Find the Million-Dollar Story within You!
“Where do you get stories for your speeches and books?” That was the question I heard from an attendee on a virtual live meeting the other day. The speaker’s answer was what I expected to hear, “Use your own stories from your life.”
Speakers spend years to hone and perfect their stories. They work diligently with keynote coaches to work on their storytelling skills and craft the perfect series of events to showcase what’s called in the speaking business as your “signature story.”
Is Your Signature Story Really Enough?
The problem with trying to ride on your signature story alone is that it gets old and stale. Your survival of the plane crash 20 years ago, your climb to the top of Mt. Everest, your surviving of a debilitating disease….Honestly, once your audience has heard those a few times, well, they’ve heard them all. The experience itself becomes old.
The New and Improved Method for Storytelling Development
I’ve been waiting a long time to run across someone to really offer a new and fresh angle on storytelling development for speaking and writing.
As you can imagine, I’ve heard a lot of great speakers tell amazing stories over my 20+ years being involved with the speaking industry, Toastmasters and National Speakers Association. I was finally introduced to that person and immediately invited her onto my Positive People Progressing show to reveal to the audience how to make a million-dollar story.
Benefits of Storytelling
If you’re new to storytelling in your writing, speaking and internet marketing, then my guest, Merav Richter has delivered a very special gift to you in this video. We didn’t really cover the main benefits of good storytelling, because I really wanted to focus on her story development techniques like her 6 Author Archetypal Assessment, 7 different ways to construct a story, and a writing framework she uses called The Swift Model. Miraculously, we covered most of that in just a 30-minute interview!
Here is a list of storytelling benefits for you to consider.
- Warms-up the viewer or reader to you – Many speakers will begin their speech with a compelling story. Why? The audience is not sure how to receive you at first. So, they’re looking for a way to evaluate your credibility and whether or not they will pay attention to you or have a look at their cell phones. A story gets the audience to give you a chance to give them a reason to keep listening to you.
- Connects with the audience – Once the initial approval stage has been met, examples and stories help the audience to connect with you on a curious level. They become curious and excited for what you will present next.
- Entertains the audience – Stories are great for breaking-up instruction into easily digestible segments. The mind absorbs what you’re teaching in small doses. A good story gives the brain a release so that it’s ready to receive more instruction.
- Fun for you! – Depths of despair stories can be difficult for a speaker or writer to present. Fun stories are fun to tell. By including up-beat and enjoyable stories, you as the presenter become uplifted and energetic for your audience. If you’re having fun, you will be more impactful for your audience.
- Engages the audience – Lack of engagement and burnout due to staring endlessly at virtual live screens has reduced most peoples’ ability to engage with speakers. Speakers need to go to extra lengths today to include specific tactics in their presentations to assure audience engagement. The right story at the right time can stop anyone from checking their email and get them to pay attention.
- Unforced learning – One of the biggest complaints I hear from children who despise remote learning due to Covid-19 forcing them to be homebound is how boring their teachers are on virtual live. They might have been boring before, but now the boredom has multiplied. The reason is because the kids are being forced to learn. Stories help to ease the structure of required learning.
- Softens the sales process – Just as people don’t like to be forced to learn, they don’t like to be sold to either. Stories offer the benefit of selling without putting the hard press on the viewer or reader. You can use an example or case study of someone who was at one place before their transformation and then how much betteer their life was after the transformation. Your audience will see the steps even though you haven’t revealed any type of specific learning sequence. Pretty soon, they want to be part of the story!
- Memory retention – I used to teach four-hour internet marketing workshops. I’m not sure why I chose four hours. The most anyone really retained was the first two hours. Then, I’d switch gears and spend more time talking about examples to keep everyone engaged. People would call me weeks later citing a story or example I used to reinforce what I was teaching. They couldn’t remember the steps as clearly, but they could remember the examples.
- Demonstration – Probably the most important (and easiest) way to use good story telling is by providing a demonstration. If people can see in person, or in their minds, how something works, they are more likely to understand what you’re presenting.
- Amazement – “The man literally hopped on one foot on the tighrope from the east building to the west building and he was 300 feet off the ground!” Amazing stories will capture the attention of anyone.
- Simplifies complexity – If I was to describe how a WordPress plugin keeps a website free from malicious code, most people would go glossy-eyed in a matter of minutes. However, if I used an example of a person who experienced
- Setup for important points – Entertainment, emotion, engagement, and the rest of these benefits of storytelling provide an open door for stating an important point.
- Builds Trust – The combination of the story, and the value of the point made, produce trust in the speaker, writer or person expressing their message through any of the multiple forms of internet marketing.
Join Us Live Next Wednesday!
Join us for episode #009 where I’m going to have a “scoop” interview with the author of a new book coming out later this month about Facebook advertising. If you’re looking for the most current trends and limitations with Facebook ads, you’ll want to be in on this live interview.
Your first step is to join the Facebook Group where all of our interviews are conducted live every Wednesday. Ask questions in the comments area during the show and we will answer them live.
