(This is an unedited transcript)
Notice something strange when you tell a story?
People are always waiting for you to finish because they want to know the point of the story. This subtle curiosity level gives us an advantage. It means that we can play director and change the path of the story.
Every story seems to have a predefined pathway; yet what if we took one story and swung it in different ways? Wouldn’t that be amazing? Let’s find out how it’s done.
One of the most frustrating things about trying to tell a story in a podcast, in a presentation, or just about anywhere, is that you have to pick the right story.
And going down this path is a mistake.
This is why we spend so many hours, days, sometimes weeks, trying to find the exact story that fits. You really want a good story, and we won't define what a good story is right now, because we're focused on how the story ends. As long as you have a good story, the ending, how you end it matters. You are the director.
If this sounds crazy to you, I'm going to tell you a story about a curry leaf plant that I planted outside my window, and we're going to end it in multiple ways. barely gonna change the story and yet you'll see that the ending is what makes all the difference. And here we go. We'll end with persistence.
When I look at the curry leaf tree outside my window I can't believe I'm seeing over 200 leaves because for four years and two months all it had was a couple of sparsely populated stalks. In fact we were so sick of the stupid plant that we were ready to throw it away. But the curry leaf plant was teaching us a lesson.
It was teaching us a lesson of persistence.
This concept of persistence applies to your blog that seems to get very little, if any amount of traffic. Notice what just happened there. We started with a curry leaf story. You didn't know where it was going and it ended with persistence. Now we won't change the story but we'll change the ending.
When I look at the curry leaf tree outside my window I can't believe I'm seeing over 200 leaves because for four years and two months all it had was a couple of sparsely populated stalks. In fact we were so sick of the stupid plant that we were ready to throw it away. But the curry leaf plant wasn't stuck. Instead we were. We didn't realise that we were trying to grow it in the wrong soil for four years or more.
The moment we changed the soil and the position the plant went nuts. Your blog can go nuts with the right change of soil and position. So what causes blogs to get stuck? You saw how that finished. We added a little bit more. You can add some bits but eventually the story is essentially the same.
Let's try a third one. Underdog.
When I look at the curry leaf tree outside my window, I can't believe I'm seeing over 200 leaves because for four years and two months all it had was a couple of sparsely populated stalks. In fact, we were so sick of the stupid plant that we were ready to throw it away. But the curry leaf plant wasn't stuck. It was just playing underdog.
Time is a critical component when you're trying to get clients to visit your blog.
You'll feel like the underdog forever and then one day, boof, it all happens. So what's the journey from underdog to boof? In all of these examples, you have little variations, but the curry leaf story is the same. However, how you end it really, really matters. If you end it with underdog, then you can continue it with underdog. If you ended with stuck, you can continue with stuck.
A good exercise is to take a story like this, just six to eight lines, and finish it with different kind of phrases like missed opportunity, potential, underdog, stuck. How do you take a good story and finish it a completely different way so that you can connect it to whatever you want to connect it to?
This is the beauty of storytelling that is very rarely explored.
So, people will tell you that you have to learn how to write stories and yes, you have to because there's pacing and drama and suspense and the first line. All of that really matters. But it doesn't matter as much as the ending. Why? Because when you tell a story, let's say you say, I went to school and there were five people there and this happened and that happened.
People want to know why are you telling me this story?
Because it has to connect to something else. And these are the connectors. Stuck, potential, missed potential. Whatever you choose as your ending, you need to know that in advance so that when you get your story and you have your article that in between that bridge that's your word you have to know that from the very start and when you know that then you can connect.
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