Book Review: Stories that Stick by Kindra Hall
A must-read if you’re interested in writing case studies or improving your storytelling skills!
Today: is book review day for Stories that Stick. So I shall begin with… a story. I grew up surrounded by old people—who happen to be AMAZING storytellers! But my stories… always lacked a little somethin’ somethin’. When I cracked into the world of copywriting—I was determined to not be a crappy storyteller! And this book, Stories that Stick, is one I wish I had many years earlier.
In this book review, I’m paying special attention to what Kindra Hall shares about stories that I like to pull into my case studies. You’re not gonna want to miss it!
With this podcast episode:
Uncover the 4 elements all stories need (and the 4 story types all businesses need).
Discover the framework I created to take me from scattered to stellar storytelling.
Learn which elements & story type you should focus on when writing a case study.
Don’t forget you can submit a question that will get answered in an upcoming podcast!
Mentioned Resources:
Connect w/ Brittany:
This episode of The Basic B podcast is brought to you in partnership w/ Leah Bryant Co.! Help me reach more service providers like you by following the show & leaving a rating or review on Apple & Spotify!
The unedited podcast transcript for this episode of The Basic B podcast follows
Welcome back to the short and sassy segment of the Basic B podcast. These episodes are intended to be 10 minutes or less, super actionable, and about a variety of topics. And today is book review day for stories that stick by Kendra Hall. So I shall begin with a story. As a little girl, I grew up moving a ton. No place ever really felt like home. I was born in Kentucky and my brother was born in Michigan.
and then all four of us landed in North Carolina where we moved around again quite a good bit. And before you ask, no, my family is not military, my dad is in sales. Which turns out is actually a pretty common story as well. But because of all of the moves and the fact that my extended family is rooted in Indiana, I actually grew up with a lot of fake grandparents. Like there were no kids on the street that Brad and I normally played with, it was a lot of older
people, which secretly I'm okay with because they are the best storytellers and I just love getting sucked into a good story. It is my favorite. So just one example of this is that I spent many an afternoon across the breezeway with Margaret. She was an incredible storyteller and she also had the best snacks. And don't you dare try to tell me that salted peanuts are not a necessary simple staple item in a pantry that you just can't tell me.
Also, I was really jealous of Margaret's storytelling skills. Not the peanut, she shared those, but I was very jealous of her storytelling skills. My stories always tend to stop off for gas on the way to their point or, you know, stop off... Hang on. My stories always tend to wander down side streets and stop off for gas on the way to their destination. So, I've always been a decent written storyteller but more in like...
bite-sized format so you can think of Facebook status updates or MySpace posts. Side note, do you remember how there was this like intro music that you could set when someone showed up to your MySpace profile? I would really love for someone to figure out how to do that on a website because that is just the greatest and it creates such a vibe and I just, I love it. Okay, back to the story thing. So I wasn't great with like those longer book-esque kind of stories.
Brittany Herzberg (02:25.878)
So when I ended up in the world of copywriting, I was worried, but also very determined not to be a sucky written storyteller. So I created my own format for sharing case studies, and I call it the Pet Framework. You might have heard me mention it. Shout out to my friend Brenna, who on a chilly fall afternoon when I was tucked into my in-law's basement helped me realize that was the name of the framework. I w-
love pets. I have my dog Jack. I had my cat Moonlight growing up, so I'm all about this name. But it's an incredibly helpful tool. This framework, you know, has helped me create easy to follow, compelling stories that connect and convert with readers, and that's huge. And I'm able to share that with other business owners like you. Storytelling is an art and a science, and it's a totally learnable skill as proven by my pet framework and by...
Kindra Hall and Stories That Stick. And I'm gonna make sure that I link her book below. So this book is an amazing starting place if you feel like you're not a great storyteller or you want to improve your storytelling skills fast. And that is what I really want to share with you today. How amazing this book is, how you can use it to improve your storytelling, how great I found it to be as a resource. So let's dive into the magic of Kindra Hall's Stories That
This is going to be a very high level overview. And we're gonna start off with some key elements, four key elements to be precise that Kendra covers in the book that need to be in a story. And I want you, as I'm navigating you through these elements, I want you to think back to the story that I shared at the beginning of the podcast, because I'm gonna pull out those different elements and show you how I wove them into the story. All right, first up is the main character. If we don't know the who,
the story falls apart. So we really need to introduce that main character pretty early on. This is something I do with case studies and in the story at the beginning of the podcast, I introduced myself as that main character. And that's not normally where I love to live. I like to be in more of like the guide position as Dono Miller calls it in his book, Building a Story Brand, which I should also probably do a book review for.
Brittany Herzberg (04:48.13)
But we want to introduce that main character because we want the reader to connect pretty quickly with someone. We want to know who we want to let them know rather who they are going to be following through this story. So in my story, it was me and I had the surrogate grandparents as more of the guide for learning how to tell stories. So, like I said, I do this in case studies. This is really important in any kind of story that you're going to be writing.
about or sharing with people you want to put that main character front and center early on, shine a spotlight on them so that people can connect. The second element are emotions because if we can't connect, which is something that emotions enable us to do, then the story falls apart. So in the story that I was sharing, I tapped into that wandering feeling. I brought that about by
telling you how often I moved and how no place felt like home. And then I was telling you about my stories and how they go down side streets and stop off for gas and snacks, right? So I wanted to paint that picture and that is something that we want to do with stories. We want to weave in those emotions so that it brings that picture to life. And instead of having it be a, you know, a drawing on a piece of paper, it actually turns it into more of a movie. It gets you to connect to someone. So
We started off with a wandering feeling in my story, but then I introduced my framework, my pet framework, and that gave us a feeling of stability and precise next steps and things like that. So also with emotions, we want to have somewhat of a transformation. And emotions, I should say, emotions enable us to paint that transformation for the reader. So next up we have the big moment. There's like some big bang up moment because...
If we can't identify the transformation, then the story falls apart. So yes, there are, you know, we went from wandering to having those precise next steps. But I needed to give you that aha moment. I needed to share that with you of like I became a copywriter and oh no, I can't be a bad storyteller because I'm writing copy for people. This cannot happen. And then the pet framework was born. So that was the aha moment from that story. So.
Brittany Herzberg (07:05.906)
You know, the pet framework also has ripple effects into the work that I do now, and I was able to share that with you. And this can show up in a case study, this can show up in a story that you're writing about yourself, that you're sharing about yourself, but we need that aha moment. And Kendra has a really, she has a really incredible section about that in her book, so highly recommend reading it. The fourth and final element that all stories need, specific details.
Because if we can't picture those key moments, we can't connect and the story falls apart. So we need specific details. Like in the story that I shared with you, I wove in details like the states I lived in, my neighbor slash fake grandma Margaret, I told you her name. I told you where I was sitting when the case study format, when the pet framework came to me. So that, all of those different specific details enabled you
to really have that more like a mini movie play out instead of it being a drawing on a piece of paper. It made it come to life. It made the story come to life. And you had this mini motion picture playing in your brain as you were listening. So that is a really critical part of any kind of writing is bringing moments to life, painting those pictures, having them be mini motion pictures. Clearly, I'm just going to say that a whole much. But we need things to really
to really come to life, to really sparkle, to really shine so that we can really feel it. So not only does Kendra do a really good job of guiding readers through those four elements, she also shares that there are four unique types of stories that business owners should include strategically in different places in different moments. And I'm gonna be briefer.
with these types of stories because kindra i cannot do it justice kindra just does like such an incredible job of telling you about these four types of stories giving you examples of when it actually came up in her work and then telling you know giving you specific things to think about so that you can come up with your own stories and know when to share them so super short four types of stories the value story
Brittany Herzberg (09:21.338)
Why should someone get your thing or work with you? What value do you provide? What is the benefit of working with you? Second is the founder story. How did you get where you are today? What was your journey? What was your story? The third one is the purpose story. So this is really more of an internal story. It's built to align and inspire employees or anyone who's working with you. And the last one is the customer story where you're actually, this differs.
slightly from the way that I write case studies, but it is letting the customer actually share their story in their own words. So this you could think of it more like, um, she gives a really good example in the book and I want to say it's a deodorant company, but this is where think of user-generated content on places like Instagram and TikTok. What product did you get? How did it help you? You're telling that story in your own words in your own way.
So hot tip for you is that if you want to write your own case studies, your own story based case studies, pay special attention to the value story and the customer story that Kendra goes over in her book. Because case studies, the way that I write them, combine those two story types. And that's basically the way out of the entire book. Kendra does a really great job. She shares some really excellent examples of different stories.
she opens with a story about her husband who buys something that she was like he never would buy this but he bought it simply because of a story. It was really incredible to hear that. She walks you through different stories about her clients and people that she worked with and how you know it felt like oh no there's gonna be no story here and then all of a sudden like a story appears and the thing comes together perfectly. Something else I should mention is that if you like audiobooks
Kindra reads this one, it's author read, which I love because they know the story and they're able to really bring it to life in a way that nobody else could. But I also kind of want to get a physical copy of this book when my boyfriend Daniel and I find our home because I want this in my library. Something that I refer back to and I absolutely love. So the moral of the story here is that story-zistic is amazing and if you feel like you
Brittany Herzberg (11:42.91)
want to improve your storytelling skills or you feel like you are starting from scratch and you don't possess any storytelling skills, you're definitely going to want to buy a copy or borrow it from your library.
Brittany Herzberg (11:59.41)
Oh, here we go. And if writing case studies like... And if writing story-based case studies backed by SEO about your clients is on your to-do list in 2024, you are going to want to make sure that you grab the profitable case study roadmap, which I will make sure is linked in the show notes. And that's a wrap, my friend. Happy storytelling.