261. How to Grow Your Business in 2025 with these 3 Storytelling Tips

Timestamp:

00:00 Introduction: It was 8am on 26th October 2024 ...

00:48 ... and then everything changes!

01:50 Why stories are such powerful lead generators

02:18 The 3 keys to telling a great story

02:59 The 5-second transformation and why it matters

03:44 Why using location in your story is so important

04:23 Speaking in the present tense is your time machine

Ash Roy's  Video Transcript (This transcript has been auto-generated. Artificial Intelligence is still in the process of perfecting itself. There may be some errors in transcription):

Ash Roy:

It's 8 a. m. on the 26th of October, 2024, and I'm sitting in this very chair, trying my hardest to keep my eyes open. You see, I've been up since 3 a. m. because I've decided to attend this webinar as part of this 5, 000 program I've signed up for, all about titles, thumbnails, and hooks designed to help me grow my YouTube channel.

I've decided to stay awake for the following five hours. To listen to this master storyteller who I've never heard of before. There's a lot of hype around this guy, but I'm skeptical of this manufactured excitement. I've seen it all before in 13 years in digital marketing. I've seen a lot of revenue millionaires who are skirting the edge of bankruptcy because they don't have enough cash to pay their bills.

Call me an old cantankerous washed-up skeptic, but it's going to take more than this for me to feel convinced. After the initial pleasantries, the guest starts to speak. Everything changes. He explains that every day consists of fourteen hundred- and forty-minute blocks of opportunity rather than the twenty-four-hour blocks of opportunity most of us see the day as and instantly I realize I've been squandering minutes away, minutes that could add up to months and years over the course of a lifetime and I'm excited

about this new resource that I've tapped into called Time.

He continues to speak and I'm transfixed. Turns out this guy is not just a storyteller, but he's a school teacher, he's an author, and he's an all-round awesome dude. Over the next month, I go on to buy a few of his books. which I absolutely devour.

And in this video, I'm going to be sharing some of the insights from this book, Story Sell, which will help you to grow your business profitably and build a brand that people remember. My name is Ash Roy. I'm an ex-banker with a CPA and an MBA. And these days, I love helping small business owners like you grow their businesses using digital marketing strategies that actually work.

In this video, I'm going to show you how to use storytelling to connect with your audience at a deeper level. Build a loyal following and grow your business all by sharing stories that really matter to them. And here's the best part. I'll give you three simple tips you can implement today to start transforming your stories into tools of connection.

Plus, I'll show you how these tips work in action. So, grab a pen and paper because this is going to be fun and actionable. Here are the three storytelling tips we'll focus on today.

Tip number one. Find your five second transformation. This is the exact moment of change where your protagonist's world shifts.

It's the emotional hook that matters to your audience.

Tip number two. use location to activate the viewer's or the listener's imagination. A vivid setting brings your story to life, making it more engaging and more memorable.

Tip number three. speak in the present tense. This creates a sense of immediacy and draws your audience into the story because they are sharing the present tense with you as they listen to your story.

Okay. Now we're going to break these three tips down for you. The five second transformation was pretty obvious, right? It was when I said that I realized I've unlocked 1, 440 opportunities to move my business forward because I've learned to see each day as 1,440-minute blocks of time rather than the 24-hour blocks of time that we traditionally tend to see our day as.

And this was particularly useful for me as an entrepreneur and for you as a business owner or entrepreneur because all of us are looking for that to find more time in our day. This is where the story intends to grab your attention and really make you care. Transformation is what creates connection,

your audience doesn't just hear your story, they feel it. Okay, the next tip was the importance of using location. Did you notice how I said I'm sitting in this very chair, a chair you can see right now and as you see the chair, you can probably relate to a chair that you're sitting in while you're watching this video.

Or if you're listening to this on audio, you can imagine a chair that you're sitting in or a chair in your lounge room or a chair in your bedroom or a chair on your patio, wherever it is. But that chair becomes a proxy and activates your version of the chair in your life and therefore draws you into the story.

by leveraging your chair and your environment. By doing this, I make the story yours. And the third tip was speaking in the present tense. By starting my story in the present tense, when I say, it's 8am, I'm sitting at my desk, I'm speaking to the audience as if it's happening right now. The present tense is the tense in which the audience is consuming the story and, in a sense, it's like I'm travelling through a time machine and meeting them where they are in this present moment that they share with me as I'm speaking the story, albeit through their screen.

This present tense creates a connection between me and the audience. And again, it makes the story that much more relatable and that much more powerful.

Now it's your turn. Think about a story from your own life or in your own business. What was your five second transformation? How can you use location to make that story more vivid for your audience and try speaking in the present tense about your story.

It works wonders. If this resonated with you and you'd like to see more content like this around storytelling, then drop a comment below sharing your favourite storytelling tip or better yet, share your own story.

This is an ongoing series called Book Insights, where I bring you the insights and ideas from some of the best books I've read.

If you like this channel, please do subscribe so you can get notified of future episodes, including the one that I'm going to be recording soon with the author of this book, Matthew Dicks. Thanks for watching, and I'll see you in the next video.