The

109 RULES*
Of
Storytelling
Over the last few years, I’ve given a lot of presentations on
the art and science of storytelling, and I’ve hosted dozens
of “ask-me-anything” Q&A sessions.

I kept notes of all the advice I gave out during those

sessions. Some of it was good. Some a little questionable...

So, for a bit of fun, I thought I’d compile them all into a
handy list for you. In no particular order.

I’ve called it The 109* Rules of Storytelling - but they’re

more like guidelines, really.

As with all “rules”, it’s important to know them

before you break them. Enjoy.

Jeremy ☺

* Because 110 is too many.

Great stories make an
audience FEEL something.

The best stories make an

audience DO something.

The other 108 rules are important, but this is Rule number 1 for a reason.
#JustSayin
Great stories are about
transformation.

Somebody (or something) needs to be

transformed by the end of the story.

If there’s no transformation, or if it’s

just a list of things that happened, it’s
not a story.

It’s journalism.
Paraphrasing Aaron Sorkin.
When you tell transformational
stories, hormones like dopamine,
endorphins and oxytocin are
released into your brain.

They help to connect with your

audience by building trust & empathy.

When you don’t tell transformational

stories, they don’t.

This is useful information because these hormones make Rules 1 & 2 work.
Great storytellers are obsessed with
Aristotle’s Poetics. This little
pamphlet explains the underlying
foundations of all great stories.

And just because it was written

thousands of years ago in 335BC,
don’t think it isn’t relevant today…

If you want to influence and move

an audience, it is.
Great stories are about
intention and obstacle.

That’s it.

Somebody wants something really

badly, and something formidable is
standing in their way; an obstacle so
big that it looks like they’ve got no
chance of overcoming it.
Great stories create drama and
contrast by using words like
“but”, “except”, “and then”.

Become evangelistic about using them.

If someone gives me story they need
to improve, and we don’t have much
time, one of the first things I do is to
count how many times the word
“but” is used.

Chances are, that’s where the peaks

and troughs of the story are going to
be. It’s one quick way to know where
to look, to gauge condition of the
story, and what needs to be done.
As a guide, one “but” every 60-90 seconds (125-200 words) is a good ratio.
Great stories have 3 acts.

A beginning…
A middle…
And an end.

But not necessarily in that order.

Jean-Luc Godard
Great storytellers don’t care about
how many people they reached.

They’re more concerned with –

of the people they reached,
how many did they move?

Jacob Collier
The quickest way to get an audience
to remember something is to make
them laugh*.

There’s a good reason why Sir Ken

Robinson’s 2006 talk is still the top
TED talk by a considerable distance.

He made the audience laugh, on

average, every 29 seconds.

* Endorphins.
Great storytellers write their scripts
out in full. Longhand*.

Word-for-word.

And they know how fast they speak.

That allows them to rehearse better,

analyse their scripts, and make sure
that their talk never runs over their
allotted time.
* Bullet points are lazy. (The best presenters speak 100-140 words per minute).
Tony Blair’s speech writer Philip
Collins insisted that on the morning
of a talk, they trimmed their word
count by 10%*.

No matter how much preparation

had gone into the speech, this
exercise always made it even
sharper than it already was.

* Because adrenalin kicks in on the day and you always speak for longer
than you expect. But you can only do this if you take Rule 11 seriously.
Good storytellers love Joseph
Campbell’s “Hero’s Journey” story
structure - but great storytellers
know that while it’s a good format
for dramatic stories, it doesn’t
often work for business stories.

One thing you do need to remember is:

The audience is always the hero.

The Hero With a Thousand Faces is essential reading for every storyteller.
The.
Audience.
Is.
Always.
The.
Hero.

A gentle reminder in case you skipped over the previous

rule without realising how important this is.
Great storytellers know that
people are not persuaded by
what you say, but by what they
understand.

Dr. John C. Maxwell

Great storytellers care about
readability scores. They know
what “lexical density” means.
And they know the Gunning Fog
Index score of their talks.

This is because they care more

about helping their audience
understand their message, than just
having something impressive to say.

This is why Rule 11 matters. No script. No score.

Great storytellers test their scripts in advance.
Great storytellers love AI, but they
don’t get it to write their stories for
them.

They use AI more like an “IA” – an

Intelligent Assistant - which helps them
to research their audience, ask the
right questions, and not let their own
cognitive bias get in the way of telling
the audience what they need to hear.

AI is great as a research assistant, or to help you with critical thinking?

AI helps you ask better questions. It’s not there to write your stories for you.
Great presenters don’t practice
their story until they get it right,
they practice until they can
never get it wrong.

Having it written down in full

is what makes this work.

If you really care about your audience – practice well.

Doing a quick run through the day before isn’t going to cut it.
Great storytellers understand
that if they know their script
off-by-heart, when they’re
presenting - they’ll spend more
time focusing on how their
audience is responding - and
less time worrying about
messing up their lines.
Great storytellers know that what
you leave out, is often more
important than what you put in.

Don’t treat your audience like idiots.

Sometimes it helps to make them

do some work and join the dots
themselves.
“And then what happened?”
are four of the most powerful words
in storytelling.

If your audience is thinking that at

any point in your story – you know
you’re winning.

That means the dopamine is kicking

in and your story is working.

Neil Gaiman
Great storytellers know their
personality type, but I’ve noticed that
people can be very opinionated about
which personality model works best!

I don’t think it matters as much as

some people think it does; but
whichever model you prefer - using
one will always make you a better
storyteller, and a better communicator.
I like Myers-Briggs. I’m an INFJ. It has many flaws but it’s simple. It’s very
helpful when you want to analyse the personality type of your audience.
Use whatever technology you have at
your disposal to research your
audience. Even Deep Research. You can
never do enough audience research.

And if you know the name of the

person who you want your story to
influence - working out their
personality type can be particularly
helpful. Especially when when you’re
preparing to present to them.
If in doubt refer to Rules 14 & 22.
Whoever tells the best stories
goes home with the most marbles.

Always.
Got a few hours to tell some stories?
A conference? A workshop?
Try reimagining yourself as a movie
director or a TV showrunner.

90 minutes? Script the flow like a movie.

4 hours? Try approaching the agenda
like 4 x 1-hour Netflix episodes, each
structured to make your audience want
to binge-watch them all at once.

Books like Blake Snyder’s “Save the Cat” will help you do this.
At CES in 2025, Nvidia CEO, Jensen
Huang, kept the audience engaged for
90-minutes. That’s a long time for any
keynote speaker. (Even Bono at Davos!)

Jensen approached his keynote like a

movie. He managed the attention span
of his audience by splitting his
narrative into 7 x mini-keynotes of
around 11 minutes each.

Steve Jobs was the master of long presentations because he used a similar
approach. Marc Benioff too.
If you’ve only got a short story to tell,
(an informal introduction, or a
presentation, with no time to prepare),
try this simple 3-act structure.

~ What’s a few things to Excite them?

~ A few things to Disturb them?
~ And a few things to Assure them?

Sounds simple. But it works.

And if it was good enough for Aristotle…
See Rule 4.
The most powerful emotion in
storytelling is surprise. When you
surprise an audience, their emotions
intensify by up to 400%*.

And now that you know that Rule 1 is

the golden rule of storytelling, great
storytellers like you will constantly ask
themselves: “How can I surprise my
audience with this story - by giving
them something they don’t expect?”
*Read “Neuroscience for Leadership” by Tara Swart et al
Sometimes you need to kill the hero
first and explain who they are later.

That’s why Quentin Taratino is one of

the best storytellers out there.

QT understands Rule 28 better than anyone.

Great stories do 6 things:

~ Inspire & Inform.

~ Entertain & Educate.
~ Challenge & Solve Problems.

Your story doesn’t need to do all 6 at

the same time. And not in equal
measure. But if you need to connect
with a diverse audience, make sure
your story hits each mark at least once.
3 Right brain (for the heart) + 3 Left brain (for the head).
Not every story needs to contain a
conflict. We love villains and obstacles
in the Western world, but great
storytellers in Japan sometimes use a
story structure called Kishōtenketsu.

Conflict is replaced with Contrast.

Makes the story FEEL totally different.

Goodness knows we have enough conflicts in the world already.

Maybe your story might benefit from a little Eastern inspiration?
Great storytellers make even the
most boring stories interesting.

When they’re bored of their subject,

or of telling the same story too many
times, they make their story about
why they’re bored of telling it.

This is more profound

than it sounds.
Great stories have a musicality to them.

Words, when presented properly, can

sound more like music that dialogue.

Great storytellers worry about things

like rhythm and cadence.

Another nod to my screenwriting hero Aaron Sorkin. I sometimes write my

speeches and stories on manuscript paper, as a reminder to make my story sing.
Great storytellers like to emphasise
important points with dramatic pauses.

Sometimes…
for…
an…
uncomfortably…
long…
period…
of time.

This is because they reap the benefits of Rule 21 when they do it.
Great storytellers love a black screen
when they’re presenting live.

They know that eyes are always drawn

to big, shiny, white objects.

And sometimes a black screen not only

gives the audience’s brain a rest, but it
shifts the focus away from the screen
and back onto the storyteller.
Right?
“People remember stories
more than statistics”.

Yes, this is true. Research backs it up.

But if statistics play an important role

in your story - and the numbers aren’t
compelling enough - it doesn’t matter
if they remember your story…

You won’t get the job done.

Read “Narrative & Numbers” by Aswath Damdaran
Good storytellers in business like to
quote Pixar’s rules of storytelling.

Great presenters know them, but

they don’t talk about them all the
time.

That’s because they understand that

the framework for Finding Nemo is
rarely going to help them influence
a commercial audience.
Despite Rule 37 (!), there is sometimes
a place for a well told playful story.
Pixar have 22 “rules”. This is #4:

Once upon a time ______________________ . [The Problem]

And every day __________________________ .

[Current solutions & why they suck]

Until one day ___________________________. [Your solution]

And because of this _____________________. [Why it’s SO much better]

And because of this _____________________. [How it’s SO much better]

Until finally _____________________________.

[Benefits of the market you’re capturing]

It’s always a good idea to know the “rules” before you break them.
In fact, come to think of it,
Pixar’s rule #7 is pretty good as well…

“Come up with your ending before you

figure out your middle.

Seriously. Endings are hard, get yours

working up front.”

Pixar’s “Storytelling in a Box” course on Khan Academy is excellent. And it’s FREE!
And maybe Pixar’s rule #14 too?

“Why must you tell THIS story?

What’s the belief burning within you

that your story feeds off of?

That’s the heart of it”.

Let’s talk about “client success stories”.
Why don’t we think about them more
like adventure stories?

Too often they’re just a problem,

a few actions, a product or service we
want to sell, and a testimonial quote.
That’s not a story. That’s a pitch.

Adventure stories only begin when

something goes wrong. Try starting
there instead?
Good storytellers and communications
coaches like to throw around rules like
“The 7-38-55 Rule”.* (It sounds fancy).

We like rules.

But great storytellers know that if the

7% (your words) are not good enough,
then the other 93% don’t matter.

* Google “Albert Mehrabian”. He’s someone you should know.

Great business storytellers study
keynotes from conferences like WEF at
Davos, COP, CES, THINK & Dreamforce.

Especially the bad ones.

Great storytelling is not just about

knowing what works – it’s about
knowing what doesn’t (and why).

Copy & paste some keynote transcripts from YouTube, and feed them into an
LLM and ask how they’d improve it. There’s a good conversation starter…
If you want to know what it FEELS like
to write a masterpiece - get a nice pen,
a new notebook, and copy your
favourite [classic novel / film script /
song lyric / speech / comedy set],
word-for-word.

It’s an exercise called Copywork.

It works.

I’ve ”written” Lin-Manuel’s Hamilton, Jane Austen, and Thoreau’s Walden.

Great storytellers are passionate about
the art of rhetoric, and the
neuroscience of decision making.

That’s because they measure the value

of their stories by what their audience
did afterwards. Great storytellers want
to understand how people make
decisions, and why they respond to
certain words and phrases.

Studying rhetoric can seem boring and really hard work at first.
Try reading You Talkin’ To Me? by Sam Leith. It’s well written and a lot of fun.
Whether you have a long time to write
a story or speech, or very little time to
prepare – apply The 50:25:25 Rule at
all times.

If you spend 50% of your time

researching, 25% writing, and 25%
rehearsing and rewriting – then you
won’t go far wrong.

Much love to Obama’s former-speechwriter Terry Szuplat.

His book “Say It Well” is the best book on public speaking I’ve ever read.
Read everything Nancy Duarte has
written.

Resonate will help you structure your

story.

Illuminate will give it more purpose.

DataStory will help you to tell it better

at work.

She gave a pretty impressive TED talk too.

While we’re on books, pick up a few by
Carmine Gallo while you’re at it.

Great storytellers have these four on

their bookshelf.

~ Five Stars
~ Talk Like Ted
~ The Storytellers Secret
~ The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs

Check out Will Storr too. He’s a very good egg.

Great storytellers love silences.

I know you want your presentation to

be brilliant, but if you try too hard - it
will be at “10” ALL the time - and your
audience might feel overwhelmed.

Sometimes your story needs to be at a

“7”, so weave “some silences” into your
story.

Read Grace by Cody Keenan. Listening to Miles Davis while you write helps too.
Great storytellers obsess over the 3 V’s.

Vocabulary:
Study the position of every word on the page of your scripts.

Verbal:
Record yourself on camera, but only listen to the audio when
you play it back. Close your eyes and listen out for awkward
filler words, monotone and speed.

Visual:
Watch the video back a 3rd time but this time with no sound.
Focus on your expressions, background & body language.
This is a brilliant exercise I learned from performance coach Vinh Giang to
help you coach yourself, self-assess and really improve your performance.
Great storytellers are not
afraid to read their scripts
in certain circumstances.

If it was good enough for

Steve Jobs, when he gave the
best commencement speech
of all time, then it’s good
enough for you.

Stanford Commencement (2005). 15 minutes well spent.

Great storytellers don’t wing it.

They don’t rely on a few bullet points,

thinking they can get by without
writing their story in full - “because it
will sound stiff or rehearsed”.

Because they know that if they applied

Rule 18 properly, then it will feel
natural, authentic and conversational.
Great storytellers appreciate the
wisdom of JFK’s speechwriter Ted
Sorensen – author of many of the
world’s most memorable speeches.

He said that all great storytelling just

comes down to four words & five lines:

“An outline, headline, frontline, sideline

and a bottom line. And brevity, levity,
clarity and charity”.
This advice is so powerful I built a whole website around it at BetterStories.org
Great storytellers who need to write a
“thought leadership” piece are aware
that success in professional writing
boils down to this one important truth:

“Thought leadership is not about

conveying YOUR ideas to your readers.

It’s about helping them to change

THEIR ideas.”

Watch Larry McEnerney’s lectures on YouTube. Thank me later.

Great storytellers avoid PowerPoint
whenever possible.

For many presentations, slides are

essential, but for some of the most
important ones – a live demo, a
whiteboard, a flipchart or a napkin will
make a far greater impression.

Anyone can click through slides on a screen, but a drawing or a demo

shows how well you know your stuff. In 1:1 C-suite meetings, opening your
laptop is one of the quickest ways to kill your story, and lose their attention.
The average attention
span of a B2B audience
is about 6 minutes.

Act accordingly.

There’s a good reason TED Talks are 18 minutes long.

3 x “Acts” of 6 minutes.
Great storytellers understand the
psychological concept of “thin slicing”.

And they’ve read Blink By Malcolm

Gladwell.

They know how important it is to

make a strong first impression in
the first few seconds.

This is especially important when presenting virtually.

Storytellers have about 75 seconds to
capture the attention of your audience
when they start talking.

TV writers call this the “cold open”.

If you want your stories to have better

“cold opens”, watch some Toastmasters
world champions, or popular TED
Talks, and make detailed notes about
what they do in their first 75 seconds.
Great storytellers know the story
before the story. They research well.

What was going on in the world, the

business, or the audience’s life before
your story began?

Context creates meaning. Having a

relevant anecdote, or even something
from that day's news up your sleeve,
could make all the difference.
What about the place where you’re
telling your story? Is there anything
historically significant about the
venue, which you could weave into
your story?

Better still, could you choose to tell

your story in a location which is
relevant or meaningful to it?

I recently gave a keynote on the same stage that JFK and Churchill once stood.
I dropped a reference to the Moon Speech and my favourite Churchill quote,
“The only statistics you can trust, are the ones you falsified yourself.”
Great storytellers know how to
“show the monster!”

If your story is about solving a

problem, make sure the audience feels
how bad the problem is before you
start solving it. Emphasise the “bad”.

No pain, no gain.

If there’s an “elephant in the room” which may influence the outcome of

your story – an “event”, or something provocative which everyone knows
but no one is mentioning - make sure you at least acknowledge it.
A story without specificity is a story
without soul.

Don’t say “a leader.”

Say “Jessica, the new CMO of a $4 billion

shoe company, who’s quietly terrified of
AI.”

Precision is persuasion.
Never forget the rule of the “Last Line”.

A story’s ending is the beginning of

what the audience remembers.

A good ending feels earned, inevitable,

and ideally includes a twist, insight, or
invitation.

Remind yourself about Rule 28.

Are you the only person who can tell
this story (in this way)?

I mean the ONLY person?

If not, you’ve got some work to do.

Start by revisiting Rule 22.

If you have a competitive story to tell
in a business environment, how much
of it could your competitor say (and
get away with)?

Look at your slides.

Could your biggest competitor put

their logo in the corner, and tell exactly
the same story with the same slides?

If so, remove and rewrite.

Great storytellers plant ideas early and
harvest them later. Stand-up comedians
are great it this.

They call them “Nested Loops”.

Set up a phrase, image, or line

of dialogue in the beginning –
and bring it back at the end.

That callback makes the story feel more

satisfying, well crafted, and complete.
Great purpose-driven storytellers want
to get things done. They want their
audience to act.

They love the word “Kairos”.

They ask themselves, “How could I

create even more urgency in this
story, which might motivate my
audience to act even faster?”
Kai-ros [Greek]: “A supreme moment when one simply must act;
no matter how implausible or inconvenient”.
If a Hollywood “script doctor” was to
look at your story – searching for ways
to improve it – one thing they’d do is
something we can all try…

Show why the hero is desperate to

achieve their goals. Increase their desire.
Next, show why the obstacle is even
more insurmountable than it already
was. Then introduce a guide to help…
The greater the delta between “intention & obstacle” the better the story. Rule 5.
Read Chris “Script Doctor” Vogler’s excellent book The Writers Journey.
If you’ve got an emotional story to
share - and you need your audience to
take action – consider that your
audience has a finite “hope budget”.
Erode too much of that hope, and they
might not do what you need them to do.

That’s because it’s easy to feel

overwhelmed and assume that one
person can’t make a difference.
I’ve seen this happen many times. The reverse is also true. If your story isn’t
compelling enough, they might care, but not enough to act.
Stories don’t need to have a
complicated structure.
I like Donald Miller’s StoryBrand:

~ A character…
~ Has a problem…
~ Who meets a guide…
~ Who gives them a plan…
~ And calls them to action…
~ Which ends in success.
This is like a “hero’s Journey” for business stories. I’ve used it many times and
it really works. JFK’s unforgettable “Moon Speech” follows this exact structure.
Use metaphor like a scalpel, not a
sledgehammer.

A single, sharp metaphor can make a

complex idea unforgettable. Too many
will make you sound like you
swallowed a TED talk generator.

“In today’s business landscape, we’re all just astronauts on a rocket ship of
innovation, orbiting the moon of disruption, sipping kombucha from the zero-
gravity cup of agile transformation. We must pivot like ballerinas on a
blockchain-powered dance floor, surfing the tsunami of synergy with our
purpose-driven paddleboards pointed toward the North Star of stakeholder
capitalism.” << Don’t do this.
If your story has no stakes,
it has no pulse.

Great storytellers ask:

“What happens if we fail?”

Great business stories

make the cost of inaction
emotionally clear.
Great storytellers embrace constraints.
Only got 90 seconds? Good.*

~ 30 seconds to Excite.
~ 30 seconds to Disturb.
~ 30 seconds to Assure.

Tight timeframes force creativity, clarity,

and focus. Most storytellers get better
when they’re not allowed to ramble.

* Search “Good – Jocko Willink” on YouTube. See also Rule 27.

Great stories are felt before they’re
understood.

You don’t need to explain everything.

Sometimes the best stories are like

good poetry.

Clarity comes second to resonance.

“Don’t treat your audience like an idiot.”

- Aaron Sorkin (Again).
Great storytellers treat “filler words”
like weeds.

Notice them. Name them.

And pull them out by the root.

Um, like, you know… they dilute your…

erm… impact...

This is also why Rule 50 matters so much. When you listen to your
recording and don’t watch it - your brain is only focused on your words.
You’ll be surprised how many filler words you use!
Speak to the room, not your slides.

Your deck is the backup dancer.

You’re the headliner.

Make eye contact.

Not slide contact!
Think of your hands as
punctuation.

Don’t lock them at your sides or

overuse them like semaphore
signals!

Use open gestures to emphasise

key points and invite trust.

Follow body language experts. I love Martin Brooks, Caroline Goyder &
Simon Lancaster. Martin’s card box set “Body Language Decoder” is excellent.
Eliminate your “verbal crutches.”

Record yourself.

Notice your go-to filler, whether it’s

“so,” “basically,” “like,” or “right?”

Replace it with a pause.

Silence is stronger than fluff.

When in doubt, turn back to Rules 49 & 50.

You have one superpower that AI
never will: your voice.

Vary your pace, pitch, and pauses

like a jazz musician.

Don’t speak in monotone.

Speak in melody.

We’re really doubling down on the musical & jazz

references in these rules, aren’t we?!
Eye contact is your emotional glue.

Speaking in-person?
Find three audience members: left,
centre, right - and cycle naturally.

On Zoom or Teams?
Look straight into the camera when
making your key points, not the screen.

Want to read some good stuff on virtual presenting? Try “Virtual EI” from
Harvard Business School & “Can You Hear Me?” by Nick Morgan
Virtual presenters are
cinematographers.

Frame yourself well. Use good light,

eye-level camera, and clean audio.

This isn’t vanity. It’s clarity.

If they can’t see or hear you well

enough, they can’t feel you.

Get yourself a good lav mic. I use a Rode. It will be 10X better than your laptop
mic and isn’t too expensive. Use key lights to show off your best side too!
Avoid screen-sharing by default.

Nothing kills connection faster.

Share your screen only when it serves

your story*.

The moment you click “Share Screen”,

your audience’s attention drops by half.

* When you’ve stopped sharing the story on your slides stop sharing your
screen. We want that oxytocin hit! And we won’t get it from your slides.
Treat every virtual presentation as if
you’re on live TV.

Everything counts: Your opening. Your

expression. Your background. Your
pacing. Your clothes.

You’re not “on a call.”

You’re on camera.

Smile. More than you think you should.

Never end on Q&A.

Your final note should

be your final message.

Take questions, but

always come back for a
closing remark that
lands the story.

This advice is more important than it sounds. Try it.

Stop apologising.

Never say, “Sorry, I’m nervous,” or

“I hope this makes sense.”

Confidence is contagious.

Let the story do the convincing -

not your disclaimers.

There’s a time and place for showing vulnerability. It can be very powerful.
But far too often it’s an excuse because you didn’t practice enough. Rule 18!!!
Polite reminder:

We are all storytellers.

No matter what your job title says.

No matter how left-brain, non-creative
or technical you think you are.

You’re a storyteller. And your job is to

tell meaningful stories as fast and as
compellingly as possible.
You should be able to explain your
mission (or the mission of the hero in
your story) in ONE sentence.

Try this for size:

I want to ______________________________ ,
in order to _____________________________ ,
because if I don’t ______________________ .

What’s at stake? What’s the opportunity? What’s the cost of doing nothing?
John F. Kennedy told his speechwriter
“Don’t make me sound like a windbag”.

He believed that if he spoke for longer

than 10-12 minutes, the audience
would just start thinking about food
or sex.

Probably true.

Good advice.
The best stories contain
big ideas, small words
and short sentences.

This is why I love Ernest Hemingway so much. He was the master.

Every great story should
contain a S.T.A.R moment.

Something
They’ll
Always
Remember.

Thanks Nancy.
In business it feels like the question
“What keeps you up at night?”
is the premise of a great story.

But if you want to inspire an

audience, a far more engaging
question to ask, is ~

“What gets you out of bed

in the morning?”

Simon Sinek.
During Sir Ken’s excellent TED talk, he
told 8 stories. The average length of
each story was 2 minutes 5 seconds.

One of the greatest speeches* of

all-time was 2-minutes long as well.

Why take 20 minutes to tell a story

if you can get the job done in 2?

*Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysberg Address. 2-minutes. 272 words. Edward

Everett spoke for 2 hours after Lincoln. No one remembered what he said.
Sir Winston Churchill used to memorise
his speeches by rehearsing them over
and over again. Sometimes fifty times.

He even wrote them in Psalm format

to make them easier to remember, but
he deliberately included a few mistakes.

This was so he could appear to correct

himself on the day, making his speech
feel spontaneous and unrehearsed.
Clever.
1 hour per minute is a good rule of
thumb when preparing a talk.

15 mins = 15 hours.

AI can help to speed up the development

time, but don’t fool yourself into thinking
you can knock out a short story, quickly.

You can’t. Not if you want it to be great.

Some of the top TED talks worked out around 10 hours per minute!
18 mins = 180 hours prep.
Think about a presentation like a
‘present’.

Present-ation.

(Especially if you get nervous.)

Remind yourself how much you like

giving people presents ~ and how
much people like to receive them.

Chris Anderson.
If you have a really important business
presentation to give, and the agenda
looks pretty full, make sure you turn up
armed with two versions of your story.

Prepare one version as normal.

But have a second ready, which you’ve

practiced well in advance, and can
deliver in half the time if you need to.
In business meetings, you’ve never got as much time as you think you’ll have.
There’s nothing worse than rushing your presentation and diluting its impact.
When you’ve only got one shot to speak
to an executive audience, and you need
them to remember your message,
remember the 3 “tells”...

Tell them what you’re about to tell them.

Tell them.
Then tell them what you told them.

Structure your story accordingly.

Reinforcement & repetition always works.

Guy Kawasaki was Steve Jobs evangelist
when they worked together at Apple.

Guy religiously followed a 10:20:30 Rule.

Never have more than 10 slides.

Never speak for more than 20 minutes.
Avoid using any text smaller than TS30.

Steve Jobs approved.

This is a good way to avoid “Death by PowerPoint”.

The quickest way to win over a B2B
audience is only to show them one slide.

ONE. KILLER. SLIDE.

It could be a very clever animated build,

but if you design it well enough, and tell
your story clearly enough, yours will be
the one presentation they remember.
I was once in a full day meeting. Everyone was given print outs of the 300
slides. Seriously. I built an intro slide which told the story of every slide on one
page. It didn’t just prepare them for what they were about to see, but it
demonstrated that we really knew what we were talking about.
Strategist David Axelrod shapes the
messaging for large political campaigns.
He always focuses on 3 questions:

~ Is it relevant?
~ Is it important?
~ Is it true?

These questions don’t just work for

presidential “stump speeches”.
They’ll help you edit your own stories.
No one will ever criticise you for giving
a shorter talk than they expected.

Apply ‘a minimum of sound to a

maximum of sense’.

Mark Twain.
Presidential & executive speechwriter
William Safire once said that a great
speech consists of just 3 elements:

1. An occasion of turmoil.
2. A setting which provides the
speaker with a momentous forum.
3. Content and phrasing.

Read “Lend Me Your Ears”. (Saffire wrote for Nixon & The New York Times).
Cellist Yo-Yo Ma tells stories without
words. He says great communicators
do 3 things well:

1. Seek truth. [In your music or your message]

2. Build trust. [With your audience]
3. Perform a service. [Turn every presentation
into a performance]
Three-times Pulitzer prize winning
journalist Tom Friedman is the most
successful opinion writer The New
York Times has ever had.
~
During a Q&A I saw him at recently, he
was asked why readers respond so
well to his writing. He explained how
he only appeals to the two most basic
human emotions – “Dignity and
Humiliation. Those two emotions
always drive the most action”.
Tom Friedman also says that, as
storytellers, “We’re all just in the
Heating and Lighting business.”

We’re either stoking up an emotion in

the hearts of out our audience... (Heat)

Or we’re illuminating something, in a

way they hadn’t seen before, to help
them think differently about it. (Light)

The job title on Tom’s business card says, “Heating & Lighting”. True story.
The award for the longest standing
ovation at a TED talk goes to human
rights lawyer Bryan Stevenson.

He used no slides and told 3 short

stories. 7-minutes each. His
foundation received over $1M
donations* before the applause had
even finished.

* That’s “Kairos” for you. (Rule 67). He also split his presentation into the 6
elements of storytelling (Rule 30). I recorded a podcast about how he did it:
https://truthinten.libsyn.com/the-arc-of-justice
Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown says
that all great stories have 3 “C”s.

A Contract. The Clock. And the Crucible.

Keep these C’s in the back of your mind

and many of our other rules will
naturally fall into place.

~ Make a CONTRACT with your reader to take them on a rewarding journey.

~ Introduce a CLOCK (or a deadline) which creates urgency, drama & excitement.
~ Stories take place inside a CRUCIBLE. Remove anything unnecessary outside it.
Taylor Swift once said, “Confidence
and happiness are the prettiest
things you can wear”.

Be yourself *.
(Everyone else is already taken).

Great storytellers were born to stand

out, not to fit in. So, you do you.
And we’ll love you for it.
*If you love hats, wear your most impressive hat when you present. (If you can!)
Always wear shoes that make you feel amazing. Let your light shine.
At the heart of all well told stories is a
deeply personal connection to the
person telling it.

I love the Japanese process “IKIGAI”

~ What are you good at?

~ What do you get paid for?
~ What do you love?
~ What do you think the world needs?
Two for the head. Two for the heart. Great storytellers know their IKIGAI –
their “reason for being” - and they weave it into every story they tell.
That was a lot of rules!

Truth is, great storytellers don’t care

about rules, they care about results*.

So, let’s go tell stories that matter.

Thanks for reading.

This was fun.

*Results don’t always need to be financial.
But every great story needs some form of an ROI.
There’s a simple truth about stories when I think about all
these “rules”. Stories don’t just share information, tell tales,
and take you on interesting journeys...

Stories move energy.

The storyteller’s job is to be a transformer. Just like the

ones in a national power grid, which convert raw energy
into usable electricity, and then distribute it via their
network across towns and cities.

Great storytellers are transformers.

They distribute their own energy across their network (to

their audience), in the form of transformational stories;
by converting their potential energy into the three kinetic
energies which make up all great stories…

This is not about being a better “presenter”…

Heat, Light, and Sound.

Our job as storytellers is to transform those energies into

something our audience’s can feel, carry, and act upon.
We transport our words and ideas into the minds of our
audience.

~ We don’t just tell stories.

~ We light up minds.
~ We ignite hearts.

When we send words and ideas vibrating through screens

and stages, if we do it right, we can impact companies,
our colleagues, and sometimes even entire communities.

That’s the kind of energy the world needs now.

… maybe it’s about being a transformer of audiences?

Now it’s over to you. Go tell better stories. You got this! ~ Jeremy
 TELL
BETTER
STORIES.