Telling stories is one of the most powerful ways to connect with your audience.

When you tell a story…

You bring down your audience’s defenses.
You help your audience to remember your message better.
You show your human side which helps your audience relate to you.
You pull at the heartstrings of your audience.

In a recently published book The Elements of Persuasion by Richard Maxwell and Robert Dickman, they define a story as “a fact wrapped in an emotion that compels us to take an action that transform our world”.

The keyword here is EMOTION.

Anyone can tell a story if they pay enough attention to the things happening around them.

However, if you want to tell an exceptional story, one that your audience will talk about even after months of your presentation, it must help your audience FEEL.

Ok, but HOW?

instead of giving you the steps which is B.O.R.I.N.G and emotionless, I am going to invite you to watch the two videos below.

As you watch the videos, take a stock check of your own emotions. How do you FEEL as you watch the videos? Jolt any memories? Which part of the video did you relate to the most and why?

Get ready your tissue paper.

What’s Your Story?

How was it?

Moving isn’t it?

Ok let’s do a bit of analysis here.

What’s the fact?

It was on the last slide: “Every family has a story. Discover yours, share yours, remember yours at Ancestry.com”. It was simple, straight-to-the-point. If they were to announce it right from the start, without the video, will it work? Will you visit their website?

Maybe. You are not sure. Because it may be a scam. Beecause you can’t exactly remember what story your family has.

As you can see, the environment has not been set up to allow the viewers to click onto their website. Scott Ginsberg (The Nametag Guy), puts it very appropriately:

Don’t get people talking about your new idea or product (Ancestry.com). Instead, create and manage an environment that enables, supports and rewards authentic dialogue.

In this case, the environment is created through the establishment of an emotional connection with the viewewrs - through the story. Notice, that they did not even hard sell and try to persuade you to visit their website. They don’t have freebies or baits to lure you. Instead, they tell a story.

So the question begts - how did the story makes us feel?

For me, it makes me feel sentimental about all the wonderful moments I had with my dad.

Though he never taught me baseball or any ball games for that matter, he fetches me to school everyday.

In his taxi, we will talk about everything under the sun - studies, dreams, family, money, and life. He will tell me about his childhood, about how he rebelled against his dad, about how he felt misunderstood when he was young, about how he felt when he first held me in his hands, about he felt when he lost his dad…

That’s me and my dad on my birthday last year in Philadelphia. We were doing a poorly executed pose of Jackie Chan.

I got to know my dad through all these road trips. That’s why I love to go to school because I get to have these conversations with my dad.

And then I remember how his dad (my grandpa) will also fetch him to school in his trishaw (or three-wheeler) and I bet they talked about everything under the sun as well.

Unfortunately as I grew up, the times I spent in his taxi gets shorter and shorter.

And now that I am in Sri Lanka, I don’t get to see him much… it made me miss the times I had with him, it made me want to call him and tell him how much I love him.

As I was watching how the dads of many generation interacted with their sons, I felt immense gratitude for my dad’s dad who taught him well. And because of that, the wisdom gets passed down to me. And hopefully one day, from me to my son.

The story shared in this video affirms a statement that was made later — “Every family has a story.”

And as we watch the video, we are reminded of the stories with our families. The happy memories and the sad memories. Of joy and of loss. Of excitement and of disappointment. This is where our emotions are evoked.

So instead of just a website, we now see it as an opportunity for us to relive these memories. To walk down memory lane and unravel all the stories that were lived before our generation…

See how powerful this story became?

Will we check out the website? Absolutely! We will even tell our friends about it.

Now that’s the power of a story.

The next video I am showing you is the semi finals of a talent show in Britain. (Simon Cowell from American Idol is one of the judges for this show as well.)

The reason why I picked this video is because I know that you will be able to relate to it.

It’s about an ordinary man - like you and me - who wants to sing opera and went against all odds to live that dream. I think the part that hit me the most was when the entire 1000 plus audience clapped and cheered for him as he sang his heart out. AND… this were the same 1000 people who scoffed at him when he first came up on stage.

That, my friend, was a million dollar moment…

How about you - what was your million dollar moment?

Paul Pott’s One Chance

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The Secrets To Storytelling Success

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