Unlock Your Story's POWER | Business Tips with Evan & Stephen

First one came in from Arturo, who says, what details would you say are most relevant in a story? I tend to talk too much. From Arturo. What would you tell Arturo?

I think Arturo, that's a great question. And with stories, part of it is kind of listening and asking the right questions. But first of all, you've got to go where your audience is. And then secondly, you've got to look at what is your audience needs and relate that to your story. I think they're the key things, and then connect your story with the needs of your customers. And if you do that, I think particularly through kind of social media, and make it authentic and super clear and really crisp, then it's very, very powerful and compelling. And I think to Evan's point as well, you know, if you look at these big companies, you want to get away from that. Don't follow the big guys. Be true to yourself, follow your story, because make it personal, because that's what people want to hear. And anybody can get these big brand agencies coming and rewrite their website. You look at any of the big corporates in, you know, kind of NYC companies or big companies, and they all look the same. But your story is unique to you, and be proud of it and make it part of your DNA. So everything you do around your product and your services, connect it with your audience and really apply it to them, and I think they'll follow you.

I think the most important part of the story, the first story you have to tell is your foundation story. Why did you start this thing? Why is it so important to you? What makes you come alive about your business? And you don't have to be great on camera, and you don't have to be, you know, great at speaking. You can just start by having it on your website on the about page. Don't just give me your resume, give me some emotion. Like, let me feel something when I read your bio or when I do hear you speak. I want to, I want to hear something. I want to feel like, man, that guy really, really cares about what he's doing. And so the foundation story is really important. And just before we started, Stephen and I were talking about Stage Summit that's coming up and Richard Branson, and Stephen was telling about how Richard started Virgin Airlines. Maybe do you want to recap that story quickly, Stephen?

Yeah, and this is something, you know, so important. If you're angry about a gap in the market, then that means you've got a product, you've got an opportunity to solve that. Branson was stuck down in the Caribbean. He got bumped off a couple of planes and he got stranded. And because of that, that gave him the incentive and the anger and the passion to say, "I'm going to have a low-cost airline that is front and center focused around customers." And you know, the rest is history. He's built Virgin Atlantic, probably one of the best brands, highest customer service, all these sort of things. And he stayed true to that foundation story that drove his passion in the first place.

They didn't know they were awakening a sleeping giant there, the menace they created by providing him terrible service.

So true, it's so true. And also, you know, it's great to have— when you're young, scrappy, and hungry, it's great to have a gorilla to go after. So in the early days, he kind of went after British Air and the kind of transatlantic airlines because they were kind of, you know, not doing a great job in terms of customer service. They were expensive, they were late, they didn't care about customers. They worried more about the unions for their employees than they did about their customers. To be honest with you. So he saw a gap in the market, he got angry, he got stranded in the Caribbean, and he said, actually, I'm going to change that. I'm going to give a service that customers really value and build an airline around customers and do it cheaply for them so they can travel around the world and do what they want to do and pursue their dreams.

What I love about it is a lot of companies will say, you know, we value our customers and customer service is number one and this is what we stand for. But when you hear the story of Branson being, you know, upset at an airline and being kicked off the plane and just being so frustrated with it, that kind of brings it home a little bit more. It makes you feel like he actually does care about customer service and isn't just paying lip service to it. I think that's the important lesson, at least that I take out of it, for entrepreneurs is you can have your mission statement and you can have your values, you can have what you're all about, that's fine. But to make it believable, you have to tell me the background story behind it. So that I get emotionally attached to it.