Story Selling 101

The first month I ever made any money online, I made $3000. In my first year, I made over $100,000.

When people saw my quick success, they asked me, “How did you do it?” But it wasn’t an innocent inquiry — it was usually said with frustration, exasperation, and sometimes anger. They meant, “I’ve been trying to make something happen and am getting nowhere. What are you doing that I’m not doing? What makes you so special?”

For a long time, I didn’t know what to tell them. I told them I was persistent, that I was good at networking, that you have to make as many friends as possible and get as many people as possible to like you. All of that was true, but none of it gave the whole picture.

Then it hit me all at once. I realized why my persistence eventually paid off, why I was able to convert networking leads into business, and why I was able to turn all of those friends into loyal customers.

What I realized was this: I sell everything with stories.

Why stories sell

Stories are engaging. Stories are disarming. Stories, told correctly, have a way of getting people on your side without having to give them a bulleted list of why “being on your side” is the right thing to do. Stories get into people’s heads like a song and work on them while they shop for groceries and while they sleep. They get past a person’s defenses and allow your ideas to have a fair shot of being heard, rather than being rejected because those ideas are “pushing an agenda” or “selling something.”

Every step of the way, business is about selling something. Even if you’re not literally selling — i.e. asking for money for a product or service — then you’re selling yourself as an expert or a person worth listening to. When you meet possible business connections, you’re selling them on the idea of working with you. When you talk to people who may become customers down the road, often your first task is to sell them on the notion that they should keep reading your stuff and listening to you — that you’re interesting and worthy of attention.

Everything is a form of selling. And all selling can be done — by just about anyone — through stories.

And here’s the best part: Stories have a definable structure. They can be spoken if you’re not a good writer, or put on video if you’re not good at speaking. They can be told by anyone, about anything. There are elements of a good protagonist, a good plot, a good theme, a good arc that can be taught. You don’t have to be Hemmingway. Because the story is ultimately yours, you just have to learn to tell it as best you can.

And I can teach you how to do that.

I can teach you how to wrap your own marketing in stories and increase your sales. I can show you how to craft a “tale of you and your product” that will increase your exposure, buy-in, and appeal. Really. I’m not big on flashy bullshit claims, but this one claim I can truthfully make.

So I created this course. It’s called Storyselling 101, and it’s around four hours of audio and video of me telling you exactly what I do and showing you how I do what I do. Is it literally everything there is to know on the topic? No, everything has a next level, and I’m developing this particular next level now. But you have to start here. You have to begin. You have to decide what your story is and to start to tell it. And you have to see for yourself just how well and how quickly it can work.

Here’s what’s inside Storyselling 101:

• Module #1: What Storyselling is and the psychological reasons it absolutely works (and how to maximize them)

• Module #2: How (and why) to identify your Ideal Reader and what he or she truly wants and needs

• Module #3: The primary elements of Storyselling and how to use them: Character and theme, inception, and an interwoven ideal outcome

• Module #4: Storyselling in action: Video breakdown of promotional copy for Question the Rules – a campaign that resulted in 25% pre-launch conversion

You want to know how to increase sales and engagement? I can say it now: This is how.

Let’s do this thing.