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

party with the high school kids who made me so happy. It was a chilly fall night,
and the party host’s father took us all on a hayride through the fields and forest
behind their rural home. Afterward, we came in, sat in the basement, drank cider
and hot chocolate with marshmallows, and ate Cool Ranch Doritos and pizza.
I was glowing with joy when the girl who played Louisa von Trapp (my
singing sibling) took me by the hand and brought me into the yard in front of the
house. Louisa had been one of my favorites in the play; she was tall and thin
with long golden blond hair and bright blue eyes. Her face was innocent, like a
Cabbage Patch doll who had shed her baby fat and now could sing and dance
and drive a car. We sat in the grass for a bit, and then Louisa asked me if I
wanted to try something cool. I said yes. While many a story that starts this way
ends with the first time someone smoked or drank or something like that, this
isn’t that kind of story.
Louisa told me to get on my hands and knees. I did. I could see my breath as
it froze in the space between my lips and the ground. She told me to close my
eyes. I did. She told me to feel the earth in my hands below me. I could. It was
cold and hard and wet and prickly. It was getting ready for winter, for the first
snow that would come only a few days later, erasing any evidence we had been
there.
Then Louisa told me to imagine, instead of just kneeling there on the grass, a
bystander on the earth, that I was 
holding
it. That as I felt the cold ground
beneath me, it was actually in the palm of my hand. She told me to recognize
that, at this moment, on this piece of earth, I was holding the world up with my
own two hands. I opened my eyes with my hands firmly entangled in the grass,
holding on for dear life. The world had never looked so new.
Louisa spoke softly then, as if to herself, as if she knew the pain of being
eleven, being in sixth grade, of not wanting to wear a training bra, and of the
cruelty of other children. As if she knew that the world can be tough beyond
sixth grade. On all fours herself, she whispered that when the world was getting
the best of you, all you had to do was take a moment to hold it in the palm of
your hands. That’s how you know you still have a place. That even if it’s just

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this one piece of land where your hands are planted, there is a place for you and
the possibilities for you are infinite.
As I stood in front of the woman’s cubicle in San Francisco, I remembered
that story, that moment, that feeling. I saw it reflected in my sister-in-law’s
coworker’s eyes, and I remembered that night from many years earlier. I
remembered walking back to the house in my last few minutes as Marta, hand in
hand with Louisa, and the way both our eyes glistened in the dampness of the
nighttime air. And I remembered how that collection of five random minutes
from sixth grade could have such an impact.
These instances happen to us daily. Small lessons, little events, collections of
minutes where we learn something new or understand things in a different way.
Minutes we might otherwise forget.
Except now you’re a storyteller.
Now you know that stories are what matter most.
Now you know the more stories you can tell, the more effective you’ll be.
And you might have been a little concerned if you don’t have enough stories.
What if you only have one or two, and you want more? How do you get them?
Let my story from sixth grade be all the assurance you need. Because that
moment could have been lost in the shuffle of life; it was only the crafting of the
story around that explosion that made it matter to the woman in my sister-in-
law’s office.
That’s the power of crafting. When you’re equipped with the framework and
proven components, no matter the length, no matter the seeming smallness of the
moment. If crafted well, any story is possible.
And it’s my hope you’ll tell them.
Which is what we’ll cover next.

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CHAPTER TEN
Telling Your Story