Garvey: Storytelling is a hard business skill
Business storytelling works where rhetoric fails because it’s imbued with elements like emotion that the mind latches onto.
It was a bad idea, but it prevailed because reason took a back seat to inspiration.
My third grade class had been learning about plant biology — specifically how plants draw water up from their roots into their leaves through transpiration and cohesion. (Yes, I had to look that up.) As a sort of quasi science experiment, my teacher brought two bundles of white carnations to school, which we’d be dying by adding food dye to the flower vases.
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The choice of color would come to a vote. The idea of mixing all the colors together to create a “rainbow” bouquet naturally came up, and those who were sold on it were really enthusiastic. What a lovely image rainbow carnations must have made in the minds of my 8- and 9-year-old peers. However, I pointed out that this was actually a dumb idea because according to basic color theory, mixing all the colors together doesn’t actually create a rainbow. Naturally, I was met with responses like this: “You just don’t like the idea because you didn’t come up with it, Johnny.”
I didn’t have a vision or a story. I had undisputable facts. I was overwhelmingly outvoted. And we wound up with a bunch of brown carnations.
In The Secrets of Sand Hill Road: Venture Capital and How to Get It, author Scott Kupor talks about business storytelling in the context of startup fundraising: “We talk a lot at Andreessen Horowitz about storytelling skills as a good indicator of potential success in an entrepreneur. True storytelling is a remarkable talent in so many endeavors, but particularly in a startup, where you have so little actual proof of success in the early years on which people can base their decision to join the company. Great CEOs find a way to paint a vision for the opportunity that simply makes people want to be a part of the company-building process. These same skills will help you land your first (and future) VC financing partners.”
Kupor isn’t alone in viewing storytelling as a hard business skill. Science of People analyzed 495 Shark Tank pitches and found, among other things, that 53% of successful pitches incorporated storytelling. I’m actually a bit surprised that number isn’t higher. In separate interviews, several of the sharks have identified storytelling as one of the secrets, or the secret, to a successful pitch. Since this became a specialty of mine, I’ve personally seen the power of story-based marketing dozens of times.
In the end, the failed rainbow carnations experiment has nothing and everything to do with marketing. Logic takes a back seat to inspiration. Three weeks from now, you will have forgotten 95% of the things you saw and heard today. But you’ll remember the stories. That’s how the human mind works.
Business storytelling is a hard skill for entrepreneurs and marketers.
John Garvey is a StoryBrand Certified Guide and marketing copywriter. He helps entrepreneurs elevate their marketing through storytelling, humor and strategic messaging.
