We’ve all been there. The pressure is on. You’ve got revenue to grow and profit to turn, so you skip the story and get to the point. Your audience doesn’t just want the data, you think, they need the data. But here’s the problem: they’re human beings first, and customers second. They’re no different than my niece who knows the story of Cinderella by heart but still wants me to tell it. If I treated her like we treat our customers and just skipped to the end—“Be nice, be home by midnight, women love shoes, good night”—she’d never ask me to tell her a story again. She’d just ask someone else. Your customers will do the same. They won’t stop being moved by powerful stories; they’ll simply go to your competitors to hear them.
A while back, I was standing in front of a room full of wine and beverage industry executives. You know the type—bottom-line focused, sharp, and they’ve heard every pitch imaginable. Their world is margins, distribution, and selling a product that’s been around for centuries. The challenge was clear: how do you get them to see their product not as fermented grape juice in a bottle, but as the vehicle for a human experience? How do you move them beyond the data dump and get to the goosebump? I knew that telling them about the “power of story” wouldn’t work. I had to show them. I had to share something real about myself first.
So, instead of talking about market share, I talked about my dad. I told them how every day after school, he’d take my brother and me to a local restaurant. He’d head to the cocktail lounge, order a single glass of rosé to decompress from his day, and we’d go play Ms. Pac-Man. It was our ritual. It was simple, it was real, and it was a story not about the notes of the wine, but the notes of a memory. It was about what that bottle represented: a father’s quiet moment of refuge, a son’s indelible image of his hero. Twenty years after my dad passed, I told them, I still toast a glass of rosé on his birthday. I wasn’t selling. I was sharing. I was trying to identify a common purpose we all have: to connect, to remember, to feel something.
I didn’t know if it landed. The room was quiet. I finished my talk, went home, and a few days later, a package arrived at my door. Inside was a bottle of rosé from a winery owner who had been in the audience. The note attached didn’t mention sales figures or Q4 projections. It just said, “Thank you for reminding me why I do this,” and that he hoped I’d use this bottle for my next toast to my dad. That, right there, is the ROI of authenticity. It wasn’t a quick networking win; it was the start of a long-term relationship. He didn’t just hear my story; he found his own story within it. He was moved, and so he acted.
We’ve misplaced the source of our impact. We think it’s in our information, when our real, lasting impact is in our inspiration. As a Grammy Nominated Spoken Word Artist Sekou Andrews, I’ve built my entire career on proving that Spoken Word Poetry is one of the most powerful and underutilized tools in business. The world’s best leaders understand that to get people to listen to you like one of their own, you have to first listen to them—and speak to them—like one of their own. This is why I’m considered by many to be one of the most inspirational and top Spoken Word Artists today; I don’t just perform Spoken Word, I help leaders find the story that only they can tell. My work as a motivational poet and Vanguard Artist is about unlocking that potential. The lesson the Grammy Nominated Poet Sekou learned from that bottle of rosé is simple: your data is your destination, but your story is the vehicle. And nobody remembers the destination if the journey doesn’t give them goosebumps.
