Brent Brooks, Blank Stage Productions

Last month, I was honored to speak at GrowthANSWERS' Meet the eXpert and thoroughly enjoyed presenting to 30 business professionals. Since that's about 1% of the total circulation of eMERGE!, I was encouraged to submit a recap of the event for the benefit of the 99% who could not attend. Here it goes…

Story-telling is the oldest form of entertainment. Frankly, it's deeper than that. In many ways, it's what binds us together. Tapping into the power of mythical story-telling is like connecting with our genetic make-up, our souls from generations past.

During this session, we began with the fundamentals of story telling and then moved quickly into the descriptions of the villain and the hero. In the business world, our customers fight day-by-day battles with villains. Our role is to be a hero to our customer. In the audience, I could see all the light bulbs going off so I knew this was not too abstract of an idea. Conceptually, everyone got it, but there were many questions posed about the villains. Villains could be anything that keeps the business from being all it can be. In a true interactive format, we asked the audience to engage their own stories with us. We all shared. We actively listened and learned a great deal from each other.

The experience for everyone was very personal and rewarding. Anytime we can help an owner or entrepreneur view his business in a different light and shift his thinking, it's a growth experience. At the end the book, "The Writer's Journey" was awarded and we all stood and cheered.

In the world of business owners, I come from a different place. For years, Blank Stage produced long form improv shows based on the Hero's Journey, a timeless structure set for forth by philosopher Joseph Campbell. In it, he discusses the hero as he travels through the perils and rewards of his journey. The show gave us a different perspective on story-telling as we used the structure as the skeleton and each night acted out with audience members in attendance.

By the way, a similar version of improv is coming up in the next GrowthANSWERS' Meet the eXpert session on December 17th. If you want to know more, go here.

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