Share Real Stories to Create Lasting Memories

• 00:00 People ask me all the time, T.J., can I make up stories?
• 00:07 Well, you could, but why would you want to?
• 00:11 That's hard work.
• 00:12 The beauty of the story is, you can see it.
• 00:15 I can see that Prime Minister there still, even though it's been more than a decade.
• 00:21 The best stories aren't made up.
• 00:23 It's simply you recounting a real conversation you had with a real person,
• 00:28 you can see it.
• 00:30 That makes it not abstract.
• 00:32 Abstraction is your enemy as a speaker, not because the people you're talking
• 00:37 to are stupid and don't understand abstraction.
• 00:41 Abstraction is a problem, because without people seeing it, they don't remember it.
• 00:49 Think of it this way, what's easier for you to remember if you've just
• 00:53 met someone, their name on a business card or their face?
• 00:58 For most of us, it's the face that's easy to remember not the name, and
• 01:01 that's because you can actually visualize a face.
• 01:03 You see a face.
• 01:05 Words on the business card, those are just abstractions.
• 01:08 So here's your homework.
• 01:10 You need to come up with a story for
• 01:12 each one of the five message points you created in your earlier homework.
• 01:20 And if you tell me, well, T.J. I don't really have a story for that.
• 01:23 Guess what?
• 01:25 That means it's not an important point.
• 01:28 Now, let's say it's purely a financial presentation.
• 01:31 If profits are up 22% from last quarter, you could say, well, that's just a number.
• 01:38 There's no story.
• 01:39 Well, there is a story.
• 01:40 What is driving that growth?
• 01:42 What's the one product?
• 01:43 What's the one thing that happened to the economy?
• 01:45 What's the one element of publicity that drove that?
• 01:49 Tell me about a conversation you had with your number one client, or
• 01:53 your number one salesperson talking about this new growth engine.
• 01:57 There is a story for anything, unless you tell me that the only thing
• 02:02 you do all day long is sit back and read the paper.
• 02:06 And at 5 o'clock you get an email from your boss saying good job go home.
• 02:11 All of us have stories to tell, because we all have phone conversations,
• 02:15 if nothing else, with a client, a customer, a colleague,
• 02:18 who's got a problem, and you've gotta deal with it.
• 02:22 Those are the stories that will make your presentation come alive.
• 02:26 So that's your homework, right now.
• 02:28 You don't have to write it out word for word, but you need a few words to trigger
• 02:33 this memory, and you need to think about how you're going to say it.
• 02:37 So now, you need to have an outline on a single sheet of paper, or
• 02:40 a single computer screen.
• 02:43 Your five big bullet points, your five main ideas.
• 02:46 And then you need two or three words,
• 02:49 that will trigger in your own memory a story for each one of your points.
• 02:55 That's your homework.
• 02:56 Go ahead and do it, right now.

Lesson notes are only available for subscribers.