How to get started with Storyteller Tactics

So you’ve bought Storyteller Tactics, but you’re not sure where to start. Don’t worry: there are LOTS of resources to help.

Here are the best articles to help a beginner get started. I’ve listed the simplest ones first, with some longer reads towards the end:

• Tell a story, fast! A super-quick guide. Start now! Also try this 1-3-5 minute guide to storytelling.
• Answer this question, become a better storyteller. A basic intro to the visual side of storytelling
• Show & Tell. Stop boring and confusing people with dull presentations. See also this post on Why everyone hates your presentation.
• Cold Call to Pitch Perfect. Selling with stories.
• Turn Boring Data into Stories. A deep dive into data driven storytelling, plus a short example here.
• Use stories in a job interview. How to stand out from the job-seeking crowd.
• Be an engaging speaker. How to plan a keynote.
• Slide-by-slide. How to plan a presentation deck.
• Icebreakers and Recipe cards. Different ways to get stories flowing.
• Tell stories about innovation. Understand how your audience feels about risk.
• Make your stories more dramatic, with a touch of Cole Porter and a rubber band.

Walkthrough a case study

Here’s how customers like you use Storyteller Tactics:

• Sheryl Brown just landed a $2.5m pitch using one card.
• Alex Afshar decides to treat his conference stand like a story.
• Bryan Driscoll is making videos to reach new customers (with before-and-after examples)
• Alan Murdock uses archetypes to coach leaders and tell more dramatic stories.
• Kerry Thompson is trying to get better testimonials from her happy customers.
• Angela Allan does her homework, then dives into the deck for inspiration.
• Ryan Baudoin is selling cyber security built for remote working
• DJ Graffiti is expanding his services to corporate clients
• Tom Fern is presenting a stakeholder analysis to 70 colleagues
• Myron Parks is running product demos in a software company
• Uroš Rojc needs a stronger sales pitch for his video company
• Andrew Jeffreys is building a stronger brand for his fencing company
• Dmitriy Bondar is making documentaries for his YouTube channel
• Zoey Zaran is convincing CEO’s to follow the data, not their hunches
• Paul Benn needs to make fascinating presentations to his clients
• Will Sutton chooses his go-to tactics for holding an audience’s attention
• Scott Friedman needs to get a tough message over to volunteer firefighters
• Steve Rawling explains how a series of failures 30 years ago made him an expert you can trust
• Steve Rawling sees how many sales stories he can come up with in just ten minutes
• Dan Dominguez is preparing for tricky questions in a job interview
• Jean Tuffier has to persuade fellow developers to get out of their comfort zones
• Hendrik Zwart wants to help customers experience a natural wonder
• keep checking for more case studies…

Read a story written using Storyteller Tactics

In 2021, I wrote a 16 episode marketing campaign to generate excitement about the Kickstarter launch of Storyteller Tactics. Every episode was written using two different tactics:

• Episode 1 – Five T’s and Downfall
• Episode 2 – Emotional Dashboard and Trust Me, I’m an Expert
• Episode 3– Abstractions and Story-ish Conversations
• Episode 4 – Metaphor Engine and Thoughtful Mistakes
• Episode 5 – Story Bank and Three Great Conflicts
• Episode 6 – Man in a Hole and Circle of Life
• Episode 7 – Hero & Guide and Drive Stories
• Episode 8 – Rolls Royce Moment and That’s Funny
• Episode 9 – What’s My Motivation and Curious Tales
• Episode 10 – Universal Stories and The Shock of the Old
• Episode 11 – Data Detectives and Cut to the Chase
• Episode 12 – Voyage & Return and Secrets & Puzzles
• Episode 13 – Happy Ever Afters and SAVE your Reader
• Episode 14 – Story Hooks and The Dragon & The City
• Episode 15 – It’s a Kind of Magic and Innovation Curve
• Episode 16 – Pride & Fall and Movie Time
• Episode 17 – Pitch Perfect and No Easy Way
• Also, check out this post on LinkedIn where I wrote 24 different promo messages using a variety of Storyteller Tactics.

Join the Community

Don’t worry, you’re not alone. Come and join a whole community of storytellers on the Pip Decks Slack channel. Read the #storyteller-tactics thread, pick up some ideas or post your own question and lots of people will suggest answers.

Try a five day challenge

Follow these five steps and make your conversations, emails and meetings more story-ish.

Take a video tour

Ask yourself “what problem am I trying to solve?” Perhaps you’ve got a client who doesn’t get Agile working, or an important pitch coming up. Perhaps you’re suffering from… The Curse of Knowledge!

What’s the Curse? Well, the more we know about a topic, the harder it is for us to imagine not knowing. The harder you’ve worked to become an expert, the harder it can be to explain yourself to non-experts. Stories can help you bridge that gap.

There is a video guide for each tactic if you subscribe to the Vault along with Miro/Mural whiteboards.

Free Video Tutorial

Taken from a previous Pip Decks event, this tutorial hosted by Steve Rawling (author of Storyteller Tactics) is everything you need to know about using the tactics to start telling your own stories.

Follow a Recipe

Read the front of each Story Recipe card – then pick the recipe that most closely matches the problem you’re trying to solve. If you need to persuade a client to wait until you’ve done proper research – ok, try the Stories that Convince recipe. You need them to back your idea: try Stories that Sell. 

Each recipe card links to five tactics – so you can create a workshop that will take about 90 mins to work through. Or you can treat them more like a buffet: take as much or as little as you need from the five suggested tactics.

By the end, you’ll have a range of new stories to try.

If you’re not sure which story will help you solve your problem, go through each of the Recipe cards and pick the recipe that looks most useful.

Watch a six part tutorial showing a group of Storyteller Tactics customers learning to tell Stories that Sell.

Desert Island Cards

Or you can try starting with our Desert Island Cards. (If we could only take seven cards to the mythical island, these are the ones)

We all talk to people – convince them, persuade them, bring them on our journey – about our work. Stories are the best tool for this! Start with one of these Desert Island Cards, each helping you with a different stage of the storytelling process – acting as the ‘head’ of a family of similar tactics.

• The Dragon and the City: get people excited, frame your work as an epic adventure!
• Story Listening: turn your insights into stories
• Trust Me, I’m an Expert: make a connection with your audience
• Pitch Perfect: convince people to back your ideas
• Man in a Hole: give your story a structure
• Movie Time: help us see what you mean
• Story Bank: keep track of your stories, don’t lose our trust!

Ask the Author

Listen to Steve Rawling, author of Storyteller Tactics, answer questions from Pip Decks customers about, well, anything to do with stories.

• Ask me anything about Story Hooks, Cut to the Chase, Man in a Hole and half a dozen other tactics.
• Show and Tell live session
• Rags to Riches live session
• Order & Chaos live session
• Rules, Cheats & Rebels live session
• Trust Me, I’m an Expert live session
• Watch an Ask the Author archive session
• Join the next Ask the Author live session