Storytelling and communicating actually kind of flow together. So, I'm a preacher, a speaker and a writer and for the past 15 to 20 years I've been communicating and telling, trying to convince people to do something, to take action. I've discovered along the way how powerful storytelling is in doing that.

A story helps you grab people's attention and a story helps you drive action. If you want people to take action, if you want to make the sale, you want people to buy something or engage with your product or service, you need to be telling them a story. Because a story drives them towards that action and the story cuts through the noise in a really, really great way.

Storytelling is obviously a very, very powerful tool. The basic job of a leader is to define a new reality, to be telling a better story, so if you want people to follow you, you need to be telling them a story. Like Martin Luther King saying, "I have a dream!" - this is the way the world is now, let me tell you a story about what it could be.

Because they are telling their own story. They're not telling the story of the customer, not drawing me into the story. They're telling everybody how great they are, and I think that's a big difference. When you're telling a story, it's very important to know who the hero is in the story, and businesses suck at it because they place themselves as the hero.

A story actually has a structure, and a very specific structure, that you can find in just about any narrative, movie book, etc. There have been many books written about storytelling and the structure behind storytelling. StoryBrand from Donald Miller is a good one. The Hero with a Thousand Faces from Joseph Campbell is the classic storytelling book - it's a hell of a difficult read, but it's a really good storytelling book.

It's very important in storytelling to make the customer the hero. So, for me, there are five different aspects to a story. The first one is a hero. So who is the hero in the story? If you're watching a movie, you need to know who the hero in the narrative is, otherwise, it becomes very, very confusing and it becomes like an art-house movie that makes no money. So you need to know who the hero is. 

The simplest way that I explain the story is, I use five aspects of stories. There are many more, the Hero's Journey has got 14 but I like five, to keep it really simple. So you have a hero, then you have what they want. The hero always wants something, they want to win the day. They want the girl. They want to find the treasure. They want something. 

The villain is a very important part of the story because the villain builds tension and tension creates attention. So when you're watching a movie and there's tension in the movie, for example the film with Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves, Speed - that created like a lot of tension so you keep on watching that movie. Tension actually releases dopamine in your brain, which makes you pay attention. If you don't have tension in your narrative, people won't pay attention. And that's what you want, you want people's attention. 

A quote I've been pondering lately, not sure who said it but I first heard it from Mark Forrester, is "How do you spot the pioneers? Are they the ones with the arrows in their backs?" It's dicey going in first. If you're like me, you probably like being a groundbreaker, the adventurer, the pioneer, and it doesn't help that our culture romanticizes being first.

Here is one of my favourite storytelling hacks, when I get stuck telling a story. So, generally, the hero likes to go back to the couch. Like, before you know it, your hero is back on the couch, watching Netflix. The trick, when that happens, when you feel like something is getting boring, then is to ask the question, "What sort of exciting incident can I create?