I am 100% convinced about the power of story. Storytelling is a skill that I want to learn.
That's why I picked up this book called Stories That Stick by Kindra Hall. Although I have read
two other books on storytelling - Storyworthy and Long Story Short - this book is different because
it focuses on storytelling from a business point of view. this book will help you to
use storytelling to captivate your customers, get a competitive advantage in your sales and
marketing efforts, and also to influence your audience, whether they are your employees or
potential donors or a potential employer and you are in a job interview. in the business world,
most people are inundated with sales pitches, facts and figures, lists and graphs. so when
someone starts their presentation with a story, it immediately wakes people up and pulls them in.
you have their attention in a way that you could never have otherwise. because stories are way more
interesting than raw facts. in addition to getting their attention, if done right, a story can
also help to build trust and credibility which is so important in business. Kindra explains the four
kinds of essential stories that every business needs to tell: the value story, the founder story,
the purpose story and the customer story. she gives examples of all four kinds of stories and
also explains when to use which type and also when not to use which type. and in these examples,
i like that not only did she give examples of stories done right but also stories done wrong
which made things very clear for me. one story that i particularly enjoyed reading
was how airbnb was started by two college roommates who were struggling to pay their
exorbitant rent in san francisco. at the same time there was a design conference happening in town
and all the hotels in the conference's suggested list of places to stay
were sold out. and when these roommates found out about that, they had a crazy idea. they thought,
what if we could rent out our living room to some of the attendees? they would have a place to
stay and we could cover our rent with the guests rent. so they advertised a few air mattresses in
their living room and they got three takers! all strangers. these guests had a great time staying
with these roommates and the roommates had a great time hosting them. that's how airbnb started!
this is an example of a founder story. many people may have heard this story, but very few people
know how important storytelling was to airbnb in its early days, when it was struggling to survive
because no one wanted to finance them because people thought that the idea of strangers hosting
strangers was the most stupid idea ever! another example of the power of storytelling is that if
you watch the show shark tank, where entrepreneurs pitch their business ideas to potential investors,
most of the pitches that succeeded told a story. towards the end of the book, Kendra guides us
in how to find, craft and tell our own stories. if you're like me you're probably thinking you
don't have any stories. but we all do. they are just hidden in our life events and we need
to carve them out. the four components of a great story are identifiable characters,
a significant moment, authentic emotion and specific details. with the myriad
stories in this book, Kindra breaks down all four components to help us understand
why a story worked or did not work. for example a mistake that some businesses make
is that they make their product the main character of their commercial and while this strategy used
to work in the past, it is not the best strategy today. this book has inspired me to find out and
tell stories from my own life, and i would like to share them with you through my future videos. let
me know in the comments if you would like to hear them! next week i will share a story from the last
year about making one of the hardest decisions of my life. If you don't want to miss that story,
make sure that you subscribe and tap that notification bell. See you then, keep growing!