A lot of my time currently has been spent studying successful people
and global influencers. The one’s who have started global movements all
seem to have one critical skill; they are great communicators who use
stories to effectively get their point across.
The idea of stories has been around for thousands of years but more
and more it’s becoming the most important way to communicate. I was
listening to a podcast interview with a Ted Talk expert the other day
who suggested that up to eighty percent of communication is best done through story telling.
He explained that the reason why people in business fail at
communicating is that they don’t use real world stories. My
recommendation to you is to investigate the art of storytelling as much
as you can. It’s a skill that will help you in whatever you are doing,
and it’s something that can always be improved upon.
The five reasons stories start global movements are:
1. Stories inspire
Out of all the reasons why stories start global movements, the number
one reason is that they inspire people. A movement is a group of people
that all believe something similar and form a community around this
idea or belief.
Movements are made up of people, and people are moved by other people. In order for people to move people (I hope I’m making sense), there has to be some human element that moves them into action.
Action requires people to feel differently than they did before and the best way to do this is through a story. See if you look at every successful business, brand, location or person (all could be considered movements) they were all started by someone who shared a story.
Through my research, there was not a single example I could find
where a story wasn’t responsible for a movement. When someone attempts
to influence you with facts, chunks of data, and content that is not
story based, you start to feel like you are in some boring corporate
presentation.
Stories have the power to inspire people because they are relatable and something that people can grab hold of. The way people latch onto a story is through finding a story in their own life that aligns with the story being told by the person starting the movement.
For example, when Wholefoods says that they stand for more than just
healthy, and they are about food that nourishes, win-win supplier
relationships, satisfying customers, food education, and advance
environment stewardship (I’ll be honest I have no idea what this is),
some of what they stand for connects with me.
Now not all the things they stand for align with me personally, but
their point about food education aligns with me because I never got food
education in school and I wish I did. If I was given food education,
then I may have a much better level of health than I do now.
So my point is that I have taken one part of the Wholefoods story,
and then applied part of my own story to it, and that’s what inspires me
to be part of their global movement. If they tried to get me onboard
through something other than the story of their vision and why they
began, I wouldn’t have the leverage needed to be inspired by them.
“What a company sells doesn’t inspire me, it’s why they sell it that inspires me and their story is what delivers that message”
2. Stories are personal and require vulnerability
Think about when you buy something. Why do you ask people you know
about their experience of the product you want to buy? Simple, because
the story of how they use it is personal and free from advertising hype
and marketing spin.
The reason you ask your friends about a product is because you are
more inclined to listen to a story about it from someone you trust
because then it’s a personal shopping experience.
Stories ae powerful because nine times out of ten they are personal. To share personal stories, like the ones I share on Addicted2Success,
requires some degree of vulnerability. Not everyone wants to share a
personal story because they are worried what others might think about
them after reading it.
Well, if you haven’t figured out already, I don’t really care, and
you shouldn’t either. For me, I want to be part of a global movement,
and I know that the only way to do this from experience is by being
real. It requires me to put myself on the line and not to be afraid or
blocked by fear.
The more vulnerable you are about sharing your deepest
darkest stories, the more likely you are to have people join your
movement. One of the best examples I have seen of vulnerable storytelling was from a fellow success junkie Lewis Howes.
Now here’s a guy who some might perceive to be a tall, athletic, footy jock kind of guy that has always been “Mr Popular.” Lewis shared a few years ago his story of how he was raped by another boy when he was a kid.
Sharing this type of story would be considered by most to be career
suicide, but Lewis has built a global movement of millions of people by
being vulnerable and sharing his story. It’s what the 0.1% of people do
like Lewis, such as telling vulnerable stories, that creates success and
can lead to global movements.
Stop being afraid and don’t just share stories, make them vulnerable and personal wherever possible.
3. Stories create raw emotion
To get any person to take action towards anything, or to get someone to join a global movement, you must use emotion. Emotion get’s people to take action and it taps into our human potential in every sense of the word.
When you tell a great story, if you’re doing it correctly, there
should be raw emotion behind it. If you look at well-known singers that
make the big time, the one thing they do is deliver songs (a form of a
story) with raw emotion.
The difference between singers who make it and singers who
don’t are the one’s that make it link their heart and communicate
emotion with every single performance. As thick as your skin can be, it’s hard not to be moved by a story when it makes you feel some type of emotion.
Those of us who have done sales training know that people don’t make
buying decisions based on logic; they make buying decisions based on
emotion. If you make someone feel really good, even if your product is
not the best in the market, there is a high chance that the person will
buy from you.
“Stories create emotion and emotion is like a magnet that brings people towards your movement faster than you have ever seen before”
4. Stories are unforgettable
As many of you know, I have been doing Toastmasters to improve my
public speaking skills because it’s helping me with my vision to inspire
the world. One of the first questions I had when I started was “how the
heck do I remember all the words in the speeches I write?”
I reached out to my network, and the response was interesting.
Apparently, the reason why I would often forget words in some
presentations was that I was supposedly speaking about something I
wasn’t passionate about.
See, it turns out that when you tell stories, you are speaking from
experience, and often on things that you are passionate about. When you
try and communicate without stories, it’s easy to forget things because
you are asking your brain to remember something that frankly, you don’t
give a damn about!
Global influencers use stories because they don’t have to
remember them. They can get up and tell a story for hours without
forgetting any part of it because the story is something that is easy to
remember.
The same is true for the audience. Stories are unforgettable and can
attract people to a movement because they are very hard to forget if
told well with the right ingredients. So many times in business I share
stories with perspective clients when the product I am offering is by no
means the best thing they can get.
To my surprise, these perspective clients usually go with me, not for
the product I am offering them, but for the unforgettable stories that I
shared with them about why I do what I do. By looking at every article I
have posted on Addicted2Success, you will see that almost every single
one is made up of powerful stories that have happened to me.
The reason for this is because that’s how I get people to join our
movement and for them not to forget what we stand for. Stories are the
reason why I get so many people reaching out via social media and why
our movement is growing stronger than it ever has before.
People want to be inspired, and the best way to do that is to make them never forget you through the power of stories!
5. Stories demonstrate growth
The key reason why global influencers use stories is because a story
does one very powerful thing; a story demonstrates growth. If you
analyse what a lot of stories are made up of you pretty quickly realise
that they have a starting point and an end point that demonstrates some
type of change or growth from where the story initially began.
It’s this growth that people are attracted to because the natural
reaction when you hear a story that includes growth is to say to
yourself “if they could do that then maybe I could do that, or maybe I
could overcome the same thing they did.”
