose of adrenaline or a double shot of espresso, our digital technologies compensate for this goalless drifting with an onslaught of simultaneous demands. We may not know where we're going anymore, but we're going to get there a whole lot faster. Yes, we may be in the midst of some great existential crisis, but we're simply too busy to notice.

Capitalism today asks for faith in a god called “the hidden hand” and seems to have forgotten the goal of the original story. Adam Smith, capitalism's original storyteller, “wrote that the ultimate goal of business is not to make a profit. Profit is just the means. The goal is general welfare” (Wink 1992, 68).

And as always when you’re presenting numbers, it becomes much more important to craft a narrative. You have to tell a story. [See also: Chapter 3.2: Why Storytelling.] Your board isn’t in the business every day like you are—they can’t immediately understand the nuances or what the numbers actually mean unless you give them context.

The majestic whale travels the seven seas piping its unique song in the hopes of finding its tribe. The other whales in the sea can hear the solitary whale. But the song to them is foreign and unfamiliar. They’re not resonating on the same frequencies and so, it seems, there can be no reciprocity. The creature carries on, searching high and low for a sign of recognition and response.

He elbows his way—blindly—through the crowd. People are ushering him forward. “Hurry, He’s calling you. He’s very busy.” Bartimaeus bounces forward like a pinball. Feet shuffling. Steps uncertain. Note the context: Jesus is on His way to Jerusalem. To the cross. Where He is going to redeem His people from the curse. He knows this. He is walking straight toward His own execution, and yet for some illogical and inexplicable reason He stops to talk with the blind, smelly beggar living under a curse.

Our understanding of the world of business is all mixed up with storytelling and mythology. Which is funny because we’re missing the real story by focusing on individuals. In fact, half the companies in the Fortune 500 were started during a bear market or recession. Half. The point is that most people start from disadvantage (often with no idea they are doing so) and do just fine. It’s not unfair, it’s universal. Those who survive it, survive because they took things day by day—that’s the real secret. Focus on the moment, not the monsters that may or may not be up ahead.

CLUES! The story must work on a superficial level, and it must also work on a deeper level for someone like you who cares to look back and re-examine. That is the delight of storytelling for me: that it can be what it is, and that it can also carry reverberations, when you go back and look a second time. It’s like life, I think. Life has clues and sometimes we are so busy living we don’t see them. So I write very carefully. And I keep refining and tweaking. I don’t think anything should be in a story for nothing. And likewise, I don’t think anything should appear in a story from absolutely nowhere.

Viola Bai knew how to tell a story. She knew that all the violence is contained in the precision of a detail. She knew how to work the timing so that the bell rang just as the bartender was busy with the fly of his name-brand jeans. At that moment her devoted audience slowly dispersed, their cheeks red with envy and indignation. Viola was made to promise that she would go on with her story at the next bell, but she was too intelligent to actually do it. She always ended up dismissing the whole thing with a pout of her perfect mouth, as if what had happened to her was of no importance. It was just one more detail in her extraordinary life, and she was already light-years ahead of everyone else.

Too many film schools, as well as any number of screenwriting gurus and an obscene number of how-to-write tomes, have made a business of catering to fledgling screenwriters and filmmakers by exploiting their belief that the only thing standing between them and an Oscar is the right kind of knowledge. If only one knew enough, one could easily become rich and famous. Unfortunately, almost all are susceptible to that eternal malady – “that last great infirmity of the soul” – which is FAME. And whilst I don’t deny the value of technical knowledge, such knowledge matters very little if the story one is trying to tell doesn’t matter, either because it’s incoherent or simply because it fails to make us care.

As an audience it seems we’re as good as saying, “I’ll pay attention to your idea if you… * are already being taken seriously in some way * have found your place (professionally or personally) * believe strongly in something relevant to your idea * are connecting (with ideas, with people) in meaningful ways * are finding ways to be useful in the world * are finding ways to achieve more of what you value * have developed mastery and control * are participating in interesting things * and are radiating love and acceptance for self and others.” Your chosen audience will have three or four things on that list they value most in their own lives. And because they do value those things so highly, they’ll be looking for those signals from you.

Storytellers like King make a conscious effort to incorporate metaphor into their speeches and presentations—the “promissory note” being just one of many metaphors in King’s speech. Metaphor gave King the tool to “breathe life” into abstract concepts: • “Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.” • “Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice.” • “I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.” • No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

Question number four: I read somewhere that you were an actor before you became an author. CC: That sounded more like a judgement than a question. MG: It was. Usually people pick a career in medicine or business to fall back on. With your chosen professions, it's like you decided to sail upstream without a paddle or a canoe. CC: Well, performing and writing have always been the same thing to me. You get to be a storyteller in both fields, and at the end of the day, I suppose a storyteller is what I consider myself the most. MG: Well, la-di-da. I know what you mean, though. I was an actress myself back in the golden days of Hollywood - you know, before all this streaming trash. CC: Would I recognize your work? MG: Did you ever see the film Gone with the Wind? CC: Of course! MG: I supplied the wind. CC: [A beat of silence.} How much longer is this interview going to take?

Anaphora is effective in the building of a movement because it increases the intensity of an idea, and intense ideas sear themselves into our brain. There’s a reason why Winston Churchill chose anaphora as his go-to rhetorical device to rally the British people in World War II: We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender. Business leaders often shy away from anaphora because they believe it’s a tool reserved for political speeches. Actually, anaphora can be seamlessly and comfortably incorporated into business presentations meant to inspire audiences to see the world differently.

The life of man is a story; an adventure story; and in our vision the same is true even of the story of God. The Catholic faith is the reconciliation because it is the realisation both of mythology and philosophy. It is a story and in that sense one of a hundred stories; only it is a true story. It is a philosophy and in that sense one of a hundred philosophies; only it is a philosophy that is like life. But above all, it is a reconciliation because it is something that can only be called the philosophy of stories. That normal narrative instinct which produced all the fairy tales is something that is neglected by all the philosophies—except one. The Faith is the justification of that popular instinct; the finding of a philosophy for it or the analysis of the philosophy in it. Exactly as a man in an adventure story has to pass various tests to save his life, so the man in this philosophy has to pass several tests and save his soul. In both there is an idea of free will operating under conditions of design; in other words, there is an aim and it is the business of a man to aim at it; we therefore watch to see whether he will hit it. Now this deep and democratic and dramatic instinct is derided and dismissed in all the other philosophies. For all the other philosophies avowedly end where they begin; and it is the definition of a story that it ends differently; that it begins in one place and ends in another. From Buddha and his wheel to Akhen Aten and his disc, from Pythagoras with his abstraction of number to Confucius with his religion of routine, there is not one of them that does not in some way sin against the soul of a story. There is none of them that really grasps this human notion of the tale, the test, the adventure; the ordeal of the free man. Each of them starves the story-telling instinct, so to speak, and does something to spoil human life considered as a romance; either by fatalism (pessimist or optimist) and that destiny that is the death of adventure; or by indifference and that detachment that is the death of drama; or by a fundamental scepticism that dissolves the actors into atoms; or by a materialistic limitation blocking the vista of moral consequences; or a mechanical recurrence making even moral tests monotonous; or a bottomless relativity making even practical tests insecure. There is such a thing as a human story; and there is such a thing as the divine story which is also a human story; but there is no such thing as a Hegelian story or a Monist story or a relativist story or a determinist story; for every story, yes, even a penny dreadful or a cheap novelette, has something in it that belongs to our universe and not theirs. Every short story does truly begin with creation and end with a last judgement.

All human creativity is an echo of God’s creativity. When God makes man, he forms him in the dirt, breathes life into him, and sends him out in the world. We’ve been playing in the dirt ever since. Just as God took something he’d made, shaped it, breathed life and meaning into it, and transformed it into something new, so we set about our own business, taking creation, shaping it, and giving it new meaning and purpose. Clay becomes sculpture. Trees become houses. Sounds are arranged in time to become music. Oils, pigments, and canvas are arranged to become paintings. Various metals, glass, and petroleum products become iPhones. The same is true of stories. There is nothing new under the sun, and our stories—no matter how fresh and new they might feel—are all a way of “playing in the dirt,” wrestling with creation, reimagining it, working with it, and making it new. Our stories have a way of fitting into the bigger story of redemption that overshadows all of life and all of history. Because that bigger story is the dirt box in which all the other stories play.

At a crucial point of the Battle of Britain, when German warplanes were bombing London daily, every available British aircraft was in the sky to stop the planes from reaching the city. As Churchill sat in a car with his military secretary he said, “Don’t speak to me. I have never been so moved.” Churchill sat quietly for five minutes. He then turned to his secretary and asked him to write down a thought that would become one of the most famous quotes of World War II: “Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few.”6 Only four words in that sentence are more than one syllable and, in six words, Churchill told the entire story of British courage and what it meant to the rest of the world: so much, so many, so few. Those six words summarize stories that fill entire books. “So much” stands for freedom, democracy, and liberty—much of which would have been eliminated if Hitler had not been stopped. “So many” represents the entire population of the British empire at the time and those who lived in the countries Hitler invaded. “So few” is a reference to a small number of English pilots, many of whom were killed in the skies as they defended their homeland.

Hardy reinforces his narrative with stories of heroes who didn’t have the right education, the right connections, and who could have been counted out early as not having the DNA for success: “Richard Branson has dyslexia and had poor academic performance as a student. Steve Jobs was born to two college students who didn’t want to raise him and gave him up for adoption. Mark Cuban was born to an automobile upholsterer. He started as a bartender, then got a job in software sales from which he was fired.”8 The list goes on. Hardy reminds his readers that “Suze Orman’s dad was a chicken farmer. Retired General Colin Powell was a solid C student. Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks, was born in a housing authority in the Bronx … Barbara Corcoran started as a waitress and admits to being fired from more jobs than most people hold in a lifetime. Pete Cashmore, the CEO of Mashable, was sickly as a child and finished high school two years late due to medical complications. He never went to college.” What do each of these inspiring leaders and storytellers have in common? They rewrote their own internal narratives and found great success. “The biographies of all heroes contain common elements. Becoming one is the most important,”9 writes Chris Matthews in Jack Kennedy, Elusive Hero. Matthews reminds his readers that young John F. Kennedy was a sickly child and bedridden for much of his youth. And what did he do while setting school records for being in the infirmary? He read voraciously. He read the stories of heroes in the pages of books by Sir Walter Scott and the tales of King Arthur. He read, and dreamed of playing the hero in the story of his life. When the time came to take the stage, Jack was ready.

Give the Audience Something to Cheer For Austin Madison is an animator and story artist for such Pixar movies as Ratatouille, WALL-E, Toy Story 3, Brave, and others. In a revealing presentation Madison outlined the 7-step process that all Pixar movies follow. 1. Once there was a ___. 3 [A protagonist/ hero with a goal is the most important element of a story.] 2. Every day he ___. [The hero’s world must be in balance in the first act.] 3. Until one day ___. [A compelling story introduces conflict. The hero’s goal faces a challenge.] 4. Because of that ___. [This step is critical and separates a blockbuster from an average story. A compelling story isn’t made up of random scenes that are loosely tied together. Each scene has one nugget of information that compels the next scene.] 5. Because of that ___. 6. Until finally ____. [The climax reveals the triumph of good over evil.] 7. Ever since then ___. [The moral of the story.] The steps are meant to immerse an audience into a hero’s journey and give the audience someone to cheer for. This process is used in all forms of storytelling: journalism, screenplays, books, presentations, speeches. Madison uses a classic hero/ villain movie to show how the process plays out—Star Wars. Here’s the story of Luke Skywalker. Once there was a farm boy who wanted to be a pilot. Every day he helped on the farm. Until one day his family is killed. Because of that he joins legendary Jedi Obi-Wan Kenobi. Because of that he hires the smuggler Han Solo to take him to Alderaan. Until finally Luke reaches his goal and becomes a starfighter pilot and saves the day. Ever since then Luke’s been on the path to be a Jedi knight. Like millions of others, I was impressed with Malala’s Nobel Peace prize–winning acceptance speech. While I appreciated the beauty and power of her words, it wasn’t until I did the research for this book that I fully understood why Malala’s words inspired me. Malala’s speech perfectly follows Pixar’s 7-step storytelling process. I doubt that she did this intentionally, but it demonstrates once again the theme in this book—there’s a difference between a story, a good story, and a story that sparks movements.

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Further develop the situation or problem by covering relevant background. Incorporate external context or comparison points. Give examples that illustrate the issue. Include data that demonstrates the problem. Articulate what will happen if no action is taken or no change is made. Discuss potential options for addressing the problem. Illustrate the benefits of your recommended solution.

recommend anything other than a white background.

In my experience, however, the best way to learn a tool is to use it. When you can’t figure out how to do something, don’t give up. Continue to play with the program and search Google for solutions. Any frustration you encounter will be worth it when you can bend your tool to your will!

appropriate.

Deep down, our minds yearn to make sense of our world. We do this by naming things, creating stories, and using storytelling to explain how everything fits together – from societal norms to who we are and how we relate to our environment. This is what Storr calls the theory of control. The stories we craft about ourselves and the world based on our deeply held beliefs are often flawed.

Leave magical first impressions Become your clients’ #1 trusted advisor Communicate the value you’re bringing to the table Overcome any sales resistance Inspire, motivate, and positively influence anyone around you

In the television show, Mad Men, creative director and Madison Avenue lothario Don Draper provides a quick lesson when a copywriter’s words lack impact. Don says, “Stop writing for other writers.” The lesson is: put yourself in the shoes of the customer. Real life mad man Leo Burnett, eponymous creator of a great advertising firm, emphasized the same point: “If you can't turn yourself into your customer, you probably shouldn't be in the ad writing business at all.” Marketing stories have to be real, relevant, and relatable.

If you do succeed in persuading them, you’ve only done so on an intellectual basis. That’s not good enough, because people are not inspired to act by reason alone

People don’t buy the thing. They buy what the thing will do for them.

The poet Maya Angelou famously said people will forget what you said and what you did, but they’ll never forget how you made them feel.

brands are built by embracing their DNA, their unique identity. “It doesn’t matter what you’re selling, identify what makes you unique and interesting and have the courage to be authentic across all of the social media platforms from which you share your story. Be yourself, put out awesome content, and people will be interested in what you have to say.

If you don’t buy into your story, nobody else will.

Business is in my blood. I don’t know where the need to write books and tell stories came from, but it’s there. It’s always been there. So I might as well write my own books and sell them. I am The Merchant of Stories.

A recurring trend from several past reports is the idea of Backstorytelling, which I have been writing about and teaching for more than a decade. For the past 15 years as a strategist and speaker, I’ve been a passionate ambassador for the importance of brand storytelling. I have created and taught a graduate-level course in business storytelling at Georgetown University. Stories are a powerful tool because the human brain is more inclined to pay attention to an engaging narrative than to a bunch of facts. Knowing this, brands are trying to win our attention and earn our trust by sharing their back stories and vulnerabilities.

He was a chameleon. He could change his appearance in seconds. He was a master in disguise and he could baffle the best in the game (read CIA, FBI, KGB, etc) So, what looked like a man looking into her eyes and playing the rituals of dating, to the girl in the group, was actually the chameleon observing the entrance of the bar behind the girl, near where the group was busy celebrating. It was all in his sinister plan. To wait for Alex to enter the bar and then go for the kill!

Digital marketing success requires you to be strategic to determine exactly what objectives might work for you, your brand, or your business.

Over the years, I’ve launched dozens and dozens of projects and sold goods and services to businesses and individuals. I’ve worked with Jay Levinson, the father of Guerrilla Marketing, with Lester Wunderman, the godfather of direct mail, and Bernadette Jiwa, the doyenne of storytelling. My ideas have built billion-dollar companies and raised nearly that much for important charities

No,” I answered with my own smirk. We had used the same track. The same footage. We only added some small clips, because the story version was slightly longer. All that had changed between the two videos was that we crafted a story and told it. Well-crafted stories don’t need gimmicks to work. That’s the point!

In truth, I don’t think elevator pitches even matter that much. It’s one of those sales techniques you hear about, but they never actually happen in the real world. What the story does reveal, though, is that stories don’t have to be long to be effective. They just need to be as long as they need to be.

The problem,” Sharon explained, “is that they all want to become volunteers.” At first blush that sounds impressive. Getting volunteer help is notoriously challenging. And United Way always needs volunteers. But that wasn’t Sharon’s goal. The programs need money, and Sharon’s job was to raise it. Her story, as beautiful and touching as it was, simply wasn’t doing the job she needed it to. It was doing a job, but the wrong one. Just as we learned in the previous chapter, there is a difference between finding a story and finding the right story. I was confident Sharon had found the right story; the story about the boy and the difference United Way had made in his life was perfectly suited for the task at hand. What we were dealing with was a crafting issue. As we rewound her story and worked through it, the problem jumped out right away. The story itself was compelling, but the message in her story—what people took away—was that it’s very rewarding to volunteer.

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? It’s an age-old question, and when it comes to your stories, a relevant one. If you find your story and put the effort into crafting it, but you never tell it, does it even matter? While the forest-tree conundrum is up for debate, the answer to the storytelling question is pretty straightforward. No.

You have no real ability to ward [disruption] off or to avoid it,” Iger said. “Except by embracing it in some form and using it for the good, or your own good. And so, I just really believe that when it comes to changes that technology is bringing in our businesses, or in storytelling, for instance, bring it in and use it to your advantage. It’s that simple.

This ease of attention is one of the great strengths of storytelling and is the result of a unique leverage point no other form of information exchange has: the storytelling process is a co-creative one. As the teller tells the story, the listener is taking the words and adding their own images and emotions to them.

The Eight & Bob story did more than just convert; it turned Michael and me into converts. We were transformed by the story. We couldn’t wait to tell it. To share it. We became like the sales clerk who had been just bursting to tell us the story. The desire to share it was as urgent and contagious as a cough and lasted much longer.

once worked with a transit company whose sole purpose was moving things from here to there, but they understood their work as being about helping customers keep their promises. Noble. I’ve also worked with title companies who, on the surface, may appear to be the soulless i-dotters and t-crossers of the mortgage and home-buying process. But as they understood it, their work is what makes the American dream possible and allows people to confidently call a home their own. Noble. In business, there is always more than meets the eye, something bigger at play. Telling the story of that something can transform business entirely.

Story is the language of the brain. —LISA CRON, STORY GENIUS

Just one factor alone wasn’t enough to get those results: you needed both attention and trust. What Zak had shown in the lab was the neurological basis for what storytellers have known for ages: stories focus your attention and forge bonds, based in trust, between people. In essence, Zak’s research showed how story placed people at the intersection of captivation and influence.

The power of storytelling is exactly this: to bridge the gaps where everything else has crumbled. —PAULO COELHO

Often, where messages that are intended to be stories go wrong is they stay too vague, too high level, too broad, too general. For a story to be compelling, it should include a specific moment in time or physical space. This component, along with the fourth component, which we’ll discuss next, aids in what I call the co-creative process. Where the listeners actively engage in creating a version of the story in their own minds, and in doing so, the story sticks longer.

The strongest, stickiest stories are those that master this final component. Using specific details in a story is a way to illustrate how well the teller knows the audience. If, for example, you’re telling a story to a 1980s audience, a detail could be a boombox. If you’re telling a story to an audience made up of a lot of parents, a detail could be wrestling a stroller into the trunk of a car. Each use of a detail signals to the audience how deeply the teller understands them and builds a strong connection between the audience and the teller and the message.

After all, we’re not in third grade anymore. From now on, let’s try thinking of them as normal, explosion, and new normal.

The normal is where you include the components. The normal is where you give your audience a reason to care. The normal is the part most people leave out, which is why their stories don’t stick.

This is the first gap in business: the value gap. The gap between the problem and the value of the solution. The gap between the product and the value to the customer. The most important gap any business needs to bridge is the gap between what they offer and the people who, whether they know it or not, need it. To capture the attention of buyers, to convince them that, yes, this is the solution, and eventually to transform them into repeat users, customers, buyers, believers. When it comes to sales and marketing, the value story is king. And the value of a value story starts in psychology and spans the full spectrum of why we say yes.