 What is a story? What makes a story interesting? And why are they necessary in business? A story at its simplest. Somebody wants something and is willing to overcome obstacles to get it. And that's it. It's nothing more complex than that. The ingredients, a character with purpose and obstacles and struggle. When we come out of a movie theater, if you've had the experience of coming out of a movie theater knowing that those two hours you've experienced a meaningful story, what do movie producers know about making the experience of a story become meaningful? Become something that feels that you've seen something that's important and you've experienced a moment that was important in time. I've spent a lot of time working with movie producers and thinking through how do you get a story onto film. And I think there's a lot of lessons we can learn for how I look at making my own life more meaningful, less boring, I help my businesses become more compelling places to spend time. So let's think about a movie. What are the steps of turning a character into someone with purpose, someone we connect to? There's seven steps. Save the cat, kill the cow, flee the dragon, doubt oneself, one last push, rescue the princess and return home. So let's look at those seven elements. Save the cat. Important thing in a film, it's not what a character thinks that allows us to see who they are, it's what they do. In our own lives it's very easy to live in our own head and see how good we are with our thought. Others only see our action. Save the cat. In a Rocky film, when Rocky's out running, he always saves a cat, rescues a kid from a fight, saves someone. Through his action we see his character. Kill the cow. Luke Skywalker is a farm boy on a remote desert planet. He doesn't want to leave and save the galaxy against the evil empire, but it's the loss of his home and family, the loss of the cow. There's no farm left, it's been destroyed. That's what allows him to make the decision to travel off with Obi-Wan. We need an inciting incident. Something must happen to force us out of the farm, the milk, the easy life. Flea the dragon. So we set off on this mission. A story where I say, John, I wanted to climb a mountain so I bought some gear and I headed out and the view from the top was lovely. It's not a compelling story. That's a boring story. A story where I say, John, I wanted to climb a mountain and I set off. We had the right gear but halfway up the mountain we were not expecting the sheer cliff. I was lost. We had real trouble. One of my team was injured. We didn't know what to do. Now it becomes interesting. The struggle is what makes a story interesting. The struggle is what changes the person as we move through the story. But in life, if your goals are small, your purpose is small, the smallest obstacle will stop you. If your goals are big, not even the greatest obstacles will stop you. So the dragon is the obstacles. And in a good story, the main character faces a moment where they doubt themselves. Luke Skywalker feels that he's not the chosen one. Frodo feels he's not capable of carrying the ring into Mordor. The hero has to face a human moment where we as an audience see that they're not God, they're not more than us. They're just the same as us. And they feel small and not worthy. And they doubt themselves. So one final push in all great stories, just at the point of almost losing everything, the hero gives one last push. Usually without any hope that this last push will achieve something. But that last push, they slay the dragon. They overcome the great enemy. And they rescue the princess. In the case of Prometheus, he reaches the heavens and steals fire and brings it back. In many stories, it's the rescuing of a princess. And then the return home. But this is often the most difficult part, because your mother and father, the people that were friends of you, before you left on this journey, they loved that person that you were. The person that has returned isn't the person of before. And this is what we love about a story. The struggle means that you've become a different person. And returning home is about allowing others to see what you've seen, allowing others to see what the eyes that you now have. That's what makes a meaningful film. And that we can learn about what makes a meaningful life. If your business is built on this type of story, the feeling of the people who are part of that business is of being connected to something meaningful. And that's why we need stories to make us get up in the morning and we need stories to make working in a business feel meaningful and important to us. That's a story.