The Benefits of Storytelling in Your Business
Stories Capture Attention & Change How People Think
It's the middle of April here in northern Minnesota, and we're currently getting hit by a massive snowstorm with lots of high winds, and there's something REALLY unusual happening outside my window.
There are literally thousands of birds flying by my window and they have been all morning.
(Click to play - 19 sec, there's no sound, FYI, and WAY more birds in person than my camera captured)
I can't stop watching them and wondering why they are doing this.
(There's a business lesson in this... I promise)
They are spring birds, and they are WAY more active than normal right now, flying against the hard winds into the snow.
Are they trying to keep warm?
Are they trying to escape the storm and fly out of it?
Are they looking for food?
Or are they just having fun? Or something else?
The wind is blowing them around like crazy, blowing them backwards, sideways, and fast... it looks precarious, and dangerous.
At least one hit my house (it was ok, though, thankfully).
It's all sorts of different kinds of birds.
So what? Why did I spend all this time telling you about the birds? For starters…
Stories capture attention like nothing else.
Seriously.
Uri Hasson, a neuroscientist based at Princeton University, found that when people listen to the same personal story together, their brain activity becomes synced.
That means telling stories SHAPE the way we think.
Our brains can't help but to follow the story.
Hasson warned that this can make people with a platform "disproportionately powerful", with even a single sentence being enough to change how people interpret a story.
I've used stories to teach since I started my business because I found it made my lessons far more "sticky" and memorable, all while making people feel more connected to me and my life personally.
Explaining to photographers why blogging is a lot like sex in marriage (it can easily become the same ol' boring story again and again if you aren't intentional about it), or sharing about my first kiss story and how it relates to getting the sale are incredibly powerful and memorable.
But I didn't realize that not everyone sees the connections and finds it easy to teach through stories.
So I'm going to share my secret for how to do this. It's easy when you understand it.
Teaching through story is simply giving meaning to the everyday things we experience and relating it to something we teach.
Just ask yourself, "What does it mean?"
(Everytime I ask myself that question, I can't help but think of the guy on youtube video below that gets WAY too excited about a double rainbow and says this around 1:19... his wonder makes me smile!)
Creating Stories for your Business is EASY.
You can do it in 2 simple steps.
Step 1: Observe what's happening around you.
Step 2: Give it a meaning.
Don't say you can't do this. We do this CONSTANTLY as humans.
Someone honks angrily at you while driving, and we immediately assume that this means they are angry, or entitled, or whatever.
Your partner goes out of their way to do something nice for you. You assume they love you, or want something from you, etc.
Our brains are wired to create meaning from what we observe.
It's how we make sense of the world.
In fact, it was the ONLY way we were able to learn when we were first born, before we had language. We saw things, we made meaning out of them, and we learned.
Start seeing what's happening around you, and give it a meaning & lesson.
In the case of the birds, there are LOTS of them, WAY more than usual.
I could compare that to how the market is going to become saturated with content now that ChatGPT makes it so easy to create and repurpose content.
They are also struggling against the wind.
I could use this as an example of how we face resistance, how it makes us stronger, how it might feel like we are going backwards in our business but really we are strengthening and getting somewhere.
It's also very unusual for birds to be this far north during a snowstorm, so I could relate this to how we may be doing all the right things but our environment makes things harder than normal, just like the recession is affecting so many biz owners right now.
I could share how unusual it is for this to happen, or how distracting, since I can't stop watching it (it's true). And how we can attract attention by being different in our markets.
Or relate this to distractions that unexpectedly pop up and keep us from our main focus.
Or write a blog post about storytelling. 😏
This is just ONE little thing going on right now, and I could easily come up with a dozen lessons from it simply by observing what is happening, and then giving it meaning through relating it to a similar quality in business or life.
You don't need something unusual to write a meaningful story.
You can give meaning to the regular, ordinary stuff too. That's even more powerful than unusual things as you get an extra powerful benefit from it (I'll explain why below).
Here's the thing, though.
Stories stick.
Stories change how we think.
And when we can tie lessons to the stories we tell our people, they don't easily forget.
Why Common Things Make the BEST Stories
The reason it's so powerful to use common, ordinary things when telling stories is because you create an association between you and this common thing that may make your listener think of you next time they experience this as well.
For example, next time you see lots of birds flying by in a flock, or have a late winter snow storm, you might think about me and this lesson or story.
Anytime we can create triggers for people to think about us, our business, or what we taught them or helped them with, it's like an extra touch point that keeps them in our world.
The next time my mastermind members see a Root Candle (or a pillar candle, for that matter), I KNOW they will think of me.
And back when I had rainbow hair, people would send me messages anytime they saw someone else with rainbow hair.
Stories can create powerful associations with you, and that's why the more common your story, the more likely they are to think of you when they experience it in their own lives.
Wanna learn more about storytelling?
I don't teach storytelling in any formal capacity, but Cody Burch has a storytelling workshop that I've heard good things about, and the book "The Best Story Wins" by Matthew Luhn is REALLY good as well.
Or if you REALLY want to dive into empathy-based selling with story via email, Andre Chaperon's Art of Email course (and all his other products, for that matter), have shaped my business more than anyone else out there in the last 12 years I've done business. It's great.
I don't get anything for recommending those... just think they are really good.
Do you use storytelling in your business?
What works best for you?
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Meet Jamie Bright
Jamie Bright is the founder of Brighter Together Mastermind, which brings together impact-driven entrepreneurs in small group masterminds where they generously share their experience and expertise with each other so everyone can grow.
