Storytelling for Trust, Truth & Profit

1. Trailer: Ivan Illich, the Austrian philosopher was once asked, what's the most powerful way to change society. He said, not revolution, not reformation, rather tell the world the story so persuasive, that it sweeps away the old myths, and becomes the preferred story. To change the world, tell it a better story. Now, if a story can do that for our country, imagine what it can do for our relationships, and businesses. But most of us, we barely thought about storytelling since we were 12 years old, were still trying to influence people with the sophisticated way of power-points and bullet points. We wonder, "I wonder how I can build trust a little bit faster with clients," or "How can I connect deeply with people?" We don't realize that the answer is under our 12-year-old nose, all along, tell a powerful personal story. At Nikee, all the senior executives are designated corporate storytellers, a practor in gamble, they've hired Hollywood producers to come and teach their executives how to tell stories. At leading business schools, they even added storytelling into the curriculum. What does Nikee know that we don't know. They know that storytelling is a hack to trust, truth and to profit. It may just be the most powerful tool in our leadership toolbox, that we've never used. So how do you tell a 20-second business story? Follow the one-to-one story formula. One point, two halves, one unforgettable detail. It's the simplest way to tell a business or personal story. Walk onto your brand new storytelling life. 2. Introduction: Why your PPT isn't working for your clients: Three years ago, I had the biggest meeting of my life. I was meeting with a man who had been an advisor to the United Nations and advisor to the Gandhi family, had joined faculty at Harvard and mentored by a Nobel laureate, and my mission was to convince him to hire me to design ethical leadership training for all of the state government training institutes in the country, just a small ask, and I had 45 minutes to do it. So what would you do? I got nervous. I took the week off. I spent 40 hours watching every single video, every single article this person had ever written or put on YouTube, took notes, was still nervous, but the day before the meeting, something in my spirit broke and I told my wife, "You know what? I'm just going to be me. The way I talked to you at the dinner table every night and share my crazy ideas about democratizing world-class leadership training, I'm going to share that with them. So they're going to love me or they're going to hate me, but at least they're going to get me." In 45 minutes, I went there, I share four stories and I left. Four hours later, I got a call from this man, he said, "Kevin, that was absolutely fantastic. We want to systemically involve you in our operations. Can you start next month?" That day, I learned the power of storytelling again. I went from an unknown nobody to a trusted advisor with the most influential person I'd ever met. So, let's say alternatively, I went and I worked on my PowerPoint all week, prepared it, then I get to the meeting I whip out my PowerPoint, I say, "Hey, here's my solution." I don't think it would have worked because the build trust people don't need more information about you, they need emotions about you. They need to know why you're doing what you're doing, not what you're doing, and the only way to do that is through a story. So storytelling is a hack to building trust, to teaching truth, and to growing your brand. My guess is that it's the most powerful communication tool that you almost never use. We feel safe with PowerPoint, with bullet points, we've been taught by our professors, by our peers to persuade with reason and grammatically perfect paragraphs. Besides who's going to criticize you, if your website is logically perfect? But stories are a risky, they're vulnerable, they're subjected, they're emotional they're arch, therefore they're criticizable, but they're also the most powerful communication tool that you're not using, and you're losing connection and credibility with people as result. So today we're going to cover three uses of storytelling, building trust, teaching truth, and making profit, and we'll finish with the simplest storytelling formula I've ever seen, it's called the one-to-one story formula. 3. Trust: How to build trust in minutes, not years: Storytelling for trust. In 2001, I gave up television. I haven't owned a TV since, but a couple of years ago, I got a little addicted to YouTube. I discovered the Late Night Show with Jimmy Fallon, and I started watching an interview with the actor Will Smith. After a few minutes, I'm thinking, wow, Will Smith is a great guy. He sounds like a great parent. He's real, he's reasonable, he's trustworthy. At this point, I catch myself thinking all these thoughts and I'm thinking, wait a second. I'm thinking all of this based on 10 minutes of an interview. What in the world do Will Smith just do to program my brain to think like this? He told stories. Jimmy Fallon asks his question, Will Smith shares 20 seconds story. Fallon ask another question, Will Smith shares another story, and within 10 minutes, Kevin Brinkmann , who's not even a fan of Will Smith, is thinking, "Will Smith is a great guy." Amazing. Now, I wish I could do that. What is the principle behind this? Will Smith can't walk on to Late Night Show with Jimmy Fallon and say, "Hey, world. I'm a good guy and you should like me." But he can tell a few good stories and then we will come to the conclusion ourselves, which is way better, that Will Smith is a good guy. Now, Will Smith can't buy that publicity. Will Smith can't tell me, "Hey, Kevin. Don't read all that stuff on the tabloids, don't believe it in all." But he can tell a better story that will supplant a tabloid story in my mind, and when I come to my own conclusion without Will Smith convincing me, I'm not going to change that conclusion. But we're the opposite of Will Smith. When people ask us, "Hey, Kevin. How you been?" We say, "Oh, yeah. Great, good." Or if people ask us, "How is your family?" We say, "Oh, yeah. My wife, she's really good, kids great." Or people ask us, "How's work?" You say, "Busy, yeah." But that's not how Will Smith would answer. We just squandered three opportunities to tell a story and build trust we squandered three opportunities to connect with people. When people ask you, "How's your family?" They're not asking you for an answer, they're actually asking you to tell a story, so let's tell a story. If you want to build trust in minutes, not hours, weeks, years, then tell a vulnerable story. Now, all of us have heard, the only way to build trust is over lots of time, maybe two years before a client, is really going to trust you, but then you got to make sure you deliver every time. But this is the standard pastes. In the words of Derek Sivers, "The standard pace is for champs." But what if we could build trust in 10 minutes? Is it possible? I trusted Will Smith in 10 minutes, and I thought of people that I've met and I've trusted in 10 minutes. What did they do differently? Usually, they told a vulnerable story that reveals something about who they are when nobody else is watching. For example, on the Late Night Show, Will Smith was sharing a story about what he and his son, who's an up-and-coming movie star, talk about when no one's watching, behind closed doors. He said, "I tell my son, when you're doing movies, keep remembering it's about loving people. Don't do movies for your ego, it'll mess you up. Your art is a gift to people to help their lives." When I hear that little 20-second story, I'm thinking Will Smith is solid, I trust him. Next time you're asked, "How's your family?" Don't say, "Good." Do what Will Smith does. Tell them a conversation you have behind closed doors. Or next time you're asked, "How's work?" Don't say, "Busy." Tell them one thing you're excited about, and you will build trust because people will get you not something that you could code a computer to say. 4. Truth: How to influence without authority: Storytelling for truth. A few years ago, I was doing a workshop on influencing skills with a large IT company. It's actually the same company that built the gyroscope in your phone so that when you turn it from, like this, it goes from landscape to portrait mode. I'd only been in corporate leadership training for a few years at that point, and for whatever reason, I was a bit more hesitant to share too many personal stories at that point. But this time, I had a spontaneous 22nd story that I shared about appreciating my wife. At the end of the day, I asked five people, share your biggest takeaway from today, three of them and stood up and said, "Man, I got to appreciate my wife more." I'm thinking, that was 20 seconds. This was an eight hour day, we weren't even talking about influencing skills, we were talking about appreciation, we're talking about influencing skills. Moreover, I never told them to apply this to their life. They just did it. But the story even gets better. At the end of this day I'm cleaning up my laptop, and this one-person Santos comes up to me after the train and he says, "Kevin, sir. Can I talk to you?" I can tell you is a little bit nervous. I said, "Yeah, go ahead and sit down here," I said, "What's happening?" He says, "Well, I have a problem because I can't communicate, you see, my wife thinks I take her for granted, but it's not true. I just don't know how to communicate it." So I said, "Well, have you ever tried the same? Hey love, I love your cooking. Thank you." The guy stands up, he goes, "Thank you. I'm going to try that." Like this was really a genius insight I had and he goes off. The next morning, I'm coming back to the same workshop. I'm setting up my laptop in the PowerPoint, and he comes in is until she comes to me, he says, "Hey, Kevin, Kevin guess what?" I said, "What?" "Well, yesterday, when I went home, my wife was cooking, and so, I came up to her behind her in the kitchen and I said, hey, I really appreciate your cooking for our family, and she turned around, she says, "What happened to you?" and the skies, grinning ear to ear and he's so excited, and I'm thinking all that for me telling him a 22nd story. So let's deconstruct this. This guy knew he had a problem, he knew what to do, and he couldn't do it until he heard my, by the way, 22nd story modeling it. After that happened I should say, I thought I got a triple the number of personal stories I share, because if they're mechanism any applications, this is great. So I did that and I kept finding the same thing. The more stories I told, the more applications people made. But the more I told people what to do, the more they just think about it. Tell them a story and they run home and they'd apply it. So this is all a bit counter-intuitive to me. I began to wonder, what makes this work, scientifically speaking. Biologically, when we hear a good story, two things happen, first, our brain releases oxytocin, which is an empathy hormone, second, the neurons in our brain actually fire in the exact same way they would if we were actually in the story. This is called mirror neuron effects. So as a result, we actually see ourselves in someone else's story and our brain actually can't tell the difference between what's real and what's imagined, which is crazy. But when Santos then heard Kevin story about appreciating his wife, he wasn't listening, he was actually doing it himself in his own mind. The story was a mental rehearsal for the real thing. So when he told his wife that night, "Love, I really appreciate this." It was the first time she had heard it, but it was the second time he did it. Now, there is no way to imitate those results with PowerPoint and perfectly constructed paragraphs. So what does this have to do with storytelling for truth? We think stories are for kids. The fact is that the deepest truths of our lives can only be communicated by story. I mean, how do you answer the question, who are you? Or how did you fall in love with your spouse? So there's no answer to this question. Anything short of a story is glib. It's boring, it's, it's blur [phonetics]. We can't turn the most important things in life into sound bites and we actually shouldn't even try. We should answer the questions like, Who are you? Or how did you fall in love? Or why you're doing what you're doing? With a story. They're the only way to capture truth without sounding drite. So how does this apply to our work? All of us want more influence. The problem is those that we went influence over our people like our coworkers are our boss, maybe some client, and we don't have any authority over them. So what can we do? We can do an Ivan Ilich said, "Tell a man a better story, to change someone's behavior, model it with a story." So after my experience with Santos, I included that 20 seconds story about appreciating my wife into the workshop every time. Almost every time someone would come up to me at the end of the workshop and say something like, "Wow, Kevin, that story about appreciating your wife, that was the most life changing part of the course." So without me telling them, "Go appreciate your wife, she works hard." They actually hear the story, they get inspired, and they model what they've just heard all on their own. It's like a magical spell or something. I don't force anyone to do it, but they choose it. So if you want to influence your boss, and you know they're going to oppose your idea if you present it directly, present it as a story, and let them come to their own conclusion. If you present it and directly they'll shut their ears, but if you tell a story, the story will induct them into it, it will release the empathy hormone and it'll keep their ears open, and that's your best chance of having them hear your truth, and changing their mind. If you want your client to think you're the you're the best of the best, of the best, tell a story which sincerely models it. Now, I'm not trying to say this is about bragging, this is actually not bragging, if it's true and it serves him, and it serves their client, if it genuinely shows them what you have to offer, don't tell them a list of your services, this doesn't capture your excellence, but tell them a better story. Finally, if you want to say influence your kids, giving them a good biography, because if they connect with a biography, they will imitate their behavior and you don't have to tell them what to do. Paul Smith said, "Experience is the best teacher, but a compelling story is a close second." So to teach the deepest truths of life, model it with a story. 5. Profit: How Nike, TOMS, and Harley built their brands: Story telling for profits. Recently there's been a business trend to emphasize storytelling for business purposes. At Nike, all the senior executives are designated corporate storytellers. At Procter & Gamble, they've hired Hollywood executives to teach their executives how do we tell stories At leading business schools, they have even integrating storytelling into their MBA curriculum. What does Nike know that we don't? The valuation is a story, not the truth. Nike is not selling shoes, it is selling the story about those shoes and what they mean. They are selling, just do it. When we tie our laces, we're thinking, "Men, these are the same shoes that Michael Jordan wears, and if I wear them, I can run faster and jump higher." Now, the reason that Nike will change to charge $200 instead of Starbury very shoes charging $50 is because of that story. Is the shoes 15 times better than Starbury shoes? No. But it is perceived that way, even though 90 percent of the materials are exactly the same. This is because we buy stories, not products. Have you ever heard of Toms Shoes? If you go to their website, the first thing you see is, "With every shoe you purchase, one shoe goes to a child in need." That's a very strange way to introduce a for-profit company. Then you click on the company information, and the first thing you see is while traveling to Argentina in 2006, TOMS, founder Blake Mycoskie, witnessed the hardships of children without shoes and wanting to do something to help, he founded Toms Shoes, a company that would match every pair of shoes purchased with a new pair of shoes for a child in need. That's interesting, so then you scroll on their home page a little bit more and you see they've given away 75 million shoes in 10 years. That's a good story. Guess how much this company is worth today? Well, over $0.5 billion. That's pretty good, for a non-profit company disguised as a for-profit. How does a 29 year old from Texas build, a $0.5 billion company? He builds it on a story. By building it on a story, he creates the possibility of a cult-like following. By telling such a unique specific story, Blake calls out, "This is who we are, this is what we're about." People hear, and they either, turn their noses and [inaudible] or they go, "You're just like me." They become evangelists for Toms Shoes. It's no longer a shoe, it's a cause. It's an identity. You're not shopping, you're saving the wealth. You're helping a child in need, it's, a true story that changes the way we value the brand. The same Toms Shoe principle applies to every luxury brand. How can Chanel get away charging $5,000 for a handbag, when everybody else in the industry is charging 100 bucks? Or how come the cheapest used beat up Rolex will still cost you $750? Or why are people fanatical about Harley and not [inaudible]? Nobody has a [inaudible] tattoo. Because Harley, Rolex, and Chanel all have a cult-like story. But here's the bad news. To tell a cult-like story, to get that sort of brand, you'll have raving fans. But to get them, you must be willing to ignore, and even offend the 80 percent majority. In fact, your goal is to turn away the 80 percent majority. Because your goal is to find the 20 percent of people that you really can serve. That's your target audience. Harley Davidson doesn't serve Kevin [inaudible] and [inaudible] is just fine with me. When I see a Harley Davidson Ad, it doesn't speak to me. I'm not for them. By Harley being all Harley it serves me because I realize, "You're not for me. We don't waste time on each other." But by Harley being all Harley, it serves our target audience because they see the same Ad and they say, "You're just like me. " and they get a Harley tattoo. This is really good marketing. If you think your product is for everybody, you don't have a brand, you have bland. How do we apply this?You can't walk into your client's office and say, "Hey, we're the best thing, and you should really go with us." But you can tell a story. If it's a good story, a story that fits the facts and their worldview, then they will turn to their boss and they'll tell them the story, and your job is done. You don't sell a product, you sell a story. Here are some simple ways to do that. If they ask about your company, tell them your origins story. Don't say, "We're a shoe company, founded in 2006." Say, "In 2006, I was in Argentina and I saw all these kids without shoes in need. I wanted to do something, so I started Toms Shoes." Don't tell them what you do, tell them why you do it. If they ask about your product, don't say, "We sell great shoes." Tell them, "These shoes were inspired by the Argentina Alpargatas shoe design." Tell them the blood, sweat, the tears that went into making this product. If they asked how the product will help them, don't say, "I'm sure you'll be very satisfied with this product." No. Tell them a story about what others have said about the product. Put testimonies, with real pictures on your website, recorded videos of what they're saying about how it's changed their life. Your job is to make them appropriately revere you, your company and your product, for what it really is. There's no bullet points that can do that for you. Only a story. 6. Practice: The 4 stories you need to be able to tell: The 1-2-1 Story Formula. In 2012, I was asked to train 15 blind social entrepreneurs from all over the world on storytelling, so that they could go back to their countries and pitch venture capitalist. It was a crazy week. It was really great, but to prepare, I read half dozen books on storytelling. After reading a few, I began to get really frustrated though, because all of them were singing the exact same thing. Here's your CliffsNotes version. Storytelling is really important. Here are some really interesting stories. Go get them tiger. I'm thinking wait. Where is the part where you teach me how to do this, that's what I want. I kept reading, I read maybe a total of a dozen books. The best I got was here is the nine point formula for telling a story, I'm thinking man and there is no way this is going to work for these folks, they're pitching to venture capitalist it's too complicated, too artsy we need something way simpler. Something for business people. Out of that, I began to invent the 1-2-1 Story Formula, it is the simplest way to tell a business or personal story. The 1-2-1 story formula addresses and solves the three reasons that stories fail. They're irrelevant, they're boring, or you forget them. 1-2-1 stands for 1 point, 2 halves, and 1 unforgettable detail. 1 point makes it relevant, 2 halves makes it interesting, 1 unforgettable detail makes it memorable. We are going to each step in more detail and then we'll practice with the four stories that you need to be able to tell. 1 point, all of us know people who like to tell stories, but who are not exactly interested in their story. If your story does not serve your audience and you notice they're looking over your shoulder and looking around you're not doing it right. We're not telling stories to entertain people. This is not entertainment. This is about service. Stories have to have a point that matters to your audience. It's not three points, it's one point that answers one question, so eliminate all of the burning trails that pull attention away from your point then build your story around it. Remember, the more that you leave out of your story, the more you will highlight what you leave in, for example, your 1 point could be, I want my clients to know that we can solve their problem. You build the story around that 1 point. Don't tell them, we can help you, but let them come to their own conclusion after hearing your story. If they come to their own conclusion, there will be much less likely to change their opinion about you later. 2 halves. All great stories have one thing in common, change. If nothing changes in your story, you don't have a story you have monotony, but it's not hard to turn monotony into a story. You just ask yourself, what were things like before? What are they like now? This is the structure to your story. That's it. This is not a nine part formula or a 13 point formula and they do exist. It's just 2 halves. We expected X to happen, but now Y happened, or this was our big problem and now this is our solution. Try it out, almost anything can become a story when you remember 2 halves. For example, a couple months ago I did a storytelling workshop for a big company and at the end, one of the participants came up to me and says, "You know, before this, I never thought these corporate trainings helped, but this I'll actually use." It's 1 sentence, 2 halves, and 1 unforgettable detail. It takes maybe 20 seconds to say. Imagine if they would come up to me and they said, "This training, I'll actually use." Not that exciting. Why? Because there's no change. It's change that makes the magic. Imagine a love story where no one falls in love, or no one falls out of love, or no one fights to stay in love. It's not a story, it's monotony. It needs 2 halves. You need something like, before there was a bachelor who vowed to never marry but then he met Aisha and he proposed within two weeks. It's a good story and all it is, is 2 halves. You can test this with any movie you watch at their core, they're 2 halves, before and after. Then you can turn your ordinary conversations into 2 halves and when we do that, we tap into this hardwired love of story and we multiply our influence. Last, let's review, 1 point makes it relevant, 2 halves makes it interesting, and now 1 unforgettable detail. Specifics makes the story. Think of all your favorite movies 1 unforgettable detail will always come to mind. It's usually an image or some quote, so Shawshank Redemption is my favorite movie and you can summarize all movie in this line. Get busy living or get busy dying, or Braveheart you can take my life, but you'll never take my freedom, or say Seinfeld, Kramer's crazy hair or the way that he barges into doors. It's in these details that the story is in a nutshell. Everything you need to know about Kramer, you can learn from his hair and the way he barges through doors. You can summarize all Shawshank Redemption with that one quote, or Braveheart with that one quote. This trick of capturing the entire story in like a single unforgettable detail is something that we can actually apply for ourselves. The easiest way to do it include a dialogue, quote something in the story. If you're the only one there, there's no dialogue then describe exactly what you were thinking when that happened. Here's one more example. The first time that the 1-2-1 story formula was taught was a big multinational company and it was a 90 minute session just to test out the materials, see how it went and at the end this woman comes up, she's really excited. She says, "You know, a year ago, our company had a storytelling workshop and they flew in this guy from Europe who was really good, really funny, really interesting everyone loved it. But I found I wasn't able to apply it. Today in this 90 minutes I learned more that I'll actually use than I learned in that full day." Here it is, again, it's a 20 second or less story and it's got 1 point, 2 halves, and 1 unforgettable detail. Their 1 point was, this was practical. Their 2 halves were, last year I couldn't apply it, this year I can. The unforgettable detail is that quote more is received in 90 minutes than in a full day. That's it. It's the 1-2-1 Story Formula. It's the simplest way to tell a business or personal story. You can hack trust from taking years to taking minutes. You can influence people's lives without any authority over them. You can help people value your product for what it really is, and you can do all that in 20 seconds or less. That's pretty amazing for something that a five year old can do. What if you're thinking going up? Now, this is really good note, but I don't have any interesting stories. Our company is not that interesting, our product is not that interesting, actually even my own life is not that interesting. Then what? Here's the good news. It doesn't matter. A story well-told will always be a story of substance poorly told. What matters is that we love our story. Bo Eason is a professional storyteller and he said, "My story is not better than yours. I just love my story more than you love yours." This is one of the secrets of storytelling. You love your story. If you don't emotionally connect with your story, then choose another one and when you find one that you love, then magic happens. Let's get really practical on this now, everyone needs four stories in their pocket. That is some answer to the four most common questions. Two are personal, two are professional. The two professional ones are what your clients, every single client is asking in their head when they meet with you, but they may not say it. It is; what does your company do and how can you help us? Now, you could answer this the boring way. You could say, "Well, we are a management consultancy and we offer these services," or instead, you could listen first to their problems and then craft a story that models how you solve that problem with another client. The second are personal questions, who are you and what do you do? These are actually a little bit harder to answer than the professional questions. Now you can answer. I'm Kevin Brinkmann, I'm from Mayo. I'm a corporate trainer and uninspiring or you could say, "Hi, I'm Kevin. In 2010, I moved from Los Angeles to India to work on a project supporting the Ministry of Education and through that, I met the most amazing woman in the world and she was also my boss and then I married her one year later and I've been in India ever since," or "Hi, I'm Kevin. I'm trying to make goodness fashionable through ethical leadership training with multinationals in the United Nations." It takes 10 seconds, but at the end, you know a little bit more about me. You trust me a little bit more, you get a sense for why I'm doing what I'm doing and you're more willing to work with me. Here's one bonus question. How are you doing? You can say, "Good, yeah I'm fine," for the rest of your life. But it doesn't communicate anything, it doesn't connect with anyone or you can tell a quick story about something that happened in the last 24 hours. It can be as short as one sentence. Well, after three weeks of trying, we finally potty trained Yohan. Doesn't need to be a comprehensive answer to answer, how are you? It just needs to be a genuine answer. Something that gives people something they can connect to. Nobody emotionally emphasizes when we say, good, fine. But our goal as human beings is that, it's to connect. 7. Movement: Spread a storyteller's mindset: Now I have a small mission I haven't mentioned yet. It's to spread a storyteller's mindset in the world of business. A storyteller's mindset is when we're asked a question, we don't think in bullet points, but in stories. What story would answer this question better than any bullet point could? If you can develop a storyteller's mindset, you will connect more deeply with people, more quickly with people, and more often with people. You'll be more charismatic. Who doesn't want to be better in their relationships and have more influence? But there's a cost involved. It's vulnerability. Socially appropriate, but vulnerable. Without vulnerability, there's no creativity. Without vulnerability, there's no connection. The good news is that even if you're not the vulnerable type, stories are still the most socially appropriate way to be vulnerable. Now, you're not like crying on someone's shoulder, nothing like that. But you're telling them you're struggling, you're telling them what drives you, you're telling them the why behind your product. We want to be connected to something of meaning and stories connect us. We become the stories that we tell and we believe. We just have to relearn the art of storytelling. It's not that hard. One point, two halves, one unforgettable detail. Welcome to your brand new storytelling life. 8. Resources: The world's best storytelling resources: I've read about 20 books and 20 articles on storytelling in my life. But the best resources that I found were not books but people. Here are a few people to search on YouTube and you will learn more about storytelling than any book could teach you. The first is a guy named Bo Eason. Bo Eason was a professional NFL football player who turned professional storyteller. He's fantastic, just watch him. The second is a woman named Brené Brown. She's an academic turned TED speaker. She has the fourth most watched TED talk ever. She's brilliant at sharing socially appropriate vulnerable stories. Watch her. The third is Seth Godin. He's Seth Godin. He's written the 17 bestselling books in 17 years, but that's not what makes him amazing, he's amazing because he's himself. He tells great stories and if you only read one read All Marketers Are Liars, which is all about storytelling. Last, get a YouTube addiction. Watch late night show with Jimmy Fallon and notice how all of the interviews follow the same pattern. Jimmy ask question. The celebrity answers with a funny, entertaining, charismatic 22nd story, over and over. This is not an accident. It's not left to chance. These celebrities have stories in their pockets and we can copy their strategy. There's a few more resources in your handbook, but that's enough to get you started. Happy storytelling.