Transcription
About five years ago, I wanted to learn to tell better stories to grow my business, so I flew a man named Michael Heg out to my home to teach me. Now, Michael is a Hollywood storytelling consultant; he works with people like Will Smith and Julia Roberts. Now this month, we've done just under 1 million in revenue, and the main part of my marketing is storytelling. So right now, I'm going to share with you three things I learned from this process so you can use it too. Don't worry; most of the stuff is actually pretty freaking simple.
Okay, so the first thing is: if I say, "Look at this tree," versus, "Imagine a tree," your brain actually requires far less processing power to look at this tree versus picture a tree in your head when I say it. Now, have you ever wondered why most people would rather go to a movie than read a book? It's because when you read a book, you have to look at the words and process them and create the images in your mind. Human beings think in pictures. Think of the last time you read a book and ask yourself if you actually just read the words or if you envisioned what the words were talking about in your head in the form of a picture. And that's another reason why people who won't do certain things—they often say, "Well, I I just can't see myself doing it"—it's because they can't visualize it. So everything that we do and that we think about is in picture form. So when you you watch a movie, the pictures are already made for you; they're on a screen. You don't have to think; you don't have to do any brain processing; you just look at the screen like a zombie. But when you read a book, your brain has to work to create those pictures. That's why most people would rather watch a movie.
The reason I tell you this is because when you tell a story, if you don't give enough detail to visually paint the picture for them in their mind more easily, you're leaving it up to them to do it. So if I say, "Well, I used to be broke and now I'm rich; I used to be fat and now I'm jacked," versus something like, "I used to have a belly that hung probably six inches over my waist belt, and literally I could feel the sweat underneath my belly, and it just made me feel so terrible about myself. I would wake up in the morning, I look in the mirror, and I would say to myself, 'Who would want to love you?'" Now that is a lot more descriptive than, "I used to be fat." And so when you tell stories, you have to try to paint the picture for them as much as possible. And what's even better is if you're on video or you're in front of a a live audience or something like that, try to draw pictures so that you eliminate as much processing power as possible for the person. Why do you do this? It's because when it's easier for them to process what you're saying, they listen longer because they don't have fatigue; they don't have listening fatigue. And the longer they listen, the more they accept the message; the more they accept the message, they might buy, they might do business with you, they might become a fan, they might become a follower. And I call that picture copy.
Okay, so the second thing is: when you tell a story, especially the origin story of your product or your brand or how you discovered the secret sauce, you have to use the 3X3 Rule. Now, here's what the 3X3 rule is: when you start the story, you have to think of three things that you used to experience—the before—so we can call this the before, that mirrors what your client or your customer or your audience is currently dealing with. Then you have to think of three things that are the complete polar opposite of what the current situation for them is, or the now. So let me just explain that in the form of an example. Let's say you're a CPA and you sell tax plans—$330,000 tax plans—and yes, those exist; I know because I've bought one before, and it saved me a lot of money. So the before might be something like: um, when I was a kid, uh, my parents got divorced because my dad owned a business, and he would work really hard, but then he'd have a huge tax bill. He was afraid to be aggressive with his Tax Strategies because he didn't know if he would get audited, and he did not have time to actually Implement any of them. And so these are three things that a business owner might be dealing with: they pay too much in taxes, they are afraid to be aggressive with their Tax Strategies, and they don't have time to implement them. And so this right here is this journey, or what I what I like to call a bridge—a bridge that is scary. You have to paint a scary bridge. So I went to college, I learned taxes because that's what I wanted to do with my life; I wanted to solve this problem that my dad had, and I wanted to solve it for these different business owners and learn everything I could about the tax code. And when I was there, I I spent hundreds of thousands of dollars and years of my life, and I dedicated it, and now I know taxes. And now um I actually went back to my dad, and I was able to save him a bunch of money in taxes; I was able to be very aggressive with our Tax Strategies without him worried about getting audited because we know the IRS code better than the IRS, and I was able to do it for him because he needs to focus on running his business. So you see how these are the exact opposite; these two things are the exact opposite. Here's where they are now; here's where they want to be now. There's a bridge to get them from A to B, but the bridge is scary; they don't want to go on the bridge 'cause he's scary, so they hire you to take the bridge for them. They're not going to go to college and learn taxes; they're not going to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on this that and the other thing; they're not going to study the tax code for years. You did that. And so when you ask for money, it makes sense to them because paying the money for the tax plan is a lot better than the scary road. This is how you tell a story with the 3X3 rule: you just simply go, "Here's where they are before; what I experienced before; here's the now; what they want to experience; and here's the scary bridge that they don't have to take if they pay me money."
Okay, and the third thing is: there must always be a mentor. People do not like it when you say, "I figured this out all by myself; I figured this out all by myself," because you seem perfect because they can't figure it out by themselves. So when you say that, that's intimidating, and nobody wants to work with somebody who's intimidating; they want to work with people who they feel comfortable with. And so notice that when I started this video, I told you about Michael Heg; I told you that I learned it from somebody. And by the way, if you think you learned whatever you learned by yourself, you didn't; somebody did help you. Okay. And so when you talk about the scary bridge in your stories, you have to mention a mentor. Now, the mentor does not have to be a person; it could be an event or a a thing that happened to you that caused you to learn a lesson, but you did not Discover it; you learned it from an experience or a meeting. So for the CPA, perhaps they got into some sort of study group in college where there was like a competition to learn the tax code—uh, so good, like almost like a spelling bee but for the tax code, right? And in this experience, even though we did it for fun, what it taught me was that the tax code is intentionally complex so that everyday Americans have to pay more in taxes, and the rich who can afford to learn or hire people that know the tax code can take advantage of and pay less, and I thought that was wrong, and this is why I dedicated my life to this. These are angles you can use to really com be compelling because Simon Sinek said, "People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it."
Now you might be wondering, "How do you take these three elements and Implement them into something that actually sells cold prospects into becoming a client?" Well, this month, 800,000 of our roughly 1 million in Revenue came from a single presentation that we used a lot of Storytelling in, and we had no sales calls, no sales team. I made another video breaking down how we actually used this stuff in that presentation to do that. If you want to watch that, I'll leave a link in the description. Other than that, see you in the next one.