'Story' is Key to Your Best Business Success
- Victoria Hogg
- Jun 19
- 4 min read
Updated: Sep 8
I read a cool quote the other day. It was from Howard Schultz, former CEO of Starbucks. He said: “We are not in the coffee business, serving people. We’re in the people business, serving coffee.”
In one sentence, Schultz tells a whole story - of community, of connection and, obviously, of priorities. And he’s demonstrated the power of story: what lingers in the mind, long after product specs and stats are forgotten.
In business and in life, decisions aren’t just logical—they’re emotional. People follow leaders they feel something about. In your career, story isn’t fluff - it’s strategy. A strong narrative makes data relatable, mission statements memorable, and leadership human.
Improv teaches you how to build stories from scratch. It trains for active listening and tunes your ear to what makes something land with your audience. You learn to say “Yes, and…” to possibility. You practice staying present, responding with authenticity, and shaping a moment that includes others. It’s no coincidence that top communicators, from actors to CEOs, train in improv.
At its heart, applied improvisation is about finding the story in the momentand learning how to share it in a way that builds trust and invites participation. That’s why companies and leaders turn to it: not just to speakmore persuasively, but to connect more meaningfully. Because story isn’t just how we entertain. It’s how we lead.
According to a Stanford Graduate School of Business study, people are 22 times more likely to remember a fact when it’s wrapped in a story than when it’s told through statistics alone. Worth chewing over.
TRY IT OUT: Pick something that you care about to do with your work and see if you can find a spicy metaphor. Maybe you’re finding it hard to finish some paperwork, so you’re ‘swimming upstream against a swirling mass of A4’. Perhaps you have to meet a tricky client, so you’re ‘hiding nervously in the undergrowth hoping they’ve already eaten that day’.
Practice makes everything a little less mundane and a little more poetic.
Good luck! Did you try it? What happened?
“Marketing is no longer about the stuff you make but the stories you tell” Seth Godin, leadership guru
Something hissed…
Story goes hand in hand with commitment. Are you prepared to stand by what you say? Can you hold onto the narrative, see the subtext and still read the room?
I (Vic) had a thrilling moment on stage a few years back when I, out of the blue, hissed at my stage partner, as we argued over kitchen chores: “I’m glad I voted Leave!” My ‘evil’ choice had come out of nowhere and in that liberal, artsy space, in front of a staunchly Remainer audience, the room gave an audible gasp. I was now the villain. Fun! I leaned into it.
What stories are you telling the world about yourself every day? If you don’t control the narrative, you might get burned. And yet the most important thing is your happiness in your work. It’s a tough balancing act.
Something sipped…
When I (Vic) was on a training with Sîan Prime (brilliant senior lecturer and co-director of Goldsmiths’ Institute for Cultural and Creative Entrepreneurship), she introduced us to ‘The Sip Pitch’. Think a slicker version of the ‘Elevator Pitch’: rather than pitching a story during a lift ride, it’s delivering it as the listener takes a sip of their drink (no pressure!).
The Sip Pitch is a perfect distillation of story. What’s your message? Can you say it easily? Is it simple, relevant, repeatable? Paul and I love giving Sîan’s Sip Pitch an improv spin at Seize the NICHE events. It’s transformative.
Story fosters emotional connection. It makes information memorable and relatable. When you can communicate your ‘brand’ - whether personal or business - in just a few words, you avoid confusion, build trust and inspire action, by appealing to the hard-wired human desire for narrative.
“You can’t tell any kind of story without having some kind of a theme; something to say between the lines” Robert Wise, film director, producer, editor
Something yelled…
Glastonbury ahoy! Tis the season, and reminds me of when I was a greenhorn journalist. My (Vic’s) second-ever interview was a phoner with Festival founder Michael Eavis.
It was the 90s, the week before the festival was to start and it was raining heavily in Somerset. I was too dumb to realise just how busy this legend would be, the week before 100,000 people popped round his farm.
I naively, sympathetically, asked Eavis: “Are you worried about mud ruining things?”. He swiftly replied with a brutal but fair: “Of course not! Who the hell cares about mud?!”. I thought I’d messed up. My editor, though, was over the moon: “Brilliant! That’s our headline!”
Three people, three completely different angles. Perception is everything. A story weaves itself into every interaction. Donald Miller, in Building a StoryBrand, puts it best: ”What we think we’re saying to our customers and what our customers actually hear are two different things… and customers make buying decisions NOT based on what we say but on what THEY HEAR.”
Are you saying what you think you’re saying? What are they hearing?
