A short transcript of TJ Walker emphasizing the importance of using stories to illustrate and reinforce key messages in speeches and presentations. Walker argues that stories make ideas easier to understand and remember, that every important message should be illustrated with a story, and that lack of an illustrative story may indicate the idea is not important.
Chapters
In the last episode, I talked to you about the need of examples throughout your speech, throughout your presentation. The ultimate example, of course, is a story. Now, you can tell me. Well, T.J. that's fine for motivational speakers. I'm a serious business person. I don't tell stories. Baloney. All of us tell stories all the time. So, for example, in one of the earlier episodes, I talked to you about the importance of limiting your messages down to five. I didn't just state it in a straightforward way. I in fact told a story. I talked about typical training in mine. I asked Sally, I asked Jim, how many stories, or excuse me, how many messages do you remember from the best speech ever? And Jim remembered zero. Sally remembered a couple. Most people remember not much. Occasionally someone remembers five. So it would stretch it out, it would draw it out. You could put pictures in your mind of Sally or Jim. You could sort of see me in a training. Is it the most dramatic story ever? No. Is it going to win a Pulitzer Prize for literature? No, but it just makes it a little bit easier to remember this magic of you've got to have five ideas or fewer. Whatever it is you're trying to communicate, if you illustrate it with a story that involves a character, a conversation, dialogue between the two of you, where you were, how you felt, what the problem was, and how it was resolved, it's going to to make it easier for people to understand it and remember it. What gets a bigger audience? A blockbuster movie about a love story or a drama, or a statistical analysis of rainwater residue in your community. One's data, the other's a story. Now, you don't necessarily have to be Hollywood. You don't have to be overly dramatic, but you need to bring to life your most importance with messages. The biggest difference between great speakers and awful speakers is that great speakers illustrate every single important message point they have with a story. Awful speakers. Say, T.J. i'd love to, but there's no time. I gotta go through all the data. No, there's always time for an important story that brings your idea to life. It's not an extra, it's not fluff. It is absolutely essential to how human beings process and remember messages. So tell your stories. If you can't think of a single story to illustrate your point, then maybe the point isn't very important.
