Business Book Review: The Best Story Wins by Matthew Luhn
Luhn reminds you that you were born to tell stories. And with simple formulas, you can relearn the craft your childhood self once mastered.
My Rating: ★★★★★
Length: 175 pages
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
Released: 2018
Luhn’s 20-year career at Pixar saw him work under Steve Jobs. Jobs, who spearheaded the company's success, once said:
“The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller. The storyteller sets the vision, values, and agenda of an entire generation that is to come.”
Among other blockbusters, Pixar brought us the Toy Story and Finding Nemo franchises. And Luhn’s book is a behind-the-scenes look into why these movies stole our hearts.
If there’s one thing that personal branding knows it’s that business is personal. Branding is storytelling. And Luhn reveals clear storytelling structures, which he teaches to top businesses. His six-stage formula includes:
Exposition
Inciting incident
Progressive complication
Crisis
Climax
Resolution
For when this seems intimidating, Luhn shares the ‘story spine’ to help creativity flow. Start by completing these sentences:
Once upon a time…(exposition)
And every day….(exposition)
And because of that…(inciting incident)
And because of that…(progressive complication)
And because of that…(progressive complication)
Until finally…(crisis and climax)
And since that day…(resolution)
You’ll start to see these structures everywhere. And the spine can be used for your own personal brand and business stories.
Favourite Quotes
All people crave stories. We love to hear them, see them, tell them, and retell them. We express our desires and our fears through storytelling.
Great stories, when told well, are memorable, impactful, and personal.
Storytelling was important to our early ancestors because we have “storyboards” of those life lessons that date back thousands of years painted on cave walls.
If you can’t catch the attention of your audience within eight seconds, you’ve already lost.
For thousands of years, great leaders in entertainment, politics, and business have used storytelling to inspire their listeners to try something new.
To connect with a broad audience, you must use universal themes that relate to fear and desire.
Perfect characters are forgotten. The ones with flaws who keep fighting find a place in our hearts.
The Best Story Wins makes storytelling simple. Through the use of Luhn’s own personal stories, you can see his mastery of the formulas he’s lived by at work. As he’s done in countless movies, he makes you care about the protagonist - him. But with his attention to detail and crystal clear explanations, he becomes the guide. To help your hero story succeed in storytelling.
In true Pixar style, Luhn explains complex formulas with child-like simplicity. As an adult, you can forget you were once a born storyteller. Luhn reminds you that you have everything you need to master storytelling once again. And in business, the best story wins.
The Best Story Wins by Matthew Luhn: Available on Amazon.
