The Back of a Napkin
so what i really want to share with you
this morning is this thing that we’re
going to call
visual storytelling why would telling a
story be interesting to all of you so
most of you are high school students i
imagine many of you are planning on
going into college and after you go to
college you’re probably going to go out
there into the working world
i can tell you this from my own
experience whether it’s filling out your
college applications whether it’s
looking for jobs uh as an intern whether
it’s beginning to think about what you
might want to do in your professional
career whether it’s pitching the newest
idea that you have
there is nothing that is going to be
more powerful you for you than being
able to tell a story of what matters to
you
in a way so that it matters to someone
else
and this is what i want to share with
you because there is a really really
great way to do it
visual storytelling
especially in an uncertain and complex
world is super clarifying it’s super
reassuring and it’s super human and so
you see these little characters down
here many of us as we look at the world
out there it’s a little bit overwhelming
but here’s why story is important
when someone comes to us and they say i
don’t know what’s going on can you help
me
we are the ones who have the ability to
tell the story who are going to be able
to say you know what
it’s okay
i got this and what we’ll be able to do
is straighten out all this craziness and
be able to tell a simple little story
that cuts through much of it and gives
us a great sense of reassurance what i’m
going to do with you this morning is
first i want us to practice just a tiny
bit about being visual so i’m going to
draw on my digital screen and while i do
i’m actually going to ask you to draw in
the air in front of you because i want
you to encode a simple visual image into
your mind by drawing it out and then
we’re going to show how that simple
drawing that we make
becomes the essence of the best story
that you’re ever going to tell i want
every one of you to take your finger i
mean it to take a finger and imagine
that this is a pen and i want you to
hold it up in front of you and i want
you to draw a big circle in the air in
front of you try not to bump too much
your neighbors
as you’re doing this i want you to
notice that you can still listen to me
even as you’re drawing in the air you
can stop now keep your finger there and
now go the other direction so think
about it as a nice little visual
exercise and i’m going to draw as well
you can stop now at any time you want
i’m going to show visually what you’ve
just captured you can put your fingers
down now we’ve drawn this circle
it wasn’t just a warm-up circle
you actually just in the air in front of
you drew
a highly sophisticated schematic diagram
of your brain i want you to imagine that
that circle represents the billion
neurons that you have in the in your
brain and the hundreds of billions of
connections and synaptic connections
that you have in those neurons and ask
yourself for a second why be visual well
here’s why do you want to guess
how much of that entire circle that you
just drew that represents all of your
brain how much of that is dedicated to
helping you process visual information
i’ll show it in my drawing
half
half that entire circle you just drew is
how much of your visual mind of your
brain is dedicated towards visual
processing
more of the human brain is dedicated to
processing vision than any other thing
that we do by orders of magnitude
so why do i love visuals in storytelling
because for 97 percent of us for the
vast majority of us we are profoundly
visual creatures and when you have
something to share
the more visual you can be the more
you’re going to tap into that so that’s
cool
but how does that become a story so what
i want you to do for a second is take
that circle that you just drew in the
air
the center was your visual mind but the
edge around it just bear with me is a
story line there’s a line and what i
want you to do is take that circle
and bend it outwards we’re going to take
that circle and we’re going to unpack it
and it’s not going to be smooth because
the story that we’re going to tell is
going to have some bumps
but in the end it’s still going to arc
up to a positive story now what am i
talking about here why does any of this
matter i just want to tell you another
story
and this might be a story that some of
you know but i’m pretty sure i’m going
to be able to add pieces into this story
that you might not have known before
we’re going to call this story
the non-heroes journey once upon a time
there was an american kid who grew up in
the farmlands far outside of town and
the world was very big and the kid was a
little bit confused but what he loved to
do is he loved to read comic books and
he loved to watch superman and he loved
to draw and in particular what he really
loved to draw were cars
and one day when he was old enough
he got a car
he got himself a fancy little fiat
convertible that was super sporty and he
raced that car around the farm fields
he loved it the sense of freedom that he
had in driving that car around the farms
gave him a sense of direction that he
found nowhere else in his life
and he loved it
and then one day he was driving and he
crashed the car wrapped it around a tree
and he died
his heart stopped and the kid died
but
bystanders were able to pull him out of
the wreckage they got him to the
hospital
and doctors were able to revive him
and it took months for him to recover
and as he was lying there in the
hospital bed and then as he was lying
there in his in his parents home in the
bed he felt like he had been given a
gift
of extra days
every single day
he died after all and come back from the
dead back to the living with this extra
day
and in those gift of extra days he
realized as he looked out into the world
he noticed something
that people who worked together
were happier and more successful
than people who worked in conflict with
each other
and he thought that’s a story i’d like
to tell
he went to college
and as he was at college he read an
anthropology textbook
and the author of that textbook said
in the introduction in the book
that if you want to be satisfied in life
if you want to feel like you’re living a
good life
follow your bliss
and the kid said that sounds like a good
idea i’ve always liked photography so he
went out and he bought himself a camera
and he started taking photos and before
long
his bliss found him
it turned out he was really talented at
photography and he got his first job as
a professional photographer so that kid
decided i’m going to make my career
so he went to film school
and he fell in love
he fell in love not just with taking
photos but with making films and he
decided this
is the kind of photography i want to do
this is the kind of storytelling that i
want to do i want to make films but
there was a problem
because you see this kid wanted to make
really optimistic movies
but at that time in the united states
the country was in kind of a bad place
and
studio directors
were saying no adults don’t want to
watch happy syrupy optimistic movies
everybody just wants to watch fairly
cynical fairly dark fairly complicated
movies so we’re not interested in making
your movie thank you but no but the kid
decided not to give up so he made a
decision
he made a choice and what he decided is
okay screw that
i’m going to make my movie for kids
and in particular i’m going to make my
movie
for the kid that i remember being when i
was 12 years old and i was living out on
the farm and the world was way too big
for me to know where i would fit in it i
wanted to make a story and a movie for
that kid
and so he did
and then he remembered that textbook
remember the one where the author said
follow your bliss he remembered that in
that textbook the author had talked
about myths
and in particular the author had talked
about a very consistent storyline that
you find throughout human history
thousands of years no matter where you
go on the planet the author had realized
that whenever you look at a really great
myth from any great culture
the story in many ways is identical
they’re all following a very similar
path
and the kid said well wait a minute if i
want to tell my story in such a way that
i know the story is going to be good
what would happen if i just wrote my
story according to that story line from
the book and he did it and the kid used
that template
to tell the story and we’re going to see
that it’s a bumpy but up kind of a story
just like that circle you bent out a
moment ago from your circle bumpy but it
goes up
that’s the story line and he decided to
use that as the basis for talking about
a group of misfits who along that
storyline end up saving the universe
pretty aspirational idea and he did
you may know this story the kid was
george lucas
the movie we’re referring to was star
wars
the author of that anthropology textbook
was joseph campbell the book was called
the hero with a thousand faces
in that book this storyline that joseph
campbell didn’t invent but uncovered
illuminated was called the monomyth you
may have heard of this is otherwise
known as the hero’s journey
and that combination changed history
there’s lucas with his little fiat
there’s the fiat after the accident
there’s joseph campbell and there’s
what’s the outcome of it and when i say
they changed history this is really
important to go back i know this was
before your time but how many of you
have seen a star wars movie at some
point in your life
it comes from this moment and what
changed history was the realization that
wait a minute audiences actually do want
to watch an optimistic uplifting movie
they really do it changed completely
that film changed how we think about
movies how we think about entertainment
how we think about storytelling all the
way through into business and now
you
are going to do the same thing
as you think about where you’re going to
go next in your lives as you think about
which job you might want to have what
your life looks like who you might want
to make your partner there’s a lot of
stories there and when it comes time to
telling the story of what matters to you
so that it matters to someone else
you’re literally going to use exactly
the same template
that has been used in every one of these
movies and by the way it’s not just
george lucas it’s suzanne collins in the
hunger games it’s the same story it’s jk
rowling and harry potter it’s the same
story it’s j.r.r tolkien and the lord of
the rings it’s the same story it’s the
entire marvel comic universe it’s the
same story it’s iron man it’s all of
them over and over again it’s it’s
captain america it’s all of the same
story and you’re gonna tell it
here’s why because it’s myths that we’re
interested in instead of having a set of
laws our rules for living come down to
us as a story
which is so much easier to absorb and
this was lucas just a couple of years
ago now here’s joseph campbell and
there’s a really important part in the
story you all know this if you watch
star wars it was obi-wan kenobi there’s
gandalf you know it there’s always the
wizard the true wizard in this story for
george lucas was this guy joseph
campbell who had spent his career going
around the world and studying myths and
here’s what the actual hero’s journey
looks like as it was drawn
by joseph campbell it’s a circle
the same as the one you were drawing in
your in the air a moment ago and the
circle goes like this this is the true
classic hero’s journey as it was defined
in that book
we start here and we move this direction
and there’s two worlds there’s a world
up here and a world down here a hero
ventures forth from the common world
into a world of supernatural wonder
down in that world of supernatural
wonder fabulous forces are encountered
and the hero wins a decisive victory and
then the hero comes back into the
regular world with the power to bestow
gifts upon our fellow humanity because
of what we have learned in what we had
to experience
we had to fight a dragon
and we had a wizard who helped us do it
what i’ve done
over the last many years as i realized
because i am a professional business
storyteller that’s what my career has
ended up being that if i could help my
clients tell their story more
effectively the best way to do it is to
take this classic story unbend it as
we’ve already done and then over the
years what i’ve done is i’ve just
polished it up and improved it and
simplified it a little bit and if any of
you are interested here’s the way the
story works
this is a map from left to right we
start here we move through the middle
and we go to the end and you’ll notice
that the story is bumpy it starts with
clarity then we establish trust but then
we introduce fear
oh my gosh there’s someone awful on the
horizon but then we have hope
and oh everything’s going to be lovely
except
then we have sobering reality we’re not
going to achieve that hope doing what
we’ve done before we need to make a bold
change we need to redecide we need to
recommit to whatever this thing is that
we’re going to do and it’s that
recommitment moment right here at the
center where we shift from it will never
be able to be better to it can be and i
want to tell you here by the way when i
told you the george lucas story
i mythologized his own story because i
took the george lucas story and i
applied the hero’s journey to the story
and i don’t know if you were noticing
but as i was going through the george
lucas story each page was numbered
there are 10 steps in the hero’s journey
i told you the whole george lucas story
according to those 10 steps here they
are mapped one to one
and here’s what matters as you become
the storyteller there is a critical
critical moment in this story and it
will be critical in yours
and i’m going to share one more reason
why in a moment
the most important part of you sharing
your idea
your college application your job
interview your internship pitch
the critical moment is when you say
i know how to get us out of this awful
place
and here’s what really matters the most
critical thing is the realization that
you are not alone
there is always with us a wizard
it may be the voice of a grandparent
it may be something that we’ve learned
in the spiritual world but more often
than not the wizard is simply someone we
find in ourselves who says today is not
the day that you’re going to lose it
today is the day you’re going to win it
and it’s the act of making that decision
that brings us back out so i want to ask
yourself with one more quick story where
is your wizard and i’ll give you the
answer
the wizard who will tell you you’re not
alone
you can make the change you need to
is in here
the wizard is in you
i have one more quick story that i want
to share my friend and my co-writer is a
woman named dushka zapata she’s here in
the audience with us and dushka is a
heck of a writer
dushka has written over 8 000 posts
online that have been read by more than
250 million people
andushka came to me as i’ve been working
on this 10-page pitch format and said
dan
i know that your story works for
business pitches but could it work
for a simple story
about
life
and i said douche a good challenge let’s
try it
so in 15 minutes we use the template
that i just showed you
and we told this story and here’s the
way it goes andushka called the story
our rock and i’m just going to read it
to you
once a teacher helped me paint a rock
a long time ago a teacher helped me
paint a rock the plan was to give my
painted rock to my dad as a special gift
but i couldn’t write
i wanted to write a message on the rock
but i didn’t know how to write i was
only three
and i wanted him to remember i wished i
could write because i wanted my dad to
know how i felt
my hope was when the rock would remind
him even on days we didn’t spend
together would remind him of me
but
little kids can’t write what was a
three-year-old to do before knowing how
to write
instead i focused on the colors so
instead of writing i focused on picking
the best rock i could find then on
picking his favorite colors
when the paint had dried i told my
teacher what i wanted the rock to say
and asked her to write it down in pencil
so i could paint over her words and i
had to whisper i had to share with her
something old i wanted only my dad to
see i whispered the words very slowly
she nodded and i picked the final color
to use to paint the words yellow
and she used a sharp pencil she wrote
out my message slowly with a sharp
pencil and told me to take all the time
i needed to paint over those words
after i did i took the pencil and i
wrote my name by myself
and the rock was perfect
i gently placed it inside a cardboard
box i gave it to my dad the next day
when my dad saw the rock he said i love
this rock so much it will always be on
my desk and he kept that rock on his
desk for 43 years
43 years later when my dad died my
sister took the rock from his desk and
placed it in my hands
the rock is now on my coffee table
it reminds me even on days we don’t
spend together
how he once felt about me
so here’s the last thing i’d like to
share with you as you begin to go
through the closing part of your high
school career and move on to college and
what comes next
nothing will be more important to you
nothing
than your ability to tell the story that
matters to you
who are you
who is your wizard
in a way that matters to the person
you’re sharing it with
and you now know how to do that
i want to thank you so much i hope this
was useful good storyteller thank you
thank you