The Storyteller's Secret: From TED Speakers to Business Legends, Why Some Ideas Catch On and Others Don't

Gallo (Talk Like TED) engages readers with a litany of stories and storytelling techniques for anyone looking to give better presentations, make better pitches, or run better meetings. If your work supports an idea, business, product, brand, or institution, you will find useful advice within these pages. Gallo's modus operandi throughout is to draw from the lives of rags-to-riches figures and explain their methods. Some are household names (Steve Jobs, Oprah Winfrey), while others are successful businesspeople (Sara Blakely, Charles Michael Yim). Each brief chapter begins appropriately with an attention-grabbing anecdote from the individual's life and then moves to brief second and third acts—with the headings "The Storyteller's Tools" and "The Storyteller's Secret." These sections are the meat in which Gallo digs into techniques such as infusing message with mission, using analogies, violating audience expectations, employing metaphor, and introducing relevant details. Many of the lessons—telling tales of trials and wrapping data with story, for example—come up repeatedly but for good reason.