What can story do anyways?

Greetings, Chief Storytelling Officers.

Last night I was watching UFC 296 and my girlfriend was choosing who she wanted to win. The way she made that decision?

The story of the fighter. The ones she liked, she rooted for.

That’s the power of storytelling.

-Robbie

What can story do anyways?

One of the toughest cases of my career as a prosecutor was a child abuse case where the boy victim was sexually assaulted by his older cousin. I was brought into the case two months before the trial date by a prosecutor I’d admired for many years. She brought me up to speed on what had been going on and we had a huge problem.

The victim refused to talk about the abuse.

Nothing that she tried could get him to open up and at this point the results I’d had inside of our special victims unit had brought a great deal of attention my way. That’s why she came to me and asked for my help.

Here’s the thing.

We had a confession from the abuser.

Sounds like a slam dunk right?

The problem is that under Texas law, a confession most be corroborated to be admissible. So if the victim wouldn’t confirm what happened in court, we would lose and a brutal abuser would walk free.

My only job was to get the victim to open up and share his story.

Are humans wired for story?

There’s a saying out there that humans are wired for story. There’s even a book with that title. So people tend to overestimate their ability to tell stories because they think they are wired for them.

The reality is humans aren’t wired to tell stories.

Humans are wired to learn through story, remember through story, and be entertained through story.

The studies have backed this up time and time again.

A story is 22x more memorable than facts and figures alone.

That’s pretty shocking, right?

So what stops people from using that human wiring for story to their advantage?

What I’ve seen over my years studying, teaching, and practicing the art of storytelling is that most people don’t even understand the fundamentals well enough to stand a chance.

CEOs and leaders get up in front of their teams and give a dry presentations outlining how last quarter went and what they need to achieve next quarter. There’s no human story. There’s no personal story. There’s no customer story. There’s no future story. There’s nothing to remember because humans are wired to remember stories.

Sales people talk about all the features and product specs and their prospect’s eyes glaze over. “Let me think on it and I’ll get back to you.”

There’s no story that brings it to life. There’s no story of why the sales person cares about solving the problem for the prospect. There’s no story about anything.

I could go on and on to give examples from marketers, engineers, product leaders, finance leaders, founders, and fund managers.

So now the question becomes, if humans are wired to connect to story, how can you do it.

Storytelling Fundamentals

I remember seeing a clip from former NBA Basketball player and now TV personality, Kenny Smith. He was talking about his journey as a player back in the day.

When he was a junior in high school he couldn’t get a single college to look at him so he made a plan to change that. The key he said…

Do the ordinary things, extra.

The same is true with storytelling. Once you’ve mastered the fundamentals, that’s when you have more freedom to explore the art.

So the fundamentals of a story.

1. Characters

2. Relationships of those characters

3. Environment/Place/Time

4. Conflict (also means some kind of stakes)

5. Resolution

I’ve seen this said a few different ways. They all mean the same thing.

What a story does at it’s most basic level is show a character at one point of time face some kind of challenge that changes them in some way.

Simple, right?

I posted this over on LI this week but I loved how Kobe talked about his study of storytelling that allowed him to become an Oscar winning storyteller after he retired from basketball.

The summary: He spent 15 years studying and practicing storytelling.

I don’t tell you this to scare you away. I tell you this so you know how you become great.

By becoming great at storytelling, you unlock the ability to change the way people behave. You will hold in your hands the ability to mold the future. You will turn the impossible into the inevitable.

Now back to the story…

The first time I met the victim of that case we met at his school. I sat with him and didn’t even bring up the case. I just wanted to get to know him and we did that by talking all kinds of sports.

I shared stories of growing up thinking I was going to be Ken Griffey Jr and wearing my hat backwards. I shared stories of going to NBA playoff games when I was his age and the players I got to see on the court. I shared stories and listened to his stories.

When I left that day I told the other prosecutor that we would get there before trial.

She was nervous. This was a case where she’d recommended over 40 years in prison for the abuser. The stakes were high both on a professional level and more importantly on the personal level. We wanted to protect this kid.

I had a number of visits with the victim and every time we chatted about what was new. Every time we’d end up talking stories and they moved from just about sports to other areas of his life and mine.

We connected more and more every time.

Around 2 weeks before trial I finally approached the subject.

I didn’t try to tell him it was going to be easy. I didn’t try to tell him it would all be okay. Because I knew it wouldn’t be.

What I did tell him is that the only way I could make sure it never happened again would be if he could share what happened with me.

I spent the next half hour as he’d tell me a little bit and then go silent for a while. By the end, he’d confirmed the entire confession for the first time to anyone.

Two weeks later he was able to do it again in the courtroom and the abuser was put in prison where he will never be able to hurt that kid again.

Sometimes the word storytelling gets thrown around as a buzzword. In many ways it’s great that it’s reached that status. In other ways it minimizes what the real power of storytelling can be.

Storytelling is about connecting with people. Storytelling is about being vulnerable with people. Storytelling is about taking back the power in your own life.

I’ve seen that first hand in some of the most brutal cases. I’ve seen it in the world of business too.

Develop the fundamentals. Put in that extra work. Tap into the human wiring.

Then you will be the type of storyteller who can shape your world.

Resources of the week

I put out a new video on how one of my clients raised a 12m round pre-product.

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Why Bezos loves the memo culture. I 100% agree with this as long form writing shows a clarity of thinking that can’t be matched. Every story I write for clients is done first in long form prose to bring everything to life.

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Interesting presentation of predictions from Benedict Evans that he gave at Slush this year.

Ways to work with me

1. If you’re looking to perfect the story of you, your company, and where you’re vision is headed you can reply back to this email to start the discussion. Think strategic vision that can be used across your company to lead, recruit, speak publicly, and other use cases.

2. If you’re raising at least 8m as a founder or 50m as a fund than you can apply to work with me here.

3. If you’re an early stage company looking to nail your fundraising story than check out Potential AI.

4. If you’re looking for me to speak to your organization or at an event, reply back to this email with more details and I can share my speaker reel and other details.