Steve Jobs walks out in front of a hall full of Apple shareholders, staff and reporters, wearing a double-breasted jacket and a bow tie. It's January 1984. There's no PowerPoint, because it hasn't been invented yet. He doesn't need it.
He opens with a few lines of Bob Dylan, and the room knows this isn't going to be a normal company update.
Then he tells a story. IBM turned down the chance to buy into photocopying, and watched someone else build an empire on it. IBM decided mini computers were too small to matter, and watched someone else get rich. IBM said the personal computer was a toy, while a little company on the west coast made the Apple II.
Now, he says, IBM wants it all, and Apple is the only one left standing in the way. By the time he's finished, the audience is on the edge of their seats.
Why it works
Jobs could have stood there with a chart of market share. Instead he gave the room a hero, a villain and something to root for. That's why his launches are still talked about more than forty years later.
You don't need to be launching a computer to do the same. Every business has stories. Most just never tell them.
What you can borrow from him
Start with the ending. Decide what point you want to make, then work backwards from it. Most stories have three parts. The start sets the scene and brings in a problem. The middle is the search for an answer. The end is where it pays off.
Then give us characters. Jobs had a hero and a villain, and your story needs people we can picture, and that includes you, mistakes and all. People like someone who tried and failed more than someone who never seems to struggle.
Make it about the audience, not you. Tell the story they need to hear, which isn't always the one you want to tell. If a bit of your story is only there because it makes you look good, cut it. There's more on that in Marketing isn't about you.
Keep it short. The audiobook of the official Steve Jobs biography runs to about 25 hours. The film based on it is two. What can you lose and still get the point across?
And have some fun with it, because stories should entertain. A bit of humour shows people you're human. Even Superman isn't perfect, and done beats perfect anyway.
Every DJ is a storyteller
I've always thought a good DJ set is a story. You set the scene, build the tension, drop the big moment and bring everyone home. It's why I think all business needs a little show business.
These days I use stories in almost everything I write, including this blog. Every post starts with a moment, then steps back to what it meant. If you want a simple way to get more of them out there, Record, remix, release is a good place to start.
First published December 2017.
