The one to one story formula. In 2012, I was asked to train 15 blind social entrepreneurs from all over the world on storytelling, so that they can go back to their countries and pitch venture capitalists. It was a crazy week, it was really great. But to prepare, I read a half dozen books on storytelling. After reading a few I began to get really frustrated. Because all of them were saying the exact same thing.

Here's your cliff notes version. Storytelling is really important. Here are some really interesting stories. Go get them tiger. I'm thinking Wait, wait, wait, where's the part where you teach me how to do this? You know, that's what I want.

So I kept reading, I read maybe a total of a dozen books. And the best I got was here is the new nine point formula for telling a story. I'm thinking, Man, and there is no way this is gonna work for these folks. This is their pitching to venture capitalists too complicated, too artsy, we need something way simpler. So something for business people. So out of that, I began to invent the one to one story formula.

It is the simplest way to tell a business or personal story. The one to one story formula addresses and solves the three reasons that stories fail. They're irrelevant. They're boring, or you forget them. One to one stands for 1.2 halves and one unforgettable detail. One point makes it relevant.

Two halves makes it interesting. One, or forgettable detail, makes it memorable. We'll go into each step in more detail and then we'll practice with the four stories that you need to be able to tell. One point. So all of us know people who like to tell stories, but we're not exactly interested in their story. So if your story does not serve your audience, and you notice that kind of looking over your shoulder looking around, you're not doing it right.

We're not telling stories, you know, to entertain people. This is not entertainment, this is about service. stories have to have a point that matters to your audience. It's not three points. It's one point that answers one question. So eliminate all of the bunny trails that pull attention away from your point.

Then build your story around it. Remember, the more that you leave out of your story, the more you will highlight what you believe in. For example, your one point could be I want my question. To know that we can solve their problem. So build a story around that one point. Don't tell them, we can help you.

But let them come to their own conclusion after hearing your story. If they come to their own conclusion, there'll be much less likely to change their opinion about you later. To half all great stories have one thing in common change. If nothing changes in your story, you don't have a story. You have monotony, but it's not hard to turn monotony into a story. Just ask yourself, what were things like before?

What are they like now? This is the structure to your story. That's it. This is not a nine part formula or a 13 point formula, and they do exist is just to house week Expected X to happen. But now why happened? Or this was our big problem.

And now this is our solution. Try it out. Almost anything can become a story when you remember to haves. For example, a couple months ago, I did a storytelling workshop for a big company. And at the end, one of the participants came up to me and says, you know, before this, I never thought these corporate trainings helped. But this I'll actually use it's one sentence, two halves in one unforgettable detail.

It all takes, you know, maybe 20 seconds to say. So, imagine if they come up to me and they said, this training, oh actually use? Yeah, not that exciting. Why? Because there's no change. It's changed.

Makes the magic. So imagine a love story where no one falls in love. Or no one falls out of love or no one fights to stay in love. It's not a story, it's monotony. It needs two halves. So you need something like before there was a bachelor who vowed to never married.

Then he meant Ayesha. And he proposed within two weeks. It's a good story. And all it is is to house. So you can test this with any movie you watch at their core. They're two halves before and after.

And then you can turn turn your ordinary conversations into two halves. And when we do that, we tap into this hardwired love of story, and we multiply our influence. Last, let's review. One point, makes it relevant to apps makes it interesting Now one unforgettable detail. specifics make the story. So think of all your favorite movies.

One unforgettable detail will always come to mind. It's usually an image or some quote. So Shawshank Redemption is my favorite movie. And you can summarize the movie in this line. Get busy living, or get busy dying, or Braveheart. You can take my life, but you'll never take more fruit.

Or, let's say Seinfeld, Kramer's crazy hair, or you know the way that he barges into doors, and it's in these details that the story is in a nutshell, everything you need to know about Cramer, you can learn from his hair and the way he barges through doors. So you can summarize all Shawshank Redemption with that one, quote all Braveheart with that one quote, The trick, this trick of capturing the entire story in like a single unforgettable detail is something that we can actually apply for ourselves. So the easiest way to do it included dialogue, quote, something in the story. If you're the only one there, there's no dialogue, then describe exactly what you were thinking when that happened. But here's, here's one more example. The first time that the one to one story formula was taught was a big multinational company.

And it was a 90 minute session just to test out the materials, see how it went. And at the end, this woman comes up, she's really excited. She says, you know, a year ago, our company had a storytelling workshop and they flew in this guy from Europe. He was really good, really funny, really interesting. Everyone loved it. But Found I wasn't able to apply it.

Today in this 90 minutes, I learned more that I'll actually use that I learned in that full day. So here it is, again, it's a 22nd or less story. And it's got 1.2 halves in one unforgettable detail. There one point was, this was practical. There are two halves were last year, I couldn't apply it. This year I can.

The unforgiveable detail is that quote, more than sit in 90 minutes than in a full day. So that's it. It's the one to one story formula. It's the simplest way to tell a business or personal story. You can hack trust from taking years taking minutes. You can influence people's lives without any authority over them.

You can help people value your product for what it really is. And you can do all that in 20 seconds. Oh, That's, that's pretty amazing for something that a five year old can do. So, what if you're thinking, Kevin, this is really good and all but I don't have any interesting stories. You know, our company is not that interesting or product is not that interesting. Actually, even my own life is not that interesting.

Then here's the good news. It doesn't matter. A story well told, will always be a story of substance poorly told. What matters is that we love our story. Bo Easton is a professional storyteller, and he said, My story is not better than yours. I just love my story more than you love yours.

So this is one of the secrets of storytelling. You love your story. So if you don't even know Connect with your story, then choose another one. And when you find one that you love, then magic happens. Let's get really practical on this now. Everyone needs four stories in their pocket.

That is some answer to the four most common questions, tour personal tour professional. The two professional ones are what your clients every single client is asking in their head, when they meet with you. They may not say it, it is. What does your company do? And how can you help us? Now, you could answer this the boring way.

You could say well, we we are a management consultancy, and we offer these services or instead you could listen first problems, and then craft a story that models how you solve that problem with another client. The second are personal questions. Who are you? And what do you do? These are actually a little bit harder to answer than the professional questions. Now you could answer.

I'm Kevin Brinkman. I'm from Iowa. I'm a corporate trainer. And I'm, you know, uninspiring. Or you could say, Hi, I'm Kevin. In 2010.

I moved from Los Angeles to India to work on a project supporting the Ministry of Education. And through that, I met the most amazing woman in the world. She was also my boss. And then I married her one year later, and I've been in India ever since. Or Hi, I'm Kevin. I'm trying to make goodness fashionable through ethical leadership training with multinationals In the United Nations, it takes 10 seconds.

I mean, but at the end, you know a little bit more about me. You trust me a little bit more, in a sense for why I'm doing what I'm doing, and you're more willing to work with me. Here's one bonus question. How are you doing? You can say, good. Yeah, fine for the rest of your life.

But it doesn't communicate anything. It doesn't connect with anyone. Or you can tell a quick story about something that happened in the last 24 hours. It can be as short as one sentence. Well, after three weeks of trying to be finally potty trained, your doesn't need to be a comprehensive answer. To answer how are you?

It just needs to be a genuine answer. Something something that gives people something they can connect to. Nobody emotionally emphasizes with you know, when we say goodbye Fine, but our goal as human beings is that it's to connect