May 20, 2026
How much would you pay for a candle? $1?Â
Now, let me give you some context to this candle. This candle used to belong to a woman whose husband was in the hospital, and every night she was at the hospital bed.
Right before she went to bed, she lit the candle, and she just said a little prayer. And that candle was actually the only thing that gave her some hope during that time.
Now, how much is this candle worth to you now?
This is what two journalists in the US wanted to find out. And so, what they did, they went to a bunch of garage sales, and they bought 100 used items.
Items that you find everywhere in the house, right? It could be a candle, a nutcracker, a jar of marbles, garbage. All of us have this. But then they did something fascinating. They invited a bunch of volunteers to write short fictional stories about those items.
Then they put them on eBay.
Initially, they paid $129 for the 100 items. How much do you think they were sold for?
They were sold for $3,613, which is a 2,700% increase in value. And why? Because of those fictional stories.
If you want to increase the value of your ideas, of your product, of yourself, well, start sharing more and more of those stories.
Now, you already know how to tell good stories, but a lot of you might still be wondering, “Hey, I’m just not this natural-born storyteller, right? How can I get good at that?”
After coaching thousands of people on storytelling, I realized that it comes down to four core exercises.
If you do those four core exercises every single day for the next 30 days, your stories will be unrecognizable, and you’ll be definitely in the top 1% of storytellers.
Let’s start with the first exercise or habit.
Imagine two people, Sarah and John. Exactly the same routine. Every day they get up, they get their coffee, they get to work. That’s it.
But Sarah, on her way to work she’s just scrolling through her phone. She drinks a coffee but doesn’t really take it in and arrives at work.
John on the other hand, he goes to the coffee shop. There he recognizes the barista’s smile. Then he drinks the coffee and is like, “Ah, so delicious.” And when he arrives at work, he also sees his co-worker’s proud face because he did this project right.
Two different people, same routine, a different level of awareness.
Now, do you identify more as Sarah or more as John? Is it somewhere in the middle?
To be honest, I used to or still today often walk through life like Sarah, right? Just on autopilot, but not taking things in.
The first habit to become a master storyteller is to notice.
And for that I don’t mean any big stories, right? You don’t need to have some dramatic, life-changing stories. It is about noticing those small moments that happen every single day.
One exercise that you can do is an exercise called Homework for Life from Matthew Dicks.
How does it work? Every single day you sit down and you ask yourself,
“Hmm, if I had to tell a story from today, what would be that one moment that stood out? That one moment that touched my heart? Maybe it was this interesting conversation. Maybe it was a realization. Maybe it was something that really hurt in that moment. But what was that one moment that stood out?”
So for example, my moment yesterday was I went to singing class and I felt so embarrassed because when I watched the recording of myself, it was just so terrible. I was so off pitch. So that was my moment yesterday.
And what I did is, write down the date and that story-worthy moment. That’s it. That’s the first habit.
At first it might be a little bit boring, right? It’s like, “Okay, today I had cereal for breakfast.” But after a while, once you do that more and more, you start to see there’s moments everywhere.
And all of those moments could be turned into some beautiful stories.
Noticing that moment is obviously great, right? You want to notice that, do that every single day, and note down the date and that story-worthy moment.
But that’s not enough. That’s when you actually move into the second habit, which is to improvise a story.
Now, if you just keep that moment, well, you’re obviously not going to improve. And so, what you want to do is take that moment and improvise a full story around it.
So, for example, if I take my moment which was, “Hey, feeling embarrassed after the singing class,” I would then improvise a story on the spot.
So, yesterday I went to singing class and at one point I had this brilliant idea, and I tell my teacher, “Hey, do you know what would be really cool? If we recorded the session. I can put it on social media. People can see my beautiful voice.”
He’s like, “Yeah, sure, let’s do it.”
We record the session. After that, I look at the recording. I think, “This is terrible. This is the worst thing that I’ve ever seen in my life. I was just off pitch all the time.”
And at first I felt so embarrassed, but then I thought, “You know what? This is awesome because I know eventually I will be good at that stuff. And then I have something to compare with.”
And then it was okay to suck for that one moment.
Now, could I tell a more polished version of that story? 100%, but improv is all about just improvising a story on the spot. So, that’s the second one. It’s improvise.
And what I would suggest at the start, is just improvise, period. Once you do that a few times, try to play with it.
So, one time you improvise and bring in so much emotion. Another time maybe you work a little bit on your vocal variety, so you speed up at one point, and you slow down in another one.
Improvising helps you to try out all those different things. It’s absolutely beautiful.
That’s the second habit. Let’s now talk about the third habit.
There’s one single question that we get asked every single day. What is that question? It’s, “How are you?”
What do people usually respond there? “I’m good. I’m good. I’m good.” Or sometimes they say, “Oh, yeah, good. Finally, it’s not raining anymore.”
And so, we talk about all these average standard things like the weather or traffic, and it’s terrible. We spend years of our lives talking about these things, and they just go absolutely nowhere.
So, what you want to do in those moments is share a short personal story. Something that shows a little bit more about you as a human anytime that someone asks you, “How are you?”
For example, if someone were to ask me today, “Hey, how are you?” I’d respond like this.
I’d say,
“Um, I’m good. Well, yesterday I had a very embarrassing moment. Yesterday, I was at singing class, and when I saw the recording of that singing, man, it was so bad. I felt so ashamed. Anyway, um what about you? When was the last time you messed it up a little bit or you felt very awkward about something?”
And then I would bring it back to the other person.
Now, did you see? Could I tell a better story? 100%, but it’s not necessary to tell the biggest, most majestic story. It’s just to share something tiny to build this connection and to get more reps in.
That’s the third habit, and that is to tell connection stories.
And so, anytime that someone asks you, “How are you?” share the short personal story. And you’ll see, after you do that a while, you’ll build completely different relationships.
But, there are different things to watch out for.
One, keep it short. There is a time for longer stories, where you share a 1-minute or 2-minute story, but not here.
If someone asks you, “How are you?” and you just share your entire life story, obviously this is too much. And so, you want to keep those stories to 30 seconds ideally, maybe 60 seconds if it’s incredible story.
The second thing that you want to do is ask a question at the end. So, don’t just share your story, but ask them, “Hey, what about you? When was the last time that you messed up big time?” Or, “When was the last time that you felt very awkward about something?”
And so, you bring it back to them because then they’ll share a story in return. Then it feels much more natural and becomes this conversation.
And I know for a lot of people this seems completely crazy, right? Especially for the more introverted people. When I first heard about this idea, I thought, “Geez, I’m sharing a story unsolicited? That’s madness, right? Why would I ever do this?”
There I would encourage you to all gather your own data points. It’s so easy. All of you will be asked every single day so many times, “How are you?” Just choose to respond with something more interesting, something more personal.
And then try that out for a week. After that you’re like, “Hmm, damn. My conversations really became so much better and I became so much better as a storyteller.”
Or, you’ll hate it and you’ll send me an angry email after, which is also cool. But gather your own data points.
Step one to three, they work really well to hone the skill of improvisation and to get more comfortable speaking in front of others, but there’s one final step, one final habit that is still missing. And that one is story bank.Â
I don’t know about you, but my memory it’s not that great. Like, I forget my stories in a week from now, right?
I think in the moment, “Ah, this is a beautiful story. I’ll remember this for the rest of my life.” And then 2 days later it’s gone.
If you want to become a master storyteller, you can’t just leave it to chance and hope that your brain will remember that story. So, what you want to do is build your story bank.
A story bank is the central place where you save your stories, where you classify them, and where you categorize them as well.
So, what do you put in there? Pretty much any moment that stood out. Any moment where you’re like, “Hmm, this could be potentially interesting.” You put it into the story bank.
And what is the stuff that you usually want to include in there? I usually capture the name of the story, then also the use case of that story, the point of the story, a summary of the story, a rating, and that’s pretty much it. That’s it.
Now, if you’re case you’re wondering, “Hey, what can I use?”
Well, most of you will probably use some electronic version, so Notion, Google Docs, Evernote, all that stuff works.
If you’re a little bit more like a dinosaur and you’re like, “I love journals,” well then use a journal. Use whatever tool creates the least friction for you. That’s a story bank.
And once you do that more and more, well, you’ll then have this archive of stories.
Because, hey, if you want to become a great storyteller, you can’t just have like two or three stories. You want to have 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 stories. Then you can pull out those stories at really any chance.
If you stick to these four habits that take less than 10 minutes, and you just do them every single day, you’ll tell better stories than any other person out there, guaranteed.
And it only takes 30 days of this. But I still do this every single day, because it’s so powerful.
If you want to become a master storyteller, check out this next article where I share some of my favorite storytelling techniques.
See you there.
P.S. Want to become a stronger communicator?
Here are two ways I can support you:
👉 Want to tell more engaging stories? Join our next Storytelling Workshop.
👉 Want to speak with confidence and clarity? Check out our Communication Skills Training.
Both are fun, practical, and designed to help you grow fast.
Are you ready to transform your storytelling skills?
Discover how your storytelling skills score and uncover useful insights to help you become a charismatic storyteller:
