How To Make Anyone Listen To You | Siddharth Rajsekar | Episode 14

It was the year 1996. I was batting in the nets and from far away I could see my uncle coming, walking towards my coach. He comes to my coach, he speaks to the coach. And I'm thinking, why is my uncle come to my school today? Then my coach calls out my name, says, sid, pack up, go home. And I did not know why my coach said that. I went and packed up and I started walking towards my uncle. Now that's how I grip you into stories. You want to know what happens next, right? I will tell you what will happen next. But it's a very, very powerful story from my life. You know, storytelling is extremely powerful. If you saw what I did in the last one or two minutes, you are already visualizing that scene. And as a coach, as an entrepreneur, if you can tell powerful stories from your own life, you will not only be able to attract more people towards you, but you will be able to connect with people on a very, very deep level. Especially if it is your own story and your own personal story. And in this video I'm going to break down all the elements of storytelling because you can share stories in multiple formats. You can share stories in emails, you can share stories through videos like this. You can share stories just in a one minute reel. And all these stories have a meaning because it is coming from your own personal experience. So what I want to do is I'll continue that story, whatever I started and then I will tell you how to apply some of the principles so that you can tell powerful stories yourself. I'll decode the storytelling template after I've told this story. It was the year 1996. I was batting in the nets. I could see my uncle coming, walking from far away. He speaks to my coach. My coach calls out my name. He says, sid, back up. I'm thinking, why has uncle come to school? He never comes to school. I go and pack up my kit. I walk towards my uncle. As I'm walking towards him, I can see that his eyes are red. I knew something was wrong. I go to uncle, he holds my hand and he says, sid, Tata has just passed away. We have to go home. My heart sunk. I start walking towards the car. I put the kit bag in the dickey, get into the car, I shut the door and we start going home. And I'm looking outside the window and I can see the trees passing by. And I'm thinking, has my grandfather just passed away? Has Tata left this world? I reach home, I walk up the stairs, I enter the house and I see his body on the floor. And I'm quickly taken inside the house. I go into the room, all the relatives are around. I just go into the room and I just start crying. Because I loved my grandfather so much. I was thinking on that day, I wish I had spent more time with my grandfather. And I recollected all those moments that I had with him when I was a child. When I was eight years old, I came back home and I remember Tata was sitting in the hall. I went and asked him, tata, why should I go to school? My grandfather was only a fifth pass. And he told me, he said, never let schooling interfere with your education. Whether you're inside school or outside school, keep learning. I was remembering those lines after he had passed away. But I never really understood what he meant by that. Because five years after he passed away, I did my sound engineering. I flunked my 12th, I did my sound engineering. I continued my learning journey. Only at that point, I realized my grandfather's message when he said, whether you're inside school or outside school, keep learning. Never let schooling interfere with your education. So the biggest lesson or the moral of the story of my journey is that there are some people from your life who might have left the deepest of impressions in you with that message. And it's only after many years we realize that message. And if you're able to just pick up that message and live that message, we can become successful. That's my story of my connection with my grandfather. Now, if I told you this same story, without a story in the sense if I told you, never let schooling interfere with your education, be a lifelong learner. If I just given you some gyan like this, would you have understood the depth of this message? Let me tell you another story. I went for this training program internationally and there were 56 people from all different countries of the world. And that was a very strict policy that we had in that program, that we could never come late into the room. It was a five day program. Day one happened. Day two happened. We were having a lot of fun. Day three, familiarity got better with the fellow participants and the trainer. And on day three, on the lunch break, we were supposed to come back at a particular time, but we got a little bit delayed because they had given an assignment which I had to complete. So I completed the assignment. I went to the washroom, finished my lunch, everything else, and I walked in exactly two minutes late. Everybody were already in the room and the main trainer was on the stage. And it was not just me, it was three of us. And as we were entering the room. We thought, okay, fine, it's day number three. Anything goes. And we enter. And the trainer said, stop. And then the trainer asked, what's the time? I said, it's only two minutes late. We are. We are here. We were just doing the assignment outside. I was giving an excuse. He asked, what's the time? I told him the time. And then he asked this question. In which other area in your life are you demonstrating this behavior where you're taking things for granted? And boom. It's like a. Like a knife going into my heart. He asked that question again, in which other area in your life are you demonstrating this behavior of taking other people's words for granted? And he said, when we started this event, we had a code of honor that you have to be here before time, not even on time. On time is late. Before time is when you need to be in which other area in your life? Again, he asked, are you breaking your codes? And from that day, I realized that whatever I say, I need to keep up my word. Because before that, I would assume that, fine, anything goes. We have this iic, right? Indian Stretchable Time. My timeliness went to a whole different level after that experience, and I needed that experience. Because if that experience was not there, if I was not humiliated in front of those 50 other people from all parts of the world, I would not have learned that lesson the way that I integrated that lesson that day. Now, this is another story, and I'm sure you'll remember this story, because if I just told you, you got to be punctual. You got to be on time. If I just given you some Gyan, yeah, You'd be like, yes, sounds good. Yes, it's good to be punctual. But now, next time you're late, you're going to be remembering the story I told you. And hopefully you're not going to be a person who'll be late the next time you commit to your clients, your next time you commit to your students, next time you commit to your own family members. Of course, sometimes it happens. You know, traffic happens, this. You know, things happen. But even when it happens, I don't want that to be. I don't want to be okay with it. I want to be. I want to own my responsibility. I want to own in case I have not followed or kept up my word. Now, that is an example of how a story can drive a powerful message like this. And if you've seen my previous videos, I've shared so many stories, stories on how I lost my job and my wife was pregnant. We only had 500 rupees in our bank account. And the decision that I made at that point really shifted me internally. And because of that decision, I've been able to help so many number of people. So that story of me losing my job and my wife was pregnant, it was a story of a decision making story. So like this, when you go back and make a list of all the moments that have happened in your life, I'm sure you can find at least five or ten stories. It could be good stories, bad stories, happy stories, ugly stories, funny stories. Make a list of all those stories and what you have learned from those stories. And the key to storytelling is making it as real as possible. In fact, making it as real as you can is explaining to your audience how that experience was frame by frame by frame, like how you would watch a movie. So let me go back to the story that I started this video with. Now how did I start the story? I used short sentences and I started telling the story exactly 10 minutes before the emotionally charged moment. Now what was the emotionally charged moment in my story? It was when my uncle broke the news to me that grandfather had passed away. Now I didn't start the story one day before or two days before. I started the story exactly 10 minutes before or five minutes before that particular moment. That's where the story should actually start. And how did I start the story? It was the year 1996. I was batting in the nets. I could see my uncle walking from far away. He speaks to my coach. Coach calls out my name, Sid, pack up. I pack up my kit. I walk towards my uncle. I can see his eyes are red. I hold his hands. He looks into my eyes and he says, sid, Tata has passed away. Can you see it? It's frame by frame by frame. And when you're able to tell stories like this, whether it's in your videos or in your webinars, when you make a list of stories and start to practice telling story stories like this, you'll be able to connect with your audience on a much, much deeper level. In fact, we have something called as a hackathon that we do in our community. And in the last hackathon we had close to 1,000 people and I made 1,000 people write their stories and post on social media. It was mind blowing. Many people who have never even shared some of their darkest secrets, they put it out there and the next day they were blown away by the responses. Because most people on social media, they want to only look good they don't want to talk about their dark side. They don't want to talk about the bad stuff that has happened to them. They don't want to talk about the things that will make people think that, oh, who is this person all about? But I'll tell you what, Trust is not built by talking about how great you are. Trust is built by being authentic and by being real and by expressing your heart and expressing your stories without any filters, removing all those filters. Trust is built on three pillars. The pillar of authenticity. That's pillar number one, the pillar of logic. Logic is when you're able to present information in a clear and concise way, and then it makes logical sense. You can build trust. And the third pillar of trust is empathy, where people should really be able to feel that you care for them. Because people don't care about how much you know until they know how much you care. I'll repeat that. People don't care about how much you know until they know how much you care. And when that comes through, through your stories, when that comes through in your communication, people will. They will just stick with you for life. Because it's not about how great you are, how many awards you've won, how many TEDx you're speaking in, how many certifications you've got. It's about who you want to serve and at what intensity you want to serve. And for you to be able to survive that level of intensity, you got to be a good storyteller. Because by being a good storyteller, you will not only be able to influence people at their core, but you will also be able to teach them through your own experience. And when you teach them through your own experience, the level of connect that you will have with your audience will be something that will be unshakable, unreplicable. And because these kind of stories that you would say is something that people cannot copy. One of my mentors, he says this, when he said this for the first time, it blew my mind away. He said, you can copy my website, you can copy my videos, you can copy my courses, you can copy my ads, you can copy my funnel, you can copy my scripts, you can copy every single thing, but you cannot copy me. You can't copy my intentions, you can't copy my stories, because my story is my story. I hope you realize that this is going to be your superpower. If you're somebody who has not started telling stories yet, start doing it. Start practicing in front of a mirror, start practicing on an insta reel, Start Saying one minute stories. Go back and make a list of all the stories from the time that you are born till now, all the different stories and what lesson you learned from each of the stories. And you can integrate all the stories and you can recall the stories at will once you know that the stories are there in front of you. That's what I've done. That's what I've done over the last few years. I have many more stories that I've not shared, but I would love to share them in my future videos because it's these stories that create the connection that we have and it's these stories that you're going to be using to connect with your audience as well. And when you build this skill, you will be able to sell like crazy without being pushy. Like I've generated more than like more than 35,000 people have joined my products, they've bought my products over the years. How is it possible I'm an introvert even till today? How is it possible that so many thousands of people are buying my products is because of these connections? In the next video, I'm going to teach you the formula on how to attract people into your products and get them to buy products without being pushy, without being hypey, without being sleazy. And that's what we have seen in most people who do all the gimmick based sales over the years. For me, selling equals service. For me, selling is about helping my students get the result. For me, selling equals helping them win at a very core level. And once you're able to operate at that level, the kind of pace at which your business will grow will be unimaginable. I'll tell you, many business owners, even with 20, 30 years experience, they have not tapped into this power. They have not tapped into this dimension of sales. They are still playing the scarcity game and out beat my competitor mindset game or the pricing game or they're just playing the typical game of my product is better than your product kind of a thing. But you know what? People are smart enough and people don't care. What people really care about is your story. What they care about is what you stand for and they care about your intentions. If you found this video useful, please subscribe to this. And if you have not seen my previous episodes, please start from episode one and come all the way till this one because everything builds up to this point. If you've just started watching this video as your first video, I wanted to complete all the episodes before this because this is going to lead to the next, which is how to become a master at sales, where you become a magnet to whatever you want to sell. Subscribe to this channel. I'll see you in the next video. And most importantly, share in the comments. What were your biggest takeaways from this particular episode? I'll see you in the next one, Sa.