Storytelling Secrets

All right guys, welcome back Let's try that one more time Awesome yeah, what's that? I know even Josiah is excited. Hey, Josiah. Give us a shout brother He's screaming in the basement. You got him chained down or something.

What are you doing down there? You left okay, that's right mama left the building, right? Bringing up abandonment issues for later in life. I know So my fingers were dug down deep in the rock Just the tips of my toes were hanging on to the edge of the cliff 50 feet straight down and I was frozen No handholds, I couldn't find my way, right and I couldn't find my way left my heart was starting to beat in my chest and a little voice Came over from the right and said to me You're going to die. I Was completely frozen Have you ever been stuck like that?

Raise your hand if you've ever been stuck like that Angel rocks Fairbanks, Alaska my friend had Encouraged me to climb, but we didn't have rope or harness. So I was freestyling stuck in the middle of a rock Now, you know that I made it out of it because here I am today we're gonna be talking about storytelling for the next few minutes and We're gonna we're gonna go through a couple of principles that are gonna help you Immediately grab people with your stories whether you're doing it in video form whether you're doing it in written form Whether you're doing it in any form so there's an art to storytelling and there's a lot of different ways to do it Now this is gonna be a workshop. It's actually gonna be a two-hour workshop. This is an extension of our copy our copy piece and Storytelling is one of the keys to having massive results in getting people to move Who uses story and their emails or their swipe or whatever they're using? Yeah, that's right So we're gonna we're gonna leverage some of your experience here probably in the second hour So we're gonna go a full hour and then we're gonna go through some principles Then we're gonna go through a second hour and we're gonna be workshop and stuff So everybody's gonna need something to write with and we're gonna think about how to how to tackle different stories so First concept that we want to go through action.

I need the mic. I need a handheld mic here We can have somebody run that back to me Be awesome Thank you, sir Okay, first thing that we're gonna do is I want to ask those of you that are using story in your in your copy And then whether it's blog posts whether it's an email or any other video wherever using it I want to know a little bit about where you're using it and why you use it and what the effects are that you notice So where why and what? And you can answer any part of that Okay in the back go start with Lawrence you can pass that back to John I use it a variety of different ways by different ways. I Kind of like to put people in a place of where I am so Sometimes I'll start emails. I can't provide my bike.

I was thinking about you So I kind of put them I haven't visualized that I was doing that but then I like to insert the thing That's like I'm waving to people as they go to work. So then they're like, well, how do you do that? So I kind of open up an open loop at that point and then I teach them something So I'm trying to put them in a place where they want to be But I'm showing them. It's me on a bike already there. Okay, very nice.

Thank you. Go to pass that back to John How do you use it? Very similar to what Lawrence said I use it in multiple places I have a couple of blog posts where one of them I've actually written out a whole segmented story of kind of the process of where I was when I first got started in this business, you know being in deep in debt and all the stress that Went with that to finding this solution and how I worked it and got out of that But then also I have some videos where I do the same kind of thing But share that through video content and then also I send out email content all the time where I'm doing almost exactly what Lawrence just Described where I'll say something like, you know, hey, I'm just getting ready to jump on a plane. I'm at the airport We're going here to do this, but I wanted to be sure I got this out to you right away So it kind of just gives them a positional reference of what I'm doing and usually that will happen like on a weekday So they're getting that reference point there And why is this person traveling to some cool place on the middle of middle of the week and I'm stuck at work So it's it's works really effectively that way. Okay.

Nice. Thank you. Appreciate that anybody else What yeah one more comment So I remember watching Michael Martin's he had one where like he had a I was a video or photo edit But he had Chrissy in her desk She's like, I don't know if she was frowning or not And I saw them like oh, that's very I used to get a cubicle But then he didn't share a story before he succeeded he already succeeded so he goes well But now I've freed her from the matrix and then the next shot she disappeared with like her notice like I'm no longer put It's like that for me. It's like oh snap. He just like retired his wife You know, I mean it was like probably 50% of you would come condos.

I only bring my spouse home He just did that in a visual format Super cool. That's tight. That is very nice. Yeah, nice round of applause for Michael there. All right So, why do we want to use story we want to use story because story ultimately is what moves people and The beautiful thing about story is that it creates powerful states when you're looking at it We're gonna be talking about belief change here in a little while, but if we're talking about how do you change a limiting belief?

How do you change an old mindset to a new mindset? We started talking about that this morning We're gonna have a couple hours to talk about that here tonight. In fact, we're gonna do a live breakthrough experience with everybody. So Gather your friends make sure they have elites come back tonight We're gonna help you update your thinking from old thinking to new thinking. It's gonna be absolutely phenomenal that we're gonna do But how do you update an old?

You basically do one of two things most the time number one You reframe it reframe. It means that you think about it differently to change the meaning or you change the context. It's there or You help somebody change their state stories do bold and so Here's the first principle. So we're gonna go through some principles of storytelling and Then we're gonna start to workshop some things and we're gonna see some live implementation and If we can all mastermind we're gonna do some suggestions as a group to help people improve the story that they're telling that's not cool Okay at home if you have questions about storytelling make sure you start thinking about this But let's wait till we get a little bit of content before we before we go to it. So here's principle number one Stories principles number one stories create states And We want to rather than just Then just talk about the principles.

Let's illustrate them. So here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna start the workshops going starting now Okay, I'm gonna give you like a hundred words or less So stories can be really teeny tiny or they can be really long You've got a hundred words and I want you in those hundred words and at home I want you to participate too. Okay, type it out on your computer because I'm having a piece it in the comment You've got a hundred words To create a state In your story, what's the state? joy happiness love hate Right, so I want you to pick a state but here's I want you to listen to the whole thing I want you to pick a state but you cannot use that word in your story But you're going to create the state Through the telling of the story that makes sense everybody.

Okay. So again, what's the state a state? Is it emotional an emotional form of being? happy sad joyful angry repulsed disgusted Betrayed you can't use your word, but you've got a hundred words to create that in what you're gonna tell Does that make sense? Okay, everybody go ahead and workshop that And you get to pick the state what's gonna happen afterwards is you're gonna tell your story first off we're gonna see if we can pick out the state and the second thing that we're gonna do is we're gonna go ahead and Ask that we're gonna give you a little bit feedback on how you can make it a little bit better That makes sense.

So focus in on creating State you have a hundred words if you're at home start typing. I'll give you a four or five minutes to go ahead and do that Pick your state pick your story Use your words like a surgeon Okay folks at home you're playing too you're gonna post your stories in the comments We're gonna pick one or two of you to read your story So if you guys in the goal can do it And Michael Martin, we're not letting you out the hook brothers. Let me know. We're not letting you out the hook And Dave you can type a story too. I know your throats bothering you.

You got a hunter you're writing a story So you're really good at so Dave what is back in the house his throat's a little sore so he won't be on stage much today, but He will be in the Room If you're watching this on a recording of course cause you have a hundred words If you're watching this on a recording of course cause you have a hundred words Oh You guys getting close And take about a minute and a half now you got 90 seconds And at home when you're done with your hundred words or if you're close to under words You're done good copy and paste that into the comments And then we're gonna we're gonna set up some agreements before we get any feedback, but just go ahead and post them up there You Hey guys about 15 seconds All right Here at home stop where you're at Copy hey put it in the comments. Don't know feedback yet. That's true. That's the agreement, but I want you to make a public Commitment to what you're writing out so that we can all get some feedback here in a minute so first off We got to create safety before we give feedback right a little scary a little scary to be out there so first thing Everybody put your hand over your heart if you're at home. I want you to do this to put your hand over your heart Repeat after me I promise To be nice Right there's a way to deliver feedback in a helpful way.

That's pretty nice, right? So we're all going to be nice and that means we're also going to do high levels of respect raise your hand if you're into High levels of respect for people Okay, good, so at the same time is it nice to leave somebody in a place where they're doing a bad job No, it's not in fact that is cruelty It is cruelty to leave somebody in a bad place if you've got an idea that can help them out now also So what does that mean that means that if you have feedback that can help somebody and you don't give it to them You're actually harming them you're harming them and you're harming their ability to do well in the future So just know we're giving you feedback on your story Not on your worth as a human being everybody repeat after me. I am a human being and I'm intrinsically valuable Okay, you're valuable as a human being your story might suck, but you're a good human being right so if your story sucks We're gonna politely tell you that you can improve right that way your next story can be better everybody okay with that Okay, cool. So with that in mind what we're gonna. Do is we've got let's see one two three four five six seven eight nine We've got nine people here.

We've got nine amazing minds anybody else that wants to participate Welcome to that Dave if you want to chime in from the back of your voice is pretty scratchy You're welcome to do so I'd like you to share your story with us in a little bit if you can Dave and or at least have one of us read it for you if you can't do that and Let's go ahead and have people take front and center and deliver Your story who's first? Okay, Lawrence round of applause for bravery here we go Hey, all right Lawrence here you go, sir. You can't judge my spelling now first thing. We're gonna try to guess this We're gonna try to guess the state. We're gonna try this might be over.

That's cool. It's like even up to 200 All right, no, I woke up to what felt like a heart attack to my silent alarm It did not go off again. My boss is gonna kill me I hurriedly showered brush my teeth got dressed as fast as I could I Dressed as fast as I could I jumped into my beater car and got in line with all the other Houston drivers must be the worst traffic jam Shaving the car text on my wife that if I don't beat my boss to work We might need to move because this job is all that's going for a house I jammed it to work got there just in time got some my desk was able to clock it before my boss Just another work day another day Okay, round of applause for him first Hey Good now, here's the question. Oh, hang on. You're not done yet.

You're in the hot seat brother. You're in the hot seat I know Doing good. So first off Let's try to guess the state. What was the state that he was trying to create? Okay right over here stress, okay Frustrated Panic.

Okay good Desperate nice now, this is this is where we get into like the grading. Is that okay? You okay with that? Okay, everybody more time and over the heart. We're gonna be nice.

We're gonna be nice, right? But I want you to think honestly how much emotion did the story stir up? Zero to ten being a lot zero being none at all right, we're gonna have a number of ranges here, but we want to see what the story did. Is that okay? Yeah, okay.

Okay. So I want you to write down your number write it down. So you can't cheat, right? I was just passed the mic around real quick nine Three Seven Okay, that's back Three Eight Seven Keep it home grade him to seven eight nine eight nine eight Grade him to put in the comments seven. Okay.

All right, hand it back All right So first off, what was the state that you're trying to create? Oh, sorry anxiety for anxiety. Yeah, I've woken up many times as an engineer miss like a miss go to work, you know, like I'm just sweating just Yeah, Diane, I gotta go I gotta go. Yeah. Yeah.

Nice. Now. Here's the next question What would help him improve that story? If you were to help them rewrite it Okay, Tracy's got a comment. I Can't remember everything that you said in the story already so you may have some of the stuff there but from an emotion standpoint I Was sweating my pop my palms were sweaty You know, I was hurriedly getting ready.

But I could feel my heartbeat racing Faster. Oh my god. I wasn't gonna think More of the Physiological response that our body would have to the anxiety Yeah, what it would bring up? So this is this is the same point that I was gonna I was gonna bring up and I need to actually see it Right. Sometimes I got a visually see the copy But that's why I wanted people to measure by the response People and this is gonna bring you to the second principle, which is gonna help everybody else But no changing your stuff, right?

You close your book. It stays the way it was, right? You got to be great in the way you were like man. I'm updating man. I'm not on right I'm gonna be in front of like thousands of people, you know Yeah, thumbs of fury you got to stop right, you know, I'm just saying no more fire on the keyboard, right So if you happen to match Lawrence's natural storytelling style That would have resonated highly with you.

If it was mismatched, it was likely to produce less of an impact, OK? And if you were to go back in it, one of the things that we're going to look at, we're going to talk about principle number two. And that is, you want to create word pictures or word movies with every sentence, right? So go take a seat here for a minute. We'll meet you up here.

We've got word pictures, word movies that leave little impressions over and over and over again. Typically speaking, when we use descriptive language, we will tend to favor either a visual channel. So some people will describe a lot of things they see. Some people will describe an auditory channel, will describe a lot of things they're hearing. A lot of people will really talk about their self-talk.

You did some of that in there, right? So there's some self-talk in there. Some people will favor kinesthetic sensations. And some people will have something else going on. There might be taste.

There might be flavors or something like that in there. But we want a sensory-rich word picture, right? So we're going to put sensory-rich. And it doesn't have to be overboard. But over and over and over again, you can use a word or two words or three words together to create little pictures.

And all of us can improve on them. And you want to cycle principally through visual channel, auditory channel, and kinesthetic channel, not necessarily in that order. That actually depends a little bit on your audience. The two dominant decisions also follow a visual-auditory-kinesthetic process when people are going through it. Most of America, I'm talking like over 70% that I've polled anyway, and this is over thousands of people, tend to fall into sequencing of visual-auditory-kinesthetic or visual-kinesthetic-auditory.

Every once in a while, you get an auditory lead or you get a kinesthetic lead. I think you might even be a kinesthetic lead. I'm not sure. But you have a strong visual channel that you run, too. So she felt a little disconnected because the kinesthetic component was missing or it was at least a little bit later.

So if we're telling stories to broad audiences, whether you're sequencing in a VAK format or a VKA format, you want to go through and make sure that you hit each one. That make sense? Is that cool? So any other feedback for Lawrence? It's a good story, right?

But any other feedback for Lawrence to help him take his storytelling to the next level? I don't either. That was pretty good. Yeah, huge. Round of applause.

Look at that. That wasn't painful. So Lawrence, here in a minute, I'm going to ask you to rewrite that story. And I want you to add a little bit of a kinesthetic channel in there. And then bring it back up and see what it does.

Is that cool? OK, who's next? OK, John, come on up. By the way, who just learned something? Yeah, super cool, right?

All right. It was a cold, winter morning in December. We had just returned from a week-long vacation in Mazatlan, Mexico. Even though it was a bummer returning back from the sun into the cold, rainy weather in Portland, Oregon, we were still energized from the relaxing trip. As I was pouring a cup of French-pressed coffee, there was a knock at the door.

When I swung open the door and saw the guy standing there in the drizzle, I instantly was overcome with a feeling in my gut. Are you John Oakes, he said. I nodded, wondering who he was and why he was there. I'm here to serve you on behalf of Wells Fargo, said she vishly, while handing me a four-inch stack of papers. I only needed to read the words on the top page to know exactly what it was about.

We were being sued for $530,000. Okay, awesome. First round of applause for him, right? Okay, so real quick, let's actually do the grade first on the emotional intensity. Be honest with it, right?

So zero being no emotional intensity, 10 being really high. I want you to write your number down. If you're at home, I want you to post it in the comments. Okay, write John Oakes, give him a grade. Six.

Six. Four. Five. I closed my eyes, so I was trying to visualize this. I'll say a nine.

Nine, okay. I'll say five. Five. Seven. Six.

Eight. Eight, okay, cool. I'll pass the mic back up. Okay, now I want you to think about the state that he just created. What was the state that John just created in his copy?

And I want you to write it down. If you're at home, write it in the comments. What was the state that was just created? If you don't know, you guess. Okay, go ahead and pass it around.

I'm not really sure. Not sure, okay. Anger. Anger. Fear.

Worry. Worry. Oh, nervousness. Anxiety. Depression.

Shock. Shock, okay, cool. What was the state you were going for? It was anxiety or despair. Yeah, anxiety or despair.

So now, knowing that he was after anxiety or despair, what feedback could you give him to help him increase the amount of anxiety or despair? Okay, let's go ahead and pass it over. Well, I think for me, the emotion actually came in when you talked about the knock on the door. Maybe start with that right away. Because that's where I kind of felt, oh, okay, that's where the impact happened.

What you're saying is like an episode of Lost, knock, knock, knock, but wait, before we get there, come back, look at that, open, look at that. Then you come back, it's like, after this fabulous vacation, bam, I got served. Yeah, okay, so this brings us to a principle. Now, remember, these are principles, not rules. Can you use two principles and leave a principle out and be effective?

Yeah, absolutely. Every story has a reason why it's powerful. All of us can improve our stories. I can improve my storytelling, right? In fact, I've been to a storytelling workshop like four times in the last year, right?

It's one of the things I've been working on. And because it's like the more powerful we become with these things, the better off we can be, the more people we can reach. But there's a principle here. There's actually two principles, I think, that are related to each other. And let me just go ahead and jot these down.

Number three, I'm gonna call it the pattern interruption. I want you to think about, what's one of your favorite movies? Okay, Matrix. Okay, I don't even remember the opening scene of Matrix. What's the opening scene of Matrix?

Yeah, and it's like something pretty, is it something pretty dramatic? Yeah, it starts right in the middle of something where you're like, whoa, what the heck is that? Now, you don't have to do that with every story. That's not the only way to do a pattern interruption. But a pattern interruption is something that hooks your attention right away.

And so one way to do that with a pattern interruption, and I'm gonna put this as a separate principle, is to start right at the peak moment. This is what Lofts did over and over again, right? And so if you're looking to study pattern interruptions, J.J. Abrams is brilliant, and open loops, too, right? He never closes the loops, either, right?

We'll talk about open loops later on. So in this pattern interruption, what he'd do is like, how does Lofts start out? First episode. Yeah, but it's like, well, after that, the first episode isn't like the plane exploding. Within like seconds.

It's like, boom, rah, shah, shah, rah, you know? You don't know, it's gonna be like, holy crap, what's going on, right? And that is a pattern interruption, right? No matter what you were doing before, even if you're not gonna watch the rest of the show, you're probably gonna watch for the next three minutes or whatever to figure out what's just happened. So that's a pattern interruption.

One of the easiest ways to do a pattern interruption is to take somebody right to the peak of the story and to start them like at the moment of crisis. And then you can always work your way backwards and work your way forward. That make sense to everybody? So in terms of a principle, we could have started the story either for a pattern interruption, either right at the moment of crisis or right at the moment where you were in, what was it, despair, in despair. It's like, that was the moment that my stomach dropped into my shoes.

I couldn't tell if I was gonna vomit or die. I wasn't sure how I was gonna make it. And then you go back. Now you can go back from that point and you can start moving in, right? It doesn't have to be that.

I don't know if you're actually feeling it, but something like that, moving into the pattern interruption. The other piece is, along with the pattern interruption, and this is because it's not necessarily a pattern interruption, I'm gonna say go right to the action. You can get away with not doing VAK or VKA sequences if you're not in the action, but if you're in the action, you wanna bring people there. And there's one more. And he actually did a pretty good one with this one.

This is one where I'd say John had really, really strong language, and that is, we're gonna talk about the difference between associated and dissociated. So associated language, and this is true not only with written copy, but also your verbal copy. You put yourself in the moment. You write it as if it's happening now. So it's not like way back then, when that happened and that person showed up to the door, and you're almost detached.

That's what dissociative language is. It's like when you're detached from it. If you've got somebody and you wanna help them create a state, you have got to put them in it. And the way to put them in it is to go there with your body and your voice. Dirt in my fingernails, clinging to the edge of the rock.

Looking down, my stomach dropped. I was getting dizzy. I didn't know if I'd live. I was frozen. So we're back to it, where we have sensory-rich language, and I'm in it, I'm right there.

So he did a pretty good job putting himself in it with his description. He was right there, he was leading it along. It's in present tense language, or even better yet, what we call ING language, gerund language, right? I was going to die, right? Standing at the edge, feeling the blood pulse through me.

So with your voice, with your body, it's like you put yourself there. The easiest way to do that is to actually go there. A good way to know if you're there when you're writing is if you're writing, the writing of it should move you. And if it doesn't move you, there's a good chance it's not gonna move the people that you're writing to. If you're on video, and you're not starting to feel the feelings, you're not there, you're telling it in a real detached, dissociated sort of way.

Does that make sense? Okay, cool. So my feedback would be like, excellent here. You did a good job with word pictures. I would put you right here, and focus in on creating that state a little bit more.

Anybody else have anything else they'd give John for feedback? Did a good job. Okay, round of applause for him, man. Yay, woo! Okay, and by the way, we have two leaders, and I wanna say they're truly leaders.

They went into the hot seat and took some feedback, and that is scary. You're like in front of like, I don't know what, thousands of people getting feedback, right? So they're doing good. Yeah, it's like they were there, and their heart was beating, and they were asking themselves, am I gonna die? You know?

It was beating, wasn't it? Yeah, I know. Well, it's like being judged. Remember, the story's being judged, not your personal being, right? And all of us can improve this stuff, okay?

We need a third brave soul. Okay, Michael Martin, round of applause for him. There we go. Up in the hot seat, up in the hot seat. Anyway.

Yep. Sorry, I was getting all day. I got late on the action, so here we go. It was two days before I left for a mission trip to Bolivia. The doctor had just left the room, and our jaws were on the floor.

My mom was with us, and we all looked at each other with tears in our eyes. After eight years, roughly eight years of wanting to have children, after procedure after procedure, and a ton of doctor's appointments, after all the medications and all the needles, more needles than I can count, we were pregnant. And here's the kicker. We're twins. How can this be?

With the blessings we've received and that we've been able to give are in themselves miracles. God is great. Okay, awesome. Round of applause for them. There we go, there we go.

Okay, real quick. Death check. How much emotion? How much emotion? Zero to 10.

Let me grab this here. After you're at home, play along with us. Grade with us, all right? This will help you get attuned to what stories are doing to you. Okay, go.

Seven. Seven. Six. Six. Nine.

I don't know. No, no, no, none of that. You gotta decide. Your second guess, so what's your gut tell you? First number.

One, two, three, go. Two. Okay, pass it along. Seven. 10.

Nine. Okay, all right. Now again, if the number is, no, no, hang on. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, hang on.

Hang on before we go anywhere. We love him, right? Everybody put your, Tracy, put your hand on your heart and say, Michael, I love you, man. This is not a statement of his character. This is a statement of how you reacted to his story.

Who knows? Now let's, we don't have a big enough female population to ask, can I ask a couple people off camera? Ooh, yeah. Okay, we're gonna go for some more women. Is that all right?

Okay, Jessica, honest answer. Zero to 10. Zero to 10. Out of four. Okay.

Did you hear the story? Yes, zero to 10. Five. Five, okay. Zero to 10.

The woman in me says 10, but the story of five. Okay. Six. Six. Okay, so this is interesting, right?

This is interesting. So we have, it wasn't about delivery? Well, it was not about delivery yet. That's coming down the road, you know what I'm saying? So yeah, that part of the story is still, sorry, but a bunching, yeah, yeah, yeah, thank you.

Thank you. Okay, go ahead. We're gonna pick some comments here. Well, for my comment is I truly believe that it was the delivery of the story because when I understood what the story meant, I felt the emotion, but I wasn't feeling the emotion from the story. Sure, okay.

And that could be, let's take a comment. Let's take a couple of comments, but we're not beating them up. Remember, we love them. This brings up a question for you, Will, is that my understanding is we're judging the story. The story.

Not the delivery of the story. No, because this could be written copy. Okay, all right. This could be written copy. Can I clarify that?

Yeah, yeah. Any of these stories could be read in any number of ways that would affect that, right? You got it, and we're going there, but that's not till hour two because we've got to deliver copy on video too, right? Yeah, DSLs. How many of you do video blogs?

How many Facebook Live? How many of you know the way that you do that affects your outcomes, right? You can be boring as heck and never get any sales, right? Never get any opt-ins. You build an audience by being interesting, and the cool thing is you already live an interesting life, and the only difference between where you're at and where you're going is just a little bit of thought.

But I suspect that there's two things going on here, okay? Now, actually, we want the emotion, so I'm not going to go to feedback yet. Is that all right? And he did a good job. Like, I would read that and go, oh, wow, this is good, right?

I got it, this is good. I wouldn't close it down and be like, oh, I'm never going to look at that again, right, you know? He's a liar, right, you know? Or whatever, that's not what we're talking about. What's the state that was created?

Joy. Joy? Peace. Taking up two. Hope and joy.

Hope and joy. Excitement and accomplishment. Okay. Anticipation. I'll go with joy.

All right, excitement, elation. Hey, write it in the comments, too, what you feel, right? Hopefully you remember, because I know we've had a little bit of distance between the telling of the story, right? So I think that probably there's a couple of things going on. If we were to ask why, first off, just based on what you know, principles that you know, why did some people connect and some people not connect?

What do you suspect? What's that? Okay, life stage, parents and not parents, right? Yet we had a couple of parents in the room with lower scores, right? So what else?

That's a good one. Sometimes, like if you're talking about something that somebody has no reference experience for, it can be really hard to connect to them. Not necessarily, but it can be, right? Go ahead. Depending on our sensory, like if I'm more kinesthetic, I might not connect to the story because I don't engage that way.

Right, and it's not so much that we're only kinesthetic, but we might favor a sensory channel for stories, right? There's a reason, like if you ever watched a movie, thought it was awesome, and somebody else watched it, and they're like, that sucked, I hated it, right? Different preferences, different people, probably different sensory channels. My guess is two things. One's the new principle, one's the old one.

One is that the VAK sequencing was off for certain people in the room, and that'd be it. The way to pick up the rest of them is to look, and this is my challenge for you. I want you to go back, I want you to look, and I want you to notice how much visual language, how much self-talk language, right, that type of auditory, and how much kinesthetic language you have, and I want you to notice where you might be low. I have a suspicion, but I want you to go look at it, okay? You can look at it real quick and go, oh my gosh, I'm like 2 3rds in self-talk.

I'm two-thirds in visual, and I'm not doing any kinesthetic language, I've just lost a third of my audience, or more, because actually this pattern right here is the number one sequencing pattern that I see in my clients, and I see in workshops, and even I see right here in this room. So if you're not sequencing in the way that somebody wants to be sequenced, you're going to lose them a little bit. It could drop the emotional intensity by as much as three or four quarters. That's cool. You're just off.

Now I think that one of the other things that can happen is that there's a difference between what I'm going to call masculine and feminine energy. And this is not boy-girl energy. Another way of talking about this is yin and yang. There's really not a good way of describing it. There's just people that describe things in a different way, and in the company, we've dominantly had masculine copies, right, over, since the inception of Empower Network.

Everything has kind of been here, and that means that people that are more in their masculine energy, male and female, will tend to resonate with the copies. Go ahead. Even, like, the way that the things that we went through that I described would be totally different from what Chrissy would describe, and the way that y'all, and the way, and what the women were perceiving is probably, they're not jiving with me. I'm talking about, like, going through all these, like, medications and needles and things like that, but she wouldn't say that. She wouldn't say it in that way.

How many of you, how many of you have a partner of some kind, right? Boyfriend, girlfriend, partner? How many of you have noticed that your partner describes things differently than you do? Same event, and you're like, where were you, you know? Who were you with?

You weren't, you clearly weren't with me when that happened, right, you know? Is that our first kiss that you're describing? And you're like, what is this, right? You know, I'm serious, right? Who knows what I'm talking about?

Raise your hand, right? Yeah. Yeah, what is this? It's because your way of, your balance of masculine and feminine energy is a little bit different in that moment. And so, masculine energy tends to be direct, right?

Tends to get to the point. Tends to be, it's strong in masculine energy, tends to be somewhat authoritarian, okay? I wouldn't put that story here, in authoritarian. Can be even commanding. Can have presence and charisma, okay?

You can have presence and charisma and feminine energy, but the energy is real different. It tends to be, it tends to be more playful. It tends to focus in on connection. It tends to focus in on togetherness, creation of experience. It's a more holistic way of looking at it.

One is not good, one is not bad. Every man has some feminine energy, some masculine energy. Every woman has some masculine energy, some feminine energy. And the way it comes through in your copy will affect the type of audience that you impact. And so, it's not odd that we got some people with a low score and some people with a high score.

I suspect your copy was a little bit more in your masculine energy, which would be normal. I don't know if you covered it, but like, just specific keywords? So, a lot of guys like to crush, explode. Like war metaphors? Yeah.

Whether they're being used by men or women, that's all masculine. All masculine. So, you'll see that in Capture Pages. A lot of marketing languages. Think of a trip wire.

Is that a masculine metaphor or a feminine metaphor? Yeah, it should be more like hot wires. Yeah, like a togetherness wire. Just kidding. No, no, but seriously, the whole war metaphor puts it in masculine energy.

Not male and female energy. We're not starting anything there. We're talking about yin and yang, if you like that better. Or soft and hard energy, if that's what you want. So, what would be a good analogy for burning the boats?

Burning the boats. Masculine or feminine? Super masculine. So, it would be a feminine version of that. Yeah.

Like, taking your shoes. No, no, it's nothing about the shoes. It's about the delivery of the metaphor. Now, this is interesting. It's the whole imagery.

Here's what I would say. In really strong feminine energy, they wouldn't be talking about burning the ships. So, they'd leave a candy trail? There would be no burning. So, how would you frame that?

The masculine energy is a destructive energy. The feminine energy is a creation energy. So, the question is, what does burning the ships create? Say, forward progress. How would you frame that?

Forward progress. Forward progress. Now, let's create a metaphor that is more feminine. How would you do that? That's my blog.

Yes. I don't see it. Lawrence is like 90% masculine energy. Whenever he's up, that's normal. But, if he can start to add in a little bit of feminine energy, he'll start to attract a totally different audience.

And that's in your metaphors, your languaging, your presentation. Yeah. Right? So, playful and creative and togetherness, connection, that is forward movement and success. What's another?

What's a whole other metaphor? Help us out. Let's think through this. Let's go shopping. No.

No. I'm thinking. You're thinking, man. You're thinking, man. You're thinking male, female stereotypes.

This is totally. You get an F minus. F minus for feminine energy, man. I know. I love you, man.

Okay. Go ahead. So, burning the ships means what? Letting go of everything behind and just charging forward. For me, from a female perspective, it's accepting what has already happened and being free to move into my destiny.

No. No. But it's not feelings. No. Listen.

You missed it. You missed it, man. You missed it. This is like. We need Google Translate.

Google Translate. This is awesome. One more time. What did you say? I said that instead of burning a ship, it was accepting what has already happened.

It is what it is. And now I'm moving into my destiny, into my calling. I'm moving into my destiny and my calling. That mission-based language is in feminine energy. You hear me do that a bunch.

Right? That's feminine energy. That's not woman energy. But that's a feminine energy or a yin energy, a soft energy. Yeah.

Right? It's stepping. Yeah, I like that. That was really good. That was a good contrast.

And you need Google Translate for feminine energy. Right? Okay. But yeah. That's.

Yeah. Yeah. We nap for that. Right? But it requires a whole new way of thinking.

Right? Sometimes I'm really heavy and masculine. Sometimes I move more into feminine energy. I'm learning how to do more feminine energy because there's a giant population of people that only speak that language. And you'll lose them.

Now, you might not want to connect with them. And that's okay. You might go, screw that. I'm not going to do that. Okay?

That's fine. Then you're also going to lose that segment of the population. Okay? Well, wouldn't you also, like if you're going towards the feminine energy, then you may be losing the masculine population. Yeah.

That's right. Right? Like Laurence's population, we know what we're doing. Let's ask a question. Now, this is not masculine feminine energy.

This is male, female. There's a difference. Okay? What percentage of the network marketing industry is female? Well, most of it.

It's like 70%. Of that 70%, some of those women are going to operate more in masculine energy than they do in feminine energy. That's okay. So, but what percentage of those operate at a high level of feminine energy? A bunch.

Yeah. I would actually say the majority. The majority of the ones I coach. I coach a bunch of people across industries. Yeah.

And so if you lose it, if you lose that ability to communicate, you're losing out on a big chunk of the population. So if that's our target audience, then you've got to learn the language. Right. And if you're like, I don't know what that is, then start with the audience you can connect with and learn to build a bridge. I was going to say, with Laurence and Jessica, because it appears, and I could be wrong, that you want to tap into that more feminine energy side because you understand the dynamics of the industry, what I've noticed is that men who want to do that usually partner with the wife and their branding.

And let the wife do some talking. Right. Now, no, that's not necessarily her thing. She may not want to. He's like, Amen!

Hallelujah! That was worth you coming to Costa Rica. But, I mean, that's really what it is. She's vomiting over the corner right now for those of you off camera. Because if it were just you or the two of you together, if she were to start talking, I would still join you, but it would be because of her.

Yeah. Nothing against you, but you have the more masculine energy. From that standpoint. Yeah. But he's very result-oriented.

Which is also a very masculine... And from my side of it, I would want that from you. Right. But I would want to know that the safety, the security, you're not just trying to ransack my team and bulldoze over everybody. She would balance that.

She would balance. She does balance that. Right. Now, Laurence is a great guy. I told him earlier, my opinion of him went up like three notches from the beginning of the story.

I was like, oh, he's a good guy. He's not only talented, he must be a good man because he's got a good woman by his side. Right. Yeah. I don't think he's tricked her not that long.

Right. You know. So there's character there. I know. Yes.

Telling all my secrets. Right. So that's true. So one way to do that is to partner with somebody who operates more in the opposite energy. It doesn't mean male-female.

Again, we're talking, do they operate in more of the creation, playful, soft energy? Or is it like domination, burning bridges and ships and destroying things to create the world of domination? Something like that. Right. Yeah.

Very results-driven versus togetherness, connection. Do you guys feel the difference between that? For how many of you is this a brand new concept? Okay. For how many of you do you know you're bad at it?

Right. Okay. At one end of it. Yeah. I'm still learning.

But this is huge. For me, I used to have like an 80% male audience in my coaching business. I now have an 80% female audience. I haven't shifted to, you know, 70% feminine energy. I've just moved down to where there's more of a balance.

You come to one of my workshops, there's a lot of mission talk, there's a lot of togetherness talk, a lot of creation talk. That's all. That all resonates to me. And I think that's a huge difference between the two. And I think that's a huge difference between the two.

That all resonates deeply with people who are in feminine energy. If you ever watch someone on stage and they're getting huge results and you're like what planet are they from? Like I don't understand why that's working. There's a good chance they're operating in the opposite energy that you are. Does that make sense?

So if I was to re-go back though and just give you one thing to work on because this is something I'm planting a seed here. Okay? I'm planting a seed because I think Empower Network can reach a whole demographic that hasn't been speaking the language. Like really almost any of us. There's been a few.

I've seen Tracy do it a few times. Right? But even Tracy sometimes when you go into like when you go into general mode you snap into masculine energy sometimes. Right? And that's okay.

It gets results. You've gotten huge results. But we've lost the whole demographic that we could appeal to. Right? So I would have you just go back here and focus on your work.

Give her a round of applause. Where's the microphone? I lost the microphone in the room. Oh yeah. What was your motion?

Joy. Joy. All right. Good. So here's what we're gonna do.

We're gonna go to break here. Okay? We're gonna go to break. When we come back we're gonna tell the same story but we're gonna let you workshop it first but rather than reading it now we're gonna deliver it VSL style. Okay?

Rather than just on the way that you're writing it. Does that make sense? Okay? All right guys. So I want you to write down your learnings if you're at home.

Actually what I like we'll start off the next segment and we'll grab I want you to go through and just grab a good story. Oh you got one already? Let's do it right now then. Let's just pull her up. Okay.

A round of applause for at home people. Right? Okay now at home if we grab your story you gotta be good with us giving you some feedback. Right? So if you're at home we'll put what you're here at.

Okay go ahead. I'm Leslie. Leslie? As I lay there on the operating table with my hand tied in my pocket I couldn't believe what was about to happen. I was about to give birth to a new human being and I didn't even have to go through hours of labor to do it.

Two days ago I would not have believed this was possible. The doctors had put me on special drugs to make the baby come and they didn't work. I was worried. I was afraid it didn't work. I was worried.

Suddenly I heard it. The piercing well that tells you that everything is just perfect. I was finally a mom. Okay. Awesome.

So now hang on hang on stay up here you're gonna be voice first. Who's was this? That's Leslie. Leslie. So first off everybody which camera is that camera right now?

Everybody turn around face Leslie here. Okay. Over right there. Which one we got? Okay that one right there.

Okay. Face Leslie put your hand on your heart. Okay. Just shoot her some love. Leslie we love you.

Yeah we love you. Now we're gonna give you some feedback. Okay. And so you heard the story zero to ten I want you to rate the level of emotion. Remember this is not about you this is about the story and we're just seeing how much do people connect with it.

So real quick run through it. Seven. Five. Two. Seven.

Seven. Six. Seven. Six. Six.

Okay go ahead and pass the mic back up. Okay let's name the emotion now. Let's run through name the emotion. Joy. Excited.

Happy. Excited. Grateful. Amazed. Grateful.

Grateful. There was really two emotions in there right? There was some anxiety first and then it switched to grateful, thankful. I'd say relief. Relief?

Okay. Cool pass it back up. Now who here has some feedback for that would help her out with her story? Not only looking at the principles back there but what else could you say about that? I always felt like childbirth for women always has like a very loving like I don't know maybe part of the brain that doesn't work but like a very like flowery like ahhhhh you know what I mean?

Yeah like ahh but like but to me like I totally associate it because I remember the guts on the table and that's like ugh but like I think she thinks it's very masculine so I think it needs to be more of a flowery I don't know Hang on this is this is something I think there's a couple things so stories create states that's the principle can you can you mix a state in a way that ends up being unhelpful for you? Yes now did she do that necessarily? I don't know it's kind of on the edge on the edge though for me it's like she was it felt like she was trying to go for like the joy or the relief of having the baby but then the beginning was like ugh right? you know which by the way was an awesome pattern interruption yeah but it felt a little bit mixed to me so it's like is there a way to do the pattern interruption and not maybe a rearranging of the story right a little rearranging is one of the things I think maybe the description of what you saw on the table comes a little later as you build up to knowing why she's in the room and then it won't be such a little gut punch right us girls it's not that but to someone else it might be like whoa so I think just a rearranging of the story yeah so again this is not right or wrong this is Leslie I do want you actually to rewrite this and I want you to think about this just think about the feedback if you hate it that's fine it's your story but just think about think about the feedback and think okay what state was I going for was I going for more of a shock or was I going for more of a connection if so how do you minimize the shock or replace it is every detail of every story useful no to a large degree this will give us a seventh principle to a large degree like what you tell hang on don't go away here Nicole what you tell and what you don't tell makes the story let's go back to Shakespearean plays for a moment what's the difference between a traditional tragedy and a traditional comedy in a tragedy they die in the end in a comedy ends in marriage now who here is going to die that's not a trick question right we are all going to die in a zero to hero story there is zero and hero the order and sequence how you tell that story matters right it's like and I went for it and then I crashed and burned and then I died the end I don't like that story you know right I lost everything and the IRS chased me out of the country and I had to live as a nomad for the rest of my life the end you know now what is that right so where you what you tell what you don't tell in a story makes a difference every detail every detail is not useful to your story it's not about being it's not about creating endless word pictures it's about identifying the key moments and the key emotions that you want to tell and then creating sensory rich pictures around those moments and then deciding when to start and stop and there is a reason to stop in the basement for a minute but you can't leave people there forever at some point is that alright so that would be that would be my main feedback for you and I also noticed that with the word pictures you were favoring a certain channel go back in and look at it and notice what you were favoring okay description channel is like a or like a sequence channel is like almost like a criteria channel Lawrence did a little bit of this she did a little bit of this description channel is like a or like a sequence channel is like of this. Michael, you did a little bit of, Michael, where you at?

Michael, you did a little bit of this as well. And that's not bad, but if that's all you're doing, you're missing, you're missing other people. That'd be real easy to catch, just by rearranging the way you tell it. Okay? Everybody with me?

I see some confused airs. Okay? Yes? No? Yeah?

Give me a yes if you're with me. Okay. We're good? All right. So, Leslie, rewrite your story, repost it.

We'll bring it up here in a minute when we do our second storytelling segment and bring it back. So, everybody, big round of applause for what was the awesome. Thank you, Leslie, for being brave and being willing to give some feedback. That can be hard. I just want to let you know that we love you.

We love you big time. Glad you're here. So, let's go ahead. We're going to go to a break for like ten minutes. So, we got a little break.

We're going to come back in, and we're going to move from writing to delivering. Everybody down for that? Okay. Good stuff. Let's go for it, guys.

Ten minute break.