Storytelling Archives - IdeaEconomy.net

Storytelling skills from Abraham Lincoln

Storytelling skills from Abraham Lincoln

“What you might not realize about “four scores and seven years ago . . .” is that Lincoln’s oration followed one of the most effective story structures you can use–the structure that storytelling expert Shawn Callahan calls “the clarity story.”

This type of story is so valuable because for people to be engaged, they need to understand why they should take action. “The clarity story provides reasons in the most powerful and digestible format possible,” writes Callahan in Putting Stories to Work.

Here’s how Lincoln used the clarity story structure to build his famous speech:

$100k Per Month with 99% Profit Margins – Jack Butcher of Visualize Value

It’s common to say that ideas are worthless and execution is everything. However, business is much easier when you start with a good idea. That’s often referred to as Product-Market Fit.

Visualize Value is the combination of several really good ideas.

Jack Butcher explains complex ideas with simple black and white graphics. Check out his Twitter feed to see the images.

He’s built a following of 93.8k on Twitter and 140k on Instagram in a couple of years with those images. He says his business now makes $100k per month and that is almost all profits.

Big Ideas
-Simple images explaining complex ideas are very sharable content on Twitter and Instagram.
– Creating this content around quotes of influential people greatly encourages promotion by people with big audiences. (Great marketing channel)
– Selling a membership site, books, and courses around productizing knowledge makes this a highly lucrative business with essentially zero marginal costs.

creatorlab.fm

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How to Make an Impact with Seth Godin

On the Akimbo podcast, Seth Godin shared an old talk that he gave to 10,000 people that is very relevant today. You can’t win in a race to the bottom. We need original thinkers, provocateurs, and people who care. The world needs you to solve interesting problems and work without a map. Seth is a great storyteller and this video is a good inspiration to bring your “art” into the world.

As a bonus, he explains the difference between bitcoin and the blockchain in the question section at the end.

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Build Your Platform and Tell Your Story

Here is a good interview with author and entrepreneur, Jeff Gothelf. He talks about the importance of sharing your story about how you got to where you are today. This is very much of what the open startup movement is about.

Jeff offers this three pillar strategy:

1. Plant your flag – What passion or expertise are you going to focus on?
2. Share your story
3. Give your content away – The more you give away, the more will come back to you.

Jeff shares the story of the current Whitesnake guitarist, Joel Hoekstra. Joel also plays guitar for Cher, writes for GuitarWorld, and teaches for MasterClass. Sharing his expertise in many ways makes his career much more resilient.

This is a great strategy for all entrepreneurs, freelancers, and employees. You need to build your brand.

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The Future of Advertising: IKEA’s Tortoise and Hare ad.

Here is a great example of storytelling in advertising. I suspect we’ll see a lot of big brands trying more interesting approaches like this. Very cool.

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How to Pitch Your Startup to Venture Capitalists

Here’s a good Twitter thread about telling your startup’s story for an investment pitch.

Telling your story like this is also a good way to think about how to market your startup. How is this for landing page content?

“Start with a one-line, high-level overview.”

“Then dive right into the big, hairy problem that you’re tackling. The problem sets the foundation for the rest of your story. Investors will noodle if the problem is real and if so, how big it is.”

“After the problem, explain your solution. No other details.” “Now you can do 1 of 2 things. Either 1) add some Fire product screenshots and explain “how it works” for your end-user (consumer or business or both) or 2) Hop straight into your vision”

via startupdigest.com

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Storytelling – The Best Marketers Read Minds

“The best marketers know that the only thing that matters is what your customer believes.”

“The stories they believe about themselves and about the world determine their behavior.”

“The best marketing works when the brand story and customer stories match up.”

“It doesn’t matter if it’s true. It matters that your customer believes the story.”

Good post on digging deeper to find the true aspirations of your customers.

via neurotriggers.org

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Storytelling to Attract People to Your Brand

Short 3-minute video on using story loops to get customers interested in your business.

Some good examples here.

“What story loop can I open, that my product closes?”

Ideas like these are very powerful if you do something with them. Take a few minutes to think about the problem that your product addresses.

For IdeaEconomy, I think the problem is that startups need to keep up with the latest ideas and skills to be successful, yet often feel they don’t have the time.

Maybe my story loop could be:

Almost all startups fail.
It could be a weak idea, poor execution, or a lack of skills.
Often, it’s all three.
Entrepreneurs with the best ideas, skills, and execution will win.
Keep up with the latest startup ideas and opportunities you need to know in a 5-minute daily email.

What do you think? Is that an improvement over my current landing page?

businessmadesimple.com