This is a third article in the series Startup 101. In the first post, we understood the importance of not starting alone. In the second post, we discussed about the issues related to selecting a business partner. In this post, we are going to talk about the importance of story telling for the leader of a company. Developing a good product or offering a good service is just one part of your startup experience. The most important part is selling your product/service to potential investors and future clients. Yes, you can have a good marketing person to do it. But, there is nothing like the founder of a company selling the product to investors and consumers. You have to be a good story-teller to do this. You should be able to captivate the audience with your story telling style and bring in your product at an opportune moment. If you are an entrepreneur developing a product, you must be passionate about your product. You should convey your passion to potential investors and customers with a great story. This art of story telling is crucial to the success of your product/company. I want you to watch this video of Steve Jobs talking about the upcoming Macintosh release in 1983. First watch the video as a normal consumer. I am pretty sure that you will be impressed at the end of the video. Now, watch the same video again as an budding entrepreneur. You can learn quite a lot about how to sell your product to investors and customers by great story telling.

Thanks to Read/Write Web for the video link.

Some people are natural story tellers like Steve Jobs, Bill Clinton (it doesn’t matter whether you subscribe to his political ideas but no one can deny his story telling abilities), etc. Many of us are not natural story tellers. But we can fine tune our story telling skills by practice. You have to funnel out your passion through great story telling. For those of us, who are not natural story tellers, this link offers you more than 200 tips to fine tune your story telling skills. Story telling is an art. Some people get it naturally. For many others, it can be acquired through practice. Being an entrepreneur, it is very important for you to acquire this skill. Steve Jobs is the best example to highlight the importance of story telling. You can convert your passionate product into a top selling product by passionate story telling. Good luck.

Tags: Startup, Startups, Entrepreneurship, Startup 101, Apple, Steve Jobs, Story telling, Tips