How to Tell Your Story in 30 Seconds

I’m working on a new process and having a blast. It’ll be the follow up to Storyline and will release next year.

It’s called Story Brand and it’s about getting an entire team on the same page as they talk about the brand they represent.

In writing the material, though, I’ve been thinking about how important it is for each of us to be able to tell our stories.

I don’t think there’s a better way to connect with people than to tell your story efficiently, say if you’re sitting next to somebody on a plane. It’s the fastest way to give people a relatively accurate view of who you are. It’s hard for us to connect unless we can tell our stories.

Of course, nobody can tell their entire story in 30 seconds, or, for that matter, even in a full-length memoir. Our lives are too complex and fascinating to be reduced with accuracy. But in even as little as 30 seconds, we can give people a pretty good idea of who we are.

Being able to explain who we are is critical if we want to connect in life and in business.

Mostly, when I ask people’s stories, they give me a list of random facts, like they’re married and have kids and work for such and such a bank. But random facts aren’t stories. Stories are facts organized in such a way they are compelling as a whole.

So, here’s the thirty-second version of how I’d introduce myself on a plane. Of course, I’d do it more naturally than in a written paragraph, but likely it would sound something like this:

“My name is Donald Miller and I’ve written several memoirs. I noticed after writing a couple I got to skip a lot of the early stages of getting to know people because, essentially, they already knew so much of my story. I then got asked to help brands effectively tell their stories so they could better connect with potential clients. So I developed a system and I teach it as often as I can.”

That, of course, is more of a business pitch, but it’s also what I’m really doing with my life and what I’m really interested in. If I’m sitting next to somebody on a plane or if I meet them at a party, I can count on some follow up questions that will make the conversation more interesting and engaging. If I were to have talked about my family or the fact I’m a writer, I’d get a lot of questions about publishing that, to be honest, aren’t very interesting to me.

Anyway, the 30-second version of a person’s story is critical, and mastering it is a building block for the longer form.

One of the keys is this:

Start with a problem and explain how your life is about creating a solution to that problem.

*Photo by evoo73, Creative Commons

Stories have to have conflict to be interesting, and so in 30 seconds a person should be able to talk about a problem that exists in the world that they are trying to fix. Imagine sitting next to a pastor on a plane who, instead of saying he was a pastor, said something like this:

“When I was younger I had a lot of questions about God and so I went to seminary. Since then, I’ve had tons of people ask me who they thought God was and whether or not we could know Him and so I’ve been studying that question my whole life.”

My guess is that answer would turn into a safe, interesting conversation, where explaining you’re a pastor would probably get you follow up questions like “how much do you charge to do a wedding?”

So how do you tell your story in 30 seconds? Well there’s a lot to it, but in my opinion, the main thing to remember is to explain a problem that exists in the world that you’re trying to solve with your life. I promise, people will be much more interested in you when you really tell them your story rather than offer them a list of facts.

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Storyline will soon release a process called Story Brand in which we help brands create a Brand Script allowing them to talk about their brand in a compelling way. Once an organization has a Brand Script, everybody on the team will know how to talk about the brand in casual conversations, speeches, websites and advertising. Clients can create their Brand Script through an online course, a live 2-day workshop, or onsite with one of our consultants.

*If you’d like to learn to speak clearly about your brand, sign up on our email list. We’ll let you know the second it’s available.

How to Tell Your Story in 30 Seconds is a post from: Storyline Blog