Stories That Stick: How Storytelling Can Captivate Customers, Influence Audiences, and Transform Your Business

What was the point of
that?
you will have committed the ultimate storytelling crime: telling a story for
the story’s sake. Not meticulously matching your story to your message could
backfire in extremely detrimental ways. Instead of being perceived as an
inspirational leader, you run the risk of being labeled an arrogant one.
Now, of course, haters gonna hate, but spending extra time to ensure that, at
the end of your story, the team better understands the actual initiative or mission
or objective will save you a whole lotta hurt.
Purpose Story Hack
It sounds easy, right? Just clarify your message and find a story to match. What’s
the big deal? And yet, if you’ve ever tried it, it’s a lot harder than it seems. Don’t
be discouraged if you’ve tried to tell a purpose story before and couldn’t
because, though you had the message, you could never seem to get your hands
on a story. Although there are no shortcuts in life and a free lunch is never free,
there is a simple way to uncover your purpose story and lure it out of the mental
caves in which it tends to hide.
Once you’re clear on the message you want to deliver, the next step is to ask
yourself: When did I learn this lesson? When did I discover this truth?
Let’s return to the vice president of sales of the tech company who wanted to
deliver the message that sometimes corporate says one thing but does another
and that’s a problem. When he asked himself the question, “When have I learned
this before?” the story about dinner with his daughter emerged. For the CEO of
the Maricopa Medical Center who wanted his message to unite his stakeholders
with pride in what they’re really there to do, he asked himself, “When have I
seen our true purpose in action?” He recalled the homeless man who had been
treated with respect.
For Michael, the young executive from the beginning of this chapter who
was just moving into a sales role during a nationwide financial crisis, his
message was “I know things are hard, but if you give up, you’ll regret it.”
When did he learn that lesson? His senior year of college on the water polo
team.

---

When the time came for Michael to take the stage at his company’s conference,
he was prepared but nervous. He knew his approach wasn’t going to be what the
audience expected, especially not at a sales conference and especially not from a
former finance guy.
He waited for the emcee to introduce him, and nerves and all, he took the
stage and prepared to give his first speech since high school English class. A
speech that started with a story from high school.
It was his freshman year. Michael was walking across campus on one of the
first days of school when a teacher called to him from across the courtyard. It
was the water polo coach. Michael realized the coach was talking to him. “Hey,”
he said, “how tall’s your dad?”
“Uh, six foot six or something,” Michael murmured the way only a high
school student can.
“You need to play water polo,” the coach said.
Michael expressed humility and disbelief as he related the way in which he
was recruited to play a sport he’d never tried and knew little about. He told the
audience the coach, in an effort to persuade Michael further, took him to the
Division I collegiate water polo championship game between UCLA and
Stanford.
Michael recounted sitting in the stands and, from those cold metal bleachers,
watching the athletes in the pool with admiration and deciding then and there not
only to play water polo but to someday play in the championship game.
Of course, a possible college championship was years away, which meant
time was on his side. This worked in Michael’s favor as he started working
through a few minor details that stood in his way: not knowing what an
eggbeater was (the swimming kind, not the baking kind) and a slight distaste for
Speedos, to name two. Unwilling to let those stop him, Michael got to work.
From that moment on Michael was the first one into the pool and the last one
out. He survived hell weeks and two-a-days and then hit the gym to lift weights.
He also worked on his mental shape. Michael was a self-proclaimed hothead, so
he worked to manage his temper and channel those emotions toward sharper
play.
It took a lot of time, a lot of work, but eventually it paid off.
During his junior year, Michael became captain of the team, his first true
leadership position. In his senior year he was recruited to play for UCLA.
Everything was going according to plan.
At this point, Michael paused. Not for dramatic effect, but because this is

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where things got real. He took a breath. “When I got to college, things changed.
The level of play was higher. The guys were bigger and better. I had to work
harder. I had to gain more weight, more muscle, more everything.”
At first, he did what he needed to do. But gradually he began to slip. He was
no longer the first in the pool and the last out. His attention and commitment
waivered. He knew it was going to be hard. He wasn’t afraid of hard, but this
was a little harder than he had bargained for.
One day the coach called him in and said, “Look, I’ve got guys that are
younger than you, faster than you, and care more than you. You need to step up
or step off the team.”
It was Michael’s senior year. He was kind of over it. So he quit.
“Looking back at those days in college,” Michael explained to a rapt
audience, “I realize now that they were kind of like the downturn in a business.
A part of the natural ebb and flow of life. But at the time, I didn’t have the
experience or the maturity or the good sense to realize that a hard period is
actually an opportunity to rise above and move ahead.”
At this point, you could hear a pin drop in the room. Michael moved to the
front of the stage.
“I was fourteen years old when I set my sights on that championship game,
watching the players and vowing to be in that pool someday.”
He breathed again.
“There I was. Seven years later. Seven years of hard work, of constant
improvement, and one decision to quit later, and I found myself back in the
stands, watching my team win the national championship—from the cold, metal
bleachers.”
He shook his head slightly.
The audience swallowed hard.
The lesson Michael learned that day is one that any of us needs on any given
day, but on that day in 2008, it was exactly what that room of discouraged
salespeople needed.
Through his story, Michael told the salespeople that they were facing a
similar choice. They could get in the pool and work, trusting that when times are
hard there’s an opportunity to get ahead, or they could get out.
“I watched that game from the stands, and it was the decision I regret most in
my life. I know things are hard right now. I know that the pool’s too cold, the
practices too long, the rewards seem too far off. But this is our championship
game. I refuse to quit until we win.”

---

That keynote in July 2008 was a turning point both for Michael and the
company. Instead of a hostile or disinterested crowd, he built a room of allies
who rallied around a shared goal. His purpose story inspired his team. It gave
them a reason to bring their best selves to work and to work toward the common
goal to ride out the storm of recession and emerge stronger and better than ever.
With no regrets.
The Purpose Story: A Components Breakdown
Once your message is clear and you search back through your career and life,
using the hack above or one of your own to find a story that is perfectly suited to
support it, your next job is to include the four components that make a story
stick.