Story Type #1: The Quest

The Story


During the summer of 1954 a food service equipment salesmen by the name of Ray A. Kroc stopped by the popular hamburger stand of the McDonalds brothers.  Ray held the national rights to Multimixer shake machines, and was intrigued that this small business had ordered so many machines.  The usual drugstore would order one, and a large restaurant might have two.  The McDonald brothers had ordered 10.  One-third of their food orders included shakes, and someone estimated that 20,000 shakes a month were being sold at their stand.  Ray Kroc was curious, how two brothers selling hamburgers, could be so busy. 

-Love, John F.. McDonald's: Behind The Arches. Rev Sub ed. United States and Canada: Bantam, 1995. Print. p. 28

Whenever I start a presentation I love to start with a story that draws the audience into my presentation.  It gives a clean break from the last presentation, focuses the audience and makes them curious.  The above story is an example of a style of story that I feel is the most common: The Quest.

The Quest starts out with a hero working to achieve some sort of goal.  In order to reach the goal the hero has to overcome obstacles, face hardship, deal with a wide range of emotions, and master the belief that they can achieve their goal. At some point in the story the hero will generally run into someone who can provide that little bit of advice that bridges some confusion, and sets the hero on the correct path once again.  This style of story is easy to follow as it is logical and moves straight ahead.

-Morgan, Nick. Working the Room: How to Move People to Action through Audience-Centered Speaking. New York: Harvard Business School Press, 2003. Print.  p. 64

I would use the McDonald's story to kick off a presentation on...

• Starting A Small Business
• The Importance of Curiosity 
• Understanding Your Customers
• Looking For The Next Big Thing
• Getting into the field to support your client-facing salespeople.

The problem that most people have is they don't know where to find good stories.  I look for good stories everywhere and am grateful to John C. Maxwell for speaking to the importance of clipping stories and information everyday.

• The International Directory of Company Histories - Found at the reference desk of your major local library.  This is THE BEST place to find all sorts of neat stories of how companies got started.  The downside is that you actually have to go the the library, pull the volume off the shelf, make a copy, then scan it into something like Evernote back in your office.
• Investors Business Daily ($365/year)- Everyday they run a biographical story on someone.  The paper can be downloaded in PDF format so you can save them over time.
• Newspapers - I read a couple a day and it is very easy to "clip" interesting stories that you read.  Focus on the small nugget that is familiar enough to most average audience members so you can pull them in.  The Wall Street Journal does a book review everyday, the New York Times has great obits, USA Today does a nice job of the giving you just the meat of any story.
• Magazines - Almost any magazine will have something you can clip from their pages.  

Read, Clip and File - This will set you up for success at the start of any presentation.

How Do I Use The Above Information?

• Think about the one big thing that you want to happen in your presentation.  Then look through your stories to see someone who has faced that situation before, or that needed to do the exact same thing, or that had to see, feel, and overcome in the same way.
• Again, using your "big idea", sift through the story to pull out the details that make the story line up with your objective.  In the above story I wanted you to see McDonalds, then Kroc, then curiosity.  As a member of my audience you would have automatically synced with me when I mentioned McDonalds.  Many folks might not have known that Ray Kroc didn't start the company so that is a bit of a surprise.  Third, I wanted to show that Ray was constantly trying to get better at selling his project the Multimixer.  All of these things were accomplished in six sentences. 
• After you find your story practice telling it at least 10 times.  If it doesn't flow then add another detail or two.  If it starts to bog down and take five minutes, take some things out.  If you practice out loud you will be able to hear how it sounds and then understand what questions the audience might have about the story so you can fill them in.