The Art Of Storytelling: How To Craft Engaging, Persuasive, and Memorable Stories

1. Introduction: If you take a second and think about it, good storytellers have an edge in this world. They can form deeper relationships, which makes it easy for them to make friends and improve their social life. They're more persuasive, which allows them to influence others and succeed in business with ease. They're more interesting to be around which makes them in some more memorable people, something that's especially important in this ever-increasing noisy world. Good storytellers simply have an easier time navigating through all aspects of life, which is why it's important to learn this rarely talked about skill. My name is Richard and I run the YouTube channel Improvement Pill. I've been using storytelling as a core part of my business, allowing me to grow a following of over 2.5 million subscribers in just five years. In this unique course, I'm going to show you how I go about telling stories. I'm going to do this by first telling you many of my personal stories, and then showing you the exact methodology I follow when crafting and delivering them. You'll learn how to hook your audience with a good introduction. How to make your stories seem more animated with your voice. How to make your stories memorable, so that people never forget what you've told them and much more. After going over the methodology, we're going to speak about how to use stories to persuade. When you're meeting new people, building meaningful relationships, and even how to change the stories that you tell yourself, so that you can find more happiness in life. Welcome to the art of storytelling, if fully animated class on becoming an all around better storyteller. If you want to become a more memorable, persuasive, and confident person, then this is the course for you. 2. The Power Of Good Storytelling: It's fascinating what you'll find yourself doing in order to impress people that you like or look up to. When I was 19, I dropped out of college and by pure chance, I found myself working as a door-to-door salesman in the Bronx of New York City. Now, this was the first real job that I ever had. Sure, I did some construction work before and waited on tables, and even worked as a teacher's assistant before. But this sales job was the first job where I actually felt like, yeah, I could see myself growing with this company and climbing up the ladder. It was the first time I felt like I had a career path worth going down, and the first time where I felt like I had some direction in life. I took it very seriously. Now, the way they train you in the world of door-to-door sales is by taking you on what's called observation days. Basically, you follow a more experienced salesperson around all day, and you watch their every move. You watch how they organize their day, how they talk to people, and how they close sales. On one of my very first observation days, I was paired up with my boss who would still go out onto the field maybe once or twice a week to make sure the newbies like me got proper training. His name was Zan, and to be honest, he was the first person I ever met that I admired and looked up to. It wasn't because he was the smartest, the most charismatic, or even the most successful person I had ever met. The reason I looked up to Zan was because he wasn't scared of anything in spite of all his shortcomings. He was like an underweight amateur boxer who could somehow master up the courage to step into the ring with Mike Tyson, and no matter how hard life or Mike hit him, he would always get back up and try again. See Zan was an immigrant and when he first got to America, he barely spoke any English, but worked hard and saved up his money to start a business. However, he was cheated by his partners and he was left with a whopping depth of around $0.5 million. He was then forced to work odd jobs and became a door-to-door salesperson, so that slowly but surely over the years, he could pay off his debt. He was someone that was dealt in extremely bad hand time and time again, and no matter what happened, he always stood back up and fought back. His strongest trait was courage. He would tell me stories about getting pistol-whipped into hood, about getting the police called on him because the solicitation, and even show me the scars on his knuckles that he acquired from spending too much time outside during the winters knocking on doors to try and make sales, so he could make his loan payments. He was the most hardcore I'll fight till I die type of guy that I had ever met. The reason I admired this trait so much was because up until that point in my life, I was still very much a coward. I had a lot of social anxiety and kept it the same small group of friends for most of my high school years. I had a bunch of bad habits and spent most of my time playing video games and watching TV, and up until I graduated high school, had never tried to change or improve myself because I was scared of failure. That's why I looked up to Zan so much. I wanted to be brave like him. I wanted to be someone who could stand up and face the things that scared him instead of coming up with excuses and running away. Back to the story at hand that day on my observation day, Zan and I were walking down a somewhat busy street in the lower parts of the Bronx of New York City to our territory, which is what we call the area where we would be working for today. It was a relatively poor and dangerous area, funny enough, that's actually where you'd make the most sales, and it seemed like just another normal day when suddenly I remembered this clearly, I heard a voice behind me scream. Stop him. I looked behind me and I saw a middle-aged woman screaming and pointing at someone not too far away. I looked over and saw a tall middle-aged man in a hoodie sprinting down the block. Something shiny was in his hand. I looked closely and realized that it was a purse and I could not believe my eyes. This was literally a scene from a movie. A purse snatcher in broad daylight. I looked at Zan, this was the man that I had admired so much because of his courage and instinctively, I felt like I had to live up to those values and standards. I wanted to impress him. Without thinking, my legs started moving. I started chasing the purse snatcher. Now in terms of my physique at the time, I was by no means strong. I was a stick, but one thing I was always good at ever since I was a kid, was running. I was fast, and I could run for long periods of time. I chased after the guy with all my might stop. I ran, and I caught up to the man in front of a gas station. I was much faster than him, so I managed to run past him and I turned around and we both stopped. It was a showdown. Up-close, I realized that he was much taller than me, but luckily he was scronny and skinny as well. He didn't want to fight, it would hinder his escape plan. He tried running around me, but I matched his every movement, stopping him in his tracks. We shuffled back and forth, and that's when I spotted an opportunity. I saw his eyes move left, and I knew instinctively that he planned on escaping in that direction. In a split second, I quickly move forward and slid down with my foot out just as he started sprinting in that direction, and by sheer luck, he tripped on my leg and tumbled down. The purse fell out of his hand, and he quickly got up and ran away. The lady and Zan caught up to me and I returned her purse. I looked up to Zan, and he looked at me and said, "What the hell was that?" Zan just doing my job. It's crazy what we'll try to do to impress the people that we look up to. I want you to take a second and think about the following questions. How do you think I felt after this experience? Do you think Zan's perception of me shifted after witnessing these events unfold? If so, how? What type of person do you think I am after listening to the story? Do you feel like you know me a bit more than before? Take a second and really think about all of this. If you listen to my story carefully, you should have definitely formed some opinions about who I am as a person. Now, I don't know exactly how you're feeling right now. You might have formed some positive or even negative opinions about me, but regardless of what you think, you probably feel like you know me a bit more than before. Chances are you'll remember this story for a while, for a couple of weeks, months, and maybe even years. I wanted to start this course by telling you a story from my past to show you the power of storytelling. See, regardless of how you felt about me after listening to the story, the fact of the matter is, I was able to leave a strong impression on you. I was able to make you feel some emotions to take you on a journey, to give you an experience, and to give you some insights as to what type of person I am. I was able to do all of this by simply telling you a story. Stories are one of the greatest ways to become an unforgettable person, which is now more important than ever in the increasingly competitive world that we live in. I want you to take a second and think about the following things. How many people do you think have the same skillset and qualifications as you? How many people do you think look and dress the same way as you? How many people do you think have the same hobbies and interests as you? The fact of the matter is that it's now harder than ever to stand out because there are simply so many people nowadays that share similar traits as you, and to top that off, because of the Internet, this has only become even more apparent. It's now easier than ever to become another forgettable face in a sea of people all fighting for attention. But, it's been said that facts, numbers, and details can be forgotten, but people never forget the way you make them feel. Stories are one of the best tools in your arsenal that can get this job done, for they are one of the few things that are genuinely unique to each and every one of you. By mastering the art of storytelling, you too will be able to grasp this power, the power to be unforgettable to leave a strong lasting impression on any of your listeners, and this in turn, will enhance many aspects of your life. You can use this skill to improve your social life, to improve your sales or your business's brand identity, and even to improve the way you view yourself. We will be touching on all of these aspects throughout this course, as well as teaching you exactly how to tell amazing stories. I hope you're excited, and I hope you are ready. Welcome to the art of storytelling. In the next chapter, you will learn more about what makes a good story good, the components every good story must have, and by simply learning and adding these components into the stories that you tell on a day-to-day basis, you will see the reactions of your listeners improve drastically. Whenever you're ready, I'll see you there. 3. What Makes A Good Story?: My obsession with storytelling started at a very young age. Growing up, my mother worked as a housekeeper in one of the famous five-star hotels in the financial power hub, that is Manhattan of New York City. She would tell me stories about some of the celebrities that she cleaned up afterwards. There was Bill Gates who would always come by himself with no security. My mother would tell me that he didn't like to eat the crust of his sandwiches because she would often notice those scraps in the garbage can that she would empty multiple times throughout his many visits. There was Mike Tyson who would always be smoking something in his room, even though it was against the hotel policy. My mother would often complain about feeling lightheaded and weird after cleaning his room. To this day, I'm pretty sure she was getting high off of secondhand smoke. There were kings and Saudi Arabian princes, famous actor, and actresses, but the most common type of customer that my mother cleaned up afterwards were businessmen and they would often leave books behind in their rooms. Now the hotel had a policy, if someone forgot something in their room, they had a three-month period of time to come back and retrieve it. If they did not, the housekeeper, that found whatever was left behind was allowed to keep it. Things like books and chargers, things of little significance, were often left forgotten in the lost and found never to be reclaimed. Every month, my mother would come back with a hall of books that she had found a couple of months prior. She would tell me to read them because these were the books that rich and successful people read, so maybe if I read them, I would become rich and successful too. Now, to be honest, I wasn't really interested in reading most of these books. A lot of them were about subjects that I simply did not understand at the time, most 12-year-olds just aren't that curious about management skills, or the economy. But there was one subject that I particularly liked, it was psychology. Out of all the psychology books that I came across, it was the works of Malcolm Gladwell that I enjoyed the most because he would always teach me something complicated in the most simple and entertaining of ways. The first book of his that I read was titled Blink. It talked about how and when we should trust our instincts. I remember he told the story of how Coca-Cola tried to beat Pepsi by relying on taste tests and how their product called New Coke, failed miserably. Malcolm told us this story as a way to show us how sometimes we should not trust our first instinct. I finished the entire book in only a couple of days because I was just so enchanted by the way Gladwell would tell stories that taught lessons at the same time. After finishing the book, I couldn't help but think, "Wow, Malcolm Gladwell, what an amazing man", for in my eyes, he was the best teacher that I ever studied under. See the thing is my mother valued education and had put me through tons of extra schooling throughout my childhood, but I was never interested or present in these classes. I would spend most of my time drawing doodles on my worksheets and copying answers from the kids who sat next to me. I thought of Malcolm as an extraordinary man because he was someone who could do what I thought was impossible. He was someone who could make learning fun. As a way to show him my thanks, I decided to write him a letter. I looked up his company and found his mail address, and I wrote him a handwritten letter about myself, about how I loved reading his books, about how I loved listening to his stories, and a couple of weeks later, I got a package in the mail. Inside was a handwritten note on a postcard that read ''Dear Richard, thank you for writing and thank you for the kind words. I'm delighted to hear that someone of your age enjoys reading my books. Continue reading and continue learning. Yours truly, Malcolm Gladwell.'' In the package was a copy of his latest book, The Tipping Point, signed and autographed by Gladwell himself. This was the first time someone that I looked up to so much noticed me and because of that, this is a memory that I still treasure to this day. I still have the book and the postcard stored away in my parent's house, and Malcolm Gladwell remains to be one of my favorite authors of all time because of the way he teaches via storytelling. The importance of stories has stayed with me ever since. I wanted to start this lesson off by telling you a short little story so that we can dissect it together and break down what makes a good story good. Now there are many components to a good story, but I want to teach you three that very few people talk about. If you can use these three components in your stories from now on, they will become more engaging, capturing the attention of your audience for longer periods of time, and they will also leave a stronger impact becoming stories that are hard to forget and stories that can change the way people view things. Two things to keep in mind. A story must be interesting so that people listen and a story must elicit emotions so that people remember. Which is why I believe that the three most important components of every good story are number one, a relatable character, number two, interesting content, and number three, emotionally charged animation. Let's start by diving a bit deeper into number one, a relatable character. The first component of any good story is a relatable character. Let me ask you a question. Why was the character in my story relatable? Think about this for a second. What were some things that you related with, some things that I mentioned in my story that has happened in your life as well? Maybe you related with the fact that my mother had a simple occupation, maybe you related with the fact that my mother was obsessed with education. Maybe you related with the fact that I wasn't interested in reading most books when I was younger. Maybe you related with the fact that I didn't pay attention in class and would copy homework, or maybe you related with how I looked up to someone. If you related to any of these things, then you would have felt a slight connection with me. The fact that we shared a similarity would have made this story more memorable. That's the power of a relatable character. Let's move on to the next big component of any good story. The second component of any good story is interesting content. What were some interesting things that I mentioned in my story? Take a second and think about this. Can you name some of these interesting facts or events? Maybe the first thing that comes to mind is when I said that Bill Gates doesn't like to eat the crust of his sandwiches. Maybe the first thing that you think about is that Mike Tyson likes to smoke in hotel rooms, or maybe the fact that my mother has cleaned up after kings and princes, or maybe it was the fact that Malcolm Gladwell actually responded to my letter with a handwritten postcard and a copy of his latest book. Whatever interesting fact that comes to mind serves a purpose. These were things that I intentionally scattered throughout the video to keep you entertained. This helps keep you focused on my story longer. That's the power of interesting content. Now, let's move on to the final component of any good story. The final component of any good story is emotionally charged animation, which refers to the way the entire story is told. Now, this is going to be a bit tricky, but take a second and see if you can think of any moments in my story where I changed the way I spoke. Did you notice how sometimes I would change my actual voice to impersonate other characters in my story, such as Malcolm Gladwell? Did you notice how sometimes I would speak louder to emphasize certain words? Did you notice how I would speak slower or speak faster at different points in time? Did you notice how sometimes I would change my pitch when ending sentences? The reason animation is so important is because it breathes life into the story. When you mix up the different ways you can read a sentence or when you impersonate another character while telling your story, it makes the story more interesting. It makes it easier for the audience to imagine the events unfolding in front of them. This is important for capturing people's attention and also for eliciting emotion. That's the power of animation. Now that you can identify the three components of every good story, it's time for us to dive deeper so that you truly understand how to add them into your own storytelling from now on, which is why over the course of the next three chapters, I will show you exactly what you need to do to master each of these three components. Whenever you're ready, I'll see you in the next chapter. 4. Mastering The Character: Having a relatable character is one of the most important components of a good story. There's a very good reason why this is. The fact of the matter is that we humans are social creatures, so much so that we are constantly looking to connect with other people, other animals, and sometimes even inanimate objects. If you think about it, we'll often take creatures that are nothing like us, like birds and lizards and keep them as pets and then pretend like they can understand us. We talk to them, we take care of them and over time, we form a connection with these creatures by imagining that they share the same feelings as us, that they can think like us. Over time, we become more and more invested in them to the point where when our pet finally passes away due to old age, we can't help but shed a tear. We humans instinctively try to form bonds with almost anything and any one if the opportunity presents itself, which is why you must learn how to create opportunities like this for your audience by making the characters in your stories as relatable as possible. The more similarities that we can share about our character, the more likely the audience will find something that they have in common, which means they'll be more invested and they will want to see what happens next. They will hang on to your every word waiting to see what happens to this new friend of theirs. Pay close attention because today I'm going to show you exactly what you need to do in order to make your characters become more relatable. The key to becoming more relatable is by sharing information about different types of things. The more you share, the higher the chances are that you'll eventually share something that your audience relates to. Now you cannot guarantee that they will have something in common with your character, but you can increase your chances of this happening by sharing a wide variety of things. There are three categories of things that you can share. They are number 1, background information, number 2, mini experiences, and number 3, opinions and feelings. Let's dive deeper into our first topic, background information. Sharing background information is when you share facts about your character's profile. Information like where they were born, their current age, their race, what languages they speak, their parents' occupation, their current occupation, what they studied in school, etc. Sharing this type of information is best used very early on in a story to set the scene and to give the audience in introductory glimpse of what your character is like. For example, I'll often introduce my character like this. When I was 18, I decided that I would attend a college in New York with a focus on majoring in economics. By quickly sharing this information, the audience now knows my age, the general location of the school I would be going to, and also my major at the time. Right out the gate, I'm giving them a couple of points that they could relate with. If they are currently around this age, thinking about college, currently in college, or if they had the same major as me, they would have immediately related to my character to a small degree. Now the thing you have to keep in mind is that out of the three types of information you can share about your character, background information is the least interesting, which is why it's easy to overdo it. What do I mean by this? Well, many of you probably know someone that's simply talks way too much when they tell their stories. They go on and on, giving us background information about every single little thing or a character in their story. The experience quickly becomes blend because background information just isn't that interesting. It's extremely hard for people to pay attention to a story filled with background information. Because it's like trying to pay attention in class when your teacher is reading facts right out of a textbook, which is why you should keep the following best practices in mind. Number 1, it's best to only share background information about the main characters in your story. Number 2, it's best to try to do so when you introduce a character, preferably only using 2-3 sentences. Finally, number 3, if you decide to share background information in the middle of a story, only share what the listeners need to know in order to follow along. I'll give you an example. When I was 18, I decided to attend college in New York with a focus on majoring in economics. Now, I wasn't the only person in my high school that plan on attending the specific college. A good friend of mine, David, who I regularly played games with, would also be attending. Notice how I'm introducing another character in a very short and sweet way. I only use two sentences to give you information about my friend, David. Now that you know how to give background information on a character, let's take a second and try it out. I want you to think about your own life and introduce your own character as if you were about to tell a story. Give us some background information about yourself. But at the same time, try to keep it short and sweet, like I did. Just one or two sentences. You can write or say your answer out loud. Now, let's move on to the next way we can make our character more relatable, by sharing their mini experiences. Mini experiences are a much more powerful way of allowing your audience to relate with a character. Unlike background information, mini experiences are focused more on things that have happened to your character as compared to background information, which is just facts about who they are. You can think of these as extremely short little stories that you can sprinkled throughout your storytelling to spice things up. They add more flavor to your story and this helps keep it interesting. Using an example from our previous lessons story, I brought up the following mini experience. When I was growing up, my mother was obsessed with education and she sent me to a lot of private tutoring on the weekends. Notice how just like the best practices on giving background information this mini experience is short and sweet. I quickly tell you about something that my mom made me do, and this gives you another thing that you can relate with. Maybe your parents were obsessed with education too, and maybe you got send to some prep school or Sunday school as well. The most important thing you have to keep in mind when telling mini experiences in your stories is to remain focused and don't get sidetracked into telling another story. Think of your stories as a timeline. Your goal is to get your audience from point A to B and occasionally let them stop at point C, D, or E to look at the scenery. If you stop at point C and you start going down that path, instead, your audience will start to feel frustrated because they want to go to B, not C. C's nice to stop and look at. But when you do stop, keep it short and sweet and quickly move on. Now that you know how to use mini experiences to make your story even more relatable, I want you to take a second and try it out for yourself. Tell us a mini experience about yourself or someone you know, and just like before, try to keep it short and sweet, giving us just enough time to enjoy the scenery and move on. You can write or say this out loud. Now let's move on to the final way we can make our character more relatable by sharing their opinions and feelings. Your characters, opinions, and feelings about things are the single most powerful type of information that you can share. This is because we humans yearn for others to understand how we feel. We all secretly yearn to meet someone that we can connect with on a deep, deep level. The deepest thing about who we are are our emotions, which is why when you come across a character that has the same driving forces behind his actions, who feels the same way as you do about similar things, you start to see them in a special light because you can relate with them on a very deep level. Let me show you what I mean using the example from before. When I was 18, I decided to attend college in New York with a focus on majoring in economics. Now, I wasn't the only person in my high school that planned on attending the specific college. A good friend of mine, David, who I regularly played games with, would also be going. Now during the summer break of this year, before college classes started, David asked me if I wanted to room together with him and after a couple of days of thinking, I decided to decline his offer. Honestly, I was quite ashamed of the type of person I was in high school and always keeping to myself and doing the same things every day because it felt comfortable and safe. Had basically spent my entire high school career running away from things that scared me. Going into college, going into this new chapter of my life, I wanted to change. I wanted to become someone that can look in the mirror and be proud of who they were. I realized that the only way I could make this happen was if I threw myself far outside of my comfort zone, which is why I decided to decline David's offer, and instead I decided to room with a complete stranger. I decided to venture deep outside of my comfort zone. Here I'm giving the audience a couple of powerful things that they might be able to relate with. One of which is the feeling of shame that I felt about myself. Now, anyone who has felt something similar before, especially if they were in high school, would be able to relate to the story on a very deep and personal level. The key to sharing opinions and feelings is to be as vulnerable and honest as possible. You'll want to share your true deep down opinions about certain things in you or your character's life. The deeper you dive, the more powerful this will be. Now that you know sharing opinions and feelings can make your character extremely relatable, I want to teach you an exercise that will actually improve your ability to be vulnerable. I call this the why exercise, and it will help you become more vulnerable in your storytelling. I want you to start off by naming one of your goals and tell us why you want to reach that goal. For example, I want to become a good storyteller because I want to be able to captivate people's attention for longer. Now, it's your turn. You can write your answer down or say it out loud. Now that you're done with that, I want you to go even deeper and tell us why you gave us the first why. Why do I want to captivate people for longer? I think it's probably because I like the attention. I like being listened to. Now, you try. Figure out your second layer why. Just like before, you can write or say your answer out loud. Now for this exercise, you can actually go even further by questioning your intentions behind the second layer whys. Why do I like being listened to? The deeper you go, the more you'll start to understand the true feelings and opinions about your character. By sharing this information, you will make your character extremely relatable. You can experiment with this exercise and examine your true intentions for many aspects of your life. The more you do this for yourself or for your character, the more vulnerable you'll be able to be to your audience. You now know exactly how to make your characters more relatable in your future stories. This is a powerful skill, but there is still much more to learn. In our next chapter, we'll be talking about how to improve the content of your stories. Because without good content, it's practically impossible to tell captivating stories. Whenever you're ready, I'll see you there. 5. Mastering The Content: The contents of your stories play an extremely important role when it comes to your storytelling abilities. The fact of the matter is that no matter how good of a storyteller you are, if your content is lackluster, you will be unable to make an impact on your audience. I think we can all agree that no one is going to feel emotionally moved by listening to someone tell a story about their average day of doing chores and grocery shopping. Such a story just isn't impactful no matter how you twist it. Because such a story lacks one very important thing. Novelty. We humans are designed to seek out novelty. See over time when we are exposed to a certain sequence of events or certain environment, or even a certain story enough, we learn to expect what happens next. Once something becomes too predictable, once it's been heard enough, it no longer becomes stimulating. It's sort of like when you start work at someplace new or when you start a new school year, it's exciting for the first couple of days, your senses are more aware. Everything feels alive and detailed, time itself feel slower. It seems like there are a lot of things going on. But over the next couple of weeks, this feeling quickly subsides as you start to get used to this new routine and environment. You get used to waking up at a certain time and taking a certain route and doing the same tasks every day to the point where your brain stops paying as much attention as it did when you first started. Autopilot starts to take over and next thing you know, the days start to melt into each other, and it feels like you're living life on repeat. Time starts to speed up. Months go by in the snap of a finger, and you find yourself living in the present, less and less. This is what people often referred to as the dullness of life. When life itself become so predictable that our brain stops paying as much attention, and we switched to autopilot. One of the only way to escape this dullness is via novelty. When there is something new in our environment, our brain momentarily switches off the autopilot so that it can digest this new piece of information. And this is why so many people turn to stories to escape this dullness of life. We do this in the form of consuming Netflix shows, YouTube videos and movies. That's why the media industry is so popular because it saves us from the boredom that comes from day to day life. Which is why if you're going to tell a story, you must be able to satisfy this need within people. This need to be caught off guard, to be surprised and stimulated. Your stories need novelty. Today, I'll be showing you three ways you can add more novelty into your stories. They are as follows. Number 1, seeking new experiences. Number 2, becoming shameless and number 3, retelling the stories of others. A couple of years ago, I received the call late at night from a good friend of mine, Tera. She told me that a couple of her friends had been planning a skydiving experience together for the past few months. And at the very last second, literally the day before they had to jump out of a plane high up in the sky, one of her friends backed out, but the ticket was non-refundable. It would be a waste of $200 if she didn't find someone to take her friend spot. So Tera went down her friends list and asked if anyone wanted to jump out of a plane the next morning. She was met with no after, no, after, no. That is until she got to me. See the moments she presented the offer to me, I immediately accepted. Was I scared? Of course. But I knew it would be a good experience because the best stories always lie outside of your comfort zone and jumping out of a plane was definitely high up on that list. After jumping, I can safely say that it was in fact one of the most life-changing experiences of my life. I can definitely tell a very interesting story on the topic somewhere down the line. The first way to add more novelty into your stories is by going outside of your comfort zone and trying out new things. New things are by definition, forms of novelty and talking about them will bring something new into your stories. I mean, how many people do you know that have jumped out of a plane before? Probably not many. It's not something most people do on an average Wednesday afternoon. Oftentimes in life, we are confronted with decisions, opportunities to do something that scares us. Maybe it's when we're thinking about starting a conversation with someone that we find attractive at the bar. Maybe it's when our friends tease us to go dance on the dance floor. Maybe it's when we're debating whether or not we should start there big project or business we've always dreamt about doing. Whenever you're confronted with feelings of anxiety before making a decision, just remember one thing. No matter what happens next, no matter whether or not you fail or succeed, whether you make a fool of yourself or kill it on the dance floor. No matter what happens, at least, you'll walk away with some pretty fresh content for a future story. Now, I'm going to teach you a little trick that will help you overcome the anxiety before making these future decisions that will ultimately lead to more interesting content for your stories down the line. It's called the 3-2-1 Method. Basically it works like this. Whenever we're about to do something that's outside of our comfort zone, anxiety starts to build up within our body. The more you think about it, the more anxiety that builds up. Which is why the key to actually taking action is to prevent yourself from thinking in the first place. Because the more you think, the more likely you will not do this thing that you're scared of, the more likely you will not experience new things that will bring novelty into your future storytelling. Here's where the 3-2-1 Method comes in. Basically, whenever you're confronted with an opportunity to go outside of your comfort zone, like starting a conversation with someone you find attractive, you start counting down from three. When you finish saying one, you must move forward and take action. Oh, wow, I should talk to that girl or guy over there. Three, two, one and you go. Now, a good way to train yourself to do this is by taking cold showers. Basically, you step into your shower. You look at the knob, and you tell yourself, Okay, I'm going to turn into the coldest setting right now, three, two, one, and you turn it on full blast. Doing some variation of this at home will train you to follow this 3-2-1 rule in real life, whenever opportunities present themselves. When I was a freshman in college, I would often go to parties all on my own as a way to push myself outside of my comfort zone so that I could improve my social skills. Now, it's often been preached in the world of self-improvement that if you plan on improving your social skills, you should try your best to stay away from alcohol, as it is a crutch that will prevent you from fully developing self. Liquid courage, they would say is cheating. But to be honest, I absolutely did not adhere to this rule when I first started going to parties, heck, the moment I would walk into a party, my first instinct was to figure out where the jungle juice was and get myself a cup and chug it. See the anxiety I had back then was pretty bad, and this was how I coped. Now, through out my first year in college, this bad drinking habit of mine led to many, many, many extremely embarrassing events, many of which over the years I've managed to turn into fun stories that I would tell. There was the time where I thought the police were chasing me and I hid under a car for two hours. There was the time where I blacked out on the floor of a fraternity party and woke up covered in bruises from having my body tossed around like a rag doll. There were plenty of times where I had drinks thrown at my face or where I was slapped for poorly executed pick-up lines. There are countless stories like these from my past that I've been able to repackage and tell. The second way to bring more novelty into your stories is by sharing stories, events, and facts from your past that you might be embarrassed about. The thing is, most of us have embarrassing things that have happened to us. These things usually bring a sense of novelty along with them because people rarely ever like to talk about them. Most of us try to paint a picture, perfect image of who we are. Because we think if we don't, people will look down on us. People will no longer like us. But the great thing about these embarrassing stories or events is the fact that they are usually pretty interesting to listen to. As an added bonus, sharing these stories will also help you overcome your own insecurities. See when it comes to embarrassing things that have happened to us in the past, honestly, there are two ways you can approach it. You can choose to hide the story and try to forget it. Or, you can own it. You can learn to laugh at it by retelling it in a funny light. If you can do this, you'll actually find that you will stop caring so much about it. You'll find yourself thinking, "Wow, I'm telling people about all these funny things that have happened to me in the past. I must not take those instances too seriously." On the other hand, if you choose to bottle up these embarrassing things, then there's a chance that they'll actually haunt you for a very long time until you either learn how to own it or until you genuinely forget about it, which usually takes years and sometimes even decades. Now you don't always have to tell embarrassing stories because sometimes it's just not the right time or place for a funny story like that. But what you can do is to be more vulnerable in general and talk about your true feelings, opinions, and even actions of your past that you might be holding back on. If you show this level of vulnerability, this ties back to what we were talking about in the previous chapter. It makes your character more relatable, and it also brings a sense of novelty into your stories because most people will not reveal such things about themselves or their characters. Now that you know the importance of using embarrassing things to add novelty into your storytelling, let's conduct a little exercise that will help you use this in your stories from now on. I'd like for you to take a second and think about an embarrassing event from your past. Now I'd like for you to take a second and think about an embarrassing fact about yourself from the past or even from the present. Something about yourself that you don't really tell people. Finally, I want you to take a second and think about an embarrassing opinion or point of view you have or had from the past or from the present. Now that you've been able to think about some of these embarrassing things, you are now aware of some ways you can add some novelty into your stories from now on. When I was growing up, one of the people that I looked up to was a friend of mine from middle school. His name was George and the reason I looked up to him was because he was a daredevil. He would do crazy things like climb up on rooftops, by scaling the wall, swim in rivers populated by moving cargo ships, explore the sewers, jump off of ledges, set garbage cans on fire, and much, much more. Throughout my life, whenever I'm on a date or hanging out with someone and the environment we're in reminds me of George, I'll often jump into a quick little story about some of the insane feats that he was able to accomplish. The fact of the matter is these were all George's feats. They were technically stories about him. But because I was there, I'm able to retell these stories. The fact of the matter is, that you don't need to be a super interesting person with tons of crazy experiences in your life to be able to bring novelty into your storytelling. Because you can always use the stories of others. If you know someone in real life or heck, if you know of someone via the Internet or from a book you read, you can always retell their stories to bring more novelty into yours. I often use this form of storytelling to get certain points across in my educational videos on YouTube. For example, in a video about habit building, I brought up a story of how a study was conducted in a cafeteria when they placed the vending machines with water in the middle and vending machines with soda in the corners, and for some reason, this led to a significant decrease in soda consumption throughout the hospital. Now, I wasn't there for this study, but I read about it before and because I know enough about it, I was able to retell it. I was able to use its novelty to make my own video more interesting. You can do the same exact thing for your stories. Now you try. I want you to take a second and think about an event that you have witnessed that you've read or heard about. Now I want you to take a second and think about a fun fact about something, anything you know about. Great. Use these stories and fun facts more often from now on to add even more novelty into your storytelling. Now that you know how to bring more novelty into your stories, your stories will now become more interesting. This will keep people entertained while listening and will cause them to be more focused on the content that you're presenting. In our next chapter, we're going to go over the last component of good storytelling which is emotional animation. Learning how to do this will allow you to breathe more life into your stories, making them even more impactful and interesting to listen to. Whenever you're ready, I'll see you in the next chapter. 6. Mastering The Emotion: If you think about it when you listen to an amazing storyteller, or when you read the works of a famous writer, or even when you watch a well-crafted film, whenever you are witnessing a story being told, you are recreating it in your head at the same time. This is something that our brain does automatically. When we read fiction books, we imagine the characters, how they look like and behave. We visualize every single detail the author tells us about the scenery. Entire complex worlds come alive all in our heads. Stories are a way for us to relive and experience to some degree, which is why the best stories are the ones that suck you in by painting a captivating scene for you to look at. So captivating to the point where they make you forget for a second that you're only just listening to a story. The best stories turn on your imagination and bring you on a journey, which is why the last component of any good story is emotionally charged animation. Because the way you tell the story and also what your body is doing while the story is being told plays a huge factor in how much your audience can imagine the scene being played out. In a way, this is acting. As an actor, it is your job to make the story as believable as possible. Now, there are two categories of animation that we'll be covering today. Firstly, there are vocal animation, which basically refers to what your voice is doing while you tell a story. This category can be broken down further into three components. First, we have tone, then we have speed, and finally we have wordplay. The second category of animation is physical animation, which refers to what your body and what your face are doing while you tell your story. This category can be broken down into two components. We have movement, then we have facial expressions. Throughout this chapter, we're going to be diving deep into each of these five ways, as well as conducting some exercises for each of them so that you can work on each of these components and learn to add animation to your stories. With that being said, let's begin. The first way you can be more vocally animated is by learning how to adjust your tone. This refers to how you say your sentences and in particular, how you end your sentences. Now I want you to take a second and listen to a short demonstration on this very carefully. He said, what are you saying? He said, what are you saying? He said, what are you saying? Were you able to spot the slight differences in how I ended each of those sentences? Can you see how each of these examples feel slightly different? The first way I said it was by using a neutral tone, basically monotone, with little to no movement at the end of the sentence. Take a listen again, and he said, what are you saying? Neutral tones are the most common way to end your sentences, and you should be using it around 90 percent of the time just to move the story forward. The problem is most people who are new to storytelling only use neutral tones throughout their entire story. They never switch it up. This is not optimal because it prevents you from breathing life into your story. It will make it seem like you're just reading off of a script. It's basically the definition of no emotionally-charged animation. The second way I said the sentence was by using what's called a rising tone, where I increase the pitch of my words at the very end of the sentence. Take a listen again, and he said, what are you saying? Do you see how I raised it a little bit at the end? Rising tones are friendlier and lighter than neutral tones. This is a tone that can often be used when we're depicting someone asking a question or if we're at a part of our story where the main character is speaking with a friend. It breathes a more casual and almost childish feeling into a sentence. It's something that you can use when you want to show the listener that things are more relaxed and casual. Rising tones can be used when there is something funny going on, when people are asking each other casual questions and when you want to exaggerate something. Now, there is one thing you have to keep in mind when it comes to using rising tones. That's if you use it too much, it makes you sound insecure because this is a tone that is often used when a subordinate is asking for a favor or for validation from someone in a higher position. Using it too much will make you as an individual, sound as if you are of lower value. This will usually cause people to want to listen to your stories less. Finally, the last way I said my sentence was by using what's called a descending tone, where I decrease the pitch of my words at the very end of the sentence. Take a listen again, and he said, what are you saying? Notice how it, drops a bit more at the end. There is almost a strong base-like feeling to this tone. Descending tones are more serious and dark as compared to neutral tones. This is a tone that you can use when you want to illustrate a very serious feeling about something in your story. Maybe your character has a bump in with the police. Police almost always speak in a downwards tone because they are people in authority. Descending tones can be used when someone is demanding something from someone, when things are getting serious in your story, when there is a problem. Just like rising tones, you don't want to be using descending tones too much as it will come off as unnatural. It will almost make you as a storyteller, seem you're talking down to your listener as it is a tone that's often used by people in authority. Now that you know about the three tones that you can use to spice up the way you end your sentences, let's take a couple of seconds and practice this. I want you to try to say the following sentence in a neutral tone. Sarah was shot, that's unbelievable. Now you try. Now let's try saying the same sentence in a rising tone. Sarah was shot. That's unbelievable. Now you try. Finally, let's try to say the sentence in a descending tone. Sarah was shot, that's unbelievable. Now you try. Now that you've got some experience using these tones. Let's move on to the next way. You can add more vocal animation into your storytelling. The next way you can become more vocally animated is by learning how to adjust the speed of your storytelling, the speed of which words flow out of your mouth. Let me demonstrate by showing you a couple of examples. I jumped over the bush and I ran and ran as fast as I could. This is normal speed. And jumped over the bush, and I ran and ran as fast as I could. This is slower. And I jumped over the bush and I ran and ran as fast as I could. That's faster. And I jumped over the bush and I ran and ran as fast as I could. This is a mix of everything. I hope you are able to identify the slight changes in the feel of each of the sentences. The speed of which you tell your story can cause people to feel certain things. Slowing your speech down and even pausing between words will make everything you say seem much more serious and dramatic. Doing this at the right time will have people wondering for a split second what is going to happen next. However, it's important to note that you shouldn't do this too often. Speaking slowly is good in negotiations or serious conversations with other people, but when it comes to storytelling, if all you do is speak slowly, it will make people lose interest very quickly as it makes your story feel like it drags on and on and on. On the other hand, speeding up your speech will add a sense of urgency into whatever you're talking about. It will make the scene that you're depicting seem like it's unfolding faster. This is good when you want to illustrate something happening quickly, like a sudden movement or a fast train of thoughts. But if all you do is speak quickly, it will make you as a storyteller seem anxious. It's best to mix and match the three speeds throughout your storytelling, maintaining a neutral speed throughout most of the story, slowing your speech down when you want to be dramatic and speeding it up when you want to show something happening faster. Now that you know how to use tempo to make your stories more emotionally animated, let's take a couple of seconds and practice this. I like for you to say the following sentence out loud how you normally would at your normal pace. Her mind started racing. What if I'm not good enough. What if I look like a fool would if no one likes the end result? Now you try. Now let's try slowing it down and adding some pauses. Her mind started racing. What if I'm not good enough? What if I look like a fool? What if no one likes the end result? Now you try. You can copy me by pausing at the same points or you can change it up. It's up to you. Good. Now let's try speeding it up. Her mind was racing. What if I'm not good enough? What if I look like a fool? What if no one likes the end result? Now you try. Now let's mix all of these tempos and try speeding certain parts up and also slowing and pausing at other parts. Her mind started racing. What if I'm not good enough? What if I look like a fool? What if no one likes the end result? Now you try. Now that you've got a taste of how you can adjust the tempo of your storytelling to make your stories more animated, let's move on to the final component of vocal animation. The final component of vocal animation is what I like to call wordplay. This is when you add other traits to the way you tell your stories. For example, you could play with the volume by whispering or by saying something louder. You could speak in rhythm by breaking your sentences into pieces. You could emphasize every single syllable slowly and you can even add an accent like a robot voice. The sky's the limit. There are endless possibilities here. The best piece of advice I can give you in regards to this is to test out some of these forms of wordplay and even come up with some of your own, then vocally try it out and ask yourself, how does this make you feel as a listener? Every form of wordplay brings along a slightly different feeling with it. You just have to experiment and find out which ones you'd like to use in your future storytelling. Now, it's very important to note that wordplay should be used sparingly and only when it matches the current scene in your story. For example, you shouldn't do a robot voice unless you're actually talking about a robot or talking about someone who acts like a robot. You wouldn't whisper if you were actually talking about someone trying to tell you something at a concert. You would whisper to depict maybe a secret being told. If your wordplay does not match what's going on in your story, it will make your story more confusing and less enjoyable. Now that you have an idea about what wordplay is and also some examples of it, let's run through two exercises to help you become more comfortable with using wordplay in your own storytelling from now on. I won't be able to go over all forms of wordplay with you, but we'll practice two of the most common ones. First, let's play around with our volume. Try to whisper the following sentence; John, come here. I got a secret to tell you. Now let's try this out by raising the volume. John, come here. I got a secret to tell you. Notice how the delivery completely changes how the sentence feels. Now let's play around with wordplay in the form of an accent. Let's pretend that you're telling a story about a run-in with the law, where there's an interaction with a police officer. We'll run through two variations of this. First, we have the angry officer. Police, hands up. Now get your ass up on the floor. Now you try. Secondly, we have the sassy officer. Police, hands up. Now get your ass on the floor. Now you try. Again, notice how the way we deliver the sentences gives us a completely different feel about the type of officer this character is. Now that you have a taste of how wordplay can be used to breathe more life into your stories, it's important to remember to experiment and try out different forms of wordplay in your own free time. Because like I mentioned before, there are almost endless possibilities. You just have to go out and find what works for you. Now that we've covered how you can be more animated by using your voice, it's time for us to go over how you can do so by moving your body. The best storytellers are constantly moving parts of their body to illustrate whatever happens in their stories. Now you don't have to physically get up and move everything because most of the time, moving just your hands is enough. For example, let's pretend that we're telling a story about a track race that we competed in. Most races start with some countdown or something to signal that the race has started. Maybe a whistle being blown or a gun shot up in the air. In this case, you could use your hand to illustrate an imaginary whistle being blown or a gun being shot up in the air, boom. Notice how I added some sound effects in two. This is another form of vocal animation that you can throw into the mix as well. Now, during the race itself, you could hypothetically use your hands to show yourself running at top speed, and when the race is over, you could pretend to wipe sweat off of your head. If you won first place, you can pretend to hold up a trophy. When you act out parts of your story like this, it allows your listener to imagine the scene more vividly. Like we mentioned before, the more you can do this, the more they'll be sucked into your story, the more of an impact that your stories will have. Now, there is one thing to keep in mind about this form of animation and it's that you shouldn't make super-large movements and you shouldn't move too fast because it will make you look a bit crazy, like you're on drugs. It's best if you use smaller movements at a slower speed so that it comes off as controlled. Now that you are aware of how you can use physical movements in your body to make your storytelling more animated, let's run through a short little exercise that will help you get comfortable with more movement. Let's pretend you're telling a story about an experience you had playing baseball or cricket. We'll break this into three parts. I like for you to imagine these scenes being played out and then act out these movements to the best of your abilities as if you were actually there reliving it. First, you adjust your hat to show how you would act when it's your turn up to bat. Second, you swing the bat as the pitcher launches the ball at you. Finally, you look at the ball fly far because you hit it that hard. Good. Now that you've got a taste of how you can move your body to make your storytelling more engaging, try to sprinkle movements like these into your storytelling from now on. Finally, the last way we can make our stories more animated is by adding facial expressions to our new arsenal of tools. Learning how to use more facial expressions is in fact, the best way to add more emotion into your stories, as people will mostly be looking at your face when you tell your stories. The reason this is, is because each of us have something called mirror neurons in our brain. Like the name suggests, these neurons allow us to feel what we witness by replicating the slight movements that we see in another, but in our head. This is where the term mirroring comes from. What this means is that when we see a sad face, we will feel a bit of that sadness too. When we see a happy face, we will feel happier. A serious face, more serious. You get the point. Now, the main question that remains is how can we learn to use our facial expressions more in our storytelling from now on. It really comes down to practice and getting more comfortable with having different faces on, throughout your stories. Even better, you can learn a form of acting called method acting, which is what famous actors and actresses use. Basically, this is where you imagine yourself reliving a scene and allow yourself as a storyteller to get lost in the role, which in turn will cause the right facial expressions to naturally come up. Now, this requires quite a lot of practice to master, but what I can do is help you practice a couple of common facial expressions just to make you more comfortable with the idea of doing so. Let's start off with sadness. Close your eyes and visualize a very sad moment in your life. Let that feeling run through your body and let it flow into your face. Whenever you're ready, show us your sad face. Good. Now let's move on to the feeling of skepticism. Imagine that you heard an obvious lie from a friend. Let that feeling run through your body, let yourself feel skeptical and show us your skeptical face. Now let's move on to the feeling of confusion. Imagine that you're listening to a lecture about something extremely complicated. You have no idea what's going on. The professor is talking, but it's going in one ear and out the other. Let that feeling of confusion run through your body and show us your confused face. Now let's move on to our final exercise, the feeling of concern. Imagine that you just heard some bad news about a car crash. A friend of yours is now in the hospital undergoing surgery. You're not sure what's going to happen, whether or not he's going to pull through. Let that feeling of concern and worry run through your body and show us your concerned face. Great. Now that you know exactly how to add more animation into your storytelling, you've been given all of the tools needed to make your stories even more engaging and interesting down the line. Now, at this point in time, we've covered all three components of good storytelling, which means that you're ready to move on to a more practical application of these skills. In our next chapter, we'll start talking about how you can use all of these components to become a more persuasive and impactful storyteller. Learning how to do this will bring you more success in the world of business as well as your career. Whenever you're ready, I'll see you in the next chapter. 7. The Art Of Persuasion: I'm going to tell you about one of the best purchases that I've ever made in my entire life. A couple of years ago, I started noticing some random bouts of anxiety that would come up here and there throughout the day. It wasn't anything too serious, it would occur maybe two or three times a week, and it would only last for a couple of hours each time. But it actually started becoming a problem for me because, well, the anxiety would usually occur in the evening before I went to sleep. Every time I would get it, I would end up sleeping way later than normal, which basically screwed up my schedule for the following day, so I decided that I needed to figure out a way to fix this problem. I looked around the Internet for a solution, I tried a bunch of things like changing my diet, getting more sunlight in the morning, even meditating more, but nothing seemed to help. The anxiety would still come a couple of times every single week. But by pure chance, while reading a book on sleep, trying to find a solution, I came across an interesting idea. See in the book, the author goes over a bunch of ways you can improve your sleep, and in one of the chapters, he brings up the fact that most people are deficient in certain vitamins or minerals that are crucial for healthy sleep. One of the most important being magnesium. I looked it up and he was right. A study conducted in 2018 found that up to 50 percent of Americans have some form of magnesium deficiency and it turns out that such a deficiency can cause anxiety. I thought to myself, okay, maybe I have a deficiency too, and maybe this is why I get these bouts of anxiety, so I looked around online and I came across a couple of solutions. Maybe I could change my diet but it's tough because I like eating different foods every day and I travel a lot so I can't really cook. Maybe I could take supplements. But I remember taking magnesium supplements when I was younger and it always seemed to upset my stomach and that's when I came across an extremely novel idea. There was a website talking about using sprays to apply magnesium to your skin as a form of supplementation. At first, this seemed rather strange to me because I've never heard of supplementing by spraying something on your skin before, so I did some digging and I discovered that, yes, magnesium can actually be absorbed via your skin, which means that a spray that does this could work in theory. Why not? I'll give it a shot, I ended up ordering this magnesium supplement spray, and a couple of days later it arrived and what happened next blew my mind. A couple of days after receiving the bottle, I had a small bout of anxiety again, I could feel it coming. I could feel the upper part of my chest tightening up, so I quickly grab the bottle and I sprayed some of the solutions on that area and wow, within just a minute, I started feeling better, the anxiety actually went away. Ever since then, whenever I'd get anxiety, I would reach for the bottle, do two or three sprays on my chest, and within minutes, the anxiety would be gone. The best part is after a couple of weeks of doing this, I stopped getting anxiety as often. Nowadays, I only get it maybe once or twice every month. It's significantly less than before that's for sure. All of this was made possible by simply spraying something on my chest. Now the best thing about this is that I've actually partnered up with the same company that I bought these sprays from, and I have a special offer for you today. We will be giving away an entire bottle of this amazing spray for just $19.99 plus shipping and handling. As an extra bonus will even throw in an extra mini bottle for free, which you can give to a friend or a loved one. On top of all of that, if you are unsatisfied with the results, you can always return the bottles with no extra cost and get all of your money back. This promotion ends in exactly one hour so if you're someone who suffers from anxiety or from insomnia and you want a solution that will actually work, just click on this video right now and you will be brought to a link, where you can learn more about the details. Just kidding, I'm guessing by now that some of you are actually interested in buying a bottle of this magnesium spray. Unfortunately, I am not actually partnered with any company that offers one. Over the course of the last few chapters, I taught you about some of the components that make up a good story but stories can be used for a wide variety of things, not just entertainment, and depending on what you plan on using your story for, you need to follow a different structure. Which is why I wanted to start this lesson off by showing you how I usually sell things so that you can get a taste of one of my favorite structures when it comes to storytelling, which is something that I like to call persuasive storytelling. Persuasive storytelling can be used whenever you want to sell something. Now you don't necessarily have to use it to sell a product or a service as the structure can actually be used to persuade people about things in general. Persuasive storytelling can sell products, services, ideas, and even beliefs. Let me show you an example. Recently, I decided to take half of my entire net worth, which has half of all the money that I've ever earned and saved, and I decided to invest all of it into one particular space. Today, I'm going to tell you what that spaces and also why. Ever since I was a kid, I loved playing video games. I started out with the original Pokemon game on the original Game Boy, and over the years, I gradually moved on to computer games when I got my first desktop computer. Now, the amount of time that I spent playing games increased tenfold when my family finally got around to upgrading our Internet connection because I was finally able to play MMORPGs, which stands for Massive Multiplayer Online Role-playing Games. The MMORPG that I spent the most time on logging in over five hours a day was called MapleStory. You got to understand something, MapleStory wasn't just a game, it was an entire world. See, unlike other games where there is a clear goal, there really wasn't a clear goal in MapleStory. Sure you could go on quests and kill monsters and level up. But you could also just hang out in the park and talk to people, you could sit around and play board games with others, you could try and start a business and make money. You could travel the world and explore new places, you could get a pet, and you could even get married. What's crazy now that I think about it is that during those 5-6 years of my life where I was an active player, I spent more time thinking about my life inside this virtual world than I did about my life in the real world. Heck, even my goals at the time were about reaching certain benchmarks in the game. If you asked me what I wanted to accomplish in life when I was 14 years old, I would quickly tell you my main goal is to reach Level 70 in MapleStory and to have more than 1 billion Mesos in-game. Mesos being the form of currency for this world. I was so motivated to reach these goals that I would daydream about them all day long. I would spend hours offline reading through forum posts, learning about ways to level up faster, and also learning about the economy of the game so that I can make more Mesos. Thinking back my identity in MapleStory during that period of time was more important to me than my identity in real life. That's why I invested so much time and energy focused on accumulating these in-game currencies. Now at this point in time, you're probably wondering, why am I telling you about how much of a nerd I was back then? Well, the fact of the matter is even if you are not a gamer, like I was back then, you're probably still spending equally as much time in the virtual world as I was. A study conducted in 2019, found that the average person now spends around six and a half hours every day online. That's over 40 percent of your waking day. Now, you might not be playing games, but many of you still have an online identity in the form of social media, your Facebook, your Instagram, your TikTok. The fact of the matter is that nowadays we spend more time maintaining and caring about our virtual identity, oftentimes more than we do about our physical identity. This is where I had my epiphany. I realized that people in the future will spend more and more time in this digital world. As we become more invested in our virtual identities, we will start caring more and more about our lives in this other world. I mean, just think about how much time people are already spending, managing their virtual identities, taking the perfect pictures, applying filters, gaining followers, getting likes, all of which are only real in the virtual world. Now, there is a certain log of human nature that you need to know about. Whenever there is an ecosystem with a large group of people, something ends up becoming a form of money in order to transfer value, in order to trade favors, in order to trade goods, in order to do business. Money naturally appears wherever they are humans. In prisons, money appears in the form of cigarettes, shanks, and packs of ramen. In America, money appears in the form of credit cards, dollar bills, and coins. The virtual world is also an ecosystem with an ever growing population of users, many of whom will be spending more time in this ecosystem in the future. Which is why I believe that's in the future there will be different forms of digital money that people will use to trade online. Now, to put things into perspective, according to the CIA, there's currently about $80 trillion of money floating around in the real-world. On the other hand, there's currently only about $250 billion of digital money, also known as crypto currencies, circulating right now in the digital world. This means that the amount of money in the digital world is currently 320 times smaller than the amount of money in the real-world. Digital money is 0.3 percent the size of real-world money. Yet this is a world that we spend 40 percent of our waking day in. I think that in the future this number will rise. As people become more invested in their life in the virtual world, the usage of digital currencies will rise and more wealth will be moved into this world. If my thesis is correct, and just one percent of the total real-world wealth gets moved into the digital world. All of the money that I've invested in this world will increase threefold. If just five percent of the real-world wealth goes into the digital world, then my investments will increase 15-fold. If 10 percent move in, my investments will increase 30 fold. As someone who spent more than half his life in the virtual world, I can very well see this happening in the future, which is why I decided to invest half of my life savings into this world. Now, what does this mean for you? Well, first off, I want to say that I am not a financial advisor. You should not invest your money based on what I say, I am simply sharing my opinion here. But if you are someone who believes that people will value the digital world more in the future. Then the first thing you got to do is educate yourself some more on how this all works, which is why I would suggest you start off by learning about what cryptocurrencies are, how they work, and why some of them have value. if you're interested in doing so, I actually have a free mini course going over everything you need to know about the ins and outs of this alternative form of money. I'm going to be giving away free access to the first 100 people who sign up. Make sure you hurry and click on this video and become one of the first 100 people who get my mini-course for free. Just kidding again. Hopefully by now some of you have a slightly different opinion about the digital world and the future. You might not totally be sold on this idea but I'm sure that some of you are definitely more open to the idea now. That was actually my goal with this story. I wanted to show you how you can use persuasive storytelling to change the beliefs within people, to spread new ideas. Now that you've got a good taste of persuasive storytelling in both the form used to sell products and ideas. It's time for me to teach you the structure behind these types of stories. Now, full disclosure, this is actually a format that I'm adopting from one of the most famous online marketers in the world, Russell Brunson. It's what he calls the hook story offer structure. The hook is the very beginning of our story. Its goal is to quickly get people interested, curious enough to stick around and hear the rest of your story. In our first example, this was the hook. I'm going to tell you about one of the best purchases that I've ever made in my entire life. In our second example, this was the hook. Recently I decided to take half of my entire net worth, which is half of all the money that I've ever earned and saved. I decided to invest all of it into one particular space. Today I'm going to tell you what that space is and also why. The story is the largest part of the actual story. It's goal is to give people an epiphany moment, almost like an aha moment where the gears click in their head and they realize something new about the world. In our first example, the story was about how spraying something on my chest fixed my anxiety. In our second example, the story was about how I lived in another world when I was a teenager and what this means for the future, where more people will be invested in their virtual identities. We'll dive deeper into the various types of stories you can tell here in a future chapter. But for now, let's move on to the final part of the persuasive storytelling structure, which is the offer. The offer is the part of your persuasive story where you convince your audience to do something. In our first example, it was me selling the bottle of spray. In our second example, it was me telling you to check out my free course. Now that you've got a taste of persuasive storytelling as well as the structure. It's time for us to dive into the details. In our next chapter, we'll dive into each of these three steps, going over all the ins and outs, the psychology behind why they work, and how you can optimize them. We'll be starting off with the hook. If you learn to master the hook, you'll be able to catch people's attention and get them to listen to you, which is now more important than ever in the increasingly competitive environment that we all live in. I'll see you in the next chapter. 8. How To Hook Your Audience: Have you ever struggled with getting people to listen to you? Well, if you watch this lesson till the very end, you're going to learn exactly how to get people to hang on to your every word as if you were the only thing that mattered in the world. Today I'm going to teach you the Art of grabbing people's attention by using the hook. Now, what you have to understand is that we are currently living in a society that is becoming more and more dominated by distractions with the adoption of the Internet and the massive widespread use of social media, we are now bombarded nonstop for the majority of the day with endless new content, thousands of new content creators all trying to get us to focus our attention on them, their work, and their message. Which is why having a good hook is now more important than ever. If you do not have a good hook, people will not stay and listen to your entire story. They might not even stay long enough for you to start your story. Now, what exactly is the hook? Well, the hook is the very first thing that you say to someone when you're about to tell your story, and honestly, it can be anything. The only two things that really matter is number 1, it must be short and sweet, lasting no longer than 30 seconds. If you could drop it down to 20 seconds, that's even better, and number 2, it must give the listener a good reason to stay. They must feel like they will gain something from investing their time with you and your story. Now, there are many different types of hooks, all of which can be effective. I'll be going over some of the more common ones in today's lesson. Starting off, we have what's called a value proposition hook. A value proposition hook is a hook that gets people interested in a story by giving them a logical reason to stay. It's implying that, "Hey, if you stay and listen to me, you will gain x amount of value." These hooks are extremely powerful when it comes to sales because it offers a solution to a problem. If you were paying close attention, you might have realized that I was actually using a value proposition hook to start this lesson off. I told you that if you paid close attention till the very end, that you would learn how to get people to hang on to your every word. For those of you that can relate to this problem, if you're someone that struggles with getting people to pay attention to you, this value proposition will sound very enticing, as it solves a major problem in your life, and because of this, you will be much more likely to watch this lesson till the end. In order to execute a good value proposition hook, you should first start off by figuring out what pain point your viewer might have? Think about the product or service or idea that you want to promote and ask yourself, what does my ideal customer for this product struggle with? For example, if I'm trying to promote a weight loss product, the main thing my potential customer struggles with is probably their weight. But it's possible to go deeper than that. Why is this extra weight a problem for them? Well, maybe it's because it causes them to feel ashamed about their body and it drops their levels of confidence. Knowing this, I can say something like, are you sick and tired of feeling ashamed every time you look in the mirror? Notice how I mentioned their problem and also mentioned in emotion that I think they might have felt before because of this problem. When I do this, my value proposition hook becomes more powerful because they feel like an entire story has been specifically crafted just for them as it is a very specific problem. Continuing from our example from before, I could say something like, "Are you sick and tired of feeling ashamed every time you look in the mirror?" Well, today I'm going to show you how I lost 20 pounds of fat in under two months without even having to exercise. Notice how I mentioned their problem, and this time I've offered a solution which is telling them about how I was able to lose so much weight in such a short period of time. Now they have an incentive to stick around because they will gain knowledge which has value if they do. Now I want you to take a second and think about a product, service or even an idea that you might want to promote in the future. Now that you have this in mind, I want you to think about a problem that your ideal listener might have that your product or service solves. Great. Now I want you to pause to think about how you can offer a solution to this problem. Great, once you've done all of that, you can put it all together and come up with your own value proposition hook. The next hook that we're going to go over is what's called a curiosity hook. This is essentially a hook that peak someone's interests by giving them some information that causes them to want more. For example, in one of my recent videos on my YouTube channel, I went over my investing portfolio, and in the beginning of that video, I mentioned that I invested over a third of my entire life savings into one thing, and I don't tell you what that thing is until much later on in the video. This is an extremely powerful hook because obviously this one thing that I'm going to tell you about must be extremely important or there must be a very good reason why I decided to invest so much in my life savings into it. If you are someone who dabbles in investing, you would be extremely curious about what this thing could be. Because of this, you'll stick around until I tell you. Curiosity hooks are extremely powerful because it takes advantage of a psychological phenomenon. We humans like to finish things. If you work on a puzzle and it's 90 percent complete, you will feel uncomfortable if you choose not to finish it. There is a certain degree of satisfaction when we complete the puzzle. The same concept can be applied to hooks. When you use a curiosity hook, you are essentially giving your listener 90 percent of the information they need to complete a thought. But you withhold the final piece of the puzzle until later on in your story. It's like how extremely addictive TV shows will use cliff hangers at the end of their episodes, a new piece of information is presented to you with a new puzzle to solve, and the moment they do this, they end the episode. You become so curious as to what happens next. Your desire to complete this puzzle is so high that you actually end up watching the next episode causing you to binge watch the entire series all day until you're done with the season. The directors of these great shows use curiosity at the end of their stories. But the same thing can be applied to the beginning of a story with your hook. Here are some examples of curiosity hooks. I was never afraid of ghosts until, or I'm going to tell you about the single most important lesson that I learned in my twenties. But first, let me tell you about, notice how for both of these examples, I'm giving you information about the story, about what's to come, but I'm not completing it. The only way you will be able to complete the puzzle and feel satisfied is if you actually commit to listening to my story. Now you try. I want you to think about a story that you can tell. It can be about anything. Great. Now I want you to give us some information. Well, remember to leave out the most important 10 percent. Congratulations, you now know how to use a curiosity hook. Next up we have what's called a pattern interrupt hook. This is a hook that is extremely unexpected, when you do something so shocking or random that it causes people to wake up and pay attention. What do I mean by this? Well, you see the thing is when people consume content online, they usually fall into what trance where they are just mindlessly looking around. It's almost like your brain is turned off. When someone uses a pattern interrupt hook, this usually breaks you out of your trends. It's usually something that causes you to say, "Wait, what was that?" When this happens, you end up focusing on whatever is in front of you. You end up paying attention for far longer than you would've had that not happened. A good example of someone who does this a lot is a YouTuber by the name of Andrei Jikh. His entire channel is focused around finance, which let's be honest, isn't the most entertaining subject in the world. But he has been able to capture his audience's attention by adding in magic. Magic is an amazing form of pattern interrupt because it's full of surprises. Something suddenly disappears and then reappears somewhere else. All while a fireball shoots randomly out of a magician's hand at the same time, it's very visually appealing and it catches your attention and it wakes you up if you were in a trance. Because of that, you pay attention more to what he does next, which is to jump into a lesson on finance. Now you don't have to learn how to do magic in order to use pattern interrupt hooks. You just have to focus on this idea of random and unexpected. For example, you could say a random fact that somewhat relates to your story. Like did you know Earth used to be purple? Or if your story is being delivered online in video format, you can take a random shot of something like I mentioned before, with the magic tricks or even something random that you come across throughout the day. Like a dancing troop on a New York City subway train, or a monkey that you saw eating a sausage on the street. As long as it is something that people don't usually expect, you'll be able to snap them out of their trends and get them to focus on whatever you have stored for them next. Finally, we have what are called highlights or Montage hooks. These are hooks that are often used in videos. What it is is when you take the best moments, whether they be the funniest or the most controversial or even the most touching moments, basically the most emotionally charged moments of a longer video. You'd throw it in at the very beginning of your video in a montage, a lot of successful vlogs do this. Famous vloggers will often record everything that they did that day and they take the most entertaining 10 seconds of all their footage and put it in the very beginning of the video. When you as a viewer come across the video and watch this montage, you think to yourself, "Wow, that was really cool, the rest of this video must also be jam-packed with cool stuff." But then oftentimes you'll actually find that this is not the case, but by then you're almost done with the video anyways, so the hook did its job. If you are doing storytelling for the purpose of selling something, highlight hooks are often used in the form of testimonials. Marketers will often rapidly show you multiple people who had amazing before and after transformations. This actually works extremely well because it's a combination of a value proposition hook and a highlight hook as it quickly shows you the best stuff that's to come. It also shows you what benefits paying attention could bring into your life. Now that we've gone over some of the most common types of hooks, I think it's also important for me to teach you how to spot good hooks in general, because the fact of the matter is there are dozens and dozens of different types of hooks out there, and the best way to improve your hooks is by keeping an eye out for good hooks in your day-to-day life. Whenever you see a viral video on YouTube or Instagram with millions and millions of views, the reason they have so many views is because the hook was so good that it caught people's attention, which caused them to sit down and actually listened to the story or whatever else was going on. Whenever you see a viral piece of content like this, you should stop and ask yourself, what about this video's Hook was so good? What value did the first 15 seconds of this video or this audio clip present to the audience that made them want to stay? By doing this, you will start to notice other unique hooks that are bound to come up in the future as the world of marketing evolves. When you notice these things, you can adopt the same strategies into your life and apply them to your own storytelling skills. In our next lesson, we'll be going over how to tell the meat of your story when it comes to persuasive storytelling. I'll be teaching you about a very important concept that can drastically influence the way people think, and perceive the world. Whenever you're ready, I'll see you there. 9. Picking The Right Story: Now that you know how to grab people's attention by delivering a good hook, it's time for me to go over the most important part of persuasive storytelling, which is the story itself. Now, unlike typical stories, the main purpose of a story in persuasive storytelling is to try to give the listener what's called an epiphany moment. Basically, a moment in time where the gears click in their head and they realize something. Where they say aha, so that's how it works. Or, oh, so that's what I'm missing. Let me give you an example. When I was growing up, my parents always stressed the fact that I should focus my time and energy on my homework and my grades for school. They did this because they wanted me to eventually get into a good college. Also, I could get a good degree, which would theoretically land me a good job, which was essentially a high paying job. All of this should make me happy. I genuinely believed that this 20 plus year plan was the best way to go about my life as it was something that all of my family, all of my close friends, and basically everyone that was around me preached about. I never questioned it. I just thought that this was how the world worked. But in my second year of college, I decided to take a break from school for a year and work instead. I ended up landing a job as a door-to-door salesman, clocking in close to 12 hours a day, six days a week, and I ended up making more money than I ever did before. I brought in anywhere from 100-$200 almost daily, which might not seem like a lot now but as a 19-year-old kid who never held a job that paid more to minimum wage, I was stinking rich. Now the thing is I still lived at home and I had virtually no expenses. I used my new found fortunes to buy all the things that I ever wanted. I bought nice clothes, the latest smartphone, a new laptop. I eat out almost every day. I took the taxi everywhere. I spent like a madman and there was definitely some excitement around the fact that I could actually afford things now. But after about a year of working, I started noticing that I wasn't happy. I barely got enough sleep. I was always tired. I was always worrying about my job, so I was stressed. I started gaining a lot of weight and it got so bad that one day I woke up, looked at my phone, turned it off and just went back to sleep. I was burnt out with absolutely no motivation to go back to work. I quit that same day. That's when I realized a very important yet cliche lesson. It's that the amount of happiness that you have in your life is not about how much money you make. It's all about how much freedom you have. What's the point of making a lot of money if you don't even have time to enjoy it. The next day I stayed home and surf the web. By pure chance, I came across a forum of people talking about starting businesses and making passive income, that thing. Basically making money while they slept. This really caused the gears in my head to start turning. I started doing more research and found out that there were thousands of people who are already pulling this off, making hundreds of dollars every night without having to lift a finger. Oh my god, they must have so much free time. That's when I realized that this whole online entrepreneur thing might be my only way out of the rat race. I started going to the local Starbucks every morning with my laptop and I would just work and work and work on trying to create a successful online business. After putting in just a few months of hard work, I started making some money. In a couple more months, I broke through my first $1000 online in a month and I was hooked. I kept on going and I kept on making more and fast forward to now it's been years since I started this journey and I now have the freedom to travel the world and work whenever I want. I often take entire months off just to enjoy life and have fun. It's without a doubt that I am significantly happier than I was before when I was working my ass off doing sales. It's all because I realized that the only people that can make money and be free at the same time to enjoy life are the entrepreneurs. I hope you enjoyed this little story of mine. Do you feel like you've had an epiphany moments of any kind? Did you feel like one of your beliefs shifted even a teeny tiny bit? If so, hopefully it was something along the lines of entrepreneurship is one of the only occupations that can give me freedom. Or even something like happiness is all about having freedom. Now you might not be 100 percent convinced about this. Maybe you believe in this idea just slightly more than you did before. But even if that were the case, it would still be significantly easier for me to push you to take action because at least you are now open to the idea. That's the purpose of the story when it comes to persuasive storytelling, to get the listener to have an epiphany moment like this, so that they'll take the next step you suggest for them. Now there is some prep work that you have to do in order to deliver a good story so that your listeners can experience epiphany moments. Let's imagine that we are a fitness company that wants to convince people that eating a low carb diet will help them lose weight the fastest. First, we have to figure out what our audience already believes. Since we are talking about weight loss, some of the beliefs that they might already have could be that losing weight is all about tracking calories. Losing weight is all about working out a lot. Or even losing weight is all about not eating late at night. Now that we have this list of preexisting beliefs, we need to determine the idea that we want them to believe, which in this case would be something along the lines of losing weight is all about eating less carbohydrates. Finally, we need to figure out what evidence to present to the listeners that can support this idea. Here we can use testimonies from our own lives or our previous clients. We can introduce facts like results from studies, data or charts, or we can even show a demonstration. Now once we figure these three things out, their beliefs, your belief, and the evidence, we can start crafting our story. Now I'm going to teach you about the most common structure that is used for persuasive storytelling. Starting off, we have your life before. Here you start the story off by setting the scene. Tell the audience what you or your character's life was like before he or she had their epiphany. Make sure to include some of the beliefs that they had from before, many of which should align with the beliefs that the audience might currently have. Also make sure that your character is as relatable as possible by using the tips from the previous lessons. Using the story that I told you in the beginning of this lesson, the life before section was the whole part about me growing up thinking that doing well in school and getting a job would make me happy down the line. Once you've set the scene, it's time for you to talk about the problem that your character faced. This should be a problem that your ideal customer has too. The more specific you make the problem seem, the better as it will make it even more relatable. Make sure to touch on some pain points that your character feels once confronted with this problem so that it's even more relatable. In my story, this is the part where I talked about how I worked and how I felt unhappy with my life even though I was making good money. The main pain point that I touched on was the feeling of getting burned out from working too much, which is something that I feel like many people can relate with. Next is the section of the story where you talk about how you came to your solution. Now you don't want to immediately jump into the solution because it doesn't seem natural. You want to show the audience the steps it took for you that brought you to the solution. This way it feels more authentic. In my story, this was the part where I talked about staying at home after getting burned out and accidentally coming across a forum online where people talked about making passive income while they slept. Once you've shown the audience how you arrived at the solution, it's time to reveal the solution itself, which is the epiphany moment. Here you sum up the epiphany that you had and talk about how you logically came to this conclusion. You can use phrases like, that's when I realized, or that's when a light bulb appeared, basically showing the listener that what you're about to say is extremely important. You can also lay out some of the evidence and facts that you've collected in the section so that whatever you say feels more believable. Finally, when you reveal your epiphany, you want to make sure you pause a bit when you finish saying it so the listener can digest it. In my story, the epiphany moment is when I said that's when I realized that this whole online entrepreneurial thing might be my only way out of the rat race. Once that's done, the next step is to talk about what your life was like after coming to this conclusion. Basically you tell us what you did after having the epiphany moment and then you sum up all the benefits that you've seen since then. It's extremely powerful to show some evidence here, like before and after pictures if you're talking about weight or screenshots of how much money you've made if you're talking about a business opportunity, you get the point. Now it's very important to note that the story for persuasive storytelling is still a story. You should still use as many of the tips as possible from the previous lessons to make your character more relatable and also to make the story as engaging and interesting as possible. This will drastically increase the amount of people who will be influenced by your storytelling. That's it. This is one of the most common and effective ways to craft the story for persuasive storytelling. Now that you have a clear idea of how to execute the story part of your persuasive storytelling, it's time for us to cover the final component, which is the offer itself. The way you deliver the offer is what ultimately determines how many people take action after listening to your story. Everything that you've done so far was to prepare them for this moment, to get them as ready as possible to take action and do the next thing you want them to do. We'll be diving deep into the art of crafting the offer in our next lesson. I'll see you there. 10. Creating The Perfect Offer: Now that you have a deep understanding of how the hook and the story work, it's time for us to cover the final component of persuasive storytelling, which is the offer itself. Let me start off by giving you an example of the main offer that I promote for my business, which is called the Habit Builder Challenge. Now, if you're someone who struggles with building habits and getting them to stick, if you're someone who is tired of feeling ashamed having to lie to yourself every year for not sticking to what you said you are going to do, then the habit builder challenge is for you. Here's how Erik benefited from this program. He was able to build a habit of meditation, which allowed him to gain more control over his addictions, something that he struggled with, with no success for the past four years. Now, one of the most interesting things about this program is the fact that unlike other programs which are always available, this is a program that I only run a handful of times every year. I do this because it creates a stronger sense of urgency. It helps you fight procrastination, which is why the completion rate for this course is 85 percent. That's four times the average rate. The last time I ran this challenge was four months ago. Which means that if you don't sign up now, you'll probably have to wait all the way until next year in order to have a chance to join again. On top of that, in order to make sure that our program is as effective as possible, I will be limiting the class size to only 50 people. That way I can make sure that I'm able to personally help each and every single person who takes on the challenge. I spend more than three hours every day during the challenge, helping people in the class. This is something that almost no other course does. Most of them simply record videos and automate the entire thing. It's also important to note that we already have a couple dozen people on the waiting list who wanted to join the last time but were too late. Many of them have already signed up for the challenge this time around. So make sure you act fast before all of the seats are taken. It's first come first serve. Once we reach the limit of 50 people, the doors will close and you will have to wait until next time. On top of all that, we will be offering a special promotion this time around. I will be dropping the price by 50 percent because I know that the benefits of this course are now more important than ever. This is a one time discount that will not happen again. Here's what Abby thought after taking the program. She was able to stick to her workout routine with much more consistency, allowing her to hit her fitness goals which she has been struggling with for the past year. I will be closing the doors to the habit builder challenge at the end of this month at 12 midnight on the dot. If you want to grab one of the limited 50 seats, just go to www dot, this is an example.com forward slash join now. Finally, if you feel like the habit builder challenge is not for you, that's totally fine because I have the tamed course, a free course on YouTube, which should still help you out on your journey. What I just did was show you how I usually structure my offers when it comes to any of the products or services that I promote. Fun fact, the last time I pitched the habit builder challenge to my email list, over 50 people signed up, making me more than $10,000 of profit in under a week. This is the power of a well crafted offer. Now, there are actually six different things that you need to make sure that your offer includes. The more of these six selling factors that you can include in your offer, the higher the buying temperature. The more your listeners will want to purchase your product, sign up for your service, or take action in general. The six selling factors are as follows. Number 1, recap. Number 2, urgency. Number 3, scarcity. Number 4, greed. Number 5, the Jones Effect, and finally number 6, indifference. I will be diving deep into each of these six factors throughout this lesson, giving you a deeper understanding of why they work and also how you can add them to your own offers from now on. Starting off, we have the recap. The recap is the portion of my offer where I said, now if you're someone who struggles with building habits and getting them to stick, if you're someone who is tired of feeling ashamed of having to lie to yourself every year for not sticking to what you said you were going to do, then the Habit Builder Challenge is for you. The purpose of the recap is to remind the listener of their pain point and tied in with the solution that you are offering. You see, people almost always make purchasing decisions based off of their emotions. You need to remind them of their pain points to stir up some of their emotions to remind them of the problems they face. Right at that moment, you tie in the solution which is whatever you're promoting. When you combine the two like this, it makes the listener feel like whatever you're promoting might be able to solve this problem for them. It becomes a possible solution to their pain and this will make them listen very carefully to what you have to say next to see if they really should pull the trigger. You want to make sure that your recap is short and sweet, mainly because you already spent quite some time going through your entire story, fleshing it out. So your listeners only need a sentence or two to become reminded of the journey that you've brought them on thus far. Next up we have urgency. Urgency is all about making the listener feel like they have to pull the trigger and take action right now as compared to next week. The reason you want to do this is because most of the time, if someone says something like, I'll think about it or I'll make a decision next week, chances are they'll forget about the offer by then and never take action. Or maybe they'll forget about the severity of their problems and forget about how much pain it brings into their life. So it's crucial that you try to convince them to take action immediately after listening to your story. In our example, I used urgency when I said the last time we ran this challenge was four months ago, which means that if you don't sign up now, you'll probably have to wait till next year in order to sign up again. Also this part, I will be closing the doors to the habit builder challenge at the end of the month at 12 midnight on the dot. In both of these examples, I'm basically putting a time restraint on the offer. I'm telling them that if they don't sign up today, there's a pretty high chance that they'll have to wait all the way until next year to have a chance to sign up again. Now, it's important to note that you want to make your deadline as close as possible. Don't tell your listener that they have two months to make a decision. It's better to wait until your offer really is going to expire in under a week. It's also very important that you stay honest here. When I say that the next time they'll be able to join is next year, I really mean it. If your listeners see that you say things like this is a one time offer, but then they see that you open the doors again in just a month, they will no longer trust you. That's important to keep in mind as well. Up next is scarcity. We humans have a built-in desire to collect and hold things that are rare. The best example of this is our strange obsession with gold. The only reason gold and silver were used by civilizations all over the world as the primary form of money and trade was simply because these two metals are rare. They're hard to find, which is why people value them so much. You need to apply the same principle to your offers. I was able to do so by saying this; it's first come first serve. Once we reach the limit of 50 people, the doors will close and you will have to wait until next time. Here I'm telling the listeners that, hey look, there's only going to be 50 seats. On top of the fact that you have less than a week to decide, if the seats are grabbed first, then the doors will close even earlier. Here I'm using both urgency and scarcity to increased the buying temperature of the listener. Now, all you have to do for scarcity is place a limit on whatever you're promoting. You have to put a restraint on the supply. Limit the amount of people that can purchase or gain access to your product. Up next we have greed. Greed is all about money. Simply put, people like making more money and saving more money. In our example, this is when I said, on top of all that will be offering a special promotion this time around. I will be dropping the price by 50 percent because I know that the benefits of this course are now more important than ever. This is a one-time discount that will not happen again. When I offer this 20 percent discount, this raises the buying temperature of the listener. This is why holidays like Black Friday are so powerful in America because everything is on sale. And even though these offers may not be that great, just the fact that something is on sale will often make people want to buy more. But there's an even more powerful way of using greed, especially when it comes to persuasive storytelling online. You can do what's called an offer stack. Here you stack up all the things someone is getting so that they feel like they're getting a tremendous amount of value, and then you show them how much money they are saving if they decide to purchase today. This creates a huge amount of greed within the listener. Let me demonstrate how this is often done. Let's say, for example, that we're selling a fitness program. I'll call it the full fitness program. I can say something like, so here's what you'll be getting if you decide to join the full fitness program. You'll be getting three months of biweekly coaching where I will personally train you and guide you through all of your exercises during your workout for an hour each time. Most trainers nowadays charge $100 per hour, so overall, this has an estimated value of $2,400. On top of that, you'll also be getting my posture mini-course, which will include all the exercises that you should do in your free time to improve your posture. This mini-course has over 30 videos, which is why it has an estimated value of $300. But wait, there's more. I'll also be throwing in ten of my best weight loss recipes. These recipes are my personal favorites. This is going to allow you to shed weight extremely fast, and each of these meals is also very delicious. These 10 recipes have a combined value of $100. And on top of all of that, a fast action bonus. If you sign up today, I'll be throwing in a $50 Amazon gift card so that you can purchase all of the supplements needed for your muscle growth. Overall, this program has a combined value of $2,850. But for a limited time only, the first five people that join the full fitness program today will get access to all of this for only $500, which is almost a 75 percent discount. That's right, you'll be getting $2,850 worth of value for only a quarter of the price. If you want to grab one of these first five seats to get the fast action bonus, just go to www.anotherexample.com/joinnow. So that's the offer stack. What do you think? Did it make you feel like you're getting a ridiculous amount of value for a huge discount? Hopefully, it did. Now there are a couple of things that I'm doing here. First, I'm compartmentalizing all of the components of my product and justifying the value for each one. It's important to note that you shouldn't just make up a number. You have to give the listener a reason why this number exists. For example, when I see that the one coaching is worth $2,400, I tell the listener that private coaching usually costs $100 per hour in America. Twenty four sessions times $100 equals $2,400. I'm also making sure to tell my listener what each of these components will do for them. The posture videos will improve their posture. The recipes will help them lose weight. The gift card will help them build muscle. These are all things that the listener values. So when I put them in the offer stack it makes the listener feel like they're getting so much more. At the end of my stack, I combine the value of all the things that I mentioned, I add them up and then I cut it down drastically so that it feels like they're getting the deal of a lifetime. This is how you generate greed within your listeners. It's also very important to note that you should be realistic about the values that you assign to each of the components. If you say something like 10 recipes have a value of $5,000, that just sounds crazy because no one would ever pay $5,000 for just 10 recipes. Next up, we have what's called the Joneses effects. Basically, no one wants to be the first to try out a new product. They want to purchase something that's already been proven to work, or that's already popular. This is why the saying, "Keeping up with the Joneses" is the thing. Because people will often purchase things that they see other people buying. We can add this principle to our offer by talking about other people who have already taken action. In my example, this is why I mentioned Erik and Heba, who have both gone through my program. I talk about what benefits they saw and also what challenges they faced. This makes my program seem more trustworthy and will increase the buying temperature of the listeners. This is extremely powerful if the listeners resonate with some of the problems that Heba or Erik faced because they will be able to visualize themselves going through the program and seeing the same benefits. You can add the Joneses effect to your offers by simply talking about other people who have taken the same action that you want your listeners to take. You can do this 2-3 times throughout your offer and feel free to sprinkle it wherever you want. Finally, the last component that you can add to your offers is indifference. Basically, people don't like being sold. They want to feel like they came to the conclusion on their own. They don't want to feel like they were manipulated into doing something. So you want to portray a nonchalant vibe as if you don't really care if they choose to purchase or if they choose to pass on your offer. In our example, I used indifference when I said, if you feel like the habit builder challenge is not for you, that's totally fine because I have the teen course, a free course on YouTube which should still help you out on your journey. The best way to show indifference is to genuinely understand that there's more fish in the sea and that some people are simply not in the position to purchase something. Maybe they don't have the money or they may not have the time to commit to a program, which is why you want to avoid seeming pushy as much as possible. You can offer them a free solution to check out as an alternative to do this. And that's it. If you can include all six of these things in your offers from now on, you will be able to drastically increase the buying temperature of your listener. Once that's done, all you have to do is tell them how to take action. Click here to join now, sign up to receive this in debt, go to www.whatever.com. You get the point. Now that you understand how the hook story and offer work on a fundamentally deep level, you have all the tools that you need to craft extremely effective stories for business, sales, and persuasion down the line. In our next few lessons, we'll be diving into a totally different topic, which is how to use stories to deepen your relationships. Your relationship with yourself, your relationship with others, and so on. Whenever you're ready, I'll see you in the next lesson. 11. How To Build Deeper Relationships: Now that we've gone over the fundamentals of good storytelling, and also how to craft persuasive stories, it's time for us to talk about its last everyday use-case, which is to further your relationships, more specifically, your relationships with others, your relationship with yourself, and your relationship with your pupils. Today we will be focusing on deepening your relationship with other individuals. This advice applies to close friends, romantic partners, and even family members, anyone that you want to form a stronger bond with. Now the main thing you have to understand about relationships is that they are primarily strengthened through shared experiences. Back in the day, our ancestors lived in the wild in small communities. They were able to create extremely deep and powerful bonds with each other by overcoming obstacles together, they would hunt wild animals, deal with sickness and death, raise their children and fight for survival together. Nowadays, things are very different. Sure, there are people in our lives like our parents and our loved ones who we share many experiences with. But for the most part, we live in a society where most of our time is spent indoors, away from others. We still deal with obstacles, but they are far and few compared to the daily struggles that we dealt with thousands of years ago. Which is why our best alternative is to turn to storytelling to deepen our relationships, because we can't always expect to overcome an intense obstacle with someone else. But we can always tell a story and have them relive a moment where we did. This is not as powerful as sharing the experience, but it's the best alternative that we have available. Most people understand this to some degree. We know that we need to tell stories to strengthen our relationships. The only problem is, we tend to trade stories about superficial things most of the time. This is fine and all if you want to have a bunch of acquaintances, but if you are someone who is looking for something more meaningful, if you want to have deep and fulfilling relationships with dozens of people in your life. Then you need to learn how to go deep, and the deeper you go, the more intimate of a relationship you'll be able to cultivate. Now, there are four levels of depth when it comes to storytelling. Level 1, the surface level. Level 2, the shallow level. Level 3, the deep level, and finally level 4, the deepest level. Your goal is to share stories at increasingly deeper levels. This will reveal who you truly are to the person that you're interacting with, which increases the amount of trust in the relationship. Once enough trust is built, the more likely they will want to share something deeper in return. Now it's very important to note that most people are not comfortable opening up when they have an audience of people listening to them. Which is why what you're about to learn is best done in a one-on-one setting. With that being said, let's dive into the first level. The first level of depth is what I like to call the surface level. Here lies stories about your occupation, hobbies, and other recreational activities that you spend most of your time doing. Stories about sports, video games, TV shows, and whatnot. These are subjects that everyone feels comfortable talking about, because these are things that we often repeat over and over again to different people. If you ever go to a college party, you'll notice that just about everyone starts off talking about their majors and what they're studying. If you ever go to an office party, you'll notice that everyone's starts off talking about work. We talk about these subjects when we meet new people because it's the safest place to start. Now, you should not underestimate this level of depth, because all relationships need to start here. You need to show someone that you are capable of holding a normal conversation so that the trust that you are safe to be around. You need to use your social skills here to show someone that you are a valuable person. This is important to remember. People will not open up to you unless they think you are valuable. This concept of value is something that we haven't really touched on. But to give you a quick rundown, it involves best practices such as having open body language, a sense of humor, holding these and eye contact, being well-groomed and well-dressed, basically prove that you are someone that others respect and that you're also someone who gets along with other people. If you're unable to do this, others will not want to go deeper with you. Once you've spent enough time in the first level with someone, it doesn't have to be a lot, maybe just one or two interactions. It's then possible to dive deeper into the second level, which I like to call the shallow level. This is where you start telling stories where you share your opinions and feelings about certain things. When you do this, you open yourself up to the possibility of disagreement, because not everyone is going to agree with everything you say and every opinion that you have. This is actually a good thing because when you open yourself up like this, you are making yourself more vulnerable. This will cause your listener to feel like they understand what type of person you are, which over time will cause them to trust you more, because you can't trust someone you know nothing about. Now there are certain subjects that you should avoid, like politics and religion. These are things that can lead to very heated arguments if there's a disagreement. Instead, you want to share your opinions about things that people are less invested in, like movies, countries, foods, and other people to some extent. Which brings us to the topic of gossip. Gossip is something that occurs in the shallow level. You are essentially sharing your opinion about someone that you both know, and I think gossip is fine. It's human nature to want to hear what people think about someone else so that they can get a clear picture about who you are. Just keep in mind that you should not say too many bad things about other people. If you actively go out of your way to attack someone and their personality, then others will not trust you in fear that you will do the same when talking about them. Anyways, when you're in the shallow level, your goal should be to talk about less controversial things, like your opinion about movies and foods at first. Then over time, if you feel like more trust has been built, then you can bring up some of the more controversial subjects. Now you can expect the other person to stay in the shallow level for a while before feeling comfortable enough to dive deeper. Of course, this varies from person to person. Some people are open to diving extremely deep early on, but others who keep more to themselves, need tome to open up. This is why you can expect to spend anywhere from several days to several weeks before the person you're interacting with is ready to move on, you must be patient. The next level of depth is what I like to call the deep level. This level contains the more serious stories in life. Things like your dreams, problems within your family, obstacles that you currently face in life, and so on. Most of the time, it will be up to you to dive to this level first. Just like with the previous levels of depth, it's your job to go deeper first so that the person you're interacting with will feel like they know you more. Over time, this will build more trust and cause them to want to go deeper, to catch up with you. Whenever they are ready to go this deep with you, make sure that you are giving them your full attention. Because telling stories at this level of depth is considered to be a big deal. When someone starts sharing these stories with you, understand that there are usually only a handful of people that they've shared such stories within their entire lives. So you should feel extremely grateful that they trust you enough to be opening up to you like this. Listen to them with your full attention. Look them in the eye at least 50-80 percent of the time. Don't play on your phone and make sure to ask them questions about certain details that you are genuinely interested in. This is not something that you can fake. If you're not interested in them or their story, then you will be unable to think of the right questions. You must have genuine interest. Most importantly of all, when someone finishes telling a deep and serious story, do not wind up them and say something like, yeah, that's tough man, but let me tell you a story about how I have it worse. Because this will make them feel like you didn't even care about them opening up, and that you only care about yourself. If you can get someone to tell you stories at the deep level, they will consider you to be a close friend, someone who understands the more than 99 percent of other people. Most relationships will stop here and that's perfectly fine, because when you're at this level with someone, that relationship is already a fulfilling one. But if you want more, if you want to go even deeper, there is one more level to explore. The deepest level is the final level of depth that you can explore with someone else. This is basically where your deepest, darkest secrets lie. These are stories about childhood traumas, stories about addiction, stories about things that keep you up at night, and stories that are filled with shame and regret. My description of this level may seem rather dark, but there is a reason why we keep these stories hidden at the deepest level, because most of us are genuinely scared of what others will think of us if we ever dared to share these stories. This is why if you manage to get someone at this level, you will have built an extremely powerful relationship. They will end up either becoming best friends or partners in life. If they spend enough time here with you. Just like before, when people tell you stories here, you must give them your full attention. Even more than before, because these are stories that they may have never told anyone else before. It might be the first time that they are doing this. So pay close attention. It's very important to note that it can take months, and even years of knowing someone in order for them to feel comfortable enough to go here with you. Sometimes there are people that might not want to go here at all, no matter how long you wait and that's perfectly fine. You must accept the fact that some people are only willing to go to the deep level. You should not force someone to talk about things that they don't want to talk about. That's it. These are the four levels of depth that you can explore with other individuals. Just to recap, you want to start off at the surface level and tell stories about those things and go deeper and deeper over time. You should be the one that leads, going one level deeper than the person that you're trying to build a relationship with. This will build up and cause them to want to go deeper with you. After spending enough time in a certain level, you can ask them if they'd like to share something deeper, similar to what you've done before. When you do this, make sure to pay close attention to their body language. If they seem uncomfortable at all, don't push hard and instead, change the subject to something in the more shallow levels. This is the best way to test how comfortable they feel around you. Give them some time, a couple of weeks to build up more trust, and then you can try again. In our next lesson, we'll talk about using stories to improve the relationship that you have with yourself. Because your identity is determined by the stories that you tell yourself. It is an exciting lesson, so whenever you're ready. I'll see you there. 12. How To Change The Way You See Yourself: The relationship that you have with yourself is heavily determined by what sort of stories you tell yourself. Let me show you what I mean by telling you a story that I often reflect on. Most people who live in New York City do not drive a car or a motorbike. They take public transportation. That's why the MTA subway system is the largest rapid transit system in the world, with 472 stations and more than 4 million daily riders. The fee to take the subway was only $2.75 cents. That's all you need to travel around the city. It probably doesn't seem like much. But if you're someone who took multiple trips every day like I did, then you would have easily racked up more than $10 worth of fees daily. Luckily, the MTA had a special card designed for people who traveled a lot. It's called the unlimited metro card and it allowed you to take unlimited rides every month for just a $130, which was well worth it if you took the subway at least two times a day. This ability to access unlimited rides was something that people abused, which is why in New York City, it is actually against the law to sell rides using your metro card. But there was nothing written in the rules about giving rides away for free. So back when I was still living in the city, I made a habit of waiting around for someone whenever I got off my station so that I could swipe them in. I would approach people who were buying a new card or fumbling around in their purse looking for their card. I would ask them if they wanted a free ride, after which I would swipe them in. Every time this happened, I would receive a pleasant smile, a thank you in return, and I would leave the station feeling on top of the world. Back then, I didn't have money to give away. I didn't have a way to save or change someone's life, but I could tell that this little deed of mine made someone's life slightly better, maybe just $2.75 cents better. But it was something and this made me happy. This is a story that I often think back on. I was, and I still am someone who enjoys helping others. I enjoy giving back to the world. This is part of my identity. I wanted to start this lesson off by telling you a story that I often think back on so that you can see how it impacts my identity. See the thing is, we all replay stories from our past, often dozens of times a day. The way your character is depicted in the stories you choose to replay is what ultimately determines your current identity. For example, if you're someone who often reminisces about an instance where you were bullied or made fun of, then you will identify as someone weak, who is at the bottom of the social totem pole, and who is a victim. Even if this happened to you ten years ago, it will continue to shape your identity to this day if you choose to replay it. On the other hand, if you choose to think back to a time where you experienced success, a story where you were able to overcome fear and move forward, then you would identify as someone who is courageous, someone who can accomplish things if they put their mind to it. This is why your goal should be to gather the right stories to reflect on so that you can start using stories to empower yourself instead of using stories to drag yourself down. Some of you might be thinking, well, I don't have any powerful stories like that. My life is boring. I just play games and study all day. If this is how you feel right now, then I hate to break it to you. But that is also a story. It's a story about how boring your life is. Because you've replayed this story over and over again in your head, you believe that you are, in fact, a boring person. If you relate to this, then you need to focus twice as hard on what I'm about to teach you because I'm going to show you exactly how to gather empowering stories so that you can change your identity. There are two ways to do this. The first is by looking into your past and the second is by looking into your future. Let's begin by talking about the past. I genuinely believe that we all have empowering stories from our past. They might not be the most spectacular stories. They might not be something that would make people go, wow, that's amazing. But we all have moments where we portrayed positive traits. Your job is to go and look for them so that you can start believing that you have these traits. I can almost guarantee that you have at least a couple hiding somewhere waiting to be found, waiting to be remembered. So let's conduct a little thought experiment to help you find some stories to relive. I want you to take a couple of seconds and think about a time where you worked hard. It doesn't have to be something as extreme as running a marathon. It could simply be a time where you studied more than you usually do. Try to find a story like this and picture it in your head. Now, I want you to think about a time where you were able to overcome fear. It doesn't have to be a daredevil moment where you jumped out of an airplane. It could be as simple as going to a restaurant by yourself. Try and find a story where you overcame fear and picture it in your head. Now, I want you to think about a time where you made someone happy. It doesn't have to be a time where you made someone cry with joy. It could be a time where you simply made someone smile. Picture this story in your head as well. I want you to think about these moments some more after watching this lesson. Spend at least 30 minutes thinking about past moments in your life where you showed some positive traits and then pick the story that you feel like was the most powerful, the one that you're most proud of. When you've made this decision, I'd like you to sit down and physically write out this story using a pen and paper. Try your best to go into as much detail as possible because this will allow you to relive this moment with more clarity, making it easier to remember in the future. You can repeat this process for other stories to increase your arsenal of empowering stories to reflect on. Now let's talk about finding empowering stories for the future. I remember when I first started my self-improvement journey, I would go out onto the streets and approach random people and ask them for directions as a way to overcome my social anxiety. Was I scared? Yes, but I still did it. This gave me a very powerful story that empowered me. I started to believe that I was someone who was able to move forward when confronted with fear. The reason I'm telling you this is because if you don't have too many empowering stories from your past, then you must make them happen in the future. There really isn't any shortcut that I can give you here. Because quite frankly, the only way to gather positive stories is by going out there and making them come true.. You don't have to save someone from a burning house to do this. You just have to figure out what traits you want to have and gather stories that back it up. I wanted to become someone who gave back to the world, who was kind and generous. So I waited around in a subway station to swipe people in for free. That's it. It was nothing fancy. Now, let's brainstorm some ideas. What's something that you can do for your community today that would show that you are someone who can better the world? What's something that you can do for yourself today that would show that you care about yourself? What's an achievable task or goal that you can realistically do in a week or two that would show that you are someone capable of getting things done? After this lesson, I want you to really sit down and think about this some more. Once you've come up with the idea, go out and actually make the story come true. Doing so will allow you to add to your arsenal of stories that you can think back on and relive. Over time with enough repetition, you will start believing that you have those traits. In our next lesson, we'll be covering how to use storytelling to improve the relationship you have with your pupils. I will be showing you the power of storytelling when it comes to teaching and passing on knowledge. This is something that our ancestors did for thousands of years. It's something that you should definitely keep in mind if you ever decide to have kids or end up in a mentor position in the future. So whenever you're ready, I'll see you there. 13. How To Teach With Stories: An anthropologist by the name of Jean Briggs traveled to the Arctic Circle in the 1970s to study the Inuit people that lived there. She ended up staying with a family in an isolated igloo with temperatures that would often dip below minus 30 degrees Fahrenheit. There were no stores or markets around, so she had to hunt with them for food, eating things like fish, seal and whatever else they could catch in the tundra. She did all of this for an entire year and a half. When she came back from this experience, she was asked about the single most surprising thing about the Inuit people, and her answer surprised everyone. She said that the Inuit people never ever lost their temper. There wasn't a single sign of anger or even annoyance throughout her entire one and a half year stay with them. There was an instance where Jean accidentally spilled a pot of tea all over the floor and not a single person seemed annoyed. One of the Inuit ladies simply said; 'That's too bad', and got up to brew another pod. In another instance, the group worked on a fishing line together for days when the line was finally ready, it broke on it's very first use. Jean was extremely frustrated, but the Inuit family simply said; 'Let's sew it back together.' To top all of that off, it wasn't just the adults were like this, the kids were like this too, which is extremely odd because kids in the Western world are well-known for getting upset easily. Now, according to Jean, the Inuits were able to teach their kids how to be like this by following one simple rule; 'Never yell or raise your voice when trying to discipline a small child.' Which is basically the opposite of what people in the Western world do. If you simply observe other families in modern society, you'll notice that almost everyone raises their voice when their kid has done something wrong. The Inuits never did this, instead, they would just tell stories. If little Tommy was playing too close to the thin ice, which is obviously a bad thing because the ice could break and he could fall in. The Inuits wouldn't yell at him and say, "Tommy, get away from the ice. How many times do I have to tell you not to do that." Instead, they would pull him aside and tell him a story. A story about the great lurker fish that lived under the ice, a fish that loves to wait and wait for little kids. If you stood too close to the thin ice, he would be able to see you and he would break through the ice to gobble you up. The Inuit people taught through stories and they wouldn't just tell the stories, they would fully act them out. Jean observed the time where a young Inuit child was seen throwing rocks at another child. When the mother of this first child saw what was happening, she did not raise her voice. She didn't say, "Tommy, stop throwing rocks." Instead, she pulled her kid aside and told him to throw rocks at her. When he did this, she would wince in pain and exaggerate how much she was in pain. But all while maintaining a fun and playful vibe, she would say: "Ouch, Tommy that hurts." After which the child would stop and realize that throwing rocks caused a lot of physical pain for the people that he cared about. Just like that, a powerful lesson was taught and ingrained for life. I wanted to start this lesson off by showing you how powerful storytelling can be when it comes to teaching. Stories have always been the best and most effective way to pass on knowledge throughout human history, and it's not only children who learn better with stories. I believe that all humans have a built-in bias when it comes to stories as compared to facts. Traveling in Asia, I would often hear interesting beliefs that the locals have. A girl once told me that after getting a piercing, you shouldn't eat beef or chicken for six months. When I asked her how she came to this conclusion, she told me that a friend of hers got a piercing and eat chicken and her wound did not heal properly. I looked online and found no evidence that this was true, it doesn't really make sense. How would eating more protein prevents a wound from healing? But just because of a single story, this friend of mine stayed away from all meats except pork for half a year. Another famous instance of this is the belief that sleeping with a fan on will kill you. I don't know how this story came true, but I've slept with the fan on probably a couple thousand times when I was younger and nothing has ever happened to me. But this story is something that millions of people around the world believe. This is the power of a single story. It can cause millions of people to believe something without any scientific evidence whatsoever. It's interesting how we have to study hard to remember facts, talks was an old textbook, but upon hearing a single-story, the lesson behind the story becomes permanently embedded into our minds for years to come. The best teacher in life is experience, the second best teacher in life are stories because they help people relive the experience. Now, what does this mean for you? Well, if you're ever in a position where you have to teach people something, or if you ever have kids, make sure to teach your most important lessons with stories. There are extremely important lessons that we have to teach our kids that could mean life or death if they don't internalize it. Things like; Don't go somewhere with a stranger, or make sure to look both ways when crossing the street, or even never ever stick your finger into an electric socket. If you see your child doing something wrong and you yell at them and get emotional while doing so, they will automatically get emotional too, because that's what yelling does. If someone yells at you, you can't help but feel attacked, you can't help but feel some degree of fear. When you're in this state of fear, it is almost impossible to learn because your body is focused on escaping this situation to survive, which is why the environment must be calm in order to teach. This applies to kids, students and even partners. Whenever you want to get a point across, simply tell a story in a calm and collected way. 14. Conclusion: That's it. This is the final lesson that I wanted to leave you with. I want to congratulate you for sticking with me throughout this journey. We've covered so many things from the fundamentals of telling stories to the many use cases for stories throughout life. I hope you found this series useful, I hope you re-watch some of these lessons and spend time practicing and honing your storytelling skills, and finally, I hope you become an amazing storyteller down the line. Just remember, our world is run by stories, master this art and you will be rewarded greatly. Thank you for watching, and besides that, stay tuned.