Speaker 1: In this video, I'm going to show you how to use one of the most powerful marketing strategies of all time, storytelling, in order to help you get more customers, make more sales, and grow your business. I'll show you why storytelling works, how to use it in your business, and I'll even give you a storytelling framework and template so that you can use it to quickly craft high-converting stories to help you promote your brand and grow your business. Now, I appreciate that saying that you're able to make sales simply by telling stories is a pretty big claim. So you have every right to be skeptical. I mean, come on, we're really going to be talking about storytelling here? Like, once upon a time in a land far away, there lived a princess who lived in a castle. You know, that kind of thing. Well, no, but also yes. And this is one of the biggest misconceptions or misunderstandings about the power of storytelling and how you're actually able to use it and incorporate it into your business. So to clear this up and to sort of help pave the path for the journey that we're about to take, we first need to cover this ever important question. What exactly is a story anyway? Well, my friend, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, a story is commonly described as either an account of imaginary or real people and events told for entertainment or an account of past events in someone's life or in the evolution of something. Basically, a story is just something that happened. Yeah, that's pretty much it. If something happens, either real or fictional, and you tell someone about it, it's a story. Now, of course, this doesn't make it a good story or an interesting story or an entertaining story, or more importantly, a story that's actually going to help you to make sales and to grow your business, but it's a story nonetheless. So my hope here is that by breaking this definition down to its core fundamentals, the fact that a story is really just something that happened, well, it helps to remove some of the fear and anxiety and stigma around story and makes it a whole lot more approachable because nobody is asking you to become the next Shakespeare or to write the next great American novel. All your customers are really looking for is for you to tell them about stuff. Stuff that happened, stuff that could happen, and stuff that may not have even happened. But of course, in order to elevate this story and to make it something worthy of your business and your marketing, we're going to need to beef it up a little bit. Fortunately for us, there is a proven framework in order to do exactly this. And a template and a system and a methodology for you to use in order to create highly effective and incredibly engaging stories that will allow you to sell with ease. But before I show you exactly what that looks like and how to apply it in your business first, a big thank you to this video's sponsor, PictoStory. PictoStory is an amazing video marketing tool that allows you to quickly take a single video and then quickly and easily turn it into multiple different pieces of content for use across all of your social media platforms. It's the perfect tool for content marketers, social media managers, brand strategists, and anyone who creates video content in order to increase audience engagement. It automatically adds subtitles, allows you to change the color, type, and size of the font, and you can customize the video background color to match your brand or whatever look you're going for. And when you click the link below, it'll allow you to create a completely free account. And when you use the code ADAM50, you'll also get 50% off any annual plan if you want to access any additional features. So with all that said, now it's time for me to walk you through one of the most powerful and influential storytelling frameworks of all times, Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey. Now, while the Hero's Journey has been around for thousands and thousands of years, it was in Joseph Campbell's 1949 book, A Hero with a Thousand Faces, that he really brought this concept and this framework to the masses. Fun fact, the book is not actually about a guy with a thousand different faces. Rather, the same story structure, the Hero's Journey, just seems to keep appearing all across the world over tens of thousands of years and different religions and different people from different cultures. The same structure just seems to keep repeating itself. And this framework is the same kind of framework you see across many of the most popular books and TV shows and movies that are out there today. Things like Star Wars, The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, Spider-Man, The Matrix, even The Lion King. Now, full disclosure, this whole Hero's Journey thing is kind of a messy ordeal. I mean, there are 17 stages to this whole Hero's Journey. 12 if you condense a few and kind of cram them together like I'm going to do. But still, 12 is a whole lot of stages to try to go through and remember. I mean, it's great if you're trying to create the next Hollywood blockbuster, but if you're just trying to create a simple story in order to connect with your customers to grow your business, well, it's a little bit overkill. So what I'm going to do here is I'm going to blast through all 12 stages of the Hero's Journey as quickly as I possibly can. I want to do this so you've at least got them as a reference point for later and also because they're going to provide context for the more simplified three-step version that I'm going to show you at the end. Now, between you and me, there's nothing stopping you from just skipping this part entirely, scrolling ahead, getting right to that three parts and the three steps, simplifying this whole thing down. But I'm going to strongly encourage you to pay attention, maybe even take out a pen and paper or the notes app on your phone and make note of what I'm about to share with you. This is because if you're really serious about building a better brand, about growing your business, about spreading your message, making a bigger impact, anything like that, all of these are going to have a direct input and a direct impact on what you're trying to achieve. I mean, seriously, this is the exact story structure that has been used for thousands of years to deliver some of the most important and influential messages of all time. So, by simply spending just a little bit of time right now to go through them, well, they'll positively influence every story you ever tell in the future, making them 10 times more powerful and potentially 10 times more profitable. So, let's get started. The first stage is all about the ordinary world. This is where we first get introduced to the hero of the story. There's no journey yet, nothing's happened. We're basically just getting an introduction to the hero and to their ordinary, mundane, maybe even boring kind of life. The key word here is normal and possibly relatable. And what you want to do is you really want to make sure that the person that we're highlighting is normal, average, relatable, just like you, just like me, just like everybody that we know and hang out with. They're not special, they're not gifted, they haven't done anything cool yet. The next stage is the call to adventure. This is where things really start to pick up steam. It's at this stage that the hero is confronted with some kind of discomfort or something that pushes them out of their comfort zone, some kind of problem or situation that they simply have to address. Different factors that can be the catalyst for this kind of adventure, as Campbell points out in his Hero with a Thousand Faces. For example, they could decide to just go out and do something all on their own volition. The example here is Theseus upon arriving in Athens. They could simply be sent away by a benign or malignant agent. This was the case of Odysseus setting off in his ship in the Odyssey. They could just randomly stumble into adventure as the case in Dorothy and Oz when that whole tornado thing happens. Regardless, something happens, which poses the next question, will the hero rise to the occasion? And that leads us to the next stage, which is refusal of the call. This is the part where the hero basically digs in their heels and says, yeah, I don't think so. Essentially, at this stage, the hero has some kind of hesitation. There's obviously some danger, some peril. There's risks involved, and they're kind of evaluating everything and trying to figure out that maybe this isn't the best plan. But obviously, something propels them forward. Something gets them to take action. Well, when they do take action, that leads us to the next step, stage four, where they meet their mentor. It's important to understand that no great adventure truly happens on their own. There's always some kind of outside force or outside person that equips the hero with what they need to succeed, some kind of personal trainer or mentor. The mentor comes in and gives them the tools and the skills and the confidence and the experience and essentially helps them succeed or, at the very least, not get killed. Stage five is crossing the first threshold, where the hero steps forth and out into this scary new world. This is the point of no return, and the part that we move from the intro kind of to the meat and potatoes of the story. Stage six is tests, allies, and enemies. This is where the hero, well, they start to face those inevitable challenges, the things that make a story interesting, and they start to build up a team of people around them. Not only is this an important part to show the hero kind of facing and overcoming different challenges, but it also allows us to introduce other characters into the story, sort of a supporting cast. Stage seven is approach to the inmost cave, where the hero starts to get a little bit closer to their goal. Now, when we're talking about a cave here, we're not talking about a literal cave, but rather kind of that peak apex of danger, that final climax of battle or whatever it is that they need to overcome. Typically, this is where the ultimate goal is located. If you think about the Death Star in Star Wars, or the dragon's lair, maybe. I guess a lair kind of is a cave. Or the bad guy's house. It's important to note at this stage, well, our hero hasn't entered the cave yet, the theoretical cave, but rather they're preparing, they're approaching the cave. Because the next stage, well, that's the big ordeal. You see, stage eight, ordeal, is where the hero faces their biggest challenge yet, their main challenge of this entire journey. Campbell calls this the belly of the whale, and essentially this is the biggest challenge, the most important part of the entire journey, the main thing that they've been working up to since the very beginning. Now, in the hero's journey, this is typically a life or death moment, where they're either going to succeed and come out the other side completely transformed, or fail and perish. In business, the stakes aren't typically life or death. However, there does need to be something at stake, which I'm going to talk about when we wrap this up. Stage nine is all about the reward and finally seeing the end of their journey. That light at the end of the tunnel. The fact that they might actually finally make it through this thing. Stage ten is all about the road back, and is actually kind of a sub-story in and of itself. I mean, they think they're done, but there's still a few more things to do. They still have to get home, and the challenges aren't completely over yet. Typically, these are some kind of a consequence that's occurred from whatever they've just done. So, for example, if he does, say, enter the lair of the dragon, the cave, and takes all the dragon's treasure, well, on his way back home, thieves might come out of nowhere and try to take the treasure away, as thieves have been known to do. Stage eleven is resurrection, in which the actual final test is met and the true climax of the story. Basically, this is the actual true ending, that final thing that they've got to go through to wrap this whole thing up. And then stage twelve is return with the elixir, where they get home triumphant. But they don't return home in the same way and as the same person. Rather, they've been transformed, naturally, by all of the things that they've had to go through and overcome and accomplish. And that, my friend, is the hero's journey. Now, if you're still with me, good for you. Seriously, that's a whole lot of story theory to go through, but it is important. And there are a few things that I really want you to take away that help to make this story structure, this story framework, so important and so interesting and so engaging. The first of which is that there needs to be stakes involved. In other words, something needs to matter. Something needs to be important. There has to be meaning behind why this is happening in the first place. The second incredibly important point is that there needs to be some kind of transformation. The hero, the person, whoever it is that you're telling the story about, has to be changed in some kind of way. Now, it doesn't have to be as profound as some of the massive stories that we see on TV and watch at the movies, but there needs to be some kind of transformation, some new way of thinking about things, some kind of belief that has shifted, some kind of identity that's been elevated or upgraded. No stakes, no story. No transformation, no impact. So now that we've got that covered, let me simplify this entire thing for you using a simple three-part structure, which, to be honest, is really just the overarching theme to this entire thing anyway. A good story has three parts, a beginning, a middle, and an end. No, I'm seriously not joking. That's about it. Now, according to Joseph Campbell, all of the steps of the hero's journey fall into three main categories. The first is the beginning, known as the departure. This is where the hero is introduced and they're presented with and prepare for the journey ahead. The middle stage is what he calls the initiation stage. This is where the hero crosses that point of no return and starts to go through and overcome those transformative challenges that are going to shape who they become at the end. And then the end, which he calls the return. And this is the hero's trip back to the regular world where they return completely transformed, or at least partly transformed. But remember, there's got to be a transformation. So when you're thinking about these stories in your business, in order to build your brand, to attract more customers, to make more sales, think about those three parts. First, think about where your customer is right now. This is their beginning. What are their pains, their problems, their fears, their frustrations? What is it that's going to get them to act? What is it that's going to get them to take action in order to go out there and to solve these problems that are causing all kinds of discomfort and suffering in their life? Then think about how your business could act as a guide, as a mentor, as someone that's able to equip them with the skills or the tools or the products or the services or whatever it is that you do in order to arm them to overcome these challenges, to help solve them for them. And then lastly, think about your customers and how much better their life is going to be after their problems are solved, after you act as their guide or as their mentor, after you help them overcome all of the challenges that they're trying to get, you transform them and you bring them out on the other side better, happier. And get them to think about how good things will be once they achieve their goals and get their dreams and their wants and their needs completely fulfilled with your help, of course, because that's what your business is there to do. It's there to help them solve their problems and the stories you tell are there to communicate that. Of course, telling a good story is important, but equally, if not more important, is making sure that you're telling it in the right place at the right time and to the right people. So make sure to check out the link for PictoStory in the description box below this video. And then the next thing you're going to want to do is check out the video I've got linked up right here on digital marketing. So make sure to check it out now and we'll see you in the next video. All right, the next thing that'll really help you become a better digital marketer is to understand the differences between strategy and tactics and when to use them. Strategy is all the big picture stuff and this is really where you want to focus your efforts first.