in the business world, who recently published his eighth

book, "The Storyteller's Secret--

From TED Speakers to Business Legends,

Why Some Ideas Stick and Others Don't."

Carmine's currently an author, columnist, and public speaker,

and has formally worked as a journalist and news anchor.

But I think, above all, Carmine is a storyteller.

His previous books had been massive hits.

His book, "The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs,"

also became an international bestseller,

and has been awarded the Axiom Award

for being one of the top three best business books in 2011.

And just today, Amazon Editor shows most recent book,

"The Storyteller's Secret," as one of the best new books

in business and leadership.

It's available everywhere now.

And we've been lucky enough to have some subsidized copies

through Google Talks that will be available for sale

in the back.

And I'm sure Carmine would be happy to sign

your copy for you, if you're willing to stick around

for a couple minutes after the talk.

So with that, I'd like to introduce the man himself,

Carmine Gallo.

[APPLAUSE]

CARMINE GALLO: All right.

All right, thank you.

Good morning.

I am really passionate about this topic.

And I'm passionate about it because I really

think that this is a topic that will help you in your careers,

help you in your business, make you more valuable than you've

ever imagined.

And it'll also help you sell your ideas more effectively.

So since we're talking about storytelling,

why don't we begin with a story?

Now, stop me if you've heard this before.

Two Stanford graduate students think

they've come up with an idea to change the world.

So they had over to Sequoia Capital, to ask for money.

Michael Moritz, one of the investors, the main investor

at Sequoia Capital, has been watching an endless stream

of really bad PowerPoints.

And Sergey and Larry do something different.

First, they have a working demo, which was really unusual

at that time.

It actually worked.

What a concept.

But they also did something very interesting.

They were able to summarize their entire vision

in one short sentence of under 10 words.

And Michael Moritz never forgot that.

And that sentence is "We organize

the world's information and make it accessible."

I spoke to Michael Moritz last year.

And he said, Carmine, tell your clients,

tell your groups that great leaders can do two things.

One, they have a vision for the future.

But they can communicate it especially well.

And so now, even today, if you walk

into Sequoia Capital's offices, they're

asking you for the one line.

And one investor told me, if you cannot summarize your idea

in one sentence, we're not interested.

Go back to the drawing board.

Because there's power in simplicity.

And there's power in articulating your ideas simply

and concisely.

When it comes to storytelling, especially, we

kind of know how this works.

Kevin Spacey said, "Story is everything and good content

making--" whether that's in business, marketing, or movies,

"--is not a crap shoot.

We know how this works."

There is a formula to this.

We know how persuasion works.

We know why you remember certain things

and why you forget others.

There's a formula to this.

In the music industry, for example, 90% of music revenues

come from 10% of the songs.

And this is a true statistic.

It's actually in a new book called "The Song Machine."

What's amazing about this is that the 10%

are written by a handful of people.

One guy in particular, is Max Martin,

who made it big with Britney Spears, Backstreet Boys.

And today, he write songs for pretty much all the other big

pop artists out there-- most of the songs that you hear,

the songs that you like, the ones that are memorable.

Because there's a formula to it.

He knows what works.

He uses something called track and hook.

So how many of you have had a Taylor Swift

song stuck in your head over the last year?

It's got three words.

What would it be?

What is it?

What is the three-word song?

What is it?

AUDIENCE: "Shake it Off."

CARMINE GALLO: "Shake it Off." "Shake it Off."

Thank you, Max Martin, who wrote that.

He knows how these things work.

We know how this works in communication too.

So in the 20th Century, give me one or two

of the most famous speeches of the 20th Century.

Name one.

AUDIENCE: I Had a Dream.

CARMINE GALLO: How did I know you were going to say that?

How did I know?

I Have a Dream speech.

And what is the most memorable part of the I

Have a Dream speech?

I have a dream.

That's called anaphora.

That's a rhetorical device that makes

something pleasing to the ear.

We know how this works.

What's the most famous line from John Kennedy's

inaugural speech?

AUDIENCE: Ask not what your--

CARMINE GALLO: --country can do for you.

What's the rest of it?

AUDIENCE: But what you can do for your country.

CARMINE GALLO: But what you can do for your country.

We know how this works.

There is a reason why you remember that.

It's the same reason why certain songs are stuck in your head.

How many of you, over the last year,

have had Omi's "Cheerleader" song stuck in your head?

Dave, you said, "Cheerleader?"

What's the chorus of "Cheerleader?"

"Oh, I think that I found myself a cheerleader.

She is always right there when I need her."

Max Martin would say, that chorus has to be balanced,

the same number of words and the same number

of syllables on each one, on each side of the chorus.

In other words, we know how this stuff works.

I won't give you any more songs.

I don't want them stuck in your head all day

when you're at work.

You're going to find yourself singing that cheerleader

song today.

And if you start Autotuning yourself,

then you know you've completely lost it.

But we know how this works.

We know how it works in persuasion too.

Great songwriters know how it works.

And we know how it works when you're communicating ideas.

Adam Braun is the founder of a wonderful startup,

but a great nonprofit called Pencils of Promise.

Every 90 hours now, Pencils of Promise

builds a new classroom in impoverished or underprivileged

communities around the world.

And he told me something really interesting once.

Because he's always out there fund raising.

And he said, Carmine, it's interesting.

Because when I'm speaking to a group of financial types,

I'm trying to raise funds, they all

want to know about how efficiently the nonprofit is

run.

They want to know the data.

They want to know the finances.

But that's not what they remember.

They always seem to remember a two-minute sequence

from my presentation, where I show

a video of the first Pencils of Promise students.

Little girls that he met in Laos who

had never been in a classroom, had never

had a classroom before.

He shot a video a 30-second video on a smartphone, inserts

into his presentation.

He says, it's always a hit.

Here's the 30-second video he shows.

[VIDEO PLAYBACK]

[SPEAKING THAI]

[END VIDEO PLAYBACK]

And that's it.

And then he shows this slide, which

is the same girls in their first Pencils of Promise school.

And he said, Carmine, facts and figures and data

never get me a standing ovation.

But this always does.

And this is what's memorable.

Why?

We know why this works.

Because we are wired for story.

Ideas that catch on are wrapped in story.

Stories inform.

They illuminate.

They inspire.

And it's not just me.

Because certainly, in business, most executive leaders

and successful business leaders believe the same thing.

That's the reason why I wrote the book.

It's because they kept telling me this.

Vinod Khosla, the billionaire investor,

said, "It's not enough to have facts on your side.

You have to do storytelling."

Ben Horowitz-- "Storytelling is the most underrated skill."

Let's go to "Shark Tank."

Barbara Corcoran-- "Storytelling is everything.

Show me an MBA and your sales numbers, that's fine.

But tell me a great story and we'll talk."

So here's the best part.

Storytelling is already in our DNA.

You already know how to do this.

We're all storytellers.

Storytelling around a campfire has been around 400,000 years.

It was a major development when people began to tell stories.

Firelight extended the day.

Anthropologists have been studying this.

When firelight extended the day, people started telling stories.

It ignited their imaginations.

It warned them of threats.

It was a major milestone in human development.

We've been doing this for centuries.

We know how to do it.

And people still do it today.

Richard Branson gathers his team around a campfire

at his home on Necker Island for the purpose of sharing stories.

Storytelling, he says, can be used to drive change.

In fact, about two weeks ago, Richard Branson

wrote a blog piece where he said,

if you want to be a successful entrepreneur,

you need to be able to tell stories well.

He said, you can have a great idea.

But if you can't communicate it well, it doesn't matter.

So we know how this works.

Today, for the next 20 minutes or so,

I want to give you three keys to winning the hearts

and minds of your audiences.

And that can be almost anything, whether you're

pitching a new idea, whether you're delivering

a presentation, what have you.

We're going to talk about the storyteller-- yourself--

the story that you deliver, and then

how you deliver that story.

So let's talk about the storyteller.

It's really important to see yourself

as the chief storytelling officer for your brand.

Great storytellers are not born.

They're made.

People work at it.

You cannot inspire other people until you're inspired yourself.

If you don't believe in your story, nobody else will.

And it's important, if you've faced adversity,

or if you've faced struggle in your life.

Or if you've had to