Storytelling resources for your 2024

Greetings, Chief Storytelling Officers.

Welcome to the end of the year. A place where everyone on LinkedIn tells you they had the greatest year in history and everything went right for them. Or maybe it’s twitter where everyone is sharing their year in review and making you wonder why you don’t have time to sit down and spend an entire day writing yours to show off all the wins, while burying all the losses.

I’m here to tell you congratulations for making it through this year. Whatever you had to go through, you did it. Maybe it wasn’t pretty. Maybe it downright sucked. But here you are. You’re still standing.

It reminds me of back in high school. I played ping pong with my group of friends every day. Early on I was the best player. It felt great. Then one of my friends figured out a strategy that made me beyond frustrated. He never let a shot get past him.

He didn’t try to hit a winner. He just kept the point going. And me and my other friends would grow tired of waiting so we would take a bad shot and miss it.

He quickly became the best player in our group.

Johh never freaking missed.

So once again. Congrats on making it here. Let’s do it again next year.

-Robbie

Some of my favorites from this year

The best part of what I do is the constant chasing of my curiosity and obsessions. This year I got to talk to incredible people pushing the storytelling genre forward. I studied everything from presidential speeches to hollywood screenwriting. I read typical non-fiction books on people like Elon Musk and Alexander the Great and also read the best fiction series I’ve read in years.

So today is a bit different. Here are some of my favorites from the year.

People

Jeremy Connell-Waite is the global communications designer at IBM who oversees billions of dollars in deals and is one of the smartest storytelling minds in the world. His content on LinkedIn should be must read/watch for anyone on this newsletter. Every time I talk with Jeremy I walk away smarter and more convinced that the future is the storyteller’s.

Nathan Baugh will be one of this generation’s great fiction writers. He already does an incredible job breaking down your favorite stories and why they work. I read everything he writes and I’m lucky we get the chance to spar with each other. Iron sharpens Iron.

Billy Oppenheimer writes some of the best unknown stories on the internet about famous people. I don’t personally know Billy but his storytelling will leave you inspired.

Books

Red Rising (series) is the best fiction book I’ve read in the last 5 years. I absolutely flew through the current 6 books (final 7th comes out in future). This series is up there with Dune, Foundation, and LOTR for me.

The Creative Act: A way of being by Rick Rubin spoke to the artist in me. I read it back in the fall and have since gone back to it the past month as a re-read. The entry on greatness will be a daily reminder in 2024. Some people in tech love it and others hate it. I’d say if you are the artist type it will resonate.

The Storytelling Almanac by John Bucher is an easy guide to understanding many of the core principles of storytelling. John is the creative director for Joseph Campbell Foundation and makes it easy to elevate your basic storytelling skills.

Other

Pitch Masters from Danny Fontaine is a great podcast on the art of storytelling/pitching/selling. His guests are top notch including people like Nancy Duarte and Oren Klaff among others.

Rich Roll podcast has quickly become one of the rare ones where great storytelling happens from all kinds of successful people. I especially loved the episodes with Arnold, Robert McKee, and Steven Pressfield.

Like Stories of Old is the greatest YouTube channel I’ve ever found. It’s breakdown of storytelling, human psychology, and culture is incredible. The videos are long but they are beautiful and brilliant.

There are so many more that could be included in all of these categories but starting here will put you in a great place.

Have a great final day of 2023 and let’s make 2024 a strong year. Thanks for reading and all of your support. See you next week.

Ways to get help from me

1. 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.

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

3. 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].

4. If you’re looking to have me speak to your organization, leadership team, or at an event, email me at [email protected].