Storytelling Basics

Everyone loves a good story, right?  

This is important to remember as ‘everyone’ includes your community and prospective customers. Storytelling as a commercial device (asides from movies/entertainment) has been on the rise in a big way over the years for this reason. On TV insurance companies don’t put up graphs of their prices, they have someone’s car break down and the stress of the situation.  

Learning to tell stories is one of the best investments any business owners can make in their company. We’re in the disability space! Stories are part and parcel of the industry so in my view storytelling is an occupational requirement. Stories can engage, inspire and influence in ways no other medium of communication can. So, what’s the business case for it? Simply put people prefer stories and are more likely to remember it.  

In fact, Stanford University did research on it and concluded; 

Stories are remembered up to 22 times more than facts alone. 

– Jennifer Aaker 

Think about this for a minute. If a marketer came to you and said ‘I’ll run ads for your company that will be 22 times more memorable than your current ads’, you’d call BS right? Storytelling is good business. If you’re at a networking event with 20 other people and you’re prospecting telling a good yarn could easily be the difference between being remembered by all or none of the attendees.  

Finally, storytelling isn’t a complete deviation from ‘facts’, a good story is made up of facts and then there’s plenty of room to go through your what and how in the story if it’s about your company and plenty of room for the ‘why’ if it’s about you. Considering it’s a skill that is innate and free to develop this is another way your brand can compete with any other organisation from day one.  

So, what makes a good story? Firstly, some tips, then some structure.  

Tips. 

• Keep it short. You ever listen to somebody tell a story and feel yourself losing interest as it drags on? Don’t be that storyteller. A short story is a good story.  
• Pauses are your exclamation points. People typically don’t like pauses in conversation, but they can be a useful device in telling stories. Saying something dramatic or impactful and giving a short pause adds emphasis to what you said. It allows people to digest the information and for the narrative punch to land. Pauses are never as long as they feel.  
• Keep it simple. Try not to establish your own marvel cinematic universe here, tell one story about one thing with one resolution. Even exceeding three characters isn’t advisable and if you have a great story involving a group of people, mention the group but pick one character to represent them.  
• Focus on the core issue. Your story has a core issue/focus at its heart. Never deviate too far from it.  

There’s plenty more here but it’s usually pretty obvious, I’ve delivered a ton of workshops on storytelling and what people don’t like is a long list. So, write your own but my rule of thumb has always been to never tell a story I would be bored by. 

Structure 

Act 1. Introduce the characters, the problem and a point of intrigue.  

Characters names are useful, but the time of day and what colour shirt they were wearing isn’t Strip it down to essentials on what must be known for the plot to progress.   

What is the problem. The magic here is to link the problem to what problem your company is trying to solve. Put it in simple terms and don’t dance around it.  

Intrigue. Don’t start the story ‘so this is a story about a person and what you need to…’ Start the story somewhere interesting. Below I’ll give you a simple version of my WeFlex story to illustrate.  

“It was at my dad’s funeral that I realised that something had to change for my little brother. You see both men are autistic, Dad died from preventable health issues and little brother was following suit. However, when I tried to find health and fitness support for my little brother there was nothing”. Short, sweet and achieves the first three points.   

Act 2. Unpack the problem.  

It’s never just the problem. Whilst the problem is what you’re trying to solve, it’s the impact of the problem that people experience. For example (unintentional) unemployment is a problem, but the impact is much larger and pervasive. It leads to financial stress, low self-esteem, disconnect from community, interpersonal relationships can falter and if there’s a family to support there’s impact there too. The problem is unemployment, the impact is much more, and this is the stuff people will relate to.  

As for my story, “this led to Jackson living a more isolated life, feeling unwelcome in gyms, his sleep quality dropped as his weight increased, which caused mental health problems, etc” See? A lack of inclusive PTs results in much worse outcomes than you’d initially think. The importance of the work becomes evident here. 

Act 3. Solution, benefits and CTA. 

And here’s where you and your services come in! Describe the intervention, what you did and how you did it.  

But don’t stop there – what were the additional benefits? What are the other positive outcomes of that came because of your service/product? Getting job didn’t just provide income. It meant we could feed our kids fresh food, we could go on holidays, we could take care of emergencies, and we relied less on government support.  

CTA is the ‘Call To Action’ which basically means ‘now what?’ for the listener. And this might change depending on the audiences. Maybe you want them to sign up for services? To refer clients? To work for you, etc.  

So, for WeFlex it was “I became a PT myself and started training Jack, because I knew how to be inclusive. As a result, Jack lost 13kgs but more importantly, he had a gym he felt safe in making his world bigger, his mood and general health improved as did his sleep. So, if you have any clients that would benefit from this type of training here’s our website”.  

See how we outlined the service and the benefits with an easy CTA at the end?   

Write it down, practice it and get out there to tell your story. There’s no faster way to build trust and create content that engages and inspires more than a good story.