Storytelling for Business

1. Storytelling for Business Intro: Hello and welcome to Storytelling for Business. My name is Dave Byrne and for the last 12 years, I've been helping businesses of all shapes and sizes tell the most impactful stories to their audiences. This is what this course is all about, Giving you the skills to tell your business story, whether that be pitching to investors, hiring your first employees, or creating new marketing campaigns. Stories have a great ability to influence what we think do or buy. It's not as easy as just a beginning, middle, and an end. Great storytellers know the structures and the skills that they need to create really compelling stories for their audiences. Ones that are going to make them feel emotionally invested, and ones where the action really resonates with them. It's no different for businesses as it is for TV's and movies. Over the course of this lesson, you're going to hear some of these skills. The purpose of this course is to give you the foundation that you can then build off of and become a great storyteller in the future. I believe that everybody has the ability to be a great storyteller. Hopefully, with this course, you can become 12. 2. Your Class Project: Over the duration of this class, students will be encouraged to fill out this workbook that you see on screen. Now this workbook will provide you with the foundation to build and develop your story, making it as impactful as possible to your target audience. You will be provided with the link to this workbook. You can either print off a copy and write down notes as we go through this course. Or you can make a copy online and type up your notes as we go through this. By completing this workbook, students will learn how to craft a strong controlling idea from which your stories will be built from. You'll learn how to focus on an audience when crafting stories and build compelling characters that your audience can connect with. We'll also help with world building by setting the scene and creating an inciting incident or a trigger where all of the action will come from. Once we get into the action, we'll learn how to engage people's emotions throughout the story. We also learn how to sequence a story so that it's as compelling as possible leading up to the climax which will instill a desire for your audience to take action. Finally, we'll also see how we can open and close the story to make it as compelling as possible. If you're ready, let's begin. 3. What Are Controlling Ideas: For our first lesson, we're going to learn about controlling ideas. Controlling ideas are the essential foundation for every great story, especially in business. But you may be asking yourself, what is a controlling idea? A controlling idea is the main takeaway from your story, whether you have 30 seconds or 2 hours to tell your story. This is the idea that your audience will walk away with. It is the ultimate meaning that is expressed through the actions within the story. Everything that the story has reflects the controlling idea. The controlling idea contains your opinion about a topic. It shows what direction that you are going to take the story in. It helps the audience understand the ultimate purpose for your story. Meaning what action you want them to take from hearing your story. Let's take a look at an example of a controlling idea. Let's just say if you were talking on the topic of camping, the direction that you wanted to take this topic was to give off a positive emotion. Your controlling idea may be something like, camping with small children is hard work, but worthwhile. The story that you may tell though, could be about the time that you went camping with your children. It rained all day, everybody was miserable. But then later on in the evening, the rain cleared up and you all sat around the campfire. And it turned out to be a rewarding and memorable day. The story doesn't explicitly say the controlling idea, but it does give your opinion of the topic. It gives that positive feeling, that controlling idea is conveyed to the audience. It also helps the audience understand the purpose in the sense of you are telling people you should go camping without explicitly saying go camping. Let's take a look at a business example of a controlling idea. Back in the late '90s, Apple and Microsoft were battling it out in the world of MP three players. Microsoft had the Microsoft Zoo on paper. It was a fantastic device. It had great battery life. It had great memory and it had great screen resolution. They decided to put that in a lot of their advertising. The ipod, though, decided to go a different route. They decided to craft their marketing from a strong controlling idea. This controlling idea actually ended up being the tag line for the ipod. Do you remember what it was? It was 1,000 songs in your pocket. 1,000 songs in your pocket could help Apple tell hundreds, if not thousands, of stories. They were able to connect with people no matter where they were, no matter who they were. People were able to create their own stories from that, whether they're a jogger and they're looking to go out on the long run. They had 1,000 songs in their pocket. Maybe you're on a long commute to work, you have 1,000 songs in your pocket. Maybe you're chilling out after work on your couch, you have 1,000 songs in your pocket. This was a really powerful controlling idea that enabled them to tell multiple stories. At the end of the day, ipod won out against the zoom. They were able to connect with their audience. They were able to give their opinion about a topic. They were able to show the audience a purpose for their story by an ipod. How can you craft your own controlling idea? This is the time to look in your workbook. The first thing to do is imagine your ideal world. What does a world look like with everybody using your product or service? Maybe you want to list out some themes that you care about or things in life that are important to you. Think about the possibilities. How would you like to be remembered? What would you like your business to be known for? Imagine what could happen in the world if everybody saw the potential of your product or service. The next thing is think of some of the feelings that you want to get across. Are they positive? Are they negative? Are they awe inspiring? Write some of these down as well. The third thing then, is now that you have captured some of the feelings that you want to get across, you want to inspire people to take action. If you can't see them taking action from the ideal world and the feeling that you want to get across. Re evaluate the ideal world and the feelings. Try to start writing down some ideas of what did the two of them look like together. In the case of ipod, the ideal world was everybody had an ipod, 1,000 songs in their pocket. The feeling that they were getting across was a inspiration. Think about how your ideal world and those emotions can mix together when you visualize your audience taking action. In this situation, oftentimes you are aiming for them buying your product or service. In the camping example, we didn't need to say go camping, but it was implicit to the story in the ipod example. They didn't say go buy an ipod, but it was implicitly understood that an ipod meant 1,000 songs in your pocket. When you're brainstorming this, there are no stupid ideas. But it's important to find an idea that you feel passionate about, find an idea that you want to tell 100 different stories from. Because depending on what audience you're going to be speaking to, your stories are going to be slightly different. But the idea that those stories come from are going to be the same work on this until you find an idea that you really want to start building stories from. Once you have that idea, let's move on to the next lesson. 4. How Facts & Controlling Ideas Work Together: I want to address one thing before we move on to connecting with your audience. It's a common mistake that many people make your controlling idea. And facts should be two different things. Facts should not be the central part of your story, and the thing that the rest of your story is built from. Facts can complement your controlling idea. They can be essential to the story itself, but they should not be the foundation given how inundated people are with information. We need to make our message stand out. We need to create stories that make the message, the product, the service standout and memorable. People don't share facts the way that they share stories. Stories make the message, product and service standout. There's an old saying that says it's not about what you say, it's about what your audience hears. The issue with facts is that the audience can interpret facts in very different ways than the way that you want it to be communicated. One facts that may look good to you may look very negative to somebody else. A glass half full to you can look a glass half empty to somebody else. If you're building a story around just a fact itself, it's possible that your audience may misinterpret what you're trying to say to them. The message then isn't clear and therefore the action itself that they take might not be clear. Let me give you a real world business example of a company trying to use a fact to tell a story. A few years ago, Toyota cars brought out this fact. 80% of all Toyotas sold in the United States over the past 20 years are still on the road today. Looking at this, a lot of people didn't know what the message that they were trying to say was, is this a good thing? Are you trying to tell me that Toyotas are tough and durable? That is what they were trying to say. But the problem was was that when they released this statistic, people started questioning it asking how does this compare to other cars? Is 20 years a good time frame is 80% to good amount of cars. The message wasn't clear and the action then wasn't clear to the audience. What if Toyota tried a different approach if their controlling idea was Toyota cars are tough and durable. What if they told a story about a Toyota truck that was sank to the bottom of the ocean, lifted back up, set on fire, extinguished, put on top of a skyscraper in the middle of a demolition. And after all of that still started and still drove. That actually happened a few years ago. Top Gear in the UK ran a series called Killed a Toyota, where they did those three things. Yes, the Toyota not only switched on but still drove afterwards. Imagine if Toyota wanted to convey the controlling idea that Toyota cars are tough and durable. They told this story about the indestructible Toyota truck, and then followed up by saying, it is not the only one. 80% of all Toyotas in the United States over the past 20 years are still on the road today. They would have conveyed their controlling idea through a mixture of stories complemented with facts. That's how a message can be conveyed. But the story itself wasn't built from this fact. The fact complemented the story itself. If you have written up a controlling idea and it is just simply a fact, then you should re evaluate it should be an idea, your opinion of a topic, the direction that you want to take it, and a purpose for the audience. Hold on to that fact though, because it could come in handy as you create your story later on. Now that you've taken a look back at your controlling idea, let's move on to the audience. 5. What Makes a Story?: Now that you have your controlling idea and an idea of who your audience is, it's time to start building the characters within your story. What makes a great character in a movie or TV show? One that makes us compelled to keep watching? It's one key word, empathy. Empathy means like me. Deep within the characters that we see in our TV shows and movies, the audience recognizes a certain shared humanity. The character and audience may not be 100% alike, but they may share a single quality. There is something about the character that strikes a chord with the audience. In that moment of recognition, the audience suddenly and instinctively wants the character to achieve whatever he or she desires. That's what makes a great character. A character who the audience doesn't just sympathize with, but empathizes with, and actively sees themselves as characters are so important to our story, if we can't feel empathy for them, we don't care. Then if they succeed in what they're trying to achieve, The same goes for business storytelling. Think about the Tota example that I used in an earlier video. We were actively rooting for the Toyota truck to overcome all of those challenges and keep running afterwards. The important thing for a good character and a great way to create empathy, is by making sure that there is enough of a challenge for our character to overcome that causes a change in that character. Change is necessary for the character. A story about an awesome person living an amazing life, doing awesome things out the rest of their days in a fantastic world is not a great story. It's not compelling. We love underdog stories. We love stories of people overcoming adversity. People connect with others. Overcoming flaws and challenges, making a change for the better, and having a better life as a result that inspires others. The same is for business storytelling. We love watching people or things overcome challenges. We love people making a change for the better That change could be buying your product or service. That better life could be as a result of buying your product or service that can inspire others to do the same. In the business world, your characters should always be active. They should always be wanting to do and achieve more, because that will give inspiration to others. Pursue that desire as well and hopefully buy your product or service. If people are empathetic to your characters within the stories, they may also see themselves taking similar actions by using your product or service. Can they see themselves with the product in their hand? Engaging with the service, a great way to help them envisage, that is by actually putting your audience at the center of your business story in the world that we live in. Everybody sees themselves as the hero of their own story. They are the main character in the movie of their life. If they are a hero in their eyes, what will encourage them to take action or do something is showing that your product or service them, the hero in their lives have a better life. There may be a challenge that they see up ahead. Your product or service helps them overcome that challenge. They may not even know that they want it, but you're telling them that they need it. Going back to 1,000 songs in your pocket. Back in the late '90s, a lot of people, including myself, were walking around with Discman and maybe a bag of CD's on our backs so that we could change up music. Over the course of the day, we didn't know that we needed 1,000 songs in our pocket. But when Apple came out with the ipod and that slogan, 1,000 songs in your pocket, we realized we didn't have to carry around this gigantic Discman and a bag of CD's on our back anymore. Apple was solving a problem for us. They were specifically putting us in the center of the story. We were the heroes. It was 1,000 songs in your pocket. Whoever you were, you were the hero of that story. The ipod was just the tool that helped you achieve a better life to make a change for the better. An easy way to put your audience in the mindset of making a change and buying your product or service is to make them hero of your story. Now that you're thinking about creating the characters, take a look back about what you've written about your audience. Is there anything there that you can use to build a character for your story? A character that your audience will be able to empathize with. That they will actively see themselves as a character. That when they buy your product or service, that your audience also sees themselves buying your product or service. Spend some time thinking about this when you're ready. Let's move on to the next lesson. 6. Setting the Scene and the Beginning of Good Story Structure: The function of story structure is to create a compelling and engaging narrative that leads up to your character making a change. In business story telling that means buying your product or service. But before you can get to the point of them buying your product or service, you need to set the scene in TV's, books and movies setting. The scene is known as the exposition. It gives a background for the events, the settings, the characters, and all of the other elements within the world you're about to speak of in one of my favorite stories, Star Wars, A New Hope. This is where we see the planet tattoo. We meet the droids. We meet Luke Skywalker of the rebellion. We learn of the empire. Everything that the movie is going to explore is set in this early stages of the movie. It's important that when you're setting the scene, it's a world that your audience can understand quickly and identify with. They can potentially see the challenges in advance and they understand what needs to be done to create a better life as a result of those challenges. If you are building a story based off of characters that you've defined that your audience can connect with, my advice is build a world around those characters. Build a world where those characters will live out the controlling idea that you're trying to get across. Build a world where your product or service is the only answer to their challenges, the only thing that will create a better life for them. This can be done by limiting the world down, keeping the world as simple as possible. Story setting sharply defines its possibilities, but it should also confine the possibilities as well. If you create too broad a world for your story to take place in, it invites other solutions to the challenges that your characters face. It invites the possibilities that a competitor product can solve their problems. I also recommend reading a book called Inside the Box, A Proven System of Creativity for breakthrough results. Because people sometimes worry about confining themselves too much. However, the authors of this book found that by imposing a constraint, it doesn't actually inhibit creativity. It inspires it. Also, by creating a small enough world, you're creating a world in which a single your mind can easily populate it with the characters and the information that are essential to get to that point. For your main character to take an action for a change, specifically buying your product or service, How can you do this? The first thing to think of is the actual setting itself. What period is it taking place in? Is it in the modern day? Is it ten years from now? Is it ten years ago? What's the duration? Is going to be a short period of time. A long period of time. What's the location? Is it in a city? Is it in a suburb? Is it in a different country? Should this setting change? Should this setting not be good enough for your character and therefore your audience? What is the weakness conflict that needs to happen in this world for your character to make a change? Specifically, what is the weakness or conflict that is going to happen in this world that will create a desire for your audience to buy your product or service. Use the workbook now to write down some ideas for each one of these questions. When you're happy with your answers to these questions, we're going to then tackle the weakness and the conflict in the world with what's known as the inciting incident. 7. The Inciting Incident: Now that you've set the scene, we come to the first major event of your story. It is the primary cause of everything else that follows in your story. It puts the story into motion. It is the inciting incident. It is the potentially inconsequential moment that creates a meaningful change in the life of your character. Think about the conflict that you've created in your exposition as you've been setting the scene. The weakness or the challenge that your character needs to overcome. What needs to change? What are we up against? Why should our character make a change? If you are trying to sell something, the inciting incident can also be a trigger. Triggers are stimuli that prompt people to think about related things. As a result, make them take an action. People often talk about whatever comes to mind. The more often people think about a product or an idea, the more will be talked about. The more often they talk about it, the more likely they are to buy it. There's a great example of triggers in storytelling for business with the brand kitcts. Kick cat chocolate bars. Do you remember the tag line for kick cat chocolate bars? Have a break. Have a kick cat. It's a top of mind, tip of tongue, simple tag line, have a break itself a break. You're taking a break from work that is an inciting incident for your character or your audience to make a change. They make a change by having a kick cat. Taking a break at work then becomes a trigger every day for them to think about having a kick cat. That trigger may cause them then to buy more kick cats. Your inciting incident can act as a trigger for your audience to buy your product or service. When your workbook, we're going to work on how to create potential inciting incidents for your story. The first way to do this is think about the best moment that somebody has had using your product or service. What was it about that moment that made it the best moment? What was it that made this life changing for the person using your product or service? Now, think about the worst moment that somebody has had, not using your product or service. Maybe using a competitor product or service. Or maybe using something that is lesser than what you are offering. What happened? What was so bad about this? What made that person think, I never want to go through this experience again. You can also think about the first moment that you use your product or service. Or the first moment that one of your customers use your product or service. What was that like? What inspired them to use the product or service? What was the trigger for them? What was the inciting incident for them? You can also think of what was the last straw. The last moment, that somebody was experiencing something that they needed to change and that resulted in them using your product or service. What was the moment for you as well, if you're a start up fender? What was the moment that you said, enough is enough. I need to make a change. I need to build this product. I need to create this service because of this moment. Think about these things. Write them down. Because as you write them down, you may find that there is an inciting incident in there that you want to tell as part of your story. There may be a trigger then that results in people talking about your product on a regular basis or compelling them to buy your product or service. It's important to get this right because without an inciting incident, there would be no story. There's no compelling need for a character to make a change if moment that forces them to make that change. In Star Wars and new hope. Luke Skywalker was frustrated with his life. He aspired to more, but something needed to happen for him to actually go out and achieve it. In this case, it was a message from Princess Lea and uncle and aunt being murdered by the empire. Without this inciting incident, he wouldn't have taken any action, the story wouldn't have unfolded. It's important to create this inciting incident in your story so that your audience sees the reason and is compelled to take action themselves. Namely buying your product or service. Use the workbook to keep brainstorming ideas. The first moment, the last moment, the best moment, the worst moment. Find a trigger, Find an inciting incident, in that once you found one, we can move on to the next lesson. 8. Evoking Emotion Through Rising Action: Now that you've identified your inciting incident, it's time to start taking your audience through the action of your story. This is the hurdles that your character needs to overcome to finally achieve everything that they've ever wanted to achieve that better life rising action is the revelations that unfold as your character goes through your story and lives out. The controlling idea. It creates the overarching narrative, the suspends the interest. It includes all of the decisions that your character needs to make. It's the twists and turns as your story continues, as the action rises, each revelation, each moment, each event should be more explosive than the previous. Progressing stronger and stronger than the one that preceded it. During the story, you want to develop, not repeat. In other words, you don't want to keep hitting the same words. You don't want to keep hitting the same beats. You don't want to keep hitting the same facts. You want to increase, heighten the story. When it comes to business story telling, what you are trying to do through rising action is to get your audience more emotionally involved. You want to get them from passive emotions to high arousal emotions. Emotions that once they reach and stop listening to your story, they feel compelled to take action on. Nobody makes impulse decisions when they're at a low arousal. They make them at a high arousal. Nobody makes life altering changes at a low rousal, they make them at a high arousal. What you're trying to do in your story as you go through this rising action, is to actually go through rising emotions with your audience. You want to get them from a low arousal emotion at the start of your story to a high arousal emotion At the end of your story, there are two different types of these arousals. There's a positive arousal and a negative arousal. A positive arasal means that by the end of your story, you're going to get them into an awe inspired place. You're going to get them excited. You're going to get them so happy that they want to take action, negative emotions. You're going to get them so angry or anxious that they feel compelled to take action. You can mix these up a little bit. Charity organizations in their commercials often start off with a low asal negative emotion, like sadness. But then take you to a high arousal positive emotion where you feel like that you can have a positive impact. You're inspired to donate, you're inspired to volunteer for business storytelling. I recommend ending with a positive high arousal emotion because research from the Wharton Business School has shown that by ending on a positive high arousal emotion, you are 17% more likely to have your audience take action. It is important that as you go through your story that you end on a high arousal emotion. You are trying to get your audience progressing throughout. Have you ever watched a movie where halfway through the movie there's an amazing scene and you feel so emotionally invested? But then the movie continues on for an hour afterwards, your emotions come down. The movie is less compelling. It's important to rise the emotions throughout your story. Don't try to get them in high arousal at the beginning and then end on low rousal. They'll be less likely to take action. In our next lesson, we're actually going to start talking about how you can take people from a low Sal to a high arousal. But for now, open up your workbook and start thinking about the emotions that you want to convey in your story. Once you're happy with those emotions and you know the ones that you specifically want to work on, then we can look at sequencing your story to make sure that it ends on a high arousal. 9. Sequencing Your Story: Sequencing is the order of events of your story. If you want to get somebody from a low arousal motion to a high arousal motion, you need to sequence your story in the correct way. An incorrect sequence will mean that you may get somebody to a higher rose motion too early on. And then by the end of your story, they're in a low arousal and they're not as compelled to take action. Specifically, buying your product or service plot of any story grows from your characters and the inciting incident that happens as you tell your story. Everything that happens should flow organically and naturally from there while still living out your controlling idea. A mistake that many people make is by throwing in what feels like imposed features of the story. They start listing things that happen rather than showing how it all fits together. In TV shows, it's when a character randomly comes back from the dead. Or in movies, when a random explosion happens, just so that an action scene can happen. It feels imposed. It's like when somebody is telling a story of their business and they're saying I used to work in an office, then I quit, then I set up my own business. Now I'm here speaking to you, asking for money to invest in my business. It's not compelling, it feels very imposed, it feels very rigid, it feels very structured. Most importantly, you're not really engaging people. You're not really taking them from a low sal to a high riisal motion. People switch off, avoid this. Good sequencing means that you are flowing your story organically. First, this happened, this happened, therefore this happened. And because of that, this happened by sequencing it properly, allowing it all to flow together. Every moment that you add in, every sentence that you add in will add value. It will propel the change that needs to happen. Scenes may cause relatively minor but significant changes towards having that change happen. Every scene leads on to the next and relates to the previous one. If you want to get people to do something different, they must be able to see how it all connects. It may be turning that rigid story that you had about your business. I worked in an office where they didn't care about their employees. They didn't care about their customers. They weren't people. I wanted to connect with people and I wanted to make an environment that people loved working in. I realized it was all about connections. I quit and decided to go out on my own. But the challenge that I found was that I needed to compete against these big players. I need to tell my story. To tell my story, I needed financing and that's why I'm here today to ask you for financing. It's a more compelling story. It's more interesting, people are more likely to lean in. Think about what you want to tell in your story. Think about how it all flows together. Go into your workbook now and start sequencing out the events that you want to happen in your story. See how they fit together, how you can connect those things together. If you're finding something that doesn't connect and doesn't work, it may be a sign that it doesn't belong in the story that you're trying to say. If it doesn't serve the story itself, if it doesn't add value and propel the characters towards the change that needs to happen, it has to go continue working in your workbook. Write out the sequence of events that you want to happen in your story. Eliminate anything that doesn't make sense. Once you've got your sequence in place, now it's time to start thinking about the climax. And when you're ready, we'll move on to that lesson. 10. Making An Exciting Ending - The Climax: Your business story leads up to this moment. This is the climax. Everything that you've been working towards leads to the change that's going to happen. Your audience getting involved, buying your product or service. It is the absolute and irreversible change that's going to happen. A revered Hollywood line warns that movies are about their last 20 minutes and it's no different than business story telling. The last act, the last moments of your story can be the most satisfying experience of all. It's the pinnacle of the story that you've told. It's the thing that gets your audience to that high appraisal points that they want to make the change. They want to buy your product or service. When you're thinking about your climax, you should be thinking about the actions that your characters have made. How are the characters different at the end of the story than they were at the beginning of the story? What is it about their lives that's so much better. What is the new normal? What is the ideal world that you imagined? When you were thinking about your controlling idea, how is it expressed in your story? A fundamental and permanent change has occurred. What is the new normal? Remember your controlling idea. The climax should somehow embed this controlling idea in the ending. It's the ideal world. It's the emotional feeling that you want people to walk away with. It's important though, that when you get to your climax to ask yourself a couple of questions. The first is, what if my character did nothing? Would their life be any different? Would it be worse? Would it be better if they took no action? If you get to your climax and you realize that if your character did nothing, then their life would go on as normal. Then you have found out that by telling your story, your audience will also see that as well. That they won't feel compelled to buy your product or service. The important thing is that change is necessary, but if the character doesn't make a change, their life should be worse off or they miss out on something. Loss of version bias is that people react differently to positive and negative changes of their status quo. More specifically, losses are twice as powerful compared to equivalent games. If you were to offer me $100 that is as impactful as me losing $50 Losses are twice as powerful. Whatever the change and whatever this new better world is, it needs to overshadow any losses that could potentially happen. In this case, them handing over money to you, the loss of their finances being transferred to you in the purchasing of your product or service. People hate change. You need to show them a world where change is needed. This world needs to be so much better than what they're experiencing right now. That's why positive emotions as well stir up a much more likely chance of people buying your product or service. Because if they are inspired, if they feel in awe they're amazed by this better world, then they're more likely to take action. But it's also important to really drive a sense of urgency in your climax. This is where we get to the second question. How can you drive urgency? There's a technique used in storytelling known as ticking clock in TV's and movies. This is simply when the clock ticks down to zero. If the clock doesn't tick down to zero, the world ends, the building explodes. If the character does nothing, the world is worse off. If the character does do something, the world is saved and the world is better afterwards. My favorite example of this, again, is in Star Wars and New Hope with the Death Star Scene. This is an iconic ending. Luke Skywalker has one shot to blow up the Death Star. Defeat. The empire, save the rebellion and become a Jedi. However, that is not the way it was originally meant to end. In the original cut of Star Wars New Hope, the one shown to test audiences, Luke had several runs at the Death Star. The Death Star was not about to blow up a rebel base in this situation. The test audiences saw this and realized that there was no urgency. There was no need for Luke to blow up the death star at that moment. He could come back at another time, somebody else could come back. This opened up a world where if we were to think about this, Luke isn't the answer. This challenge isn't the thing that he needs to overcome. Luke could go off and get some more rebels to attack the base. He could have several weeks, several months. Why should he take action now? The urgency isn't there, The need for change isn't there. But by putting in a ticking clock, it makes the narrative more compelling. You realize that only Luke can defeat the empire, blow up the death star, save the rebellion, and become a Jedi, all in one foul swoop. In business is storytelling. You often see the ticking clock in action. If you stay up late and watch infomercials, it's the by now and you get this free set of steak knives. It's creating that urgency. I mentioned earlier that people have this loss of version bias where they react differently to positive and negative changes. Those negative changes can be missing, missing out in this case on those steak knives, you also see this ticking clock in more common occurrences. If you're Amazon prime member, you may see this ticking clock in your checkout buy in the next 5 hours for next day delivery. They're giving a ticking clock to instill the sense of urgency. If this person does not buy in the next 5 hours, they won't have the product tomorrow. Their life will be worse off, they will miss out. As you're coming up with your climax, think about some of the ways that you can include a sense of urgency in your story at the end of your story that compels them to take action. Make sure that your character has a need to take action. Specifically, buying your product or service. If you've ticked those two boxes, your climax is going to be compelling. Your audience are going to want to take action after hearing us, and they're more likely to buy your product or service as a result. Now your story is complete. What's next? Well, first we're going to take a look at how to open and close a strong story. 11. Opening & Closing Your Story: You've crafted your story and now you're ready to share it with the world. I want to give you some tips though, in how to present your story, especially if you're pitching to an investor or you're stage in an event and you're showcasing your business. It's important to open strong and close strong. I said earlier when we were setting the scene, that you only have one chance to make a first impression. When I spoke about the closing, I mentioned that Hollywood talks about how the 20 minutes at the end of the movie are the most important. Create something special. Opening and closing, your story is exactly the same. It's important to make a strong first impression and it's important to get to a point at the end where people feel compelled to take action. If you're thinking about how to craft your opening of the story, think about your first line opening scene. You want to get their attention and put something into motion. You're helping set the scene, it's working towards setting the broader scene. You can leave some of the backstory for later. You don't need to explain everything in your first sentence. How can you hook them in? How can you make them feel compelled to hear on if people get sucked in early? Stay for the conclusion. When you hear people tell a good story, you hang on there every word. You want to find out if they missed the plane or what they did with a house full of screaming kids. You've started in a path and they'll want to know where it ends. A compelling opening can make that happens. A story is like closing a fireworks display. If you watch the most amazing fireworks display, and the last firework goes up and just fizzles out. The takeaway that people will remember is not the amazing fireworks display, it is the fact that the last firework went up and fizzled away. You want that last firework to be a gigantic explosion thing that causes people to stand up and applaud the thing that's going to inspire all work on your closing line or your closing scene to make it as impactful, as strong as possible. That last line, that last scene, should be the reason why somebody stands up and takes action. I've said it before, I've said it again. That action is buying your product or service. What is the lasting impression that you want to leave your audience with so that they buy your product or service? When doing a presentation to investors or on stage in an event, memorize these opening and closing lines to ensure you always know where you start and land at the end. Because once you have an idea of the structure, the characters, this opening will set you up for success. You know the structure of the story. You don't need to know every single world word. You can get yourself to that end. You know that you have hooked them in at the beginning and then you have left them with a strong sense of desire, urgency that is going to get them to take an action, specifically buying your product or service. Once you've worked on these, use the workbook Jot and some ideas. Then let's move on to the last lesson. 12. Course Closing: Our last lesson in storytelling for business is also going to be the quickest lesson you've come so far already. I hope at this point that your workbook is filled with notes and ideas. You have made the biggest step in creating fantastic compelling stories. Because putting it down on paper, you start fixing it. Lets start working on it, editing it, and turning it into the best story that you can tell. If de, a controlling idea stays in your head, it could be perfect, but it will always remain an idea. If you have the best story ever in your mind, but you don't put it down on paper, you may never share it with anyone. This is one of Pixar's Rules of Storytelling. Putting it down on paper lets you start fixing it. You've taken the first step to being a great storyteller. This is the foundation that you can continue building on. If you want more skills, tips, and resources for storytelling, you can go to my website, Controlling Ideas.com Or you can e mail me at Dave at Controlling Ideas.com Thank you so much for joining and participating in this course. I hope you found it useful, I hope, to hear your story soon.