Your story is your biggest leverage in business and life.
I’m sitting here on my couch, the sun peeking in, as I stare at the blinking cursor of the note app on my phone.
A few paragraphs, half sentences, and bullet points scattered around.
And I’m
Excited to announce…
Honored to share…
Happy to be happy…
Excited to be filled with excitement…
I’m sorry I’m still processing some post-traumatic stress from scrolling for a few minutes on my LinkedIn feed earlier today.
Every post sounds like a daily TED talk.
Seems like the only things worth writing have to be ground-breaking.
For years, I thought this too. I never posted anything.
Then I came across the book GRIT. The author talked about the perseverance that helps people get to extraordinary goals.
The first step is finding your interest, and then developing that interest.
She mentioned that in the interest development phase, the real experts make the interesting.
They find the game inside the game.
The NBA player takes thousands of boring shots, focusing on the nuances, to show up and achieve incredible fears on the court come game day. They make the boring interesting.
The same goes for storytelling.
Most people think you need to have groundbreaking stories to be interesting.
Perhaps you just need to go pro.
More Stories, More Options
In the day-to-day, people feel trapped.
No autonomy.
The corporations are back, cracking their whips once again.
It was “work from home,” to hybrid, to “you better get your ass back” in the office.
What most of us want is autonomy.
Freedom and more options.
No one is going to give it to you.
You have to pave the path yourself.
You do this by leaning into the new economy.
Where sharing your experience is how you attract opportunities. Gone were the days when you waited until you retired to “give back.” You can give back now (and get rewarded for doing it).
You can teach while you are still learning and growing.
This is how you align and find autonomy in the process.
You have experienced stuff.
You’ve learned.
Help others shortcut their path.
Your experience is valuable, teach it. Wrap it around with your story to draw people in.
7 Ways To Tell Engaging Stories To Attract Opportunities
When you learn how to share your experience to help people, you will send out signals to the world that will attract the right people.
There might be a content overload out there.
But people are looking for value from people who have experienced what they want to get through and looking to follow authentic voices. Do this with your stories.
When you do, you’ll clarify the things that are important to you, you tell more captivating stories, and you’ll attract more options in your life.
Here are 7 ways to write more engagingly.
1. Start with the end in mind
Before you write anything, keep the end in mind.
Think about how you want to make the reader feel, what you want them to do, and what you want them to remember. Stories are meant to engage emotions and inspire action.
Answer these three questions:
- How do I want them to feel? Inspired, happy..
- What action do I want them to take? Reply, comment, share, discuss…
- What do I want them to remember? If they had to remember one sentence, write it down.
Once you have this down, then you go to the next phase.
2. The most important piece of the story (the five-second end)
Every story boils down to five seconds.
I learned this in Matthew Dick’s Storyworthy book. Every narrative is about a transformation. It can be a life-changing event or simply a new insight “Oh, I didn’t realize that.”
This happens all the time.
With movies, it’s the moment the main character gains a new insight and “seizes the sword”
In the movie, The Matrix, it’s the moment when Neo gains full confidence, realizes his full potential, and goes on to save the real world from the agents of the Matrix.
These transformations happen every day in our lives. You just have to pay attention.
I talked about keeping a list of these events by doing the “homework for life” in this letter.
Write down the five-second transformation.
In this letter: it was my realization from the book, GRIT, that experts make the boring interesting.
3. Start with the opposite of the end in the beginning
Every story is a transformation.
Once you have the end in mind. You have your five-second moment (and it’s usually at the end of the story). Now, all you have to do is think of the opposite of the end – and you have your beginning.
When you notice this in a lot of your main movies, it will start ruining movies for you. (sorry)
Oh well, it’s the price you pay to craft and tell your own stories. The beginning could be something that happened on the same day as the transformation. Or it could have happened days, weeks, years ago.
Find your beginning and walk your way through to the end.
In this letter: The beginning started with a discussion about excitement: the opposite of boring.
4. Write like you’re making a movie
Create a cinema in your audience’s mind.
Your stories don’t have to be theatrical. You don’t have to open up like you’re giving a TED talk. You just have to keep the cinema going through your reader’s mind.
Once the movie has stopped. You lose them.
There’s one easy way to pull people into your movie: provide a location.
Add a line of where the story is taking place and boom, you’ve brought them into your world.
Every story needs a scene. Every scene needs a setting. A physical location drops the audience into your story.
Look back at how this letter started: “I’m sitting here on my couch, the sun peeking in, as I stare at the blinking cursor of the note app on my phone.”
That’s the context. That’s the location.
Just that one sentence sets the scene. Give your audience an image to anchor on as you lead them through your story.
Let your story be a running movie in the mind of the audience.
5. Action & Stakes
Start with movement.
The best way to begin is with action and movement. Physical movement creates momentum for the story.
Someone walking into a store. Some pushing a shopping cart.
Toffy swiveling in the back of his autonomous vehicle in my book, Toffy’s Divide.
Drop people into the action. And keep the action going. My editor once said, “If there’s no action, cut it out.”
Always keep the audience asking “what’s next?”
6. Pass the dinner test
Will you tell this story to a group of friends over dinner?
If so, then it’s good to go. You don’t tell a story filled with unnecessary theatrics at the dinner table. You don’t tell a group of friends over dinner “I’m so honored to announce I got a promotion.”
Drop the kale salad. Just stop.
Stories are natural. If you’re forcing it, you’re taking away from the story.
Use this as a proxy to know how to tell your stories.
7. Teach with repetition
Every story is a teaching moment.
You can teach through a creative fictional story, illustrating transformation through the path of the protagonist. You can also teach through your narrative, inspiring action, and engaging emotions.
A good way to teach is with lists:
- 5 ways to be more productive
- 7 steps to build an authoritative voice
- 3 things every business leader needs to grow their team
Readers love lists. It allows them to get a sense that they are grabbing tools. It makes your writing skimmable, so they can decide whether they want to invest their attention on what you have to say.
Use your story as a lead into your list of what you want to teach, just like I did here.
I hope you get to tell your burning story in exciting ways.
Happy storytelling.
Yours truly, Nifemi
