Categories: Articles

A Foolproof Way To Building A Great Story

If you are in business and you are trying to tell your story, you have to watch this.

I am thrilled that Steven Pressfield decided to post these two videos on YouTube. I’m a huge Pressfield fan (you can listen to my conversation with him right here: SPOS #251 – Do The Work With Steven Pressfield). He has written a slew of great books, including, The Legend Of Bagger Vance. I’m an even bigger fan of Pressfield’s non-fiction writing, which typically focuses on unlocking creativity, becoming a better writer and telling better stories. Most people know Pressfield for his seminal books, The War of Art and Do The Work. Those are two books that I constantly find myself reverting back to and re-reading on an annual basis (yes, they are that good). In building up to the release of his most recent book, The Authentic Swing (which is a non-fiction tale about how he discovered and developed the book idea for The Legend of Bagger Vance), Pressfield shot a small video series on something he describes as the Foolscap Method. In short, take one sheet of paper and use it to illustrate the entire story and flow of a book, an idea, a startup, your business, whatever. In a word: amazing.

Watch this, learn Pressfield’s strategy and then let me know just how much better and more structured your work becomes…

Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.