THE POWER OF STORY TELLING

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SUMMARY

Stories have been around since the beginning of time, we’ve used them for ideas, history, sharing knowledge and information, and one of the things that with stories, as it communicates and connects people through emotion. One of the things as entrepreneurs, we have to become masters at is telling your story and telling a story to communicate and connect with your audience or your clientele. Some of the things that we want to touch base on today in this episode is how we can become a master story teller and several points to help you become more successful in creating your own story as well as telling your own story. How often do you go beyond the facts when you’re communicating with your clients or with a potential prospect or investor for your business? If you want to be able to kick your business up to that next level, to 10x that level for your business, it’s time to start adding stories.
We’re all communicators, we communicate in all aspects of our life with everyone. People love stories because it engages them, it creates that emotional connection, and it creates that sense of well being and good feeling overall. One of the biggest things is emotion prompts you or your clients to start taking action and that’s what we want to engage people to do is start taking action. Whether it’s listening to our ideas, whether it’s buying a product from us, or just sharing and inspiring others. With communication it’s a key important that you must master story telling. There are five steps that I have come up with to help you create your own story and become a master at your story and we’re going to cover those in a minute.
One of the things that I found for myself is becoming vulnerable when you’re telling your story is one of the biggest things that I’ve always been able to do as I’ve always held back and had been reserved from that key point. One of the biggest things when you’re telling your story is becoming vulnerable. Vulnerable with your audience, vulnerable with your clients, and sharing your struggles and how you’ve overcome that and so these five key points are how I’ve utilized overcoming that part of and being able to connect and tell my story with someone.
Number one is you want to select the right story for the right audience, you want to listen. What does your audience need? What is that goal and that focus that you’re trying to communicate to your audience as well as to really become a successful story teller, you have to become an excellent listener. Number two, your story needs to have a call to action, so what do you want your intended clients, or prospects, or audience to do? Something that’s going to connect you and the audience together to inspire, to take action to move forward. Part of that is coming out and showing your real passion, your real emotion with where you want to go with your story. Number three, when you’re preparing for your story you have to be in the right mind set as well as the right state. When you go out and you’re communicating your story if you’re low energy and you’re sad, you just don’t have that happy face on and full of excitement, your story’s going to get a whole different emotional connection than if you come out and you’re vibrant, you’re mentally there, you’re physically there, and you are just exuberayting that emotional connection that people want to feel and hear and this is going to help you with your story as well as being authentic.
You want to create that contagious energy, that contagious excitement as well as connecting with the people and making sure our stories are congruent with our mental state and physical progress. Number four is what we talked about, is becoming vulnerable. You have to share your struggles, how you overcame that, how you were able to get past and move past that point of struggling with that position of what you’re trying to communicate with your audience. Then number five, engaging your audience and making it interactive. One of the biggest things when telling your story is engaging your audience. Every ten, fifteen, twenty minutes, somewhere in that range we want to get a response from our audience whether it’s raising our hands, whether it’s asking them to respond and every fifty minutes we want to get them up and moving around and be able to connect and get that motion going because motion creates emotion and when we have that emotion that’s when we have that connection. That’s when we have that energy and excitement and moving us forward as well as when you have that emotion you’re now able to then help influence those people towards your call to action.
The other part of it is we want to engage multiple senses. What I mean by that is when you’re talking you want to be able to change your tonality, change your pace, whether that’s slowing down how you speak or speeding up how fast you’re talking as well as changing the tonality in your voice, reducing that tonality in your voice, that’s going to get that connection and that deeper emotion from the audience. What I want you to start doing is start crafting your story, start crafting how you want to communicate with your clients, with your audience, and by doing this you’re going to create a massive amount of success for you as an entrepreneur and in your business. , I am Josh Felber.

Josh Felber: I’m Josh Felber, host of Making Bank on the . I’m excited today as we have Ty Bennett. When Ty was twenty-one years old, he and his brother Scott started a business that they built to over twenty million in annual revenue while still in their twenties, since that time he has developed over five hundred sales managers globally with sales and leadership in thirty-seven different countries. He is the author of The Power of Influence, The Power of Storytelling, and in addition, this month, he is releasing his book, The Two Most Important Days of Your Life, a leadership fable. Ty knows from firsthand experience what it takes to lead in today’s world as well as drawing on his knowledge from being in the trenches. Ty will provide us with tangible techniques that will build commitment and increase the impact of your leadership skills and the power of your storytelling. Ty, welcome to making bank and it’s an honor and a privilege to have you today.

Ty Bennett: Oh thank you so much. I’m really excited to be here.

Josh Felber: Excellent. I kind of filled everybody in with a little bit of your background but I’d love for you to expand a little bit more and I think the first time that you and I ever connected was somewhere back around 2006.

Ty Bennett: Wow.

Josh Felber: It’s was quite some time ago.
Ty Bennett: Yeah, well, like you said, my background is an entrepreneur and my brother and I built a business in direct sales and through that we had an opportunity to build sales organization and lead and teach those teams and grow that business. Luckily it was a great success, I don’t say luckily because it was luck but I feel very blessed because of it and we worked extremely hard to build it and in the process I found for me a real passion and that’s writing and speaking so I built a speaking and training company called Leadership Inc and now I do about a hundred keynotes a year. Like you said, I’ve got my third book coming out this month.

Josh Felber: Awesome.

Ty Bennett: We’re just having a lot of fun.

Josh Felber: Fun’s a big part of it. With whatever you’re doing I’ve always tried to teach is you got to have passion, you got to have fun and enjoy what you’re doing. What I’ve been talking today a little bit about, to our audience is how the power of storytelling, how to create the best story for what you do out there, and I know one of your books resonates right along with that, is The Power of Storytelling and I’d love it if you could share some insight on what you’ve come across and what you’ve been able to put together for our listeners on how they can really maximize and create the best story out there.

Ty Bennett: Absolutely, I personally believe that stories are the most influential form of communication and the reason they are is because they engage people emotionally and regardless of what anybody says, we’re emotional beings. We make decisions based on emotion, we buy based on emotion, and so I think if we want to be successful as sales people, as entrepreneurs, in whatever we’re doing, if we have a message we want people to resonate with and act on, we need to engage them emotionally and so stories are really an influencers best friend. For me, the love of stories kind of came about because I was struggling to get our business off the ground at twenty-one and I was talking to a lot of people but they weren’t really resonating and so I started to dive in and dissect my own communication, actually recorded every presentation I gave and in that, when I started to listen to it, what I found is when people really engaged with me it was because I was telling stories.

That seemed to work, that’s when they laughed, that’s when they asked questions, that’s when they were fully engaged and so I started focusing on that and developed my story that helped us in our business and the story of our product and the story of our company, what we were doing, and then developed that ability to tell stories and now as a speaker and as a writer I do stories all the time and that’s what led me to writing the book The Power of Storytelling.

Josh Felber: Awesome. I know you work with a lot of major companies and corporations around the US and the world I think so with that is, when you’re going in and you’re training and you’re working with those leaders, how can we as leaders be able to take that as well as turn around and communicate that either to our employees or as entrepreneurs, how can we take our story as well as pass that down to our employees to create their own story to help empower them? Whether they’re working in customer service, whether they’re working in sales, or marketing, and then be able to help utilize that to move the business forward and to create more success in the business?

Ty Bennett: I’ll give you a couple of quick tips. Obviously, tomorrow for example, I’m speaking to a bunch of financial advisors for a couple hours to dissect stories, we can go really in-depth but I’ll give you some high level tips in terms of how you can develop the story. Number one, I want you to think about what story is. This is my definition: a story is a re-imagined experience narrated with enough detail and feeling to cause the listener’s imagination to experience it as real. That’s a really long version of saying if you engage the audience, the person listening, and they feel it, they will act on it. Here’s the foundation for influential storytelling in my mind is you don’t retell a story, you relive a story. There has to be emotion in telling that story, we have to engage people, we have to captivate them because if they feel it, they’ll act on it. If they don’t, it won’t move them. You don’t retell a story, you relive a story.

The best we can to do that, to fully immerse them and to engage them and to put them into the story so they really experience it, the more influential it’s going to be. Here’s one of the key things that I think people miss, especially in business, every story follows a simple pattern, or every influential story follows a simple pattern. It’s struggle to solution, that’s the pattern, struggle to solution. You hook them with the struggle, you help them with the solution. Here’s why I say we miss this, because most people don’t get that they should be open and vulnerable and share some of the struggle. What we want to do is we want to come from a power position too often in business where we want to basically say “Hey, we’re great, we’re amazing, you should come and work with us.” Well, what emotionally engages me about that? It just doesn’t move me, but the reason you exist in business is because you solved a problem. Everybody exists in business because they solved a problem so what’s the struggle that leads to that because if people emotionally connect to the struggle they’re going to want the solution that comes from that.

There’s something about struggle that emotionally engages them. Conflict or struggle, the trial, that kind of thing just grabs us emotionally and so if we can share the right story that engages people emotionally where the pain in their life right now connects to the struggle in your story. For example, if I am struggling to lose weight, and that’s on the back of my mind-

Josh Felber: Ty, Ty, we have a few seconds left. I want to definitely hear the example when we get back from that. I am Josh Felber, host of Making Bank .

Josh Felber: I am Josh Felber, you’re watching Making Bank on the Whatever It Takes Network. We’ve been talking with Ty Bennett, he’s been giving us some insights and some tips on how to have the best story to move us forward in success and Ty, you were just getting into an example right before we had to cut to break and I’d love to hear that.

Ty Bennett: We were talking about every story follows this model of struggle to solution. Let’s say that you are selling a weight loss product. If the transformation is the struggle to solution of that product, it’s the [arc 00:14:57] it’s what engages people and if you’re talking to somebody that you share either your own personal experience or you’ve used this product to lose weight, or maybe a client’s experience where they’ve used the product to lose weight. If the person listening engages with the struggle, if the pain in their life emotionally connects with the struggle, they’re going to want the solution, they’re going to find it credible. We could talk about that in any situation, but especially with our own personal stories, it’s the journey that really engages people and for me I figured that out at a young age as a twenty-one year old.
One of the stories that I told constantly was basically sharing my vision and my journey of where I was going so that people would buy into me and see me as credible because as a young entrepreneur I was struggling with that and so I developed this little story where I compared myself to Bill Gates and the young entrepreneur he started out as and where he went with his business and was open and honest. I said I don’t think I’m going to change the world the same way Bill Gates has, I don’t think I’m going to necessarily make the same kind of money that Bill Gates has but I do know that I have something here and I want you to take a serious look at it. That struggle to solution model just absolutely works, it makes your story emotionally connected and therefore it moves people.

Josh Felber: Awesome and I know for me that was one of the biggest things, how vulnerable do you become? How much do you really share and get into detail? A lot of that is a fear from our listeners and stuff, how do I get over that? How do I know really how much to share? If you could share some insight on that.

Ty Bennett: We recognize that it’s struggle to solution so we don’t want hear that your life sucks, we want to hear that it did suck and now it’s amazing. We want to see the transformation that takes place there. In terms of detail, if the detail helps to bring out the specificity or the actuality of your experience then use it. What I mean by that is if I can relate more to your struggle because you give me real detail of what it felt like, what it looked like, what you went through, then yes, use it. We also deal with the fact that we’re all on a constant time restraint so we have to decide what to put in, what to leave out, and decide which details are more necessary than others but there’s a rule in storytelling that says the more specific the details, the more universal the connection. We often think that we don’t want to be too detailed but it’s in the details that it makes it real.

Josh Felber: Right and those are definitely some awesome tips. I guess what’s a good way as entrepreneurs we’re like, “Okay, what is my best way that I can actually craft,” and really pull out, “Hey, what are these details, what are these struggles,” and then how they overcame that. What’s the best way to craft that and really make it so it stands out and people resonate with that?
Ty Bennett: A couple of things; one, I would start with the question ‘when have I struggled?’ I wouldn’t start with the question, ‘what’s a good story for this purpose’ because your mind just doesn’t go there but if you were to sit down and start with what’s a struggle I’ve had around this idea, we can all come up with the struggles. The truth is some of those struggles didn’t lead to a great solution so that would be your story, but some did. Once you get there, I coach people to literally script it out and role play it, record it because if you hear yourself say it out loud, you’re going to go, “You know what, that didn’t quite connect,” or, “I need more information here,” or, “That doesn’t work,” and so you have to really walk through that. The other thing that that does is it gives you some of the word tracking, I don’t think you have to have it memorized because you don’t want it to sound memorized or rehearsed, but it gives you some word tracking that will more naturally come to you.

Josh Felber: Okay. As you built your company to the twenty million in revenue and now you have your leadership training company, what are some insights that you’re able to convey from your personal life, your struggles that help connect you to the people that you’re communicating with?

Ty Bennett: Well, I really struggle to get people to take me seriously and to move people forward with my communication in the beginning. That was actually what led me down the road of studying storytelling and trying to get better at it. It was [inaudible 00:19:38] out of struggle. I talk to people about that and there’s constant struggle and it’s interesting because I think it’s where teaching as leaders we often think, okay, this is a great victory, I need to share this with people but we also need to think this was something I struggled with, I need to share this with my people so that I can show them how I overcome it because they probably dealt with the same thing and so that shift in my mind makes a big difference.

Josh Felber: Okay. We got our mind set shifted and I’m glad you said that because we actually pull from a lot of the millennial audience and things like that as well and one of the things is hey, people don’t take me seriously, and you being able to share that and help them realize if I craft my story and create that story of what my struggles are I can work on communicating and help myself grow and help create value for others as well.

Ty Bennett: When you think about what brings credibility; experience, success, but also the ability to communicate value brings credibility so in the beginning, before I have success I had to develop my ability to communicate value so people bought into me.

Josh Felber: What part of that did you use to create the value of your story?
Ty Bennett: Specifically the more product knowledge, the more knowledgeable you are in terms of what you’re doing is great but also to be able to truly just open up and connect with people. When I started to sit down with people and I addressed the fact that I was twenty-one years old and in the back of their mind they were thinking why should I listen to this kid, it was when I was open to that and I talked about it, that’s when it really started to work.

Josh Felber: Awesome. From what you did, you said, “Hey, look I know I’m twenty-one. I know that this may be a limiting belief or this may be a hurdle for you, but here’s why you should listen to this.”

Ty Bennett: Exactly.

Josh Felber: Awesome, man. We got a few minutes left and I’d love to hear something that our listeners can take away in addition to starting to craft their story, to start to position themselves, and set themselves up for success. What’s one key component that you felt that’s really put you on the track to success at such a young age, besides your story telling?

Ty Bennett: Yesterday I was speaking to a group of Re/Max agents in Canada and the main of what we talked about is just shared belief and it’s something I believe to my core and that is that business is about relationships. I think the more you focus on building long term relationships the better you become at building those relationships and approaching it from an abundant standpoint and helping people and serving people, the better it’s going to serve you long term, especially for those who are young. When you look at it, business is a long term proposition and so understanding that has served me extremely well and it will serve other people too.

Josh Felber: Awesome. Ty, the information, you to be able to share today has really been a great help, it’s been able to really, I think, resonate with our audience and our listeners, to be able to connect with them, to figure out what their story is, to start to craft and create their story to help move their businesses forward to success and I know you have that new book coming out. When does that launch and where can we find it?

Ty Bennett: It comes out on May 22nd and the books is called The Two Most Important Days of Your Life thetwomostimporantdays.com.
Josh Felber: Awesome. I really appreciate your time today and if you haven’t read any of Ty’s books yet, jump onto his website, grab his books, Power of Storytelling, or Influence, or his new book, and really connect and read those and start applying these to your lives daily. Ty, it’s been an honor and a privilege to have on this show on Making Bank today and I really appreciate your time.

Ty Bennett: Thank you.

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