Stories Mean Business - Nick Warren

So the new website went live a couple of days ago – yes, this one, you are looking at.

You may notice the acres of white space, the simple design and ... I hope, the speed at which the pages load.

I've very intentionally created a smart, slim platform that I can use for a while. Hopefully years.

One of the challenges – which I talk about inelegantly in this podcast – is the menu on the homepage, which needs to fit onto a a mobile screen. I have no hamburger menu, and this constraint is keeping me very focused on what's important.

No doubt this will change over time, but right now I'm super happy with my fast, efficient website.

Show notes:

https://storiesmeanbusiness.com/podcast/695-restraining-myself/

For a while now, I've been intentionally reducing the number of apps and services in my daily work flow.

This occasionally comes at the cost of features that I might like, but increases clarity, calmness and overall productivity.

Here's a quote that sums up this idea:

The more complex a machine or procedure or set-up becomes, the less directly it applies its power. Simple forces applied intelligently should carry the day. This is no snub of wile or cleverness or inventiveness, only a caution against dissipating your efforts in the bother and friction of complication. - Jan Adkins, Moving Heavy Things.

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Show notes at: https://StoriesMeanBusiness.com/podcast/694-Removing-friction

See also:

In 1999, Sung-il Kim – a professor at the Brain and Motivation Research Institute in Korea – ran a fascinating experiment.

He wanted to understand what made stories engaging.

He asked his subjects to read short stories (that he had prepared) and rate their engagement.

Here's an example:

A newlywed bride had made clam chowder coup for dinner and was waiting for her husband to come home. Although she was not an experienced cook she had put everything into making the soup. Finally, her husband came home, sat down to dinner, and tried some of the soup. (He was totally unappreciative of her efforts and even lost his temper about how bad it tasted.) The poor woman swore she would never cook for her husband again.

You'll notice that the penultimate sentence is in brackets... that shows us that Kim included it for some of his subjects, but excluded it for others.

Which version of the text would you say the test subjects found more interesting?

If you think it's the full version, you'd be wrong.

Kim's work was part of a cluster of studies that showed we pay more attention when we have to draw some inferences ourselves. 

If the story is too easy – think preschool reading books, or too hard – think avant-garde cinema, we tend to check out.

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Show notes at:

https://StoriesMeanBusiness.com/podcast/693-Moderately-Hard

Stories are proven to hold attention, and one reasons why is the constant need to make predictions about what happens next.

This is a super important survival skill, and 'story' is the purest form of training because, in a well-told story, everything that happens matters.

There's no noise in a well-told story, it's ALL signal.

Yesterday, I was typing into my phone and smiling as the Autocomplete got it wrong, that humans are just like that. We have Autocomplete that's 'on' all the time, and sometimes we get things wrong.

This is why it's so important to tell great stories, because without a well-structured narrative we risk our PCCs (prospects/customers/clients) getting the wrong idea, and leaving us behind.

When we tell a good story, their autocomplete is right on the money. When we don't, they'll get us wrong and leave.

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Show notes at:

Last week, a friend put me onto his favourite clothing brand L'Estrange, and said something that got me interested.

"They have a really interesting ethos."

Full disclosure. I'm not into clothes. I standardised on jeans and black t-shirts a while ago, but I went to the website to see what story [[L'Estrange]] was telling.

Turned out of be very interesting. To summarise...

"Fast fashion has created a wasteful, throwaway culture. Most clothes are worn less than ten times. We're doing things differently."

For comparison, in my local supermarket I can get a black t-shirt for £4. But because I want better quality I pay £20 at Landsend. At L'Estrange a basic black t-shirt costs £40.

What's the difference? The quality obviously, and therefore the longevity ... but also the story you'd be telling yourself about the kind of person you are. You'd wear a L'Estrange t-shirt without any visible branding (which is the other way businesses 10x the value of cloth) ... and only you would know.

That plus the remarkable fact that l'Estrange actually offers to try to fix their clothes if something wears out.

All these things mean that when I next need a t-shirt I'll be giving them a try.

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Show notes at: https://StoriesMeanBusiness.com/podcast/191-How-do-you-10X-the-value-of-your-product

Most people claim that advertising doesn't work on them – perhaps mostly because the majority of the ads we see are not 'for' us.

But I want to talk about a particular time it did work on me – 20 years ago.

I was on a train reading a magazine, and I came across an ad for Hugo Boss Cologne.

The ad was a 'scratch-and-sniff' thing, and it smelt good, but the copywriter didn't try to sell me on the smell or even the brand.

Instead the line was TOTALLY focused on me and the story I might tell. It was something like...

Take the first step towards the new you.

Read that line again and ask yourself, who doesn't want to reinvent themselves in some way ... smarter, funnier, better looking. Sure, this is a small step. But it's a step...

I talk often about the two stories we are telling, but it's clear which one is preeminent. The story your client is telling about their life, if they buy what you are selling.

Show notes at: https://StoriesMeanBusiness.com/podcast/690-when-advertising-works

In episode 686, I talked about the difficulty of endings, and how hard it can be to deliver on our (implied) promises.

In fiction or drama, the ending needs to feel surprising, complete and satisfying.

But business storytelling isn't like that.

We don't want our audience to file our story away, we want them to act!

Action – as we know – is driven by emotion, and emotion is driven by change.

Not just any change of course, but change that affects the audience enough to open up a gap between where they are now and where they (suddenly) want/need to be.

We've all seen headlines that didn't deliver, or followed links only to be 'mildly' amused, excited or angry.

But if we want people to take action, 'mild' isn't enough.

Attention >> Change >> Emotion >> Action

You know you've delivered when your prospect gets to the end.

Go deeper:

Three weeks ago I started a trial fasting practice – limiting food to the evenings between 6pm and 10pm.

Expecting discomfort, I prepared in a 'stoic-light' way, by writing through my conflict.

(Real Stoics would sometimes go without food or sleep or money, just to armour themselves against the fear of losing everything.)

My solution is easier, I write a story that shows the conflict AND how I'll deal with it. When hard things happen, I don't want to be working out the solution on the fly ... I want my brain to have a plan.

The conflict here, of course, was hunger. I knew that there would be times when the fridge would loom very large indeed.

In my (very short) story, our 'hero' stopped before the fridge, remembered why he was fasting in the first place, and diverted to black coffee.

This technique works. I've used it for many of the hard things in my life, such as speaking at my father's funeral.

The trick is to be honest about the conflict and go through The Hero's Journey.

No one else ever has to read it.

I'll end with a quote from Seneca:

"Until we have begun to go without them, we fail to realize how unnecessary many things are. We've been using them not because we needed them but because we had them." - Seneca

https://StoriesMeanBusiness.com/podcast

I've talked a lot about how we create and resolve tension in stories ... how opening up gaps can pull our prospects into our world.

But what happens next?

Every 'list post' headline is leveraging curiosity... every website is offering an 'ethical bribe'.

But, that's the easy part.

As I said in the final Mad Men episode ... the hardest part of any story is the end – how we deliver on that tension.

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https://StoriesMeanBusiness.com/podcast