Storytelling is an age old educational and newly re-purposed digital marketing technique that’s been “rediscovered” by social media and communications management gurus and thought leaders. Everyone loves a good story. Stories are important because they provide patterns of a life lived and patterns to embrace or reject, depending on the outcome. Stories give us concrete examples of a sequence of events, a way of problem solving, and a blueprint of a script for you to follow or deviate from when embarking on your own script. Whether on a quest for truth, justice, or The American Dream, chances are there’s a story for that embedded in a book, movie, TV show, or video game app.Harnessing the power of storytelling, of identifying archetypes, and implementing that knowledge, together with your resiliency, will help you transition from me to we, especially when it comes to entrepreneurship and marketing yourself in terms of your service or product. It enables you to learn from others, empathize with them, and become more flexible and adaptive when your own story changes and/or intersects with another’s.

1. © 2013 Penina Pearl Rybak, Socially Speaking LLC, All Rights Reserved
NICE Initiative for Female Entrepreneurship: White Paper 2
By Penina Rybak MA/CCC-SLP, TSHH
Founder/CEO Socially Speaking LLC
Director: The NICE Initiative
The Road to Successful Entrepreneurship Starts with Understanding the
Power of Your Story: Reflections on The Use of Storytelling in
Marketing Your Service/Product
“Success is like reaching an important birthday and finding you’re exactly the same.”
— Audrey Hepburn
“There are no secrets to success. It is the result of hard work, preparation, and
learning from failure.”
— Colin Powell
Partial Excerpt from Chapter 4 of My Book:
The NICE Reboot: How to Become a Better Entrepreneur-How to Balance
Your Humanity & Technology in Today’s Startup Culture (Maven House Press,
January 2014):
The road to successful entrepreneurship starts with becoming educated, an observer of
human nature, which results in the enrichment of your actions—the ones executed in
hidden increments, and the ones executed publicly on a grand scale. These components
form your Story, which gets internalized and implemented through the execution of
specific entrepreneurial skills. Skills which are needed to then implement four strategies
for becoming a successful entrepreneur.
These strategies were first proposed by Peter Drucker, dubbed the Father of Modern
Management, who saw entrepreneurship as a behavior instead of a personality trait. A
process that produces a Story, a pattern that others can emulate. In Innovation and
Entrepreneurship, he lists the four entrepreneurial strategies that are needed for
successful entrepreneurship and for that matter, good storytelling:
1.
Being “fustest with the mostest”
2.
“Hitting them where they ain’t”
3.
Finding and occupying a specialized ecological niche
4.
Changing the economic characteristics of a product, market, or industry

2. © 2013 Penina Pearl Rybak, Socially Speaking LLC, All Rights Reserved
Drucker argues that true, insightful, and competent entrepreneurs position themselves
physically, philosophically, or both, to cause change and talk about it with others. To do
so by being the key suppliers of specific services or products in niche markets that, over
time, essentially cause changes in the way people live and work and cause reform in
public service industries. This change is what Clayton Christenson later referred to as
disruptive innovation in The Innovator’s Dilemma. These changes get transmitted by
word of mouth and now viral social media digital marketing campaigns as well.
Honing your social media technology savvy and public speaking skills is crucial to being
a successful entrepreneur. So is protecting your digital reputation—content, media,
testimonials, and timeline. How do you do it? By being direct, passionate, and
compassionate about your mission, your cause, and your raison d’être for providing
your service or product. By carefully crafting and sharing your Story.
Storytelling is an age old educational and newly re-purposed digital marketing
technique that’s been “rediscovered” by social media and communications management
gurus and thought leaders. It’s been written about extensively lately, and was one of the
running themes at the Hubspot Inbound 2013 marketing convention in Boston in
August. I had the pleasure of attending for the first time and heard inspiring talks on
this subject from the likes of Seth Godin, Pamela Slim (whose take on it will be
published in her upcoming book, Body of Work), and Dan Lyons (journalist, current
Hubspot blogger, and previous author of the very clever satire blog series The Secret
Diary of Steve Jobs). I paid particular attention to Dan Lyon’s talk about the importance
of storytelling in marketing as a means of providing media representations and lessons
(mentorship) about humanity and archetypes. He discussed archetypal storytelling and
marketing, using Steve Jobs as an example. I filled in the blanks for entrepreneurs:
Q: What was so great about the way Steve Jobs told a story?
• He used emotive words to tell the tale
• He gave an exaggerated and hyperbolized accounting of what’s happening
• He was one of the first to practice psychological transparency (Lesson: Dare to be
human. Speak to a larger truth by being yourself.)
• He used all the four elemental archetypes of a story:
1. Betrayal, disillusionment, or need by a protagonist starts the personal quest
2. Identification of the underdog, so we know who to root for when the
challenges start piling up
3. Revenge arc—the “hero” returns to turn the tables on the naysayers or
enemies
4. Turnaround, resolution of conflict

3. © 2013 Penina Pearl Rybak, Socially Speaking LLC, All Rights Reserved
Everyone loves a good story. Stories are important because they provide patterns
of a life lived and patterns to embrace or reject, depending on the outcome. Stories give
us concrete examples of a sequence of events, a way of problem solving, and a blueprint
of a script for you to follow or deviate from when embarking on your own script.
Whether on a quest for truth, justice, or The American Dream, chances are there’s a
story for that embedded in a book, movie, TV show, or video game app.
I confess I’m not into sports or gaming, yet I love sports movies (Remember the Titans,
The Rookie) and used to love Myst and The Sims. Why? Because the elemental
archetypes of any story boil down to one theme: causality. The seesaw upon which
action/reaction and good/evil are balanced. A great story arc involves and depicts the
hero’s struggle to orchestrate change, for himself or herself or for others, by finding new
ways to work and invoke archetypes, lessons, and the causality loop that life is based on.
How someone uses what life has thrown him or her to effect change makes for a hero, an
archetype, and makes for riveting reading. Think of the worlds of Buffy and Angel,
created by master storyteller Joss Whedon. Think of the TV show Heroes, created by
master visual digitalization guru Tim Kring. The causality loop being reconfigured so
that a linear trajectory is not always the outcome, let alone the desired path.
Archetypal storytelling and consulting for branding and marketing purposes has since
become a hot topic and legitimate avenue of entrepreneurship, as seen from Diane
Bertolin’s fall 2013 blog series “Archetypal Consulting” and her subsequent e-book for
Hubspot on this subject. I recommend that everyone read her books—educators,
entrepreneurs, marketers, public speakers, and those trying to forge a human
connection with others through dating, marriage, and all the steps in between. They are
insightful analyses of the human condition, seen through the eyes of a female business
woman and social media marketing expert.
Harnessing the power of storytelling, of identifying archetypes, and implementing that
knowledge, together with your resiliency, will help you transition from me to we,
especially when it comes to entrepreneurship and marketing yourself in terms of your
service or product. It enables you to learn from others, empathize with them, and
become more flexible and adaptive when your own story changes and/or intersects with
another’s. These traits need to be honed individually and fostered collectively—at home,
in public, and at work.
When planning on honing your storytelling to improve both the delivery and the content
of your message, you should read Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath. In it they list
six principals for effectively getting your message across.
The Six Principals of Sticky Ideas, Proposed by the Heath Brothers and
Interpreted by Penina Rybak:

4. © 2013 Penina Pearl Rybak, Socially Speaking LLC, All Rights Reserved
1.
Simplicity: Find the core of your intent and translate that verbally and in
writing as your mission and vision statements, and present these statements
publicly, including via social media.
2.
Unexpectedness: Find what would naturally block your message from getting
out there and solve that problem technologically or intellectually or both.
3.
Concreteness: Break down your business plan methodically and implement it
over time at pre-planned, key intervals for more effective delivery of your service
or product with less financial risk.
4.
Credibility: Get people to agree with, believe in, and endorse your service or
product publicly. Nurture your real-time relationships and protect your digital
reputation while doing so.
5.
Emotions: Get people to identify with and share your vision by showing that
you care and that your service or product really addresses a particular problem.
Emote!
6.
Stories: Inspire others to act based on your examples and tales. Learn public
speaking skills and brush up on your presentation delivery—content and style.
When planning to incorporate stories into your message, you should take a look at the
story and character development of the TV show Touch for inspiration. Tim Kring
encompasses all the thematic elements found in a story that sticks. So does Joss
Whedon in his televised series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Both men are master
storytellers; you can learn much from them. I certainly did.
According to the Heath brothers, there are three types of universal themes in stories.
Taken from Made to Stick, I’ve listed them below, along with practical examples of the
three main character archetypes, using well known films to make my points:
Challenge plot: Overcoming obstacles (Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen
in The Hunger Games; Sarah Michelle Geller as Buffy Summers in Buffy the
Vampire Slayer; Diane Lane as Frances Mayes in Under the Tuscan Sun; Will
Smith as Del Spooner in I, Robot; Dennis Quaid as Jimmy Morris in The Rookie;
and Tom Hanks as the title character in Forrest Gump)
Connection plot: Unexpected friendships or relationships (Emma Stone as
Skeeter and Viola Davis as Aibileen Clark in The Help; Sandra Bullock as Leigh
Ann Tuohy in The Blind Side; Angela Bassett as Stella Payne and Taye Diggs as
Winston Shakespeare in How Stella Got Her Groove Back; Sanaa Lathan as
Kenya McQueen and Simon Baker as Brian Kelly in Something New; and Tom
Cruise as Captain Nathan Algren and Ken Watanabe as Katsumoto in The Last
Samurai)

5. © 2013 Penina Pearl Rybak, Socially Speaking LLC, All Rights Reserved
Creativity plot: Inspired people doing inspiring things (Whoopi Goldberg as
Celie Johnson in The Color Purple; Mulan in Disney’s Mulan; Winona Ryder as
Jo March in Little Women; Jodi Foster as Dr. Ellie Arroway in Contact; Cuba
Gooding Jr. as Carl Brashear in Men of Honor; and Daniel Craig as Tuvia Bielski
in Defiance)
Q: What is the outcome of using storytelling in your digital marketing campaign?
A: The establishment of your tribe and thus, your entrepreneurial competence.
The perception of entrepreneurial competence requires that the message sticks. It thus
involves:
★ Effective delivery of the message sharing the mission.
★ Effective leadership in implementing the nuts and bolts of the mission and seeing
the process to fruition. That means using your Story and your tribe, to help you execute
your game plan.
Seth Godin, prolific writer and thought leader extraordinaire defines a tribe as “any
group of people, large or small, who are connected to one another, a leader, and idea.
It’s [in] our nature [to join]. The Internet has eliminated the barriers of geography, cost,
and time.” In his book groundbreaking book Tribes, he asks and answers this question:
Q: Who is going to lead these tribes?
A: You are. “Great leaders create movements by empowering the tribe to
communicate. They establish the foundation for people to make connections, as
opposed to commanding people to follow them.”
Godin describe what leadership really means, which can be summed
up by three telling quotes:
1. “Leaders figure out how to step into those vacuums and create motion. They work
hard to generate movement—the sort of movement that can transform a group into a
tribe.”
2. “Not only aren’t leaders most people, but the members of the most important tribes
aren’t most people either.”
3. “Every leader cares for and supports a movement. What marketers and organizers
and people who care are discovering is that they can ignite a micro- movement and
then be propelled by the people who choose to follow it.”
Godin raises many interesting questions in Tribes, including:

6. © 2013 Penina Pearl Rybak, Socially Speaking LLC, All Rights Reserved
How does a leader maximize tribe effectiveness and build on the passion
and belief in his or her mission?
Let me paraphrase the answers. A leader uses his/her Story and storytelling skills to:
Turn collective passion or outlook into a cause that matters—with joint goals to
effect change
Promote a communication paradigm, lingo, and forum to plan the tribe’s goals
and share info
Become an evangelist about the mission to expand the tribe
Penina’s Pointers: Elements of Good Storytelling
1. Look-Invoke Humor & “Share a Moment”: Use funny visual imagery or a shared
experience and/or gently find humor in universal themes to “break the ice” and
connect you with your listener(s). Make your message more memorable. Physical and
linguistic humor can alter perceptions, trigger a memory, and bond people now
sharing a common goal or purpose. See the Nationwide car insurance ad with the
baby; http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=ryNtVK55OUY
2. Listen-Pace Yourself: Use intro, short sequence of events, and ending, usually a Call
to Action (CTA). Modulate your voice; your intonation, your speech rate, and/or the
“tone” of your deck/pitch. See Apple™ Inc. and Sir Jony Ive’s message about design;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=kfaetlLbgzM
3. Show-Be Transparent: Share your ups & downs. Admit to mistakes. Explain your
takeaways. Increase your likeability and people’s ability to identify/empathize with
you & your mission. Or, share universal ugly truths in an artistic, emotive way, to
really pack a punch re: honesty! See the Philippines Pantene shampoo ad about
women in business; http://www.youtube.com/watch?
feature=player_detailpage&v=kOjNcZvwjxI
4. Tell-Swing That Pendulum: Showcase the conflict/problem and the stakes, and how
you almost failed but then succeeded. Map out the obstacles and how you felt about
them; the mood swings and reasoning involved when attempting to overcome them.
Flesh out the “arc”. See Charity: Water’s September Campaign Ad for Orissa, India;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=6bH7SPNdSt4
5. Surprise- Juxtapose the buildup & takeaway in an unexpected manner to provide an
element of surprise (and humor) to promote curiosity and asking questions. See the
Heineken ad for “His & Her Closets; http://www.youtube.com/watch?
feature=player_detailpage&v=S1ZZreXEqSY
* I didn’t use Bitly so that these links can be easily found and shared!

7. © 2013 Penina Pearl Rybak, Socially Speaking LLC, All Rights Reserved
Penina Rybak MA/CCC-SLP, TSHH
CEO Socially Speaking LLC
Director: The NICE Initiative for Female Entrepreneurship
LinkedIn Page: Penina Rybak http://www.linkedin.com/pub/penina-rybak/
37/900/191
Email: penina@niceinitiative.com
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