How To Become a More Impactful Storyteller
The Amplified Impact Podcast
November 29th, 2023
I’ve discovered the superpower of storytelling and how it shapes everything.
From my childhood writing stories to now, I’ve realized its incredible impact, especially in business and connections.
Here are three keys to better storytelling: Start specific, show transformation, and add meaning.
And guess what? I’m building Seven Figure Storytelling, part of the upcoming beyond the Apex community launching soon.
It’s not just a course…it’s a community for learning, growing, and achieving together. Stay tuned for early access.
TWEETABLE QUOTE:
“Story is the source code of the human experience.”
– Anthony Vicino
LEAVE A REVIEW if you liked this episode!!
Let’s Connect On Social Media!
instagram.com/theanthonyvicino
Join an exclusive community of peak performers at Beyond the Apex University learning how to build a business, invest in real estate, and develop hyperfocus.
Learn More About Investing With Anthony
Invictus Capital: www.invictusmultifamily.com
Multifamily Investing Made Simple Podcast
Passive Investing Made Simple Book: www.thepassiveinvestingbook.com
Episode Transcript:
Anthony Vicino:
What’s up, everybody? Welcome back to the podcast. So I have been talking a lot recently over the last couple of months about storytelling because it’s become very, very clear to me that storytelling is is a superpower. It is something that I I just underestimated how impactful it was. I think that’s because I took for granted, because my life has been about stories for so long. You know, if you rewind when I was a kid, my dad was paying me write him short stories. He cultivated this thing in me that at the time, I didn’t think of myself as a writer. I didn’t think of myself as a storyteller. I couldn’t understand why he felt compelled to try and nurture this in me as like a 13 year old kid.
Anthony Vicino:
But I did it. I went along with it. And then many, many years later, when I found myself in hard traits and I had to figure out, what am I going to do with my life, I fell back on that. I fell back on that thing that my dad had cultivated. And thankfully, it happened to be just an incredibly powerful skill for a lot of the things that I was trying to accomplish in life, specifically around business and just interacting and making an impact on the world. And so because it’s like a superpower of mine, like something that I’m very good at or maybe above average at, I just took for granted that everybody’s good at it or that it is just this thing. And I think that’s very common with us. Regardless of what you’re great at, you probably take for granted that you’re great at it.
Anthony Vicino:
And I think that can make it very, very difficult to triangulate, okay, what is the thing that I’m called to do in the world? And what’s the meaning, the purpose that I can have and share with people? Because the things that you’re great at, you just take for granted, you think everybody’s great at, and so it doesn’t seem all that fantastic to you. And so this is where getting other people’s perspective of you and saying, hey, what do you notice about me that I seem to be better than average at? And sometimes people around you, your loved ones, your friends, your family, they see you more clearly than you see yourself, and they can point out, hey, you’re really good at this thing. And you’re like, oh, I never knew that. Well, storytelling is that thing for me. And I want to share that with you guys. Because what I’ve noticed in working with entrepreneurs and capital raisers investors now is that if you can master storytelling, if you can master how to tell your story in a compelling way or the story of your business or the story of your product, you can unlock unlimited growth and unlimited impact. Because at the end of the day, people don’t buy products. People buy products because of the story that they tell themselves about that product.
Anthony Vicino:
For instance, this sharpie. I did not buy the Sharpie because it’s a Sharpie. I bought the Sharpie because of the story that I told myself about this Sharpie. Namely, that it would be great for writing, it would look great on this piece of paper, that it would be permanent, it would help me dial into the most important things because I can only write in this big, fat Sharpie and so I can’t get too detailed and granular on my to do list. Right. It’s the story that I told myself about this thing, but not the actual product itself. And once you understand that, you can unlock incredible amounts of growth in your business and just in your life as well. Because I think one of the core human desires is to be seen, to be heard, to connect in a meaningful way with others.
Anthony Vicino:
And the way that we do that is through story. I firmly believe that story is the source code of the human experience. It is how we make sense of the universe. And so understanding how to package and convey ideas is a superpower. And I want to share with you three things that are going to make you a more potent storyteller. Number one is to start your stories in a specific moment in time. It’s very easy to feel like when you start into your story, whatever story it is, it’s very easy to think like, oh, the person listening isn’t going to be very interested, and they don’t have enough context. So I need to quickly give them context.
Anthony Vicino:
And context is very, very hard to get without going broad and very vague. And so you’re like, before I can even tell you about the thing that happened, let me first explain the world. Start doing some world building and start telling you about these things that we feel as a storyteller. You need to understand about what’s happening. And the truth is, the audience doesn’t need that. Typically, for the most part, Lord of the Rings, they had a little, I think, a very short intro, maybe saying like, here’s the rings and the silence to bind them, or darkness and all that stuff. But then eventually it very quickly gets directly into the story. Same with Star Wars.
Anthony Vicino:
Very quick context and then straight into the story. You don’t need as much context because you’re not telling a story that’s set in a galaxy far away or in Middle Earth. You don’t need that. And so you’re boring your audience, and you’re making it very hard for them to connect with you instantly. So the way that you start in a very specific moment is you find a person who is in a dramatic moment, and you tell the story from the perspective of how they feel in that moment, for instance, which is more impactful. When I was a teenager, I was stressed. I was angsty all the time. I felt like I wasn’t understood.
Anthony Vicino:
And so I kind of like recoiled into my own cocoon. I didn’t have a lot of friends, and it made it very hard for me to feel like I had purpose or I had value in the world. And so I went through all my high school years feeling alone and frustrated and angsty. That’s a very broad story that tells you really not much about me personally beyond the fact that I just went through a teenage experience. But if it was more specific, like starting in a very specific moment, let’s say, for instance, I’m just going to pull a story out of my hat, which is okay, so when I was 17, so when I was 16 years old, my family went through a massive upheaval. My dad got divorced just two years before, and suddenly he’s getting remarried. And I remember my sisters, I have two biological sisters. And now our families were about to blend with this woman who had two of her own daughters and one son.
Anthony Vicino:
Now our family was suddenly doubling, and I went from being the one son in the house to one of two and suddenly one of five children, rather than just one of three and one of six children, actually. And I remember feeling like I already had a really hard time being seen by my dad in particular, who was often away in the military and not super emotional and hands on. And suddenly the number of people I was having to compete against for love and attention just doubled. And I remember feeling alone, like deeply, deeply alone, and a house full of strangers suddenly because I wasn’t super close with my biological sisters and suddenly my stepsiblings, they all were very, very close and I felt like an alien outsider. So I was struggling every day, one to be seen and to be heard by my dad, but then also to fit into this new family dynamic. And that really impacted and carried through as I transferred schools and started high school my junior year in a new school with new people that I had never met. And they all grew up in this small farm town in Minnesota. And I spent the next two years in trying to navigate these waters and really, really struggling and it kind of carried through for the next five years.
Anthony Vicino:
Okay, anyways, not a great story, never told that story before, but it’s true. And which one connects more? Which one actually gives you more details, gives you more context, gives you something to hook onto. It’s a story with specific details, right? Starting with a character who is in a particularly dramatic moment. So that’s tip number one, start somewhere specific. Number two, you have to have a transformation. Everybody loves an underdog story because the underdog story has the ability to go from being the underdog to being the winner. They can go from being in the pits to being on the peak. We do not resonate with people who start on the peak and just stay at the peak.
Anthony Vicino:
It’s not an interesting story. You can start your story with somebody who’s at the peak, they lose everything and then they come back. We love those stories, but it always has to have a transformation in some meaningful way. If you tell a story where the character is the same, they are unchanged at the end as they were from the beginning. It is a terrible story. They have to go through a transformation of some type. So going back to that story of me struggling to integrate with my family, I could say by the time I graduated high school, though, I had started to integrate with my sister, my one stepsister in particular, and her and I started hanging out 90% of the time. We went on road trips.
Anthony Vicino:
We were in a horrible car accident together in the middle of winter as she was driving me across Wisconsin to go on a date with this girl. And we had all of these amazing experiences, and then we went and traveled Europe, just the two of us, a couple of years later. And I learned through that relationship with my sister what family really is, more so than I ever did with any of my biological siblings. And it was something that I carried through for my life, which was that you can’t choose your family, but you can choose your friends. And that is more important because those friends can be made into true family. Okay, so that’s a transformation, going from not understanding family and how to be seen and be heard and whatnot, and feeling stuck and then suddenly understanding how to connect with people or whatever, I don’t know. So there’s a transformation, there’s a change. The character is going through some kind of progression in that story.
Anthony Vicino:
But it’s important that your story always has that. If you don’t, it’s just going to be a really lame story. People are not going to enjoy it. Number three, your story has to have meaning, has to have some reason for being told. If it’s just, hey, there’s this interesting thing that happened that can be fine, it can be entertaining, but it’s not going to move an audience with resonance. And if you do not imbue your story with meaning, then it’s going to be left to your audience to imbue it with their own. And they will all stories are given some kind of meaning, which might just be, oh, is a stupid story. That could be the meaning.
Anthony Vicino:
It could just be, oh, Anthony Steep until steepest stories. That could be the meaning. If you’re not intentional about tying down your story to an idea, then your audience is going to have to make it on their own. And they just generally do not go where you think they should go or where you want them to go. So it’s on to you to navigate and direct that attention through something that we call the Tie Down. If you want to learn more about that in storytelling in general, I’m putting this all into a program called Seven Figure Storytelling. It is going to be part of the beyond the Apex community, which we’re going to be launching in January. So this is the university, the school, the academy that I wish I had had when I was a kid, which is like teaching all the things that can make you a successful, happy, joyous, meaningful, purpose filled life that they didn’t teach us in school.
Anthony Vicino:
So we’re going to be talking about the four spheres of influence mindset, health, wealth, and skills. And within that, that’s not really a course. It’s going to be a community. That’s really what I’m trying to build here is a place where we can all come together. People who are like minded and have similar ambitious goals of realizing their greatness can come together. We can learn together. We can share. We can hold each other accountable.
Anthony Vicino:
We can continue to grow. There’s going to be monthly group coaching calls, and there’s going to be a bunch of little sub courses on each one of these topics. Storytelling is the one that I’m working on at the moment. That’s why it’s so top of mind, and I’m excited to share it with you guys. If you’re interested in learning more about that, stay tuned. I’m going to be dropping a link here in the next couple of days to a landing page where you can go sign up for early bird discounted rates on the community and everything like that. We’d love to have you there. It would be amazing.
Anthony Vicino:
I think it’s going to be a lot of I learned a lot from launching the last free community and realizing free communities are not great for a couple of reasons. But this one, it’s not free, but it’s awesome because I think we’re going to be able to attract people who are actually going to help you move meaningfully forward in life, surrounding yourself with the people who are where you want to be and doing the things you want to be doing. I think that’s the key. And we’re going to cultivate an audience or a community that does just that. So stay tuned. More to come. Don’t have anything for you to go click on or go sign up for right now, but just wanted to tease you a little bit with what’s coming down the pipeline. So thank you, as always, for being here, guys and gals.
Anthony Vicino:
We’ll catch you in the next episode.
This Week On YouTube
These 3 Daily Habits Made Me A Millionaire in 3 Years
Whenever you’re ready, here are 3 ways I can help you:
1. Unleash your hyperfocused mind to dominate life, business, and everything in between? Here’s how:
→ The Hyperfocused Masterclass: the exact system I used to overcome ADHD, write 12 books, build 4 businesses, and acquire $70M of real estate.
There are a handful of spaces left in The Hyperfocus Masterclass for those who want to snag the early bird preorder special discount of $49.
Email anthony@anthonyvicino.com to let me know you want on the waitlist.
2. Learn to passively invest in commercial real estate with better returns, less risk, and zeo hassle.
→ Invictus Capital: my real estate private equity firm.
→ Multifamily Investing Made Simple: Top Apple Podcast.
→ Passive Investing Made Simple: Amazon Best Selling Book with 100 5 star reviews.
3. Want more like this? Check out these 3 popular articles from the vault:
