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The perfect first sentence

The perfect first sentence is the one that makes your audience want to read or hear the second one.

Sounds trivial, but is it?

I mean, just look around – let’s say at a couple of speeches you listened to recently. How did these begin?

How did yours begin?

Just because every other speech begins by going through the agenda, yours doesn’t have to.

Your favorite movie

A huge part of what makes a great movie compelling is that you don’t know what’s going to happen but want to find out.

But then again, why is it that you’ve watched your favorite movie a dozen times although you know what’s going to happen?

These movies keep the tension regardless. You’re glued to your seat and can’t help but want to follow the story a fifth time.

This time, tension works in a very different way, though.

When you’re watching a movie for the first time, tension is to a large degree created by what we don’t know. We anticipate what’s going to happen and tension is created by the uncertainty about whether that’s actually going to happen.

But when we’re watching a movie repeatedly, tension is created differently. This time, we already know what happened.

Crucially, we already know what we felt. And so this time, what we anticipate is the repetition of this sensation. It’s the certainty of what we’re going to feel that creates the tension. (Just observe how often you’ll say something like: “Wait, now comes the best part!”)

Music works this way, too. You can hear a piece for the 100th time and it still creates tension, sometimes even more, when you’re waiting for that climactic moment to finally arrive.

What does your audience anticipate?

Leave out the boring parts

Storytelling is rather simple if you follow this advice from writer Elmore Leonard:

“A story is real life with the boring parts left out.”

Simple, right?

Just leave out all the boring parts and voilà: your story is ready.

But.

What if you can’t leave out the boring parts? Because, let’s say, it’s a really dry topic … with lots of facts …

Sounds like bad luck, doesn’t it? I mean you can’t just leave the facts out when it’s about the facts, do you? You’re basically doomed to be giving a boring talk.

Well, unless the premise is wrong.

Which it is: Facts are facts. In and of itself, a fact is neither boring nor exciting.

But if the facts relate to our lives, if the facts have an impact on our lives (even if it’s just an impact on your business’ bottom line), then we’re back in Leonards domain: Leave out the boring parts, i.e. those facts that don’t relate to the point we’re trying to make about our lives.

Facts make for a boring story if (and only if) you write real life out of the story and if you waste your time on the facts without making the connection to real life.

The misuse of stories

Stories are powerful.

Which is why they are often misused. The more emotional, the greater the potential for misuse.

A couple of years back, at a conference, I listened to a speech about water problems in mega cities. The speaker started with a story about a poor family who suffered some severe diseases due to contaminated water. It was a touching experience. She really made us feel the pain.

Which earned her harsh criticism during the coffee break.

Because it turned out that she had been misleading us. The problem: The story wasn’t representative of the situation. Not at all.

It was a story that was meant to evoke emotions (which it did). But it was a dishonest story in the sense that the speaker had picked a very specific, very special situation that painted an unusually dark picture. One that wasn’t representative of the situation at all. It was purely there to evoke emotions while not making the proper point.

That’s a crucial difference: The best stories are such that they are representative of the whole picture despite highlighting only a specific part of the picture.

Skilled communicators pick stories that paint a vivid picture.

Great communicators pick representative stories that paint a vivd picture. A story that is powerful because it evokes emotions and captures the essence of the complete picture.

What Rocky teaches us about business storytelling

Almost everyone has been Rocky at one point in their life.

You just knew that you have what it takes … if only the world was at bit more fair and didn’t throw all the mess at you while treating the already big fish with (even more) money, (even more) relationships, and (even more) luck.

When someday luck would call you – just like Apollo did with Rocky to give him the opportunity to fight for the world championship, you’d prove that.

Haven’t you been Rocky? You knew that if only luck would call you to give you the opportunity to show the world that you really have what it takes, you would prove them right? Just like Rocky did? (I know that many of you actually have.)

That’s why Rocky resonates with so many people – even those who would never watch a real boxing fight. It’s not the boxing why people love Rocky. It’s the journey.

Rocky, just like any good story, is a canvas, a canvas we project ourselves on. We look at the hero, but it’s us who we see. If it’s a great story, we derive lessons from what we see and implement them for our own lives.

The same principle works for business stories.

Unfortunately, most business stories work rather differently. They are not designed as a canvas but as a spotlight. A rather bright one, in fact, so that the audience can appreciate the hero and cheer for them.

The problem with that is that audiences already have a hero to root for: themselves. They don’t need you to replace that hero.

A better way to tell a business story is to think of it as a canvas so that – even while we’re speaking about ourselves – it’s the customer who recognizes themselves in the story.

Can you point to a business story that does that for you? I’d love to hear it!

Curiosity

Many presenters tell their audience everything but fail to make them curious for anything.

It’s exactly the other way around: Start from curiosity and ignore everything else at the beginning. If you manage to tap into your audience’s curiosity, they will follow you down that rabbit hole. Wanting you to tell them more. Ever more. Until you’ve told them everything.

Sadly, most presentations turn that on its head. They hope to make people curious for something by telling them everything. Which rarely works. If only because most people have long tuned out before they’ve reached their point of interest.

So, what would make your audience curious to know more?

PS: If you’re unsure about how to do this, an instant clarity call can help.

Everybody is interesting

“We believe that everybody has a story and is creative in their own way.” – Astrid Klein

Long-time reader Thomas Maile nominated Mark Dytham and Astrid Klein as leaders who light the path.

The two founders of the PechaKucha movement have changed the rules for presenting forever. In a world that was used to death by PowerPoint with presentations that seemed to run forever while leading nowhere, they established a format that has made quite an impact.

PechaKucha Nights are held everywhere across the globe giving everyone a stage and the chance to tell their story and let us in into their world.

Thomas made his nomination with these words:

“German news magazine DER SPIEGEL once called PechaKucha speakers ‘pop stars of PowerPoint’. While that’s a cute description it’s also one that doesn’t quite do justice to what PechaKucha is really about.

First (and obviously), PechaKucha is a strict presentation format: exactly 20 slides each advancing automatically to the next after exactly 20 seconds, adding to a total of 400 seconds, i.e. 6 minutes and 40 minutes. Every presentation is the same length and has the same format.

But underneath, PechaKucha is way more. By spreading across 1200 cities around the world, PechaKucha gives a stage to the unheard voices. It allows people like you and me to talk about what matters to them. That to me is the power of “EVERYBODY HAS A STORY”. PechaKucha gives the opportunity to tell it. It’s also why the Spiegel headline is not quite true. It’s not for pop stars. It’s for everyone.

Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham have done an amazing job of fostering that movement. To me, they serve as a role model for leaders who light the path.”

I couldn’t agree more to Thomas’ words. Recently, I’ve had the pleasure to chat with Astrid and Mark and they deserve every word that Thomas has said about them.

What struck me most was their deep belief that everybody is equal. In their own words: “PechaKucha is about democratizing the stage”.

It gives everyone an opportunity to speak up. It surfaces those voices that don’t consider themselves pop stars but have stories to share that are just as interesting – often even more so – than the ones that the pop stars, influencers, and gurus share.

On their freshly remade website there are a lot of gems to discover. Head over to discover some.

And then, when you come back, read the “Leaders Light the Path” manifesto and nominate someone yourself. It’s really easy.

We need to spice it up

The whole piece needs to be more emotional to get people interested. Let’s add some in. Juice it up with some nice storytelling. And gorgeous images.

Also … count me out.

Because if you need to decorate your story with emotional bits, it means that your story is flawed.

A way better approach would be to EXTRACT the emotional aspects, not add them.

What’s the spice INHERENT in your idea? Surface that!

Of course, the obvious question is what to do if you feel that that’s exactly the problem … because it feels like there is no inherent emotion.

I don’t believe you.

If your product is the solution to an actual struggle that actual humans have, then there is no way that there are no emotions involved.

Surface them! Make me feel the pain of my struggles, make me feel the happiness once I get rid of the struggles.

Add-on emotions might give you attention, inherent emotions drive action.

There’s something wrong with storytelling

If storytelling is that ancient tool that fuels all human learning, then shouldn’t it be easier after all these years?

Shouldn’t we just have learnt by now how to tell a story? Just like we know how to add 2 and 2 together?

And yet, looking around (or googling the term “storytelling”) I sometimes get the impression that telling stories is designed to be complicated. That somehow only a privileged breed of “storytellers” are supposed to really master the art. And that you need to learn a complex framework (such as the hero’s journey) and a number of other techniques before you can even start to tell your story.

I don’t think that’s true. Quite the opposite: I firmly believe that if you care for what you do and if you have an offer that actually solves someone’s problem, then you already have all you need to tell a compelling story.

The most surprising aspect is that in my experience, the best stories are not even the stories you tell but the stories you spark in your audience’s minds.

Later this year, I’m launching a new online course to unleash the storyteller in you. My promise is that this will be the simplest and yet, most effective approach to storytelling you’ve seen, yet.

We’re doing without any complex frameworks and start from what you deeply care about. We’re looking at the fundamental reasons why stories work and then make them work for you. So that you can just start to tell your story from where you’re at.

If that resonates, I’d love to make you a special pre-launch offer.

Reserve your seat to …

  • get early access to crucial insights on and masterful examples of storytelling, released weekly until launch.
  • secure 25% off when you decide to actually enroll in the course at any point pre-launch.
  • join an exclusive, free group video call with me where we discuss common pitfalls in storytelling and during which you have the chance of getting 1:1 feedback on your storytelling.

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Dr. Michael Gerharz

Dr. Michael Gerharz