Make storytelling your superpower by Adam Davidson

by Ziad Shihab/ July 26th, 2021

Masterful Storytelling

Make storytelling your superpower

You hear about them and you need to know their secret: the folks who walk into a VC’s office with nothing but a deck and a tale to tell and walk out fully funded. Or those employers who recruit teams filled with the most awesome people. Or that person who sails through job interviews and gets your dream job.

You know what they all have: they have a great story and they know how to tell it well.

Storytelling is the essential technology of the twenty-first century. With a great story, you can get all the other things you need: capital, a great team, a fabulous job, eager customers. Without the ability to tell a great tale… you’re screwed.

Our class is designed and taught by Adam Davidson, one of the greatest business communicators around. He has told great business stories in podcasts and radio shows, the world’s best magazines, and movies and TV shows. He created the Planet Money podcast; helped shape the movie, The Big Short, and is a writer at The New Yorker Magazine. His book, The Passion Economy, was named one of the best nonfiction titles of 2020 by Amazon and serves as a model for great business storytelling.

In four days of live sessions over two weeks, Adam will teach you how to craft your story so it grabs your audience, persuades them effectively, and gets the results you need. And you will learn the frameworks and tools that will allow you to craft and recraft stories with mastery and grace for the rest of your career. You will hone in on the essence of your story and then express it in multiple ways: from the very short to the long, from a landing page to an email, from a Ted talk to an ongoing podcast series.

with Adam Davidson

Alpha

Class Period

Aug 17 - Aug 26, 2021

Registration Deadline

Aug 10, 2021

$1000.00 USD

A two-week course with guided, hands-on training that will teach you how to tell your story passionately and powerfully — enabling you to truly stand out in the current economy.

Topics we'll cover

We’ll go in-depth on the following concepts

See Curriculum

APPLY the key narrative leverage points that attract the right customers and allow you to charge the right price.

BREAKDOWN your story into its unique, compelling, and essential elements.

CRAFT your best stories into compelling arcs and multiple formats: long, short, text, image, audio.

TRANSFORM your story by adding the right details and removing the wrong distractions.

DISCOVER the essential tools that will turn you into a master storyteller.

BUILD a reserve of your best micro-stories to draw upon when you need them most.

DESIGN captivating variations of your core story and be ready to tell them at the right time.

MASTER your story so it can succeed in any context, across platforms, in any medium.

Who this course is for

Creators

You are a creator, maker, chef, artisan, or other solopreneur whose success requires that you convey your story well.

Professionals

You are (or want to be) a successful professional who wants to better convey your unique ability to add value to improve your career.

Entrepreneurs

You are launching a product that you know is amazing and special and you need to make sure your ideal customers get it, too.

Tune-Ups

You already have a company and products and you need to up your storytelling game to improve sales, move into new markets, and better compete.

Meet your instructor

Adam Davidson

Adam Davidson has worked with the greatest storytellers of our age. He is the author of The Passion Economy: The New Rules for Thriving in the Twenty-First Century. He is a writer for The New Yorker; co-created NPR’s Planet Money; has been a frequent contributor to This American Life; and was technical advisor to Adam McKay on his Oscar-winning film, The Big Short. Davidson and McKay are frequent collaborators: they co-produced the Amazon TV show, This Giant Beast That is the Global Economy; and they co-hosted the podcast, Surprisingly Awesome.

Davidson has won Peabody, Dupont-Columbia, Polk, and Daniel Schorr Awards. His one-hour special for This American Life, "The Giant Pool of Money," was named a top ten work of journalism for the decade by the NYU journalism faculty. His book, The Passion Economy, now in paperback, is an Amazon Editors’ pick for Best Nonfiction. He lives in Vermont with his wife, the novelist and journalist, Jen Banbury, and their 9-year-old son, Ash, who is the best storyteller in the family.

In this course, you will become a master at telling your story, powerfully and effectively.

Cohort-based Courses

A New Type of Online Course

Active Learning, not Passive Watching
I’m putting you to work. You won’t have time for those doubts and procrastination techniques. You’ll be typing away!
Learn with a Cohort of Peers
You will be part of a small cohort of peers who will be going through just what you are. You will share thoughtful, constructive criticism; celebrate wins; and offer clear, friendly feedback.
Accountability and Feedback
You will have to write. A lot. And you will get thoughtful, encouraging, and honest feedback.
Additional Benefits
We will bring in an all-star group of kick-ass storytellers from This American Life, The New Yorker, Hollywood, and more.

Adam Davidson is one of America’s most accomplished business journalists, with a reporter’s eye and a storyteller’s grace.

Daniel Pink
Author of When and Drive

Move over, Malcolm Gladwell. Adam Davidson upends the conventional thinking about how to succeed in our topsy-turvy, seemingly unforgiving postindustrial economy.

William D. Cohan
Author of House of Cards

Adam Davidson’s new book, The Passion Economy, is a solid gold winner. Extraordinary stories of "normal" people creating extraordinary businesses.

Tom Peters
Author of In Search of Excellence

Adam Davidson is a master storyteller. An engaging mix of Michael Lewis-style reporting and a Shark Tank-like focus on how to succeed in business.

Danna Isaacs, Chicago Reader

Adam's book, The Passion Economy, was selected as both a best nonfiction and a best business book of 2021.

Amazon Editor's Pick

You can have a great product, but a compelling story puts the company into motion. If you don’t have a great story it’s hard to get people motivated to join you, to work on the product, and to get people to invest in the product.

Ben Horowitz, Andreesen Horowitz

Learn with a comprehensive curriculum

The Value of a Story

Discover why storytelling is the most effective way to match overwhelmed buyers with narrowly focused suppliers. Distinguish between high-value and low-value stories, and take the first step toward mastering this timeless skill.

Refining Your Core Story

Start to shape the raw material of your core story by identifying your motivations and understanding your audience’s desires and then using timeless themes like the Hero’s Journey to create a narrative around them. Begin turning your life and work into a well-crafted story that positions you for success.

The Emotional Physics of Storytelling

Explore and practice the eternal laws followed by veteran storytellers at This American Life, Planet Money, and The New Yorker, and then investigate the building blocks that make up every narrative by breaking down your core story into its essential components.

Filling Your Story Bank

Capture the abundance of great stories all around you and start to gather them in your Story Bank—a lifelong resource cherished by the best in the business. Know when to draw upon historical, technical, and personal microstories for impact.

Engineering Effective Stories

Shape the narrative arc of your career, product, or company. Learn when to make the strategic moves that turn scenes into sequences, and begin to practice your pacing.

Scaling Your Story

Master storytellers know how to tell captivating tales that perfectly fit their presentations, whether that be a single tweet or a six-part podcast series. Craft your story to be consistent and coherent across platforms, mediums, and scales using the technique of Fractal Storytelling.

Creating Stickiness Through Details

Specificity is at the heart of great narrative. Using Adam’s 90-9-1 rule, you will learn to distinguish between evocative details and extraneous distractions. Plus, you’ll know when and how to speed up or slow your story down, and ultimately how to make it come alive and feel real.

Tell Your Story Everywhere

Become a masterful storyteller by taking charge of your Story Telling Control Panel, a capstone framework for making every story you tell about your business—from your elevator pitch to your landing page—effective and powerful.

Limited availability

Upcoming

Alpha

Class Period

Aug 17 - Aug 26, 2021

Registration Deadline

Aug 10, 2021

$1000.00 USD

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I really become a master storyteller in two weeks?

You can, without question, dramatically improve the way you tell your story in two weeks. And you’ll do this by using key frameworks developed by Adam Davidson over three decades of award-winning journalism, podcasting, and scriptwriting. That means you’ll have tools you can use for the rest of your career. (The truth is, no great storyteller ever thinks they’ve mastered the art. There’s always more to learn.)

Who else is taking the course?

Since this is the first time I’m running the course, I will keep the class size quite small and only admit people who are ready to get to serious work and will encourage--and give honest feedback to--their peers.

How much time will this take?

There will be four two-hour classes (with two modules in each class) delivered over a two-week period—so, eight hours of live sessions. And there will be homework, for which should probably add at least another five hours or so (as with everything, the more you put in, the more you’ll get out). We don’t expect that this will be the only thing you’re doing during these two weeks. But it’ll be a big deal and will be fairly intense.