What is the power behind storytelling in business? Which stories of yours are the most successful ones? What are the stories that you should be telling about your business?

In this podcast episode, Sam Carvalho speaks with Gabrielle Dolan about why people are interested in your stories.

Do you need help building your brand? Feel like you don’t even know where to begin when it comes to marketing your practice online? Whether you’re a seasoned clinician with a website in need of a refresh, or you’re fresh out of school needing your very first therapist website, Brighter Vision is the perfect solution.

From building a brand and designing the perfect website to reflect that, to helping you rank higher with search engines. They’ve even created tools to make online marketing simple that are specifically for therapists. Best of all, we’ve worked with them to create a special offer just for our listeners.

Simply visit brightervision.com/joe to learn more and get your first month free of a new website for your private practice.

• They think they are sharing stories: they may call something their story but it is actually not a story, it is a timeline and a list of their products and services.
• Companies that think it is only one story: there are many stories and many aspects to creating a business and you can share them all in various ways.
• They have amazing stories that they are not sharing.

That’s the power of storytelling, where a message can be communicated through a story and that story is still being told and [is] still delivering the same message tens of thousands of years later. (Gabrielle Dolan)

Storytelling has the power to transcend lifetimes because it carries wisdom across generations and therefore links people across space and time to those that came before us, and it gives us the ability to communicate with those who come after us.

In the corporate world, storytelling also has powerful benefits:

I think what happens in business and why it is really powerful in business is [because] we have a bit of a bias towards facts and figures and data in business which we need … but what storytelling does [is that] it taps into emotion. (Gabrielle Dolan)

When you tap into emotion through storytelling in a business:

1. Helps you understand the message better,
2. Helps you remember the message,
3. If you had to, you could retell it to others without it losing its meaning.

Successful stories are relatable stories

You may think for a moment that you have nothing of value to share, but that is not the case. We are more alike to others than we realize, and it is often through being truthful, honest, and real about ourselves that we can connect to others with that same authenticity and rawness.

One thing we all have in common is we were all kids and we’ve all done something stupid, and we’ve all done things we’ve regretted, and we’ve all done something we’ve learned a lesson from so those ones are really relatable and in our life, we have so many of those stories … the real skill is how do you take those stories and connect it to the business message you’re trying to communicate? (Gabrielle Dolan)

The best stories you can tell are often the ones that similar people have shared, or find valuable, or relate to them in some way because people create connection through emotion, and often we share our emotions through secure and stable connections.

What becomes important is how you bring your story into your business, and how you can write it so that it brings the business, the customer, and you all closer together.

What types of stories every business should have

1. Creation story

How the company was founded, essentially the origin story. This can also relate to how the company started through the production of the products.

2. Culture story

Stories that the owners and leaders share about the values of the company and what these values and principles mean to them. These stories are sometimes or can be, more personal.

3. Customer stories:

This relates to how you share stories about your customers. This more than sharing customer testimonials, this is when you make the customer the hero of the story and essentially is about how you serve and empower the clients of your company.

4. Community story:

What are you doing in your community through the good impact of the company? This story can also relate to what are your employees doing – it does not have to be related to any product or service that you deliver – it is the opportunity for you to highlight your employees.

5. Challenge story:

This is the story about how your company overcame obstacles and how it responded to situations that went wrong. It is the story where you highlight some of the strengths of the company, and what it did to succeed in sour odds.

My advice … is don’t get too hung up on deciding which story fits into which category. The idea of having these five categories is to really help you think of just all the different types of stories you could share. (Gabrielle Dolan )

How storytelling can increase brand loyalty

Through authentic storytelling, you can create an emotional connection, and once this emotional connection has been set up and strengthened, it can be difficult to pull away from.

Once customers hear a backstory or the explanation of the company’s philosophy, and they connect with it positively, that story will stick with them for a long time afterward and will inform their future purchasing decisions, most likely to favor the company with the story that they felt the most connected to.

Books mentioned in this episode

[SAM CARVALHO]
Do you need help building your brand? Feel like you don’t even know where to begin when it comes to marketing your practice online? Whether you’re a seasoned condition with a website in need of a refresh or you’re fresh out of school needing your very first therapist website, Brighter Vision is the perfect solution. From building a brand and designing the perfect website to reflect that, to helping you rank higher with search engines, they’ve even created tools to make online marketing simple that are specifically for therapists. Best of all, we worked with them to create a special offer just for our listeners. Simply visit brightervision.com/Joe to learn more and get your first month free of a new website for your private practice. Again, that’s brightervision.com/joe.

Welcome to the Marketing a Practice podcast with me, Sam Carvalho where you’ll discover everything you need to know about marketing and branding your business. To find out more about how I can help you brand new business visit www.practiceofthepractice.com/branding. And if you’d like to see some examples of my design work, be sure to follow me on Instagram at Samantha Carvalho Design.

Hi there. Thanks so much for joining me today on the Marketing a Practice podcast. Today, we have Gabrielle Dolan with us. Gabrielle is considered a global expert in business storytelling and real communication. She is a highly sought-after keynote speaker and bestselling author of seven books. Her time list is extensive, including the likes of Visa, Amazon EY, Uber, Accenture, Telstra, Australian post, and the Obama Foundation. The professional highlights of her career so far is meeting Barack Obama while delivering storytelling training for the Obama Foundation. Gabrielle is the founder of Jargon Free Fridays and her dedication to the industry was recognized when she was awarded Communicator of the Year for 2020 by the International Association of Business Communicators. Hi Gabriel, thanks so much for chatting to us today.
[GABRIELLE DOLAN]
Thanks Sam. I’m really excited to be here.
[SAM]
So what was it like meeting Barack Obama?
[GABRIELLE]
Oh, that was very, very impressive. So that happened December, 2019. I was asked to run storytelling training for the Obama Foundation, which is a very special highlight in itself. They run a leadership program for 200 leaders and it was across the Asia Pacific region. It was five days in Malaysia. He came and spoke on the last day. We were told we would not meet him at all. There was like, no chance we’d meet him at all. We’d actually thought he’d left the building and then the 200 leaders went into this room for the official photograph and being one of the speakers we weren’t invited in. So they all went in and then next minute, Barack Obama walks into the room, surrounded by a security guard.

We were, there were a few speakers outside and we’re all very excited and security guards come rushing up saying you’re not allowed to take photos and you’re not allowed to approach him. And I was like, okay. But then when he came out, he sort of had to walk past us, like about 20 feet away ad he noticed that we were the speakers and he broke ranks and came over and thanked us and shook our hands. Yes, it was sort of one of those times you walk away going, you can’t fake that authenticity. I was actually surprised how, I reckon it took me about 30 minutes for my heart to settle down. It was so exciting.
[SAM]
I can imagine. I’ve actually recently read Michelle Obama’s book and I really, really enjoyed it. So yes, I’m also a huge fan.
[GABRIELLE]
I’ve listened to his book and I’m reading his books, so very excited to meet him in person.
[SAM]
Yes. Awesome. So can you share with us a bit about your story and how you got to where you are now?
[GABRIELLE]
Yes. Well, I used to work predominantly in corporate. So I worked for one of Australia’s largest banks and it was probably about 20 years ago in senior leadership roles and in change management roles. I sort of started to notice that when I communicated using a story, whether it was a public story or even a personal story of mine, the message seemed to get through. People not only seem to understand the message more, but they sort of would remember it and people would still be asking me about it years later. And I remember just thinking there’s something in this, there’s something in the power of sharing personal stories to communicate a business message, whether that be values or a strategy or a change, or just to get your message across. I looked around and there was sort of no one really doing anything around storytelling, especially in Australia. There has been a couple of books written by a couple of people from the US and I just decided that this is something I think was really important and I also thought this is something I could teach other people. So I left almost 17 years ago and have been working ever since teaching people how to communicate more effectively through storytelling.
[SAM]
That’s awesome. So what are some of the common mistakes that you would say companies make when it comes to storytelling?
[GABRIELLE]
There’s a few. I think probably the most common mistake I see people make is that they think that they’re sharing stories, so they will call something else story. So whether this is a large organization or just a small practice to say, this is our story, and when I look at it, it’s actually not a story. It’s mostly a timeline. So it’s a timeline of the company, when they started and what products and services they have. And it’s not a story. It might be relevant information, but it’s not a story. So that’s the most common mistake I see, people thinking they’re sharing stories and they’re not actually stories. Another common mistake I see is people thinking it’s just one story. So they might, for example, share the story about how the company started, which is a good reason to share. I’ve sort of just shared why I started my own business, but that’s just one story and it just communicates one aspect. So I sort of say they’re probably the two most common mistakes. I see people not sharing a story thinking they’re not sharing a story and just sharing one story.
[SAM]
And you’ve already kind of touched on the power of storytelling and I think it’s become quite a common theme within the marketing sphere, especially over the last few years where people have definitely cottoned onto the fact that storytelling is a powerful way to kind of market a business. Why do you think stories are so powerful in business?
[GABRIELLE]
I think they’re powerful in business. Well, I think they’re powerful, full stop. I recently just came back, I spent a week in central Australia at, [inaudible 00:07:05], you may know it as, and learned a lot about the indigenous stories. And you need to look no further than Australia’s First Nations People that have been communicating their values and their culture and their expected behavior through stories. And these stories have been going on for tens of thousands of years. And Australia’s first nations, people are the oldest culture in the world going back at least 65,000 years. Some people say it’s a 140,000 years. So that’s the power of story where a message can be communicated through a story ad that story still being told and still delivering the same message tens of thousands of years later.

So I think what happens in business and why it’s really powerful in business is we have a bit of a bias towards facts and figures and data in business, which we need. You still need all that stuff, but what storytelling does it taps into emotion? And when you tap into emotion through a story, three things happen, it can help you understand the message better, it can help you remember the message, and if you had to it, you can retell it to others without losing its meaning. That example I just gave you about Australia’s First Nations People is a great example of that, but that the same challenges are in business. You know, you might be wanting to communicate the values of your company. You might be wanting to communicate something that’s really important. And if you can communicate that through in story where people actually understand it and remember it, and if they have to can retell it to other people, then that’s the real power of it. Because ultimately story taps into emotion and as human beings, we are emotional beings and we are actually hardwired, we’re hardwired share stories and to tell stories.
[SAM]
And I think as you’ve kind of touched on it is relatable. So I think no matter what kind of business you’re in, we’re all part of the human experience. And I think when you’re sharing stories within a business context you’re kind of reaching out to that human experience in your customers and doing what you can to relate to them.
[GABRIELLE]
Yes, absolutely. And you’ve sort of hit the nail on the head. The real successful stories will be relatable. So often when I run my training workshops, a lot of people will go, “I don’t have any stories, you know, because I’m just normal. Like nothing really is great to happen to me. Nothing’s really bad happened to me.” And I go, “We all have stories and it’s those day-to-day stories like something just about, you could have broken your leg when you fell off your bike when you were a kid, or it could be something on the weekend.” They’re the relatable ones because one thing we all have in common is we’ve all been kids and we’ve all done something stupid and we’ve all done things we regret and we’ve all done something we’ve learned a lesson from. So those ones are really relatable and our life, we have so many of those stories. The keys, the real skill is how do you take those stories and connect it to the business message you’re trying to communicate.
[SAM]
So I know you mentioned earlier that one of the mistakes around storytelling within business is that people kind of just focus on one story. Can you kind of give some tips around what types of stories every business should have?
[GABRIELLE]
Yes, in my latest book, I talk about five different types of stories. I had so much fun writing my latest book because it gave me the opportunity to just interview and speak to so many different companies from around the world on what they’re doing with storytelling and hearing their amazing stories. I didn’t going into researching for this book. I didn’t have a number in mind, but I knew, I remember Sam, when I was mapping out the chapters, there was a chapter or a part of the book that was titled the X number of stories every business needs. But I had no idea what that X number would be. As it turned out or from all the stories I’ve heard, it sort of fell into five buckets or categories I guess. And they all start with C. So I’ll just go through them relatively quickly.

The first one is the creation story. So this is either how the company started or, often people will call it the founder story of the origin story. The reason I called it, the creation story, not just because it starts with C, but that did help with all the other accounts, it’s also about how a product starts. So you could have a story around how the company started, for example, but you might be delivering a service and then there could be a reason about why that started, like why are you delivering that service? Why are you passionate about that? So it could be a creation story, not only about how the company started, but a creation story about how a particular product or service started that you are delivering.

The other story is the culture story. So these are the stories either about the stories that the leaders or the owners are sharing about the values of the company and what they mean to them. These are normally personal stories and they talk about, you know what this means. So if you’ve got a value of integrity, for example, sharing a personal story about that, what that means to me, and also sharing stories of your team, living those values. So again, if you want to be known as customer service, like exceptional customer service sharing stories of your employees or your teams doing that.

The other one is customer stories. So this is how you share stories about your customers. Now this goes beyond just the customer testimony or something like that, but it’s making the customer the hero of the story, which sort of by default highlights what you do. I’ll give you a really, really quick example for this. One of the companies I interviewed for the book was Columbia restaurants in Florida in America. They’re one of the oldest, in fact, they’re the oldest restaurant in Florida. They’re a fifth generation restaurant and they do amazing things with stories. Actually, I dedicated a whole chapter to them because they do so many good things. And one of the things they did this year is on Valentine’s day. They shared a story about one of their customers. This couple had been celebrating their wedding anniversary at Columbia restaurant for 72 years in a row.

They shared the story about they came there on their first wedding anniversary and they came back on their second wedding anniversary and coincidentally got seated at the same table. Columbia restaurants have been holding that table for them every single year on their wedding anniversary. So you read that story and you go, “Wow, that is so cool.” It makes the customer the hero, but at the same time, you’re thinking it must be a pretty special restaurant and it’s a pretty cool thing that the restaurant are doing reserving that table for them. So I think that’s a great example of a customer story, making your customer, the her.

The other type, the other two types of story or community stories, so what are you doing in your community? What are the good things you’re doing, not necessarily yes, what your company’s doing, but what are your employees doing? And it doesn’t have to be related to anything that you’re doing, any product or service you deliver, but you might have an employee that volunteers at the local life saving guard or something, and just highlight them, because if you’re showing that you have really great customer community minded employees, then that reflects well on your company, just like the customer stories.

And the final one is the challenge story. This is how you’ve responded to challenges in the organization. We had so many examples coming out of the last 12 months with coronavirus. I was tempted to actually have a sixth category called corona stories, coronavirus stories, but I thought I would just put them into the challenge stories, because again, sometimes the stories we share about how we’ve responded to challenges, or when things have gone wrong, they’re the ones that are really relatable. And they’re the ones that really can show our values and our priorities and people really respond to them. So they’re the five stories, creation, culture, customer challenge, community. My advice to your listeners is don’t get too hung up on deciding which story fits into which category. The idea of having these five categories is to really help you think of just all the different types of stories you could share.
[SAM]
Well, I was actually just thinking while you were talking that a lot of these stories make for great social media content. Like you were saying with the culture one, for example, like showing how people within your organization, or even you are living out those values. To me that sounds like a great social media post. It’s almost like this can be ongoing content that you’re kind of putting out there.
[GABRIELLE]
Yes, yes. So two really good points in there. It is absolutely ongoing content that you’re putting out there finding. I mean, you look at that customer story, that would just be one story that you could share and so how do you keep finding these stories and sharing them, but yes, social media lends itself beautifully to stories. So what companies, what I’ve noticed companies starting to do really well recently is they used to just sort of share these stories internally, so on internal social media sites like Yammer or Workplace, but what I’ve noticed now is they’re starting to share them externally on things like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn. And that way, I mean I think how we communicate internally and externally is blurring because by default, when you communicate externally on a social media platform, you’re communicating to both your customers and your employees, because they’re both on that site. But yes, it you can share the story in the written format that the Columbia restaurant did with this couple that had celebrated their wedding anniversary, 72 years. You could do a really quick video. It doesn’t have to be a polished video. Just do it on your phone and put it out there. It really lends itself to social media.
[SAM]
And I think what I’ve even noticed kind of with the rise in storytelling over the past few years is a break away from kind of even your corporate companies that historically kind of tried to maintain that professional facade and never really wanted to get too personal with their customers. I mean, even just in South Africa here the way the banks are advertising all of them have kind of resorted to the storytelling into, as we mentioned earlier, trying to relate to that human experience.
[GABRIELLE]
When I first started doing this nearly 17 years ago, it was still very much a case of personal is personal, business is business. Don’t mix the two, keep emotion out of business. Like seriously who was coming up with these rules and saying this because it doesn’t matter whether it’s business or not. It’s human beings and by default we’re emotional beings and we like working with people we like, and we like buying from brands. We like employing people we like. So I think the business world has started to realize that we need to move away from this heavy reliance on just logic and facts and figures that people don’t connect with and find a more human way to connect. I also think in the last 12 months when we’ve been physically disconnected from everyone, that there’s a greater realization that we need this human connection and you can get human connection virtually via stories. That’s the way you can do it.
[SAM]
Hmm, absolutely. And I think it’s interesting that you touched on COVID as well, because I think that’s going to provide a basis for storytelling for the next 10 years, at least because that was a shared experience that we all kind of went through.
[GABRIELLE]
Yes, and it comes back to you when you said before the stories are relatable. I think for the first time, well not I think, it is the first time in all our lives where we’ve all gone through something that’s a shared experience. You know, we could talk the year before that, I had clients speaking about how terrible it is for Australia and the bush fires, but that was a shared experience for some people in Australia, not even all of Australia, but something like COVID created a shared experience that every single, literally every single person in the world was impacted by. And the reason that shared experience is powerful is because it’s relatable. So I think sometimes when you’re sharing stories, it’s trying to find that relatable story that is a shared experience where it could be getting in trouble with your mum and for lying or he keeps telling you you’re wrong. And like, it’s all those things that are shared experience.
[SAM]
So can you share a bit about how you can increase brand loyalty through stories?
[GABRIELLE]
Yes. So one of the power of what we’re talking about is story creates an emotional connection. And once you have an emotional connection, it’s very hard to pull away from that. Even the title of my book, Magnetic Stories, I was looking for a title of the book that’s sort of, I wanted the book to sort of say, once you hear a story, you have this like instant attraction to the brand that’s very hard to pull away from. And that’s when I got the idea with magnetic. So I’m like a magnet it’s like this instant attraction that’s very hard to pull away from it and it’s very hard to forget. So that’s what I think we’re stories can help with brand loyalty. I’ll give you a quick example. Are you a fan of Barbie? Did you ever have a Barbie growing up?
[SAM]
Yes.
[GABRIELLE]
You did? Okay. I wasn’t a fan of Barbie at all. I must admit I was a bit of a, I wasn’t actually into dolls. So I played a lot more cricket and football than I ever did playing with dolls. So I wasn’t into dolls. And over the last few decades, when Barbie’s sort of got a bad name for being a bad role model for girls and bad body image and all that, I happily went along with that story because it was very convenient for me to believe that. But researching for the book, I actually came across the backstory to Barbie and how Barbie started Barbie was invented by Ruth Handler, who was the wife of one of the co-founders of Mattel that make Barbie. And this was during the fifties. And what she noticed that when her two children played with their respective dolls, so she had a son and a daughter, and her son was named Ken and a daughter was named Barbara and yes, Ken and Barbie were named after children, but what she noticed when they were playing with their dolls they both pretended to be adults.

And all Barbie could imagine herself as was a caregiver where Ken could see himself as an astronauts, a firefighter, a superhero. So she pitched this idea to the execs at Mattel to come up with 3-D version of a doll, with clothes that they could change into and different sort of like executive Barbie or CEO Barbie or nurse Barbie. They didn’t like the idea at first, but she persisted and in 1959, Barbie debuted at the New York toy fair. And it’d be fair to say the rest is history, but there’s a quote from Ruth Handler saying that “for me, Barbie always represented that the little girl could have choices.” And for philosophy with Barbie is that the girl could herself as anything she wanted to be and that women always had choices. Now, as soon as I heard that story, it completely changed my opinion of the brand Barbie.

It will be brand loyalty and the reality too, it’ll influence my future buying decisions. So I’ve got two daughters, 17 and 20, and I never bought them a Barbie, but maybe any future grandkids that come along, maybe they might get a Barbie because, and I could, I would give them the story, give them the Barbie and tell them the story behind it. One of the first questions you asked me is what are some companies doing wrong with storytelling? Another thing they’re doing wrong is that they have these amazing stories like this and they’re not sharing them. So I had to research pretty hard to find that story. It is on the Mattel website, but it’s sort of hidden, like it’s not said in a really succinct way. I imagine what a missed opportunity that, that story isn’t on every single Barbie packaging, like it should just be.
[SAM]
It should be. I think, especially in today’s climate of like women kind of rising up I think that would make a huge impact to the sales.
[GABRIELLE]
Yes, yes, definitely. So that message was as relevant today as it was in the fifties and sixties.
[SAM]
Yes, crazy. So we’ll definitely have a link to your book, magnetic stories in the show notes, but is there any more you can kind of share about your book or just the journey of writing it?
[GABRIELLE]
Yes. I think probably one of the main things in the book is, the book’s separated into three parts. The first part is all around what is brand and what is brand storytelling and why we need it. And I think it, I hope it gives the reader clarity around what is brand and what is brand storytelling, which we’ve sort of covered in this interview. The second thing I hope the story gives them is knowledge. So if you are interested in implementing storytelling or how do you go about doing brand storytelling, it gives you the knowledge of how to do it. So I talk in detail a lot more about those five stories and give heaps and heaps of examples. I also talk about how you would go about implementing. So how do you define what you want your brand to be? How do you teach people around the power of storytelling and how do you start doing this, collecting stories, communicating them, and most importantly, how to create them? So what do you do that creates stories?

So I then, and then I feature so many different companies, but I feature five in particular. And I just hope through all the stories I’ve shared in the book. It gives readers the inspiration do it. So I hope from the book, people get clarity, get knowledge, but most importantly, get inspiration that they could actually do it themselves.
[SAM]
Sounds awesome. So, as I said, we’ll definitely have a link to that in the show notes. And then Gabrielle, I believe that you have a bit of an offering for our listeners here today. Can you tell us a bit about that?
[GABRIELLE]
Yes. I think if you’re interested in storytelling and again, whether you’re a big company or just a really small running your own practice in, or even just thinking about how you can implement storytelling yourself, I have, it’s called a 7 Day Storytelling Starter Kit. So what it is, sort of what it says is is what it is. It starts with seven days. So you’ll get an email from me once a day for seven days containing a really short video that’s just going to get you started. It’s just going to help you think about how you could share these stories. It’s going to give you some activities to think about all the stories you could share, all the different ways you could share them. So it’s just a really good way to get started. So that’s just on my website. You can download that and get started on that. There’s a lot of other free stuff on my website, if you just go to the resources page, but that’s the best place to get started.
[SAM]
Awesome. So that starter kit will be available gabrielledolan.com/starterkit. And again, we’ll have that link available in the show notes. And Gabrielle, if people wanted to get in touch with you to improve their storytelling within their business, what is the best way for them to do that?
[GABRIELLE]
I would say go to my website, gabrielledolan.com and just send me an email or LinkedIn. I’m on LinkedIn as well. So that’s probably the two best places to contact me.
[SAM]
Great. And if every private practice owner in the world were listening right now, what would you want them to know?
[GABRIELLE]
I would want them to know the power of stories. That’s what I want them to know and know that their stories, it doesn’t matter. They might not think anyone’s interested, but people are interested. It’s one of the most powerful ways to connect and engage with both our customers and our employees.
[SAM]
Great. Thank you so much for being on the Marketing a Practice podcast.
[GABRIELLE]
My pleasure. It’s been so much fun.
[SAM]
Thanks again to Brighter Vision for being the sponsor on this podcast episode. Remember to hit over to brightervision.com/Joe to see the special offerings they have available for you.

Thanks for listening to the Marketing a Practice podcast. If you need help with branding your business, whether it be a new logo, rebrand, or you simply want some print flyer designed head on over to www.practiceofthepractice.com/branding. And if you’d like to see some examples of my design work, be sure to follow me on Instagram at Samantha Carvalho Design. Finally, please subscribe, rate, and review this podcast on iTunes if you like what you’ve heard. Talk to you soon.

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