The video reflects a personal story about the challenge of communicating important messages effectively and how it inspired a career in helping others clarify their ideas through storytelling. The speaker recounts a humorous yet insightful incident on a plane, which became a catalyst for a new career focusing on how to summarize ideas so people truly listen.

The speaker outlines a framework based on storytelling principles that can empower individuals to communicate their ideas more effectively. By using ancient narrative structures, which include establishing a clear character desire, a compelling problem, providing guidance, outlining a plan, initiating a call to action, and establishing stakes, communicators can capture and maintain audience attention. This method not only helps in personal storytelling but also in business contexts to sell products and ideas.

Main takeaways from the video:

Please remember to turn on the CC button to view the subtitles.

Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:

1. memoir [ˈmɛmˌwɑr] - (noun) - A historical account or biography written from personal knowledge. - Synonyms: (autobiography, diary, account)

I spent years writing memoirs.

2. narcissist [ˈnɑrsɪsɪst] - (noun) - A person who has an excessive interest in or admiration of themselves. - Synonyms: (egotist, self-seeker, egoist)

I realized that if you write your 8th memoir, you're actually a clinical narcissist.

3. empathy [ˈɛmpəθi] - (noun) - The ability to understand and share the feelings of another. - Synonyms: (compassion, sympathy, understanding)

It also elevates empathy.

4. referential [ˌrɛfəˈrɛnʃəl] - (adjective) - Containing or of the nature of references. - Synonyms: (allusive, indicative, suggestive)

And then the biggest challenge of all, it reduces self referential thinking.

5. amateur [ˈæmətʃər] - (noun) - A person who engages in a pursuit, especially a sport, on an unpaid basis. - Synonyms: (novice, beginner, non-professional)

There are some rules that amateur screenwriters break to their own demise.

6. cognitive dissonance [ˈkɑgnɪtɪv ˈdɪsənəns] - (noun phrase) - The state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes, especially as relating to behavioral decisions and attitude change. - Synonyms: (mental conflict, conviction, ambivalence)

Because right now our stakeholder is dealing with cognitive dissonance.

7. elusive [ɪˈlusɪv] - (adjective) - Difficult to find, catch, or achieve. - Synonyms: (evasive, slippery, mysterious)

And we tend to be very passive aggressive, rather than saying, will you do this? And when we're passive aggressive and elusive, people just don't take action.

8. stakeholder [ˈsteɪkˌhoʊldər] - (noun) - A person with an interest or concern in something, especially a business. - Synonyms: (investor, partner, sponsor)

You want to identify something specific that your stakeholder wants.

9. increment [ˈɪnkrəmənt] - (noun) - An increase or addition, especially one of a series on a fixed scale. - Synonyms: (increase, addition, enlargement)

And if we give people some simple steps they can take to solve their problem, they tend to engage our message.

10. protagonist [prəˈtægənɪst] - (noun) - The leading character or one of the major characters in a drama, movie, novel, or other narrative. - Synonyms: (hero, lead character, central character)

Luke Skywalker is the hero, Yoda is the guide.

How to clarify your message so people listen - Donald Miller - TEDxNashville

All right. About 20 years ago, I was boarding a plane to Indianapolis, Indiana. I was getting on the plane because I was going to speak at a conference there that night. I got on the plane, and sitting next to me was a gentleman who was reading my latest book, and I had never seen one of my books in the wild before. I was really excited. You can imagine. I tried to be humble, but instead I just blurted out, what do you think of that book? And he looked at me and he said, I love this book. This is the third time I've read this book. In fact, I'm flying to Indianapolis tonight to hear this man speak. Now, my picture is on the back cover of this book, so I'm thinking he's going to get it in a second. And I said, well, tell me what you like about this guy. After about a couple minutes, I realized I've dug myself in a hole. He has no idea who I am. And quite honestly, as he said things like, well, you'd have to read them to understand. And I kind of think that he's living proof that a loser can make something of themselves. I mean, the more he talked, the less I wanted to read my books. And quite honestly, the more he talked, the less I wanted to hear myself speak that night.

I realized at that point, I've got a problem. I'm great at writing the 300 pages, but terrible at writing the sentence on the back that makes you want to read the 300 pages. And by the way, I never told him who I was. I figured he'd just get it when I walked on stage that night, but he didn't come up to me. So if you meet him, just tell him I'm sorry. Regardless, though, that actually launched an entire new career for me. And the career is all about how do we summarize our ideas, our products, our offering to the world in such a way that people listen. I am absolutely convinced that one of the things that is wrong with our culture and so many cultures around the world is that the wrong people have the microphone. Do you agree? I think the wrong people have the microphone because those who have the best ideas, those whose principles are the best, aren't really great at getting people interested in those ideas. And if we can fix that, if some of you can have the microphone, I think we'd be better off.

Now, I spent years writing memoirs. These are stories about myself, and they did really, really well. When the publisher came to me and said, we really want an 8th memoir, I realized that if you write your 8th memoir, you're actually a clinical narcissist. I'm just a regular narcissist. I'm not clinical. And so I thought, I want to do something different. I want to help other people tell their stories, and I want to tackle this problem. And the real problem is, why do we listen to some people and ignore others? And why do we listen to people who just have nothing to offer us and ignore the ones who actually do? It's a serious problem. Now, in order to write those memoirs and all those books and sell those books, I had to learn a lot about story and story structure. Story is what makes you turn the page. It keeps you going.

And so I thought, wait a second. You know, story is a very powerful tool to get people to pay attention. In fact, some research indicates that up to 47% of the time, you are daydreaming, or 47% of the time, you're just not paying attention to the actual thing that's happening right in front. Slightly more in the audience right now, but about 47% of the time in general. And the only tool that we have that can get a group of human beings to pay attention for 90 minutes or 2 hours or a whole weekend, if you're binging something on Netflix is story. You don't daydream. You actually just pay attention the entire time. It is the most powerful tool known to man to compel a human being. And if we could get that power in the hands of the right people, maybe people would start paying attention to good solutions rather than drama and theater. Well, story to the rescue.

So I began to do some research on how story works and how we could clarify our message using story and story structure. I wrote a book about that. That book also did really well. And suddenly, I found myself in this consulting business, helping people all over the world clarify their message. And it was a job I really loved. Nonprofits on human trafficking, to foreign policy, to selling plungers. And by the way, selling plungers is actually really fun. But we started to use story and story structure to invite people into a story and to help others clarify their message.

Story has been proven to increase focus so that when you're engaged in a story, you're actually paying attention and you're not distracted. It also elevates empathy. Suddenly, when something happens to a character that you like, you feel like it's happening to you. And then the biggest challenge of all, it reduces self referential thinking. I don't know about you guys, but I think about myself a lot. Unless I'm watching a story. And then I'm wondering what the hell's going to happen to Bambi now? And on and on. Right? You reduce self retro thinking. It's actually kind of a miraculous process of what happens in the human brain when you are engaged in a story. Now, I want to talk to you about a framework, and it's a formula.

So I got to tell you, if you're going to keep watching this talk, there's one caveat. I am going to ruin stories for you for the rest of your life. They are very formulaic. In fact, there are many scholars who say there are only seven stories that ever get told in a movie theater. I agree with them. Christopher Booker actually says that my wife hates going to movies with me because she knows at some point I'm going to elbow her and say, that guy dies in 31 minutes. And he does. However, with each idea that gets shared in a story in an order, you will understand more about how to clarify your message. You will also understand how to get your ideas across, how to sell more products, and how to get your kids to brush their teeth.

Okay, that's my offer to you. We'll see about the third. That's a serious challenge. All right. The first thing that you have to have are these seven sound bites based on these ancient narratives. These narratives are over 2500 years old. I didn't invent them. Aristotle wrote a book called. Called Poetics, probably the first time that it was ever written down. And they have been bettered and bettered and bettered throughout the decades, all the way to the box office, where they're measured every weekend. So we know which ones are working, which ones are not. It is very formulaic. It's a science. But it's really just not the study of narrative. It's the study of how do you get a human brain to actually pay attention?

So these plot points are things that happen in almost all stories, all seven story structures. These things happen inside of them, and they teach us a lot about what human beings want to pay attention to. The very first thing that you have to have if you want to tell a story is a character. You've got to have a hero. The hero shows up on the screen. Now, there are some rules that amateur screenwriters break to their own demise. Business people break them, thought leaders break them, and people stop paying attention. The first thing is the hero has to want something very, very specific. If I said, hey, let's skip the rest of today. Let's go across the street. There's a movie about a guy looking for fulfillment. Almost nobody would be interested. But if I said to you, another one of Liam Neeson's daughters has been kidnapped, you might go, right. We can't be vague.

We have to be very, very specific in terms of defining what the hero wants. And what this means is we, as communicators have to think about what our stakeholder wants. Who are we talking to? What do they want? Have we defined what they want and have we communicated it clearly in a soundbite? If we don't, they'll stop paying attention the next thing. So you want to identify something specific that your stakeholder wants. That's your first soundbite, your second sound bite. That is about the problem that the hero actually has. The problem is incredibly important. It is the hook of the story. It is as important as all of the other elements put together. If there is not a problem, there is no story. If I told you a story and there was no problem, let's say a man meets a woman at a coffee shop. There's some chemistry.

They start talking. She says, my parents are in town. You want to do dinner? They do dinner. The parents say, you really ought to marry our daughter. A priest shows up, they get married. You roll the credits. Horrible story. Why? No problem. The story is all about the problem. Until we have a problem, we don't have a story. So let's retell it. Man meets a woman at a coffee shop. They hit it off. There's some chemistry. Everything is going really great. Suddenly she says, I can't be here. I can't have this conversation. This is very inappropriate. I'm getting out of here. She gets stuff in her briefcase. She leaves. Now we've got a story. The story loop is open. How is the man going to get to the woman's thing and fallen up? He gets a call. Let's make this worse. He gets a call from his mother. And his mother says, your brother's in town, wants to have dinner, has an important announcement. Our hero says, my brother's a jerk. I hate my brother. I never want to see my brother again. He's a con artist. Please come. Give him another chance. He goes to the dinner. The brother says, good to see you guys. Have an announcement.

I'm engaged. And the woman from the coffee shop walks in. That's a hell of a story. Somebody steal that? The problem is the hook. So what does this mean in terms of engaging people about our ideas? It means we need to talk a lot about their problems, not ours, their problems. When we talk about their problems, they engage. A story loop opens. They want to know more. In fact, to my commercial clients I say talk 75% about your customers problems and 25% about your products and you'll sell a lot more products. It's the hook. It's one of the reasons that all media and news outlets it's just bad news, bad news, bad news. Good news doesn't sell. Politicians, it's always bad news. Bad news, it's nauseating. But good news doesn't sell. Nobody's going to run for president going things are really good, but they could be slightly better. Negativity sadly sells. So we have to engage with our clients, find out what our stakeholders problems are and talk about those.

Now, most interestingly, the story isn't over here. We actually have to define the stakeholders problem and then enter into their story where we play the role of guide. Guide would be somebody like Luke Skywalker is the hero, Yoda is the guide, Gandalf is the guide for the guys trying to destroy the ring. Mary Poppins is the guide. In the movie Mary Poppins, it's actually the father who is the hero of the story. The guide shows up in the story to help the hero win the day. Nancy Duarte rightly says, when you're giving a presentation, make the audience the hero of the story. And we want to position ourselves as the guide. Now, many different scholars call the guide a wizard, a mentor, but I just think of them as the guy. You don't want to position yourself as the hero in the story, really for two reasons.

The first is the hero is weak. They're the second weakest character in the story. They are ill equipped, they are afraid, they are unwilling to take action, and they are in desperate need of help. Why would you ever want to position yourself as the hero in the story? Not only that, but if you position yourself as the hero in the story, you remove yourself from your stakeholder story. If I'm in a story playing the hero and you're in a story playing the hero, we are in separate stories. And so while I wish you the best, we're probably not going to do business together. The stakes on this are incredibly high and your audience can intuit whether or not you are the hero or they are the hero. The guide is the one who has conquered the hero's dilemma and is able to help them win the day.

And that's what people are looking for. Nobody's looking for a hero. They're looking for somebody who is a guide. So position yourself as the guide in your stakeholder story. That's the third sound bite, the fourth soundbite is a plan. Now that we've identified what our customer, our hero wants, we've identified their problem. We've positioned ourselves as the guide. We need to build a bridge from their problem to our solution because right now our stakeholder is dealing with cognitive dissonance. They like what we're talking about, but they aren't sure how it's going to work out for them. So a simple three step plan. One, we're going to do this. Two, we're going to do this. Three, we're going to solve the problem, build that cognitive bridge. You know, it's not enough for Luke to go destroy the Death Star. He has to fly into the little trench in the Death Star, and then he has to shoot his laser into the exhaust valve.

I'm sorry, it's not a laser, it's a proton torpedo. Because I got a letter once. I sent him a book, you know, how to date. Solve the first problem first, and then he's got to destroy the Death Star. There's always like these three step plans in movies that the hero has to do. That's because we like really simple steps. And if we give people some simple steps they can take to solve their problem, they tend to engage our message. And so building a bridge from the stakeholders problem to the solution you are proposing is key. If we want people to hear us out and take action next, we actually have to challenge them to take action. We have to say very clearly, here is what I want you to do based on the information that I gave you. And we tend to be very passive aggressive, rather than saying, will you do this?

And when we're passive aggressive and elusive, people just don't take action. I study websites almost for a living, and I look at people's messages and I always read these messages that just say something like, learn more. Learn more. Ladies, if I went up to you at a cocktail party and I said, learn more, are you remotely, I think you've probably learned everything that you need to learn. No, it's buy now. It's vote for me. It's sign the petition. Make it very, very clear what you want people to do. In fact, I was illustrating this here in Nashville at a business conference. I had 250 people and business owners in the room. And I said, hey, I want to give you the best advice you'll ever get as a business owner, but I'm going to give it to you outside. And I just walked out and 250 people said, I think we're supposed to follow them. And so they walked out had my team put a little soapbox there, had a bullhorn, and I said, okay, here's what I wanted to say.

People will go where you tell them to go. And then we went back inside. We have to be crystal clear because as one of my mentors said, do not put people in the mind reading business. What do you want us to do? And many of you have ideas, have products, have important missions that you're a part of, but you're not telling people what to do. You're saying things like, look, if you ever want to know more, call me. Right? It's not clear enough. Our calls to action have to be clear at this point. Our stakeholders are going to engage, but let's make it even better. Let's really make the message even more enticing. The story has to have stakes. Something has to be won or lost based on whether or not people actually take action. There has to be a soundbite that defines the success that they can have, and there has to be a soundbite that defines the failure that will happen if they do not engage our ideas.

Without stakes, there is no story. If our hero, if Liam Neeson is flying across the Atlantic and he gets a call and the call says, hey, your daughter was kidnapped, but it was a college prank, she's actually fine. She's here. She's hoping that you brought your credit card because she'd like to do some shopping in the west end, and she wants to talk about where she's going to go to graduate school. And then it's 60 minutes of Liam Neeson and his daughter shopping, and every dress she tries on is half price. And she's clearly going to Dartmouth. We have lost this plot. The reason is we remove the stakes. There have to be stakes or people just don't pay attention. And so we've got to define what is at stake. Give your stakeholder a vision of a better future, a climactic scene that they can head toward. And then always, even though it's sometimes uncomfortable, warn them about the consequences of not taking action on what you want them to take action on.

These seven soundbites are proven 2500 years of best practices in storytelling to get an audience's attention. And often, you know, sometimes we'll have a candidate that we are for over to the house, invite some friends over, and as they speak, I can pretty much predict whether they're going to win or lose. It doesn't matter how much money they have. What matters is their message and they are telling their story rather than inviting stakeholders into a story, and it will never work. It will never work because people are wired to survive and they want to know how you can help them survive. Never position yourself as the hero in the story. Always position yourself as a guide.

All right, let's test this out. Now, I actually wrote some descriptions. Remember when you went to blockbuster back in the day? You read the back of the vhs thing? I wrote some subscriptions using this exact framework. And here's one for the Bourne identity. Jason Bourne wants to uncover his true identity. It's what the hero wants, but is being hunted by assassins without knowing why. That's the problem. He meets a woman named Marie who helps him navigate his journey of self discovery. She's the God. His journey leads him to investigate clues about his past. Step one, evade pursuers. Step two. And confront the truth about his identity and former role. That's the three step plan born. Must decide whether to face his past or continue to run. If he fails, there's going to be stakes. He will continue playing the pawn in a corrupt system, but if he succeeds, he will uncover the truth and break free from those attempting to kill him. Well, you know, you throw Matt Damon in, I'll give you $20.

But let's talk about commercial stakes. For something like this, I'm not going to name the brand, but it's an eight point five, eight point seven. Five billion dollars. Used car franchise. They dominate the industry because they've used a framework similar to this. Intuitively, I didn't help them, but they used it not just as messaging, but as business strategy. Our customers want to buy a reliable used car, identifying what their stakeholder wanted. The problem is she doesn't trust used car dealers. Right. There's an emotional negativity or a disgust about that. We empathize with her frustration and promise a transparent buying experience. Positioning themselves as the guide, our plan is to help her browse our wide selection. Step one, take a 24 hours test drive. And three, purchase a car with a 30 day money back guarantee. After 24 hours, she's invited to experience our no haggle buying process that helps her avoid stressful negotiations, negative stakes and results in a fair deal on a reliable used car. The positive stakes. This has been turned into an $8.75 billion strategy. Why? They sell used cars just like everybody else. No. They clarified their message and invited customers into a story in which their problems could be resolved and people pay more attention to them than anybody else.

All right. I opened my talk by talking about how I'm not good at writing. The paragraph on the back of the book. So if you've been asleep during this 18 minutes, let me just summarize my talk. You can wake up now. This is what I want you to do. All of us want to be heard and understood, but it's difficult to get people to pay attention, right? That's the problem. This story framework has helped over a million people clarify their message. The key is to use the seven specific soundbites that invite people into a story. Figure out what those sound bites are. When you clarify your message, people will finally engage, but if you don't, you will continue to be ignored.

All right. Be careful how you use this because it really does work. I know what you're saying. I'm never going to get my kid to brush their teeth. I promise. Just try. In fact, it's so powerful that I don't use it. If I'm on an airplane and somebody says, what do you do? I just say, I'm in publishing, because inevitably they're going to open their laptop and want me to look at their website. But not very long ago, this is a true story. I flew into Baltimore. I had a client. Five minutes from the Baltimore airport, an Uber driver is taking me to my client. And the Uber driver says, what brings you to town? Business or pleasure? I said, business. And he said, what do you do?

And I thought, you know, he's legally obligated to let me out of the car. So I just gave a short version of this. You know, a lot of people have ideas. They have products. They have things they want to communicate, but they just can't get anybody to pay attention when they struggle with that. I'm the guy that they call. This guy's name is Christian. And he turns down his radio and he says, you are a very important person. And I said, tell my wife. Now, my client was a government agency, big security outfit. And he pulls his car over at the gates of this agency. There are armed guards everywhere with automatic rifles. And he says, I need your help clarifying my message. I said, christian, I don't know that this is the spot that we want to do this. And literally, they're just, like, peeking out of the booth and looking at me from rooftops as he's pulling over and won't go through the gate.

I said, christian, we got to make this quick. What's going on? He goes, I got to break up with my girlfriend tonight. Christian, this is not what. Okay, tell me what's going on. And he talks to me, and I give him some advice. Most of it was don't say that. You can't say that. Don't do that. And quite honestly, I think she's a little better off without him. However, the point is it's really powerful. People pay attention when we stop telling our story or spitting facts at them or data at them and we invite them into a story about them winning the day. In fact, our life and my life has become so much more meaningful when I stopped telling my own story and tried to start helping other people tell theirs so they could be heard and understood. And your life could be more meaningful too. Play the guide, not the hero. Help other people. People win.

So your assignment is this. Use your seven sound bites and casual conversations, presentations, landing pages and a messaging and marketing campaign and maybe your ideas will be heard too. My promise to you is when you clarify your message then people will listen. Thank you so much.

Storytelling, Communication, Inspiration, Education, Innovation, Leadership, Tedx Talks