Business Storytelling from Hype to Hack: How Do Stories Work? Unlock the Software of the Mind

This book is your fast track to storytelling – 'the single most powerful tool in a leader’s toolkit' (Harvard leadership guru Howard Gardner).

From informal meetings to public speaking: our ability to get ahead stands and falls with our ability to be heard, understood, and believed, personally and professionally. But how do we capture interest and imagination in an age of information inflation? When you have an important message, you need to communicate it so that it clicks (makes immediate sense) and sticks (is memorable, repeatable, and consistently acted upon).

You can hack this communications challenge with stories. Storytelling is a brain hack.

This is your hacker’s guide to
• save time and nerves – get through to people quickly
• save money – communication errors are costing your organisation
• master storytelling – even if you’re not ‘creative’

Why do stories work? How? In this definitive guide, storytelling expert Jyoti Guptara takes you beyond the hype. Drawing on insights from neuroscience and with lively personal and business stories, Guptara shows you the fastest way to communicate better, so you can find and tell stories effectively.

Struggling with sales pitch ideas or how to get buy-in? Mere polite applause after your speech? Are people confused about the strategy? You need storytelling.

If you’re in marketing & sales, stories are your bread and butter. But making a human connection and making sense are mission critical to everyone’s work, regardless of position or industry. The CEO doesn’t need to work out all of the organisation’s stories, but they do need a working understanding of how stories operate and where they need deploying. They must have what Forbes magazine calls the #1 business skill: narrative competence. That’s what this guide will do for you.

Written in a clear and conversational style, Business Storytelling from Hype to Hack explains how stories can help you hack 7 key areas of life and business:

1. Interest: Hack Conversation & Influence Meetings
2. Empathy: Hack Trust
3. Get Agreement: Pitch an Idea and Hack Buy-In
4. Alignment: Hack Strategy with a strategic narrative
5. Desire: Hack Sales with stories that sell
6. Destiny: Hack Yourself by reframing personal narratives
7. And finally, how to hack Storytelling itself with a simple but powerful narrative structure

With plenty of storytelling tools, this booklet can be used as your personal public speaking workbook or as soft skills training materials. In addition to universally applicable lessons, find out how stories are making business more human and can boost employee and stakeholder engagement. Understanding the importance of narratives in business and effective leadership communication begins here!

A novelist and business communicator, Guptara knows the theory and practice of stories, and has taught thousands of students on four continents. In his first book on the subject, Guptara gives simple storytelling training and inspiration for beginners and pros alike. Learn the secrets he shares with his leadership coaching clients and master this crucial skill enjoyably – before your competition does.

Stories are not only one of the best ways to communicate effectively, done well, they’re fun – to hear, to tell, and, with a good storytelling teacher, they can even be fun to come up with.

Learn how to tell anecdotes that make your messages stick. Feel the thrill as people receive, believe, and remember your message. This one-hour read could change your life.

Scroll to the top and click “buy now” to start growing your influence!

Jyoti Guptara is a highly successful author (his three novels have been translated into in four languages and have sold over 100,000 copies). However he himself did not appreciate the value of storytelling in business - until he became a Fellow and Writer-in-residence at a UN partner organization. There, he realized that some of the best content came after and between presentations, informally - when people told stories.

He was initially invited to apply his decade of experience with narrative fiction to executive education, helping business leaders find and tell stories from their own experience to give better talks, pitch ideas, and influence meetings.

That is what led to his current work and to this book. He is now regarded as the European pioneer of the field.

Of British and Indian descent, Jyoti and his wife live in Switzerland. He advises business leaders and businesses internationally, and has been invited as a speaker to four continents.