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- How can you use story?
Greetings, Chief Storytelling Officers.
This past week was 2024 planning with my co-founder, Rachel, for Potential AI. When we first started talking about this idea back in May, I wasn’t sure if we could pull it off. Story is too important to me and I didn’t know if we could train our AI to my standards.
Those doubts pushed us to take a critical eye to every single thing we did. Now, I know those doubts are why I no longer have them.
Watching this thing takeoff and the stories it’s now creating for founders, I’m more excited about the future and fulfilling the vision I had back when I left being a trial lawyer.
I saw a world where I could work with the most ambitious and driven founders to turn them into the world’s greatest storytellers so they could build the best version of the future.
We are on that path. It’s inevitable. And I can’t wait for all of you to experience that future.
Merry Christmas to all of you. Have a wonderful holiday season.
-Robbie
How can you use story?
We called him Colonel. We called him Judge. We called him Snipes.
He was the number 2 in the Dallas District Attorney’s Office. A democrat serving a republican District Attorney. Not an easy job by any means and one that most lawyers thought impossible.
When he took over, I had no idea what to expect.
He was former military. He had tried some of the most serious cases as an Assistant United States Attorney and he had been a long time judge as well.
I was young and trying to make my name in our office.
The first days on the job he set the tone. He walked into every single prosecutor’s office every single morning. At first we thought it was a test to see who was showing up on time. Over time, we figured out the real reason.
He wanted to show his troops that he was with us.
Some days he would walk in and simply say “Crab, need anything?” Other days he would joke “Crab, get a haircut. You’re looking too french for my taste.” And some days he would come in to give us updates, answer questions, and make sure we were briefed on what was going on.
I’ve never met anyone who’s stories were as hilarious, inspiring, and completely random as The Colonel.
One thing he did that became beloved by the entire office was his Friday email.
He’d send an email that wasn’t politcally correct…not even close. That was part of the charm. He didn’t bs anybody. You knew exactly where you stood with him.
What made the emails so entertaining is he was a military historian. So each week he’d share some story from the military. They might be his own stories or they might be from the wars of antiquity. At the end of it he would call out a few of the standout wins our office had that week.
We never really understood how the story tied into the wins of the week but we always enjoyed them. We tried to decipher them. They brought our office together.
So that brings us to the topic of today’s newsletter.
The ways to use story
Story overwhelms many people because of the almost unlimited use cases. Should it be for marketers? Maybe salespeople? What about founders? Does a CTO need story? What’s the brand story? How often should a CEO use story?
I get it.
So today I want to share a few ways I believe you can use story that will be most impactful.
Two categories of story:
Personal
Professional
For today’s issue let’s focus on professional.
Most readers of this newsletter are in some kind of leadership role. That might be founder, CEO, or investor.
The first way to use story is to create connection. Story does something magical in the human brain. When you hear a great story, your brain waves sync with the storyteller. They’re called Mirror Neurons.
It’s the reason that you get nervous reading the Red Rising series even though you know it’s fictional. It’s the reason you get happy when the little girl in Miracle in 34th Street sees her dream home that Santa gave to her family.
The idea is played upon a bit in the movie Pacific Rim as well as Spock’s ability to Vulcan mind meld.
So when does connection matter for your professional life?
Building trust with a customer
Creating relationships with investors
Entering into a co-founder agreement
Recruiting a new team member from their current job
Giving a big public keynote, a major podcast appearance, or a product launch
One of my favorite examples of this comes from Steve Jobs when he was asked a difficult question. He didn’t get defensive, instead he went into storytelling mode. It let him create a connection and the questioner could see what Jobs saw.
It’s the reason I believe the Founder Origin Story is the foundation of every successful fundraise which is why it’s the first thing a founder creates over at Potential.ai.
The second way to use story is to provide context or clarify. Story let’s you shine a light on your decision making. Let’s say you’re facing the investment committee and they are grilling you with questions.
What most founders do in that situation is try to survive. They give just the facts.
Here’s why this fails.
Facts are open to framing. So the fact might mean one thing to you and something different to the investor.
You might think the fact that you’ve spent 0 dollars on marketing is a great fact. The investor might think that “fact” is a negative. To them it might mean you don’t have a predictable channel to scale.
History, the present, and the future aren’t written by facts. They are all writen by the storyteller. The storyteller shapes the way facts are seen.
As a trial lawyer I can tell you that you have no idea how easy it is to shape facts to mean anything. No murder weapon in my case. No problem. The defendant is a smart criminal who knew how to get rid of the gun.
This might shock many people but we were trained to be able to play both sides of a case at any given point. We were tested on how well we could take a fact and spin it whatever way we wanted to. It’s one of the most terrifying things I’ve ever seen and also one of the things I’m most grateful for because I see it everywhere.
So you can’t rely on facts to do the job.
You tell a story to provide context and give perspective. The story can clarify.
One of my favorite quotes from Jeff Bezos is this:
“When the data and the anecdotes disagree, the anecdotes are usually right.”
This takes me to another example to highlight how you can use story in this way. If you’ve ever watched a Presidential speech (I’m mostly referring to US speeches here but others will work too), you’ve seen them do this.
The State of the Union is the perfect example. The President will talk about a big policy idea. He will back it up with all kinds of stats, data, and figures. But then he will point into the crowd and call out a real person. Then he tells their story as the example of why the policy is needed.
There’s a great clip of the Obama speech writing team working through this process and they discuss how they need a real person with a real story for each policy initiative.
Any time I’m working with a founder it’s a constant training in how to storytell to provide context and clarity. It’s an effortless dance which is why I call it effortless storytelling.
You might not think of Elon Musk as a great storyteller because he’s not the smoothest speaker. I’m here to say that’s wrong. He embraces a specific type of charisma and is a master storyteller. He’s always telling stories. Especially when he’s giving interviews or speaking in any type of public situation. It’s how he maintains the strongest frame in the room.
I can guarantee that if you ask any employee at SpaceX they can tell you the story of why they exist.
Which brings me back to my old boss The Colonel.
One time he walked into my office, told me a story, and left before I could ask him anything.
For weeks I wondered what I was supposed to take away from that story. Finally, I had to ask him.
“Crab, it was just a cool story.”
I guess that means the third way to use story is to show you’re cool.
And The Colonel did that.
Resources of the week
A list of the most lifelike sculptures ever created. The more beauty you expose yourself to, the more beautiful your storytelling (and life) becomes. I think taste is one of those things that will be more in demand over the coming decade.
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For all my sci-fi fans (which I am one of) this image is amazing. Sci-fi is one of the best genres to read, watch, and study when you want to learn how to world build for storytelling purposes.
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For any of the emerging fund managers here, this resource has a bunch of fund pitch decks for you to check out.
Ways to work with me
If you’re an early stage company looking to nail your fundraising story, check out Potential AI. Our ai will guide you through the exact process and then write your 3 minute founder origin story and 3 minute startup vision story.
If you’re raising at least 8m as a founder or 50m as a fund, apply to work with me here.
If you’re thinking that it’s time to write the perfect vision story for your growth or later stage company (might be a new strategic narrative, might be for a major company wide keynote, might be for a huge product launch you have coming up), you can email me at [email protected].
If you’re looking to have me speak to your organization, leadership team, or at an event, email me at [email protected].