The Search

In pursuit of increasing the efficiency of my work and creating more value for others, I asked myself, “How can I create more value?”.

Take, for example, 3D/game development activities.

I could, for instance, work hard, climb the corporate ladder to higher positions, and earn a bigger salary. Unfortunately, this has nothing to do with creating greater value. My experience working on games isn’t that good and the vast majority of it was trashed. Looking o the industry in general, I see the same pattern. I prefer not to lose my and my team’s efforts.

Moreover, the system of rewards in companies is often very disproportionate. The best workers don’t receive compensation that matches their contribution. While the worst ones are overvalued. This is well described in the book “The 80/20 Principle” in the section about business. So, I don’t feel that too exciting, at least for now.

The second option is to receive all the profit from your invested efforts.

For example, if you are a 3D artist, you need to convert the results of your work into new products and money. Like freelancing or contract work. But this takes a decent amount of time to find clients. But still better than employment.

What about producing tons of 3D assets and selling them in stores?

It’s better – digital assets are created once and can be sold many times. It has a bottleneck. It doesn’t scale well because depends on my personal productivity. To make more things, you need to spend more hours on the job. And this relationship is linear. I will become a weak link in this process pretty quickly.

Hiring people to do more work!

It’s a working option – that’s how a huge number of outsourcing studios work. But it’s generally quite expensive, and I don’t want to go back to management just yet.

Option number three – creating educational courses. It scales much better. More people want to learn how to model a fire hydrant than need an actual 3D model of the fire hydrant. The main issue is the cost of production. To create a great course, you need to have outstanding technical and teaching skills and invest a lot of effort and time.

I decided to stop at this point and delve into the details.

Over the past few years, I have watched hundreds of hours of various courses. Mostly about working in 3D and game development. Their price usually did not exceed $50.

Then I stumbled upon an advertisement for relationship building for $700. Then for consulting for $1500. Then courses for coaches on how to teach coaches for $3500. It cannot be that such a difference in price corresponds to a difference in material quality!

I asked myself, “Why do some people manage to sell publicly available information for thousands of dollars?” and “Why do others make ends meet selling incredibly cool courses for $30?”

It’s unfair!

It is a universal injustice!

The first thought is that it is about the price. But upon closer inspection, it becomes clear – nope, it’s not about the price. Otherwise, cheap courses should sell better than expensive ones. It’s obvious. In fact, we see the opposite situation.

There was something else here.

Emails ???

“How can you make money from email?” I thought when I saw the incoming message on my Instagram. “This must be some kind of scam,” I thought. But out of boredom, I decided to continue the conversation and expose the scammers.

It turned out to be much more interesting than I thought. I think it was one of those moments in life that happen not by chance but are somehow organized by the universe.

Shortly, I was able to attend training with one of their best copywriters and marketers. He made a fortune optimizing email campaigns and writing for his clients.

It looked interesting, and I completely immersed myself in this topic. In addition to the technical intricacies (which I will discuss in one of my next blogs), one aspect stood out in his approach. Only a very small part of businesses around the world use it.

Let’s think about it.

In order for people to read your emails, they need to be interesting. Sounds obvious?

Yes.

A significant portion of the email is made up of text. So you need to make this text interesting.

How?

Storytelling.

It sounds pretty obvious. And it is.

99% of businesses ignore stories at all. They only send ads with a bunch of bright pictures and calls to “BUY BUY BUY” in their mailings. And even despite this, such an approach brings in some money.

But by changing the content of the emails, you can change the relationship with readers. This change forms such a strong trust with them that they themselves begin to buy more. As a result, the business receives insane profits. The company grows. Customers are satisfied more than ever.

I really liked this approach. So I decided to study the areas of its application in those spheres that were already familiar to me.

Discovery

I spent several months researching the companies and individuals I knew.

Here’s what I noticed.

In any field, whether it’s 3D art, game dev, or a random local business, there was a too-obvious correlation. More successful businesses had a newsletter that was interesting to read (or at least not immediately closed upon receiving). Or book. Or videos. Or any other kind of backstory.

Of course, it’s not the ONLY thing, that makes them stand out. But it was the NECESSARY thing.

You might argue, “Hey, maybe it’s the opposite — when a company becomes successful, they start doing that”.

A reasonable argument.

I also thought so.

And as usual in such cases, I went online to look for confirmation or refutation of this theory.

Not to tire you out, the conclusion is as follows.

Telling interesting stories leads to increased customer trust and sales right from the beginning. Those stories can be about yourself, your business, or your products. Even random things, slightly related to your work.

Email is just one way of conveying information. Blogs, YouTube videos, social networks — all serve the same purpose. Emails are simply the most effective way to deliver stories to the reader (the highest ROI, bigger increases in LTV).

This relates to launching the game as nothing else — games sell better than they have a strong community. And the best way to get attention to the game while it is in development is to tell stories.

But does it work in general?

Significant Objects

There was an interesting conducted on this topic in 2009. It’s titled “Significant Objects”.

In 2009, Josh Glenn and Rob Walker conducted an experiment. They bought or collected two hundred items: trinkets, baubles, keychains, souvenirs, and handicrafts. They didn’t pay more than $1.50 for any item. Then they gathered almost a hundred writers to create short stories related to individual objects. They listed each item for sale on eBay with a short story as the description. They made sure not to create the impression that the story described the object – they didn’t lie, deceive, or mislead potential buyers. Sometimes the stories were fantastic, impossible in reality, like a story about a child trapped inside a tiny snow globe.

The description of a toy plastic hot dog in a bun featured a story about a vendor who remembered Beatrice Potter’s tale of mice who found toy food in a dollhouse. The closing line of the description read, “I keep the hot dog to remind myself that food doesn’t have to be beautiful.”

There’s nothing special about the hot dog. You could probably go to a dollar store and find a whole set of plastic toy food. Nevertheless, this plastic hot dog, bought for $0.12, sold on eBay for $3.58.

In the first experiment of the “Significant Objects” project, trinkets worth $128.74 sold for a staggering $3612.51.

The researchers repeated the experiment and got the same result. They did it a third time. They sold trinkets for a couple of hundred dollars for thousands (the money went to charity and the authors of the texts who contributed to this project).

Let’s break it down.

Buyers of the plastic hot dog or glass snow globe clearly knew they weren’t buying anything special. They could have found something similar (if not exactly the same) at any yard sale or thrift store. The story is only tangentially related to the item. And yet two hundred people were willing to buy something almost useless for an average of 2800% more than the item was originally sold for…all because they read a good story.

If stories could sell useless junk, just imagine what they could do to sell a great product or service!

These results are definitely worth deeper research.

Who doesn’t want such outcome improvement for their work?

Why it works?

Well, this is how we humans are created. This is how our brains work.

Our brains light up like fireworks when we hear stories.

Research using brain imaging has found that telling stories activates multiple areas of our brains, such as those in charge of language, senses, and emotions. When you’re just listing facts, you’re not triggering all those brain zones, so it’s less engaging. Doctor Uri Hasson from Princeton University discovered evidence of what’s known as “neural coupling”. During the perception of a story, the listener’s brain starts to synchronize with the storyteller’s brain, with the same parts of the brain becoming active at the same time for both subjects. Perceiving stories is as close to telepathy as is currently possible.

Ever notice how it’s easier to remember a story compared to a dry list of facts? That’s because our brains are wired to remember stories better. They create a structure that helps us retain information. Think of stories as mental Velcro for facts. Professor Jennifer Aaker from Stanford University found that people are 22 times more likely to remember information presented in the form of a story than when presented as simple facts.

Stories allow us to see things from different perspectives. They put us in someone else’s shoes, which builds empathy. A neurobiological study conducted by psychologist Raymond Mar in 2011 indicates that we use the same parts of our brain to understand stories as we do to understand other people. To put it in sales terms: stories help listeners empathize with the storyteller and better understand the “who,” “what,” and “why.”

Adding stories

Well, I thought to myself, this suits me! It seems like I’ve found my way to be most useful in any field.

Adding stories!

Imagine this: you have an ordinary coffee mug. Nothing special, right? But now imagine that someone wrote a touching story about how this very mug was used by a famous writer while writing their masterpiece. Suddenly, this mug becomes much more interesting, and people may be willing to pay a premium price for it.

The trick is to appeal to people’s emotions and make them feel a connection to the product. When they hear a good story, it increases its value in their eyes and they are more likely to spend money.

This storytelling trick really exists, and it can turn cheap items into valuable treasures. Pretty clever, isn’t it?

Think about it: Behind every successful product or service is an exciting story.

No matter if you’re selling stuff or offering services. If you tell a good story about your work it makes it stand out and be something special.

Easy to get, and hard to forget.

This is the path that everyone who wants to reach a larger audience (customers, readers, viewers, players) should follow. And those who do it effectively (preferably automated) reap positive feedback (sales, likes, views, etc.).

The ROI of Storytelling

Storytelling goes beyond just describing the features and benefits of your product. It’s about creating an emotional connection with your audience. About helping them see how your product fits into their lives and solves their problems. When done effectively, storytelling elevates your brand, enhances customer loyalty, and ultimately boosts your ROI.

But why should you invest in storytelling? After all, it’s not a tangible product or a specific marketing channel. But it takes time and effort to create good stories. Why not focus on things you used to do and just make them more and/or better?

The answer lies in the measurable impact it has on your bottom line. Storytelling can maximize your business’s value in several ways:

Stories build brand identity. They help create a unique personality for your brand. This makes people remember and relate to your brand better. Work better for personal brands with personal stories.

They engage customers. Good stories make customers like your brand more. This leads to them sticking around and telling others about it.

Help with differentiation. In a crowded market, storytelling makes your brand stand out. It helps customers see why your stuff is special and why they should pick it over others.

As a result, this leads to a sales increase: When people feel connected to your brand, they’re more likely to buy your stuff. This means more sales and more money. This is the way people sell publicly accessible information in digital products. People prefer to buy from businesses they know and trust.

Additionally (and most importantly in my opinion), stories increase long-term value. Customers who really like your brand will keep coming back. They’ll keep giving you money over a long time, which is great for your business.

Win-Win-Win

Since I made this discovery for myself, I completely changed my approach to what I do. I started working with various businesses to help them bring their stories to their clients.

There is nothing more satisfying than seeing that this brings a positive effect to all parties involved. The business earns more money, and the clients receive the products they need.

Consider stories not as a separate entity, but as part of your product.

This is what increases its value for the consumer.

This is what increases its price from $30 to $3000.

This is what people really want to see in your products.

Create stories.