MBA1478 Guest Teacher: Graham Brown – How To Influence, Engage, And Create Change Through Storytelling

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Hello, my name is Graham Brown. Thank you for inviting me to contribute to the $100 MBA podcast. For the next 12 minutes, I'm going to share my insights on storytelling, how you can use storytelling to engage, influence, and create change. Now, this is specifically important for business owners because storytelling is one of the most important skills that you'll need to master. And the other day, I was talking about storytelling at a startup event, and at the end of the event, one of the startup founders came up to me and he said, graham, I don't want to tell a story. I want to tell the truth. And I said to him, listen, if you don't tell me a story, I won't know what your truth is.

You.

You see, storytelling isn't once upon a time. It helps us as the audience understand where your information, what it is that you're doing. You're making your solution, the problem that you understand fits into our world. And without that, it's really hard for us to work out what it is that you're trying to do. And if you look at history, history favors the better storyteller. Thomas Edison very much associated with discovering inventing the light bulb. Yet he didn't really. Thomas Edison was one of 22 people, inventors, innovators, engineers, who at the time were working on the light bulb. But it was Thomas Edison who went out there and courted the media. Thomas Edison was known as the wizard of Menlo park, and he was famous for his live demonstrations of some of his inventions. And it was Thomas Edison who didn't necessarily discover the light bulb. He just learned how to tell its story. Now, what happens when you don't tell a story? Maybe one of the easiest ways is to look at people who have achieved great things, but yet haven't learned how to tell stories about them. Lakpa Sherpa is a single mom of three kids living in the United States. Now, there's three incredible things about Lakhpa Sherpa's story, the first of which is she has climbed Mount Everest. Now, climbing Mount Everest on its own is an incredible feat. Yet doing it as a guide and looking after not only yourself, but the lives of other people makes it a doubly impressive feat of human endurance and performance. Most recently, she guided Yale University team to the top of Mount Everest. The second incredible thing about Lacpa Sherpa's story is that she holds the world record for the amount of summits for any woman on the planet. In the Guinness Book of World Records, Lacpa Sherpa is noted as the record holder for nine successful summit attempts of Mount Everest. Once is enough. But nine times is out of this world. But what if I told you that's not the most incredible thing about Lakpa Sherpa's story? You see, Lakpa Sherpa has climbed Mount Everest. She's a world record holder, has climbed Mount Everest nine times. And yet she works as a dishwasher in Whole Foods Market in America for $30,000 a year. And she supplements her income by working in the evenings at 7:11. Incredible. How is that possible? Bear gruels, by contrast. And you'll be familiar with Bell Grills from those Netflix and YouTube programs of bear versus wild or man versus wild bears. The guy who takes the prime minister of India, Modi, into the jungle to forage for food. And he's there with Barack Obama, foraging for food or escaping wild animals or eating snakes. He's man versus wild. But Bear Grylls has climbed Mount Everest only one time. And yet when he presents on the public speaking circuit for one hour presentation, Bear Grylls charges, you guessed it, $30,000. And the reason why I share this story is that we as business owners tend to take the approach of Lacpa Sherpa, which is that we believe our achievements sell themselves and they really don't, no matter how good they are. You may have climbed Mount Everest in your industry, you may have created something amazing that is going to change the world, and yet your achievements are only as good as the story that you tell about them. So how do you actually tell an amazing story? Well, let's back up a little bit here. You don't actually have to tell an amazing story to engage, to create, influence or change. You just have to tell a familiar story. Let me give you an example. Avengers Endgame, which I'm sure a lot of you have seen. I've seen it twice. My son has seen it four times. Twice for me was enough. Avengers Endgame is the best selling movie of all time. Its box office receipts are in excess of $3 billion at the time of this podcast recording. And yet is it the best story of all time? Well, if you've seen it, you know that Avengers Endgame is the same plot line as Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Harry Potter, and even the wizard of Oz. And that's the point. Avengers Endgame doesn't need to be the best selling or the best story of all time. Avengers Ends Game just needs to be a story that we already know. In fact, it's a story that we've been telling for thousands of years around campfires and since the beginning of oral history. So how do you tell those stories? It's not about telling amazing stories. It's about telling stories we all already understand. And if you think about the human brain, this marvelous thing that gets exposed to so much information at any one time, now you are paying attention to me and you're choosing not to pay attention to other things in the room around you or other noises or other distractions. And that's a selective thing that you are doing on an ongoing basis. In fact, the brain has what I call in the book, the Excel book, which I'll tell you about at the end of this podcast recording a human API. And just like in the sense that when you access your bank online through an app, you have to access it through an API. And an API is like a filter, it's like a gate. You can't get into your bank information, unless the API, unless the bank knows who you are, no matter how good your information is. And what are those API keys that you need to access the gate? Well, the stories that we already understand. And that's the point. You don't need to tell a story that blows us away, just a familiar one. So how do you tell a familiar story? Well, in my Leadership in the Exponential Era book, one of the storytelling techniques that I teach in workshops and I share it in the book, is the three box transformation story, inspired somewhat by Charles Dickinson, A Christmas Carol. But I won't go into that just now because Christmas has already passed. But just know that there are three boxes and this is how you can tell a story. A good example of it is when I came to Singapore. When I moved to Singapore from Japan two years ago, I could have told people what I was doing there. People asked me, what are you doing here, Graham? Why are you in Singapore? And rather than tell them what my job was, I told them what I was going to build. You see, I told them that I came to Singapore to build a podcast studio and a podcast business. And that Saturday after I moved to Singapore, I put the call out on LinkedIn and said, I'm going to build a podcast studio. If you want to come along and help me build this and put up the acoustic tiles and put in the wiring and set up the microphones, I can't pay you with anything apart from kindness, memories, good times, and beer. And a whole bunch of people turned up. I only knew two people in Singapore at the time, but 12 people turned up to help me build the studio. And that's the point. That's the power of story. If I said to somebody when they asked me, what are you doing? And I said, yeah, I do podcasts, it's a missed opportunity. Rather than tell people what you do, tell them what you're going to build. And when you tell stories about your business, you can break it down like that. Break it down into three boxes. Past, present, future. Let's have a look at those. It's very simple. If you want to tell people about your business, why you're here, what you're selling, break it down into the three boxes. And if you want to go deeper into this, take a look at the Exponential Leadership book, which is free, by the way. You can go and get an excel book.org but I'll give a plug at the end of this podcast anyway, so you don't forget it for now. Past, present, future, past. Where have you come from? What is the mindset that brought you here and what is the mindset also that holds people back? Present. What is the shape of the business that you are today? And future. What is the shape of the business that you want to become? Now, you may think this may work for, for example, a startup, which it does. It's a fantastic sales tool for a startup, but it also works for multibillion dollar enterprises. And a great example of this is I've seen Tony Fernandez is the CEO of AirAsia. When he talks about the future of the quote, unquote airline, he doesn't talk about it in the context of we're an airline. He uses the equivalent of the three box techniques, which is past. What is the mindset that's holding us back? Well, the mindset that's holding AirAsia back is we're an airline. We sell tickets, we sell seats. And yet they want to grow. They can't go on with that mindset. They have to change it. They have to even sell competitor tickets. They have to sell a whole bunch of other different services, ancillary service, everything from music to food. Present. What's the shape of the business that we are today? What's the structure in which we need to innovate? Well, we're an airline, but yet we have this ecosystem of partners. We have a venture fund that's funding these partners. Future. What's the shape of the business that we want to become? He doesn't talk about becoming a better airline. He talks about becoming a digital travel platform. So whenever you hear Tony Fernandez talk, he tells the story of, of AirAsia 2.0, which is the journey from being an airline that sold tickets to a digital travel platform. Because, you know, the problem is this, is that the future doesn't belong to the airline that flies the most plane, but the travel company that solves the most problems. And that's what it's about. Storytelling is about sharing the journey of you and your business, why you're here and where you're trying to get to. And you can use storytelling everywhere. You can use it when you sell. When you post on social media, notice the difference between just telling people this is what we do, or just telling people we're doing this now, or telling people we've just done this. The difference from that to telling a story about it, your engagements on social media will increase significantly. And likewise, this podcast, I've shared stories with you. I could just have told you that storytelling is a powerful tool and here are three things that you need to know. But then it's not about that. Like Maya Angelou, the author once wrote, people will soon forget what you told them, but they'll always remember how you made them feel. So with that, my name's Graham Brown and I'm signing off. Hopefully I gave you some insights into the world of storytelling. But if you're interested in finding out more about storytelling, then I've written a book about it, Leadership in the Exponential Era. And you can find out. Get that book free@excelbook.org oh, could this.

Vintage store be any cuter?

Right?

And the best part? They accept Discover. Accept Discovery in a little place like this? I don't think so. Jennifer. Oh yeah, huh? Discover's accepted where I like to shop. Come on baby, get with the times.

Right.

So we shouldn't get the parachute pants. These are making a comeback, I think.

Discover is accepted at 99% of places.

That take credit cards nationwide.

Based on the February 2025 Nielsen report.

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What a great lesson by Graham Brown. Absolutely loves his advice. Anytime you're having a conversation with your customers, whether it's on a live webinar or recorded webinar on your website, on your homepage, in an email, always include a story. Whether it's why you started the company or whether it's in an email and you're sharing a short story on, stressing the reason why you're emailing or why it's important, or on a webinar where you share your ups and downs. To get you to the point today to be able to give that webinar and offer them a great workshop, here's the bottom line. People buy because of the way they feel, how they feel about you, how how they feel about your business, your brand. People enjoy buying, but they're trying to find a reason, a real truth to why they should buy from you. And if they feel they could trust you through the stories you tell, through sharing about yourself a little bit, then they'll buy. This is how we build trust with our audience. We only buy from people who we trust. We often forget that buying is an emotional experience. Making the decision to purchase something is often credited to a feeling how we feel about somebody or something. And stories evoke emotions. Stories allow us to feel strong feelings, happy feelings, excited feelings, frustrated feelings. But when you're just a data machine and you're not really contextualizing the information, you're blocking feelings from happening. And really what you're doing, you're blocking the sale, you're blocking the ability for them to trust you. So use stories in every step of the way. When you're trying to acquire a customer, when you're trying to build that relationship with a customer, when you're communicating with your customers. Thank you so much for listening to the Hunter mba and thank you so much, Graham, for that amazing lesson. Again, check out his brand new book, Leadership in the Exponential Era. Check it out@pikal.com that's P I K K A L.com and of course, don't forget to hit that subscribe button. When you hit that subscribe button, you automatically get our next episode once it's Subscribe a available. And of course, by hitting subscribe, you get access to over 1400 business lessons. All our episodes in the archive. It's the only way to get access to it. And you just hit that subscribe button. It's absolutely free on whatever app you use to listen to podcasts, whether it's Stitcher Radio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Himalaya, we're on them all. Hit subscribe and thank me later. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. The best stories are the ones that take you through a journey. This is what Graham was talking about in many of the popular movies that we know about. Star wars and Endgame, the Hero's Journey. This is very popular where you go through the ups and downs and the tribulations and the challenges and the adversity. So when you're sharing stories about yourself, definitely, or about other people like your customers, don't just share the positive, share the challenges and how they overcome those challenges to get to where they are today. Thank you so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

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