storytelling

“The biggest source of economic waste is when people produce something that's objectively brilliant, or they produce an invention which should be life-changing, But then they tell the wrong story about it, and it doesn't sell.”

“She used to say that a story is like a shark. It has to keep moving forward or it dies, right? Or you can imagine it as a trapeze, where the listener, you have to provide that next rung for the listener. There can't be any gaps or they fall.”

“And what entrepreneurs who tell stories will succeed at, is they realize they're not the hero in the story. The audience of their message is the hero in the story. And what they're doing is they're helping that person go on a hero's journey. To co-create a bet…”

“You've been taught to write in a boring way, which is topic sentence and supporting details. That's a disastrous way to write. Because you're right. Once you present the topic sentence, people know you're going to provide some evidence, and unless I'm like a n…”

“So a story is about change over time. Usually, it's sort of a realization. Like, I used to think one thing, and now I think another thing. That's most stories. Sometimes they're transformational, meaning I once was one kind of person, and then some stuff happe…”

“So an hourglass is the idea that once you know you have the audience's attention and they're dying for the next sentence, you make them wait as long as possible. You flip the hourglass over and let the sand run.”

“If we start to recognize that our lives are filled with stories, that they're everywhere, that we don't need enormous moments in order to carry the day, and instead small moments are actually some of the most powerful moments we can ever share.”

“If I did something stupid over the course of the story, I'm not going to remove the stupid thing I did in an effort to make myself look better. In fact, I will enhance the stupid thing I did, because I know that's what audiences really want. You know, that vul…”

“When we tell a story about something like a spoon, something as simple as that, it suddenly becomes not a spoon anymore. And the better we are at telling stories about ourselves, the people we love, the products we make, the services we offer, you know, all of…”

“People often think of stories as an attempt to describe something when actually nobody ever wants to know what anything looked like, unless it's relevant to a story. What people really want is to know what you felt, what you said, and what you did. And so if y…”

“The phrase, never let the facts stand in the way of a good story, I hate that. It's the stupidest thing I've ever heard anyone say. When we lie in our stories, we can no longer be trusted.”

“When I tell a story, I'm not hoping that you are thinking, that once happened to me. What I'm hoping is you're thinking, I once felt that way. I once thought that way, or maybe someday I Could feel or think that way. That's the goal.”

“People want to hear the story of the person sitting across from them. They want to know that you're the one speaking because that requires vulnerability. If I tell you a story and it's not about me, the only vulnerability required is public speaking.”

“Like, you're just stealing bandwidth from the audience, mentioning that Martin was also in the car. Like, if you don't do anything, you're out of the car. You're irrelevant to me at that point because you're irrelevant to the audience.”

“Which is to say, you probably should never memorize anything that you say. I've never memorized a story or a speech. That I'm going to deliver, but what I say is we remember them. Meaning we understand the beats, we understand what's going to happen, but if I …”

“I think the extent of lying in a story amounts to, I'm allowed to take things out of stories that are inconvenient for the story. Not inconvenient for me, but because they make the story not run as well.”