Big Idea

The argument in one line.

Storytelling becomes unforgettable when it follows a five-part structure, hook, stakes, turn, scene, and shatter, that manufactures curiosity, builds relatability through vulnerability, and lands a single mic-drop lesson.

Who This Is For

Read if. Skip if.

READ IF YOU ARE…

You give talks, pitches, or sales presentations and want a repeatable structure for turning your own history into a story people remember.
You create long-form video, write posts, or teach where a personal story needs to carry a lesson, not just entertain.
You've been told your stories are good but they don't land the way you want on stage or on camera.

SKIP IF…

You're looking for fiction or screenwriting craft rather than personal and branded storytelling for talks and content.
You want tactics for editing or shooting video rather than what to actually say.

TL;DR

The full version, fast.

Great storytelling makes people feel an idea instead of just hearing it, and the difference between a forgettable speaker and an unforgettable one is a five-step structure. Hook opens with an idea collision, two unexpected concepts smashed together. Stakes show the moment you might fail, which builds relatability. Turn is the pivot where the story changes direction and the lesson starts to form. Scene slows down and adds sensory detail so the audience can picture it. Shatter delivers a single mic-drop sentence with the lesson before any evidence. Applied consistently, the same structure that turns a personal story into stage gold also scaled a licensed meditation course into a bestseller earning 40 million dollars a year.

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Chapters

Where the time goes.

00:00 – 02:34

01 · Why Some Speakers Get Forgotten

Cold open contrasting speakers who get forgotten with speakers who move a room to tears, then promises a five-step framework for unforgettable storytelling.

02:34 – 03:22

02 · Learn HSTSS

Introduces the HSTSS acronym, 'Heroes Start Their Stories Somewhere' or the edgier 'Holy Shit That's So Smart,' as the mnemonic for the five-part framework.

03:22 – 08:18

03 · Craft The Hook

Teaches idea collision as the mechanism behind a great hook, using the Dalai Lama vodka story and Naveen Jain's parenting quote as examples, plus a three-second social-media hook rule from Jay Shetty.

08:18 – 10:04

04 · Add The Stakes

Defines stakes as the moment the hero might fail, using Star Wars and Avengers as reference points, and explains why stakes build relatability and humility.

10:04 – 14:03

05 · The Story Of The Couch

Tells the personal story of moving to Silicon Valley in 1999, losing his father's $30,000, and sleeping on a stranger's stained two-seater couch for months.

14:03 – 18:49

06 · Find The Turn

Explains the pivot as the turning point that flips a story's direction, illustrated by his desperate 2001 Google search that led him to the Silva Ultramind meditation class.

18:49 – 19:57

07 · Build The Scene

Shows how to slow down and add visual, sensory detail, his boss's puzzled expression, a hand pounding the table, so the audience can picture the moment.

19:57 – 21:27

08 · Land The Shatter

Defines the shatter as the mic-drop lesson that breaks an outdated belief, delivered as a single quotable line before the supporting evidence.

21:27 – 24:07

09 · Scale It Like Silva Ultramind

Recounts how storytelling turned the Silva Ultramind course into a course earning 40 million dollars a year, nine years after acquiring the rights, and ties the training back to the same five-step structure.

24:07 – 25:55

10 · Avoid These Mistakes

Warns what breaks when any one of the five ingredients is missing, then closes with the mic-drop line and calls to follow, comment, and share.

Atomic Insights

Lines worth screenshotting.

Great storytelling makes an audience feel an idea instead of just understanding it, which is why some speakers get forgotten and others are remembered years later.
A hook works by idea collision: smashing two ideas the mind doesn't expect together, like a religious leader and shots of vodka.
On social media a hook has three seconds to land and eleven seconds to fully set up the story before the payoff begins.
Stakes are the moment a story's hero might fail, and sharing them signals humility that makes a speaker relatable instead of arrogant.
Vulnerability compounds: describing the shame of lying to a parent about a real address adds a second layer of stakes beyond the bare facts.
The turn is the pivot where a story changes direction, and it usually carries the lesson the audience is meant to walk away with.
Adding humor to a dark moment, like joking about googling why his life was so pathetic, lightens the turn without erasing the stakes.
A scene becomes visualizable through small sensory details, like a boss's puzzled expression or a hand pounding a table, not broad description.
The shatter is a single mic-drop sentence that delivers the story's lesson before the supporting evidence and citations arrive.
Skipping any one of hook, stakes, turn, scene, or shatter weakens the story: no stakes reads as arrogant, no turn leaves the audience sad, no scene loses immersion, no shatter leaves no lesson.
Storytelling turned a licensed meditation program into a course earning 40 million dollars a year, nine years after acquiring the rights.
Relatability comes from the hook and stakes; respect comes from the turn, scene, and shatter, and a speaker needs both to hold an audience.

Takeaway

Five beats that turn a personal story into a mic-drop moment.

WHAT TO LEARN

A repeatable hook-stakes-turn-scene-shatter structure, plus the vulnerability and sensory detail that make each beat land, is what separates a story people forget from one they still quote years later.

01Why Some Speakers Get Forgotten

The gap between forgettable and unforgettable speakers comes down to whether they make the audience feel the idea, not just hear it.
State your credibility early if the audience doesn't already know you, then quickly pivot to your failure so you stay relatable.

02Learn HSTSS

A five-part structure, remembered as 'Heroes Start Their Stories Somewhere' or 'Holy Shit That's So Smart,' turns any story into a repeatable formula.

03Craft The Hook

A hook works through idea collision: pairing two concepts the mind doesn't expect together, like a religious leader and shots of vodka.
On social media the hook has three seconds to land and about eleven seconds to fully set up before the story itself starts.
The same hook mechanism works live on stage, in interviews, and in scripted content, just with more room to build before the reveal.

04Add The Stakes

Stakes are the moment your story's hero might fail, borrowed from film structure, and explain why they grip an audience's attention.
Sharing real stakes brings humility and vulnerability, which is what makes an accomplished speaker relatable instead of arrogant.

05The Story Of The Couch

Concrete, specific detail, a two-seater couch, a yellow stain, a towel laid down every night, makes stakes believable instead of generic.
Describing the feeling, not just the situation, such as the shame of lying to his parents about having an apartment, adds a second layer of vulnerability.

06Find The Turn

The turn is the pivot where the story's direction flips, and it usually carries the lesson the storyteller wants the audience to walk away with.
A touch of humor at the low point, like joking about googling why his life was so pathetic, lightens the turn without undercutting the stakes.

07Build The Scene

A scene becomes visualizable through small, specific sensory detail, a facial expression, a hand gesture, a sound, not broad description.
Slowing down instead of rushing through the moment is what lets the audience feel present in the story with you.

08Land The Shatter

The shatter is a single mic-drop sentence that delivers the lesson before the supporting evidence, studies, or citations arrive.
Missing the shatter means the story has no clear point, no matter how strong the hook, stakes, turn, and scene were.

09Scale It Like Silva Ultramind

Wrapping storytelling around someone else's principles, not just your own history, can turn a licensed program into a bestseller, 40 million dollars a year, nine years running.
The same five-part structure that works in a single story also works across an entire training or webinar built to teach a body of ideas.

10Avoid These Mistakes

Missing the stakes makes a speaker sound arrogant and unrelatable, even if the rest of the story is well told.
Missing the turn leaves the audience sad and without resolution; missing the scene means the audience never fully arrives in the moment.
Relatability comes from the hook and stakes; respect comes from the turn, scene, and shatter, and a story needs both to truly land.

Glossary

Terms worth knowing.

HSTSS: A five-step storytelling framework, remembered as 'Heroes Start Their Stories Somewhere' or 'Holy Shit That's So Smart,' standing for Hook, Stakes, Turn, Scene, Shatter.
Idea collision: Pairing two ideas the audience doesn't expect to hear in the same sentence, such as a religious leader and shots of vodka, to create an instant hook.
Stakes: The moment in a story where the hero might fail or lose everything, borrowed from film structure and used to build relatability.
The turn: The point in a story where the situation changes direction, usually carrying the lesson the storyteller wants the audience to learn.
The shatter: The single mic-drop sentence that delivers a story's core lesson, breaking an outdated belief before evidence and citations follow.

Resources

Things they pointed at.

19:10bookThe Code of the Extraordinary Mind

16:46linkSteve Jobs's Stanford commencement address

16:57bookExecutive ESP by Professor John Mihalasky

21:50productSilva Ultramind (Mindvalley)

Quotables

Lines you could clip.

04:09

“Great hooks collide facts.”

tight one-line definition of the hook mechanism→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote

04:40

“It's called idea collision. You take two fundamentally different ideas and you smash them together.”

names the technique in one breath→ IG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote

13:00

“So your chaos is sometimes a gift. The darkness that you go through can sometimes be a gift.”

reframes personal hardship as storytelling material→ newsletter pull-quote↗ Tweet quote

25:08

“Nobody changes their life because of a fact. People change their life because they heard a story that gives them hope for who they could become.”

the video's own mic-drop closing line→ IG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote

The Script

Word for word.

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metaphoranalogy

Great storytelling is making people feel the idea, not just understand it. I've sat in rooms with some of the most brilliant minds on the planet and I noticed something. There are certain speakers where the audience listens to them, might applause, and then forgets what they say.

And then there are certain speakers that the audience is moved, sometimes to tears, standing ovation. And when they walk out of that room, even years later, they remember what the speaker said. What is the difference between these two types of speakers?

It has to do with the emotion they bring into their storytelling. There's a five -step framework that I'd like to teach you. And this five -step framework is going to make anything you choose to communicate absolutely unforgettable.

The ability to tell a story is one of the most amazing meta skills you can learn. It transforms so many things about you from the way you talk about your company to the way you command respect from stage to the way you're able to connect with people in a room, on a date, or even to entertain your kids. But most people get storytelling wrong.

What I'm going to show you in this video is how to become such a masterful storyteller that doors open for you. And before I begin, let me first tell you who I am and why you want to be listening to this video. If you are looking to improve your ability to speak and your ability to communicate.

My name is Vishen Lakhiani. I'm the founder of Mindvalley. And for 22 years, I have created many of the best -selling personal growth and wellness programs in the world.

Combine the programs I produce with people like Jim Quick, Marissa Peer, Dave Asprey, May Musk. have sold half a billion dollars worth of content. And most of this came true.

storytelling. Not only have I used storytelling to build one of the most successful personal growth apps in the world, our app has been featured in every single Apple store last year, but I also used it to write this book, The Code of the Extraordinary Mind. And this book became the number one book in the world.

Why? Because of the unique storytelling technique I'm about to share with you and how I applied that technique to the first 20 pages of this book that cost a book to have one of the stickiest open rates. So while most people pick up a book on Kindle and put it down, after they browse through it, this book, you could not put it down because of the technique I shared here.

Now, you're going to want to grab a pen and paper, and you're going to want to pay attention because we're going to go fast. I'm going to give you examples. I'm going to cover five things, and they spell out H -S -T -S -S, okay?

Now, I've created a little sentence to help you remember these five things, and we're going to go bit by bit. And it says, heroes start their stories somewhere. So repeat after me, heroes start their stories somewhere.

H -S -T -S -S. These are the five things that you can use to turn any ordinary story into something unforgettable. But let's go a little bit further.

For those of you who want to get a little bit edgy, this is how my students remember it. Holy shit, that's so smart. Much easier, right?

Holy shit, that's so smart. And by the way, guys, that is what your audience is going to be saying about your ideas when you apply this technique. So are you ready?

H -S -T -S -S. Now, we're going to start with the hook. So the hook is how you capture the person's attention and leave them hanging.

My story started with this simple hook. I was about to get on stage in Calgary in 2009 with the Dalai Lama. And I was so unbelievably nervous while about to get on stage with this.

holy man, this world visionary. I decided to pop into the hotel bar in the middle of the day and ask for two shots of vodka. And the story goes on to explain and describe in vivid detail me by the bar, sweating, nervous, pounding back shots of vodka before going on the stage with a global religious leader.

Now, that was a hook. Now, why was it a hook? Because great hooks collide.

Facts. That story kept people reading past page 11. Why?

Because, well, you want to know what happened next. Did I pass out drunk? Did I embarrass myself in front of the Dalai Lama?

That was a powerful hook. But there's another reason that story worked. And I want you to write this down if you happen to have a pen and paper.

It's called idea collision. You take two fundamentally different ideas and you smash them together. What were the two fundamentally different ideas here?

Religious leader and shots of vodka. The human mind is not used to hearing both these ideas in the same sentence. This makes it a hook.

Great speakers start their talks with a hook that arouses curiosity, captures the attention of the room, and frequently one of the most powerful ways to capture that attention is the idea collision. Now, when you're telling a story on social media, the hook has to be incredibly tight.

Three seconds. I remember sitting down and interviewing the great social media superstar, Jay Shetty. Jay said, the first three seconds, hook them, and then all the way up to second 11, go deeper in the hook.

That's when you start the story. So on social media, I might start this story in the following way. I can't believe the Dalai Lama made me kick back shots of vodka.

That's the first three seconds. Now that is the hook. You want to understand that Dalai Lama made you kick back shots of vodka.

And then I go on to the rest of the story. So what happened was I was invited to share the stage with the Dalai Lama when he was visiting Calgary. But I was so absolutely nervous.

I ran into the hotel bar and I started kicking back shots of vodka. This is what happened next. That's 11 seconds.

Now you have a hook with an idea collision optimized for social media. powerful, isn't it? Now, here's the thing.

You can apply the same thing to a stage talk. You can apply the same thing to a presentation. When you're giving a presentation, you have a captive audience because you have people in a room.

You have a little bit more time to establish your hook. And this is what I'm going to teach you to do. Now, you can even do this on an interview.

Just two days ago, I was on stage at a conference here in London, and I was asked to interview the billionaire Naveen J. And Naveen... said something really interesting that captivated the entire audience.

He was speaking about raising genius kids, okay? And Naveen's kids are all super successful entrepreneurs. And people often ask him, how do you raise children who are that successful?

I mean, his son is Uncle Jane, one of the youngest billionaires in America. So Naveen said, this is how I raise kids who are entrepreneurial. I don't buy the bullshit that I need to spend all my free time with my kids.

This was the hook. Now, notice what he did? Idea collision.

But he's about to go further. He goes on to say, I make my kids see me working. Why is this an idea collision?

Because as parents, and I'm a parent, we are told, when your kids are around you, don't worry. Be attentive to them. Focus on them.

Naveen, whether you agree or not, he created an idea collision. He goes on to explain. and craft the story he says when my kids wake up on sunday morning and they come to the living room i'm not sitting in front of the tv i'm not reading a book i'm on my laptop working they see me working late at night they see how passionate i am for my job your kids see you in front of the tv before they go to school they come back from school they see you in front of the tv what mental model do the children get the mental model is my parents love watching tv i'm gonna grow up and love sitting in front of the tv but my kids they see me working what mental model do they get that work can be meaningful that work can be passion, that your work can be so enjoyable that even on a Sunday morning, you want to work with a smile on your face, okay?

Now, you don't have to agree with what Naveen said, but you got to admit, he captivated that audience. Not everyone agreed with him, but by creating the idea collision, he made his point. That's why he is frequently asked to come on stage and do interviews, because he has a hook.

for almost every interview question he knows he's going to be asked. So that is the hook. But there is a second part to ideas.

And the second part is stakes. Now, I've already given you a clue for the second part, for the stakes concept. In a movie, the stakes are the opportunity where the hero might fail.

You see this in all the great movies when Luke Skywalker has his hand cut off by Darth Vader. When in Avengers, Thanos makes his snap and half the people of the planet disappear, including half the superheroes. Gone for good.

These are the stakes. It's the moment when everything might collapse, when everything might end. Human beings pay attention to stakes.

Maybe it's a biological wiring. Maybe we need to pay attention when we hear stories of tragedy, of chaos, of surrender, because we need to get the lesson. So we can get out of the same situation.

So stakes grip our mind. And this is how you use it in a story. Now, there's another reason that stakes help you connect with an audience.

Stakes bring in humility. Stakes bring in humbleness. Stakes talk about the danger, the surrender, the chaos that you were facing in your life.

It makes you relatable. Great storytellers bring themselves to connect with the audience. Now, I started.

this talk by telling you about my book being number one in the world. There was a reason for that. When you're on YouTube, you have so many videos to watch.

I need to establish my credibility because you may not know who I am. But now that I've established my credibility, I need to show you my failure. I need to show you where I started from.

That makes me and you relatable. So when I'm telling the story of how I started my company, Mindvalley, I always go into the stakes. And this is the story I tell.

I want you to observe this story and observe how I tell this story because you're going to see the stakes and then you're also going to see point number three and point number four, how everything lines up perfectly. The story goes like this. So I graduated from the University of Michigan, you know, barely passing grades, but I got the degree I always wanted.

It was 1999 and I came out with a computer science degree. I moved to Silicon Valley and I had this great dream to start this software. that I had invented, but I needed some money to get started.

So I went to my dad and I borrowed $30 ,000 from my dad and I promised him I would pay him back. And I loved my dad and I knew he loved me and I knew this 30 grand that he lent me was a lot for him. Now I moved to Silicon Valley, but folks, my timing sucked.

The dot -com bubble burst just shortly after I landed in Mountain Deep. And what happened is, for the next couple of months, I ended up losing everything. I could not get anyone to invest in the idea.

I burned through the 30 grand that I borrowed from my dad, and I found myself homeless. I had a... couple of hundred dollars in my bank account.

And the only thing I could do to make money was odd jobs. And the only place I could afford to rent so I wasn't sleeping on the streets was a couch that I rented for 200 bucks a month from a Berkeley college student in his cramped little apartment. So I could not afford my own apartment.

I couldn't even afford a bed. I had to go up to a Berkeley college student who also needed money. and rent his couch.

And it wasn't even a three -seater couch. It was a two -seater couch. So my legs dangled off the end.

On that couch was everything I owned. That couch stank. That couch had a yellow stain on it.

And I never wanted to know what that yellow stain was. I kept a towel on that couch every night before I went to bed because I did not want that stain touching my body. But that's how I had to live for months and months and months as I sent my resume out to...

every company that was hiring online and job sites of that time, like Craigslist, just waiting for someone to offer me a job. And then I certainly get an email that changed my life. Okay.

Now, did you notice what I did there? I spoke about the stakes. I spoke about the lowest of the low and everything I said was true.

That story of the couch, I've shared that story hundreds of times from stage. That story of being near homeless, I've shared that. And It's real and people can relate to it because especially in the United States, so many people have been kicked out of their home because they couldn't afford rent.

But that story is what makes the next spa especially powerful. So what I just shared there were the stakes. It was the lowest of the low.

This is where you not just connect with the audience and bring in vulnerability and humility. Don't make things up. All of you have some story from your past, some moment of misery that you can share that might help other people navigate their pain, okay?

So your chaos is sometimes a gift. The darkness that you go through can sometimes be a gift because when you overcome that darkness, you have a story that could inspire and move other people. I just gave you the stakes and here are the rules of the stakes.

Don't just describe the situation. Describe how you're feeling. So when I tell that story, I often go deeper into the shame I felt asking my dad for help.

I'd lost his money. And I knew my dad, if he knew that I was homeless, would have given me money for rent. But I'd lost his initial 30K.

I couldn't ask him. So I lied to my parents. They thought I actually had a decent apartment.

I did not. I was sleeping on a freaking couch. When I tell that, that creates another level to that stake, another level of vulnerability.

Okay, so describe the shame, the guilt. the anger, describe it. And now you come to the pivot.

So notice how I set up the pivot and then I got that email. Okay, so the pivot is the turn. It's the turn that changed the story.

My email was an invite to my first job, a job through which I would learn everything I needed to later start my company. That's a whole different story. We don't need to go there.

But the turn is that turning point. Often in the turn is a lesson that is baked in. So let me tell you the turn in my story.

I go on to talk about how I got a job. And I got this job in this company in Silicon Valley and the economy was so bad, there was no base salary. Basically, I had to pick up the phone, call lawyers and sell them on software.

I described how my boss told me, by the way, we don't pay a base salary because we have a hundred people waiting for your job if you can't succeed. So all I'm going to do is this. No benefits, no base salary, but you get to keep 20 % of whatever you close.

Now, I had no experience in sales. I was a computer scientist. And for the first one month, I made precisely zero sales.

Now I was working a 50 -hour week and getting zero money. That was frightening because I could not see any way out. Now, at this point...

I bring in the term. It was 2001. Now, Google had just come out, and Google was kind of a magical thing back then.

I remember getting on Google and typing in, Google, why does my life suck so bad? Or Google, why am I so pathetic? Google, why am I such a loser?

Now, notice what I did. I certainly ran from the darkness, okay, the unfairness of my employment, no base salary. I made it lighter.

I brought in a little bit of humor. because I'm making the turn. Okay, now we're going to continue.

When I put in that request on Google, I saw a class. The class was called Silver Ultramind. It was a meditation class and they said on their webpage that they would teach you mindset.

They would teach you how to visualize your goals. They would even teach you intuition, which they say is a very human skill. You can tap into your intuition.

and get a gut read on situations. I was desperate. I took the few hundred dollars I had, got a hundred dollar flight to LA, attended the class, got back on the plane the next day, flew back to San Francisco to start my job.

And this is what happened. So you see, back then we used the yellow pages. When you go to the San Francisco Public Library, check out the yellow pages.

And I had to call everyone in San Antonio. All the people who are on the phone, we had to call names from A to Z. But I'd learned something.

Cool. Through Silva Ultramind, I learned how to close my eyes and go into a meditative level of mind and listen to my heart and intuition. I would then run my finger down the book and listen for an impulse.

Yes or no? Yes or no? I didn't know it back then, but I was applying techniques that many great CEOs say truly help with decision making.

Steve Jobs in his famous commencement address at Stanford said, and most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.

Everything else is secondary. Professor John Michalowski at Newark College of Engineering, he did a study and showed that CEOs and founders who use intuition actually generate more revenue for their company. Without knowing it, I was using that technique.

I started just calling the names that created this feeling of yes, and overnight, my sales doubled. Every single one of these crazy targets I started hitting.

I ended up getting four promotions in three months and I was made VP of sales. Now, the funny thing is this. I remember this day so vividly.

I was sitting at my desk and my boss comes up to me. My boss was this Russian guy, very, very, very brilliant mind, respected him tremendously. And he called it on my desk with a big smile on his face.

And he said, Vishen, what are you doing? This is crazy. How are you closing so many sales?

And I said, I don't know. but I think it's called intuition. And my boss looked at me with a funny look on his face.

He dropped his shoulders and he said, nah, that's bullshit, but keep doing it. And can you teach the rest of us? Now notice what I did there.

The turn is where you share the discovery that moved you, the discovery that you want to get the audience to focus on. In my speeches, I frequently speak about intuition and the power of the mind. So my turn is getting the audience to now open up their awareness to.

mindset and intuition. That is how you do the turn. The reason I love the concept of the turn is that it brings a moment of levity.

It brings a moment of joy to the scene. You have taken them through the stakes into your darkest moment and now you're bringing them out with you. And this is a really powerful part of storytelling.

So the technique you're learning is called holy shit that's so smart. It's a technique for captivating storytelling. Holy is the hook.

Shit is stakes. That is the turn. And now we go on to so, which will remind you of the word see.

So this is where many people trip up. Their story is good. The turn is good.

But they forget to bring in the scene. The scene is where you make something visualizable. The audience can be there in the moment with you.

So I've already been crafting the scene. Notice the story of my boss. That's the scene.

You're bringing in. You're bringing in something they can visualize. Now, you can amplify the scene.

You can paint the picture and make it richer. Human beings love that. They love it when you describe the weather, the carpet, the living room.

You can see yourself in that scene, right? Notice, pound at the table. I used the hand gestures of my boss.

I tried with the best of my ability to describe the puzzle look on his face. That is expanding the scene. Many people rush through a story.

Stop doing that. Take your time. Build a scene.

The tiny details, we often think they're unimportant. But to an audience, you bring the audience into the moment. Okay?

So now we go on to the fifth ingredient of your story. And that is the shatter. The shatter is called shatter because you're literally taking an outdated belief and punching through it.

You're shattering the glass ceiling. You're punching through whatever blocks a person might believe they have. The shatter is where you drop the lesson.

So what is the lesson of this story? It's the lesson that Steve Jobs said in a Stanford commencement address. Now, when I give this talk on stage, I talk about how to access intuition.

I talk about altered states. I talk about meditation. I talk about intuition principles.

I quote Jobs. I quote scientific studies. All of that is there, yes.

But the way... you design the shatter before you get to all of the signs and all of the evidence is to give people a single mic drop moment. So the shatter comes with a mic drop.

This is the mic drop I use in my story. That entire experience made me understand one thing. For so much of my life, I was hustling, I was pushing, I was struggling, overworking, and I was failing.

But when I understood, the potential of the human mind, I realize that sometimes the greatest secret of success of all is to know how to sit still and listen to that still, gentle voice within, the voice of your intuition. Did you see how that worked?

Now, you want to know something crazy? The Silver Ultramind program changed my life. And so, as I started telling the story, I ended up reaching out to the owners of that program, the creator, Jose Silva.

He passed away in 1999. I reached out to his children and I got the rights to sell their CDs on a website. Call that website Mindvalley.

In 2018, the owners of the Silva program asked me to recreate the program in my storytelling style, in my voice for the world. We published it, Silva Ultramind. It's available on the Mindvalley app.

But here's the crazy thing. Because of the storytelling that I brought in, That course went on to become one of the best -selling courses in the world.

40 million a year in revenue. The Silva organization was incredibly happy. I was happy because I got to teach something I was really passionate about.

And by the way, it's now been... Nine years since I published the course, it is still the number one program on Mindbaru. The way I was able to make the course so popular is bringing in storytelling as I teach Jose Silva's principles of mindset, but also bringing in storytelling when I am creating webinars.

to teach people about the program. My webinars went on to get millions upon millions of views on YouTube and introduce millions of people into Silva Ultraman. See the power of storytelling?

So your story, even if it's a story of something you learned from someone else, in my case, it was a story of what I learned from Jose Silva. If you can bring storytelling to a principle, you get to take this idea and expand it to a massive audience. If you watch how I did this training.

And if you watch it again, you will see. As you went through this training, I applied these five things. Go back and watch the first 10 seconds of how we start this video.

And then I brought in the stakes. I literally told you about my time almost being homeless. There were multiple turns in this.

The turn of my book hitting number one on Amazon. The turn of discovering intuition. I painted scenes many different times.

The scene of pounding vodka as I was about to get on stage with the Dalai Lama. The scene of my boss coming up to me. And then I now bring in the mic drop.

And this is the mic drop moment I want you to know. This is what I want you to remember. Nobody changes their life because of a fact.

People change their life because they heard a story that gives them hope for who they could become. That is a mic drop moment. And what you want to do is come up with a mic drop sentence like that to end your story.

That's how you make an impact. So let's recap. Holy shit, that's so smart.

the hook, the stakes, the turn, the scene, and the shatter. Now, if one of these things are missing, what happens is you can still get a good story, but your story might not make the impact that it needs to make to truly land. For example, if you miss out the stakes, you might come across as being too arrogant.

You might come across as being unrelatable. If you miss out the turn, but you have a really good stake, you leave the audience sad, wondering, oh my God, that's crazy, that's awful. Now the audience has a bad, bad...

memory. If you leave out the scene, you can have an incredible turn, incredible stakes, but did the audience really go there with you? If you leave out the shatter, well, what's the point?

What are they meant to learn? Every single one of these five points has a purpose. If you're really trying to capture an audience, you need to create relatability and respect.

You cannot just have one. You can be relatable by talking about, you know, stuff you're going through and you can be humble and that makes you relatable. The audience may like you.

But are they going to respect you? Are they going to listen to you? You need relatability and you need respect.

When you start your story, your hook, your stakes can give you relatability. But your turn, painting the scene, the shatter, that can help build respect because they see you as someone who can convey a powerful, life -changing idea or product. Stay with me.

Click follow. add a comment. I'd love to know your thoughts on this video.

I really want to do my best to serve you. What else can I teach? Because I'm going to try to teach one thing every week, okay?

And share this with a friend, a friend who's speaking, a friend who needs to share their business idea. And I want you to know I've also created a second video going deeper in this method, where I'm going to expand on how to make your hook even better. Expand on the stakes, expand on the turn, expand on the scene, and expand on the shatter.

All right? So stay tuned. and I'll see you in the next video.

The Hook

The bait, then the rug-pull.

Vishen Lakhiani opens by naming the gap between the speaker a room forgets and the speaker a room remembers for years, then promises the exact five-step framework, HSTSS, he says explains the difference.

Frameworks

Named ideas worth stealing.

02:34acronym

HSTSS: Hook, Stakes, Turn, Scene, Shatter

Hook
Stakes
Turn
Scene
Shatter

A five-part structure for turning a personal story into something audiences remember years later, remembered via the sentence 'Heroes start their stories somewhere' or the edgier 'Holy shit that's so smart.'

Steal forthe personal-story section of a keynote, sales page, or long-form video hook

04:40concept

Idea Collision

Smashing two ideas the mind doesn't expect to hear together, like a religious leader and shots of vodka, to manufacture instant curiosity in a hook.

Steal forcold opens and video hooks

CTA Breakdown

How they asked for the click.

VERBAL ASK

25:24subscribe

“Stay with me. Click follow, add a comment. I'd love to know your thoughts on this video... share this with a friend... I've also created a second video going deeper in this method.”

Soft native CTA folded into the closing lesson rather than a hard sales pitch; teases a follow-up video to hold subscribers.

FROM THE DESCRIPTION

PRIMARY CTAWhere the creator wants you to go next.

OTHER LINKSAlso linked in the description.

Storyboard