Everyone craves stories.
I love listening to stories, watching them, telling them, and retelling them.
Expressing desires and fears through storytelling.
Stories breathe life into our lives and give meaning to them.
Even the act of posting on Twitter is a form of storytelling.
Posting photos on Instagram or Snapchat is also storytelling.
Even the most ordinary and trivial actions are full of movements that convey emotions.
Handshakes, waving, cooking your own food, frowning, raising your middle finger, etc.
Actions tell the story.
From novels to movies, promotional speeches, brand advertising images, and even family-run toy stores, the world we live in is filled with stories.
--- p.22

When you just look at statistics or various data and information without a story, after 10 minutes, only 5% of the information remains in your head.
Isn't that exhausting? Especially if you work in a job that involves crunching numbers all day or collecting and analyzing data.
Sure, big data is changing everything, but without a compelling story that resonates with people, customers, clients, and coworkers will forget about it.
Even your boss at work forgets that material at the next meeting.
This is the key.
Even if it is the same information, if you convey it by combining stories or events, people will remember that information for a long time.
In fact, you may remember more than just the information you encountered.
According to cognitive psychologist Jerome Bruner, people remember information 22 times better when presented through a story.
The same applies even to very hard information.
Adding a story to information may seem like a small thing, but it's the beginning of a change that changes everything.
--- p.35

Research shows that the average human attention span lasts for 8 seconds.
It means you only have eight seconds to convince someone that something is valuable before they leave, before they turn their back, before they pay the bill.
Whether you're pitching your business to investors, giving a presentation at a company, or advertising to the public, if you can't grab their attention within eight seconds, it's already game over.
So how can you capture people's attention in under eight seconds? It requires some serious fishing skills.
Like a gorilla on display in a display case.
Nowadays, people's attention is more important than ever.
We're all busy, easily distracted, short on time, and face-deep in our phones.
Before people come into your store, visit your website, or encounter great products and ideas, you need to convince them that you have a story worth hearing.
--- p.47

A well-crafted story creates a powerful sense of empathy.
What exactly is empathy? Empathy is the feeling of connection that arises when you consider and see things from another's perspective.
When you properly tell a story about a struggle to reach a goal, your audience will root for you.
And by projecting that encouragement onto yourself, you gain the courage to reach for seemingly unattainable goals.
Experiences of change or success stories move the hearts of those who hear them, leading them to change and take action.
Companies empower employees to take on new challenges, improve how they communicate with customers, and become more confident leaders.
The more deeply the audience immerses themselves in the experiences and emotions of the characters in the story, the stronger the driving force for change.
--- p.63

Let's raise an important question here.
Who is your audience? Who are you trying to build a connection with? Is he married or single? What is his age and gender? Is he an investor, a customer, or a colleague? Where did he come from and where is he going? To tell your story, you need to understand your audience's passions, concerns, habits, and idiosyncrasies.
Without this information, no matter how good the story is, it will just end up being irrelevant to the subject.

Entertainment and marketing companies spend millions of dollars researching and understanding their audiences before creating stories or messages.
Of course, you may not have to spend this much, but if you don't know your audience well, all your efforts are more likely to be wasted or fail.
Data collection is the best way to connect with your audience by identifying patterns, trends, and relationships in human behavior and interactions.
We need to collect all the data: shopping habits, product loyalty, preferences, enjoyment, fears, beliefs, potential risks, even dreams.
--- p.78

So how do we create authentic stories that build a strong connection with our audience? First, we need to avoid appearing too clever.
We must honestly convey our weaknesses.
This is not as easy as it sounds.
From a young age, we are taught that being vulnerable or taking chances is socially risky and leads to failure and ridicule.
But ‘weakness’ is the core of storytelling.
Vulnerability evokes a powerful sense of empathy in people.
It makes you think that the story is your own story.
I think it's a human, genuine, and believable story.
--- p.95~96

From Homer to William Shakespeare to Steven Spielberg, great storytellers have devoted considerable effort to the structure of their stories.
Every storyteller should do that.
Regardless of country, culture, age, gender, social status and class, all stories have a beginning, middle and end.
Why is that? Because everything in the world we live in is structured around a beginning, middle, and end.
The sun rises in the morning, shines during the day, and sets at night.
Humans are born, live, and then die.
Flowers sprout, bloom, and then wither.
This cyclical structure of beginning, middle, and end occurs everywhere in our lives and creates stories.
This kind of story structure is the essence of human existence, derived from instinct.
All human experience confirms this fact.
Whether it's a 90-minute movie, a play with three acts, or a 30-minute promotional speech, it needs to have a clear beginning, middle, and end.
Otherwise, the audience will get bored, confused, or disappointed.
--- p.111~112

So how do great heroes become? In his book, "The Hero with a Thousand Faces," mythologist Joseph Campbell defines a hero as "one who sacrifices himself for something greater than himself."
Whether your protagonist is a loyal customer, a supporter of your company, the CEO of a company, or a character in a movie, there must be an emotional connection between the hero and the audience.
To do this, the audience must like the protagonist and trust his cause.
Whether it's an ordinary person, a CEO, or a fictional character, when the audience is captivated by the character,
Become a hero.
When this process is done well, heroes drive sales, strengthen their brands, and build strong bonds with their customers.
This kind of thing happens everywhere.
People who empathize with a hero want to drive the car the hero drives, wear the clothes the hero wears, and eat the food the hero eats.
A hero doesn't necessarily have to be human.
Animals, objects, and cartoon characters can also be heroes.
How many times have children, after watching a cartoon, become so captivated by the characters that they want to buy toys, cereal, and even shampoo?
--- p.142~143

Business is a kind of service.
Good business improves the quality of life, inspires courage, and energizes.
Instead of thinking of yourself as the hero, saving your struggling customers, what if you cast them as the "hero" of your story? What if the goal of your business wasn't "saving the world" or "finding treasure," but helping customers achieve what they want? Companies are so absorbed in their own stories that they completely forget that their products aren't the real heroes.
The customer is the hero.

--- p.159