Hello and welcome to the Redefining High Performance Podcast. My name is Ty Bennett, and I’m excited to be back with you today, and especially today, as I start a three-part series. Over the next 3 weeks, I’m going to share with you the power of storytelling. Storytelling, I believe, is one of the most underrated skills in business. Now, if you want to be a high performer, last week we talked with Heather Younger about connection. And one of the best tools that you have in your disposal to be able to build connection, whether that’s in sales, in leadership, in personal relationships, in whatever it is. Stories build connection unlike almost anything else. I wrote a book called The Power of Storytelling. This is something that I believe in, and what we’re gonna do is, over 3 parts in these short, quick segments. I’m going to share with you today the mindset of storytelling. Next week, the skill set of storytelling, and then in week 3, the toolset of storytelling.
So, from a mindset perspective, I want you to think about why stories work. What do stories do for people? I think we all probably know inherently that stories are good, that stories are powerful, that stories move people. But scientifically, they’ve actually studied it. Stories do a lot. There was a study that was done at Loma Linda University that found that stories create two chemicals within the brain. One is called oxytocin, which is often called the trust hormone. And the other is cortisol, which is a stress hormone, but it causes you to focus. So, chemically, when I’m sharing a story you must have to listen. Chemically, your body is telling you to listen, and we begin to trust it.
Stories are proven that people retain information told within the context of a story 500% better than just regular facts and figures. And so if you want your message to be remembered, and ultimately, I think what the biggest thing that we need to think about is that stories engage people emotionally. And people buy, move, make decisions, are inspired and are driven to take action based off of emotion. And so, if we can learn how to use stories to communicate our ideas, our messages, our points, our product, whatever it is. I think we can build a deeper connection with people to action.
Storytelling is a skill set, just like anything else, and it’s something that you can work on and understand and practice.
And as you role-play, and as you record yourself and go back and listen to it, you can develop it and become better at it. I think some people are more natural at storytelling than others, and that’s okay. I think I was a fairly natural storyteller.
But I also could go through years of recordings of myself, I mean, 20 plus years, and listened to where I was, what I thought felt natural to where I am now and there’s a drastic difference, because as you understand some of the formulas that I’m going to teach you, as you understand how a structure works and how to approach it. Then also, practice it. You develop it just like any other skill. So, from a mindset perspective, I want you to think about how you approach connection with people. What are the things that are important for you to have in mind? Before we flush out the structure formulas that this step-by-step, how you craft a story. I think that if the mindset isn’t correct. If the approach isn’t the right approach, we’re gonna fall flat either way.
So, a couple weeks ago, I shared with you a story of the first time I met Stephen Covey. Stephen Covey is one of my heroes. Unbelievably successful author, speaker, somebody who I admire, somebody who I had been changed by their work. 7 Habits and the 8th habit were fundamental in my understanding of. Leadership and success in connection and relationship building, and the key habits that I wanted to develop. And so when I met Stephen Covey for the very first time.The short version is that he’s said to me, Ty, make sure you write the book for the reader not the writer. That advice was given in context of me writing my very first book. And I pushed back, I asked him, I said, okay, what do you mean by that? He said, you know, a book that’s written for the writer, for their own ego, to build themselves up, that book is not going to go anywhere. But a book that’s written for the reader. To teach, to inspire, to help people. That book is going to be a home run, and it’s like you got this train of thought going. He goes, you know, Ty. I’m a lot older than you. At that point, he was in his late 60s, I was in my late 20s, he said you know, I think we go through life, and we think life is about achievement. What’s the next goal? What’s the next step?
He said, maybe it’s with age, but somewhere you figure out that life is actually about contribution. It’s about how can I serve, how can I give?
That conversation, the very first conversation I ever had with Stephen Covey was life-changing. Because, yeah, it was great advice if you’re gonna write a book. You said write a book for the reader, not the writer, but I think it was broader than that. I think what he was saying is that as an influencer, your focus is on the audience. So if you’re gonna write a book, you write a book for the reader. But if you’re a teacher, it’s about your students. If you’re a leader, it’s about your people. If you’re in sales, it’s about your prospect or your customer it’s about them. That’s how influence works, right? And I think as human beings, we screw this up so often, because we make it all about us. Now, how does this pertain to storytelling? The key is that you’re telling your story for them. Your story has to be connected. It has to engage them. They can’t listen to it and go, oh, that’s really cool for you. There has to be a point where they feel like this pertains to me. And we’re going to talk about all those things next week in terms of how you craft that, but I’ll just give you this insight. You shouldn’t be the hero of your own story. Number one, because you’re probably not. And number two, because it’s not very relatable.
And so, even if you were, like. even if you, you know, delivered that key line, where did that come from for you? Where do you learn that?
Who’s the mentor who shared that piece of advice with you? There’s ways to make it relatable and connected. So, if we focus on the audience, and here’s the thing, I think we screwed this up so often, right? We make it all about us.
Do you ever get nervous before you give a presentation? Before you give a speech, before you share your story. Do you ever feel nervous? I want you, just for a second, to think about where is your focus when you’re. Your focus is on you, right? It has to be on you. You think about how am I gonna do? How’s this going across? Am I gonna screw up any of those things? But when you shift your focus you ask different questions, and different questions create different emotions, right? Before I go to give a speech, I’m looking at how can I serve them? How can I connect with them? What are the things that they need to hear. That changes things. That changes the focus and the intention, and therefore the emotion that I’m feeling.
Now, I think that we go into most presentations, conversations, stories with the wrong goal. I think we go in with the goal of perfection, right? We want it to be perfect. We want to deliver this perfect story, and everybody loves it, and they laugh, and they cry, and they respond, and they clap, and whatever it is. Guess this is what I do for a living, and I promise you, if there are not perfect presentations. I’ve been a full-time keynote speaker for the last 15 years I’ve delivered thousands of keynote speeches. None of them work. You will stumble over your word, you will say things incorrect, you will missed queues, you will forget transitions. All of those things are gonna happen. But sometimes it feels worse. And here’s why. If we shift our goal from perfection to connection. All those imperfections go away. You see, if our goal is to actually connect with people then it doesn’t matter if it’s perfect. If you build that connection sometimes. Like, they’ll forgive that. So your goal in telling a story should not be, I want to tell a perfect, it should be, I want to connect.
Perfect. Does that make sense? I want to connect with the audience I’m in front of, with the people that I’m there with. Now, I think that you have one purpose when you’re communicating, when you’re trying to connect. That purpose is engagement. Because think about it, without engagement, there’s never any influence. If people are not listening to you, if they’re just looking at their phone, if they’re not engaged with the story, with the conversation, they’re probably not going to act on what you’re sharing, they’re probably not going to do anything with it.
And so, we have to engage them. We have to grab their attention, we have to make them part. There’s lots of engagement tools that we can talk about. Storytelling is one of them. But humor, shock, questions, like, there’s so many engagement tools that we can use. And we want to make them part. I think all of this also hinges on this balance. There’s a balance that all of us have to find and it’s a balance between credibility and relatability. Credibility and relatability. You see, if people don’t view you as credible, they will not care what you have to say. But if they don’t view you as relatable, they won’t respond.
Right? Relatable as they know you, like you, trust you. Credible is they see that you have value.
I want to share where storytelling became vital, where it became monumental in my career. As a 21-year-old entrepreneur, I was struggling to get people to take me seriously. I was calling people, prospecting people, and they seemed to be responsive. They weren’t dodging my phone calls, but when I’d sit down, I’d present to them, they weren’t doing business.
And I couldn’t really figure it out, and so I went to a mentor friend, successful entrepreneur, family friend, and I explained the situation. I said, tell me what I should do. I’ll do anything, just tell me what I should do. And he said, okay, here’s what I want you to do. I want you to go to the last 5 people who told you no, and I want you to ask them why. And I was like, I will do anything else. Do you have any other ideas? And he goes, no. Go try it. So I did. I went to those last 5 people.
just kind of hat in, and I asked him, I said, look, I’m not trying to convince you of anything, I’m not trying to change your mind, but would you be willing to give me feedback? I want to understand what I’m doing wrong. I want to get better. And all 5 of them gave me feedback. And it was fascinating. And it was interesting because there were a couple things that were said, but all 5 of them said Ty at your age. At the time I was 21, I probably looked like I was 12. But as dumb as this sounds, I had never thought about that before. I was just young enough, just cocky enough, I thought it was amazing. I didn’t know that that was an objection in people’s minds, so I went back to this mentor, and I said, it’s my age, and he goes, I know. And I was like, what? And he goes, you needed to hear it. And I said, okay, well, what am I supposed to do? I’m not gonna wait till I’m 40 to start a business. Like, what do I do? He said, I don’t know. And I was like, what kind of mentor are you? Like, help me out. And he goes, okay, what other young entrepreneurs? What did Bill Gates do? What did Steve Jobs do? And as soon as he said Bill Gates, I had this idea. And it’s something that I practiced, and I turn into a story. So I would sit down with people. who are older than me, more experienced than me, and they have this objection now in their mind of why would I do business with this kid, and now I understood that.
And so the first thing out of my mouth, I would sit down and say, I kind of feel like a young Bill Gates. And they would typically laugh or give me, like, this side-eye. And I go, here’s what I mean. If you remember, Bill Gates was 21 when he dropped out of school and the time, computers were huge. They were the size of refrigerators. They were super expensive, and Bill Gates went around and told everybody who was gonna put a personal. In every home in the world. people probably thought he was nuts. Right? Who’s this young, naive entrepreneur? No idea what he’s talking about, right? Well, here’s the thing. I’m not saying I’m gonna be as rich as Bill Gates is, and I’m not saying we’re gonna change the world the same way Bill Gates has.
But I do know that I have something. And I’m just asking if you’ll take a serious look. Is that fair? You see that little story.
told thousands and thousands of times. Quite literally helped us build a multi-money business. You see, that story was a career changing moment for me. If I didn’t learn how to tell that story, and then built a super successful business in my 20s, I probably would have never decided to write a book, or start speaking. I probably would have never started this podcast, we would not be talking right now about storytelling.
Stories are that. As we dive into this concept of storytelling from a mindset perspective today, let me just recap some of the things that we talked about. Stories engage people chemically, they have to pay attention, and there’s a trust hormone that’s happening. They engage people emotionally, which causes them to act, and it causes people to remember the message that you’re sharing. I think the focus is on the audience, it’s not about you, it’s about them. I think that your goal is not perfection, it’s connection. I think your purpose is to engage them, because without engagement, there’s never any influence, and for each of us, we have to find a balance between credibility and relatability. To steal a line from Stephen Covey, it’s in that that you find your voice. So, that gives us the right mindset to approach this and learn how to craft stories, learn how to deliver stories, because stories are that.
Powerful. I hope this has been fun, insightful and next week, I’m going to come back, we’re gonna dive into the formulas. We’re going to dive into the skill set of storytelling. I can’t wait to unpack that a bit more with you.
Thank you for listening to the Redefining High Performance Podcast. My name is Ty Bennett.
Please like, subscribe, rate, review. Uh, we appreciate you being here every single week, if you bring these short, quick segments. Hopefully something.
It will help you to be more effective. weekly forward, I will talk to you soon.