So this guy walks into a bar...
It’s in Bethlehem, and there are these three rich guys in there. The way they’re dressed, you can tell they’re not from around here. And they’re talking about this weird star…
Now, the details are a little off, but you’ve heard this before…
We’re hard wired for stories. They stop us in our tracks. We go into a sort of trance when a good story gets going.
It’s how we celebrate holidays.
Imagine Christmas, Chanukah, Independence Day, Thanksgiving, Valentine’s Day – without the stories.
Yeah, right…
Christmas alone, there’s the three wise men, all the inns booked to the hilt, the barn and the stable, the cruel king Herod. For Chanukah, it was the Pharaoh vs. Maccabees.
Point is, one or two good stories can lift your point of view to a whole new level for your audience.
Napoleon Hill’s best selling book Think and Grow Rich has sold well over 70 million copies.
Assuming you’ve read it, can you recite the 13 principles on which it was based? Probably not.
How about the story behind it?
On a dark rainy night in a luxurious office, billionaire industrialist Andrew Carnegie challenges Hill with the idea of writing the book, and gives him 30 seconds to make a fateful decision…
Which do you remember – principles, or story?
J Peterman was – and still is – a master at this. Case in point, how to sell a leather jacket:
“I would rather wake up in the middle of nowhere than in any city on earth.”
That’s what he was about.
Contrary to popular belief, he didn’t jump that fence at the end of “The Great Escape,” but he wanted to.
The insurance company wouldn’t let him. But he did most everything else.
Raced dirt bikes. Piloted a 1945 Stearman.
Often in a jacket like this.
Get the idea?
It’s just a jacket. But wrapped in story, it becomes an icon, part of a legend.
Any product or service you offer is fair game. You just need a little imagination.
Wrap it in a story for the holidays.
Because, as Albert Einstein said, resting his chalk on the blackboard ledger…
“Imagination beats knowledge.”
Happy (and profitable) holidays!
– Mike
