我从史蒂夫·乔布斯学到的讲故事技巧

我从 Steve Jobs 身上学到的讲故事课 These are the storytelling lessons I learned from Steve Jobs

在他的新书节选中，Nest 联合创始人托尼·法德尔讲述了他在苹果的时光，以及他如何看到史蒂夫·乔布斯运用事实和情感来讲述故事。

In an excerpt from his new book, Nest cofounder Tony Fadell writes of his time at Apple and how he saw Steve Jobs marshal facts and emotion to tell a tale.

每个产品都应该有一个故事，一个解释它为何存在以及如何解决客户问题的叙述。一个好的产品故事包含三个要素：

Every product should have a story, a narrative that explains why it needs to exist and how it will solve your customer’s problems. A good product story has three elements:

我记得坐在看台上，看着史蒂夫·乔布斯在 2007 年向世界介绍 iPhone。

I remember sitting in the stands watching Steve Jobs tell the world about the iPhone in 2007.

每隔一段时间，就会有一款革命性的产品出现，改变一切，而苹果——首先，如果你能在职业生涯中参与其中一款，那已经非常幸运了。苹果非常幸运，它能够向世界推出几款这样的产品。

Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything and Apple has been—well, first of all, one’s very fortunate if you get to work on just one of these in your career. Apple has been very fortunate. It’s been able to introduce a few of these into the world.

1984 年，我们推出了 Macintosh。它不仅改变了苹果，还改变了整个计算机行业。

In 1984 we introduced the Macintosh. It didn’t just change Apple. It changed the whole computer industry.

2001 年，我们推出了第一款 iPod。它不仅改变了我们听音乐的方式，还改变了整个音乐产业。

In 2001, we introduced the first iPod. And it didn’t just change the way we all listen to music, it changed the entire music industry.

今天，我们要推出三款这一类的革命性产品。第一款是带有触摸控制的宽屏 iPod。第二款是革命性的手机。第三款是突破性的互联网通信设备。

Well, today we’re introducing three revolutionary products of this class. The first one is a widescreen iPod with touch controls. The second is a revolutionary mobile phone. And the third is a breakthrough internet communications device.

所以，三样东西：一款带有触摸控制的宽屏 iPod；一款革命性的手机；以及一款突破性的互联网通信设备。一个 iPod，一个手机，和一个互联网通信器。一个 iPod，一个手机……你们明白了吗？这不是三个独立的设备，这是一个设备，我们称之为 iPhone。今天，苹果将重新发明手机，这就是它。

So, three things: a widescreen iPod with touch controls; a revolutionary mobile phone; and a breakthrough internet communications device. An iPod, a phone, and an internet communicator. An iPod, a phone…are you getting it? These are not three separate devices, this is one device, and we are calling it iPhone. Today, Apple is going to reinvent the phone, and here it is.

那是演讲中每个人都记得的部分。铺垫和惊喜，精彩的设置。人们至今仍在写文章谈论它。他们庆祝了它的十周年纪念。

That’s the part of the speech that everyone remembers. The buildup and surprise, the brilliant setup. People still write articles about it. They celebrated its ten-year anniversary.

但演讲的其他部分同样重要。在设置之后，他提醒观众苹果正在为他们解决什么问题。“最先进的手机被称为智能手机，他们是这么说的。但问题在于它们并不那么智能，也不那么容易使用。”他花了一些时间谈论普通手机和智能手机以及各自的问题，然后才深入介绍新 iPhone 的功能。

But the rest of the speech was just as important. After the setup, he reminded the audience of the problem Apple was solving for them. “The most advanced phones are called smartphones, so they say. And the problem is that they’re not so smart and they’re not so easy to use.” He talked for a while about regular mobile phones and smartphones and the problems of each before he dove into the features of the new iPhone.

他使用了一种我后来称之为“怀疑病毒”的技巧。这是一种进入人们脑海的方式，提醒他们日常的烦恼，让他们再次感到恼火。如果你能用怀疑病毒感染他们——“也许我的体验没有我想象的那么好，也许它可以更好”——那么你就为你的解决方案做好了铺垫。你让他们对现状感到愤怒，这样他们就能对新的做事方式感到兴奋。

He used a technique I later came to call the virus of doubt. It’s a way to get into people’s heads, remind them about a daily frustration, get them annoyed about it all over again. If you can infect them with the virus of doubt—”Maybe my experience isn’t as good as I thought, maybe it could be better”—then you prime them for your solution. You get them angry about how it works now so they can get excited about a new way of doing things.

史蒂夫是这方面的大师。在告诉你产品能做什么之前，他总是花时间解释你为什么需要它。而且他让这一切看起来如此自然，如此简单。

Steve was a master of this. Before he told you what a product did, he always took the time to explain why you needed it. And he made it all look so natural, so easy.

我以前看过其他 CEO 做产品推介，他们几乎不知道自己所谓的革命性产品是什么。有时他们甚至不知道怎么拿好它。但顾客和媒体总是对史蒂夫的演示惊叹不已。“这是个奇迹，”他们说。“他那么冷静，那么镇定。没有准备好的演讲稿，幻灯片上几乎没有文字——他就是知道自己在说什么，而且一切都浑然一体。”

I’d watched other CEOs give pitches before, they’d hardly know what their supposedly revolutionary product was. Sometimes they didn’t even know how to hold it right. But customers and the press would always be in awe of Steve’s presentations. “It’s a miracle,” they said. “He’s so calm, so collected. No prepared speeches, slides with almost no words—he just knows what he’s talking about and it all hangs together.”

原因很简单：史蒂夫不只是照着稿子念。在开发产品的几个月里，他每天都在对同事、朋友和家人讲述同一个故事的某个版本。他不断地打磨、完善它。每当他不经意的早期听众露出困惑的表情或要求澄清时，他就会修改、微调，直到故事变得完美无瑕。

And the reason is simple: Steve didn’t just read a script for the presentation. He’d been telling a version of that same story every single day for months and months during development—to us, to his friends, his family. He was constantly working on it, refining it. Every time he’d get a puzzled look or a request for clarification from his unwitting early audience, he’d sand it down, tweak it slightly, until it was perfectly polished.

我们讲述的是一个将改变一切的手机的故事。所以这就是我们必须打造的东西。

We were telling the story of a phone that would change everything. So that’s what we had to build.

你产品的故事就是它的设计、功能、图片和视频、客户评价、评论者的建议、与客服的对话。它是人们对你创造的这个东西所看到和感受到的总和。

Your product’s story is its design, its features, images and videos, quotes from customers, tips from reviewers, conversations with support agents. It’s the sum of what people see and feel about this thing that you’ve created.

故事不仅仅是为了销售产品。它还能帮助你定义产品、理解产品、理解你的客户。你用它来说服投资者给你钱，说服新员工加入你的团队，说服合作伙伴与你合作，说服媒体关注你。最终，你用它来说服顾客想要你卖的东西。

The story doesn’t just exist to sell your product. It’s there to help you define it, understand it, and understand your customers. It’s what you say to investors to convince them to give you money, and to new employees to convince them to join your team, and to partners to convince them to work with you, and to the press to convince them to care. And then, eventually, it’s what you tell customers to convince them to want what you’re selling.

为什么这个东西需要存在？为什么它重要？为什么人们会需要它？为什么他们会爱上它？

Why does this thing need to exist? Why does it matter? Why will people need it? Why will they love it?

要找到这个“为什么”，你需要理解你试图解决问题的核心，即客户日常面临的实际问题。

To find that “why,” you need to understand the core of the problem you’re trying to solve, the real issue your customers face on a regular basis.

而且，即使你在构建“是什么”——功能、创新、解决客户所有问题的答案——你也必须坚持那个“为什么”。因为你在某件事上工作得越久，“是什么”就越占据主导——那个“为什么”变得如此显而易见，成为你内心的感觉，成为你一切行动的一部分，以至于你不再需要表达它。你忘记了它有多重要。

And you have to hold on to that “why” even as you build the “what”—the features, the innovation, the answer to all your customers’ problems. Because the longer you work on something, the more the “what” takes over—the “why” becomes so obvious, a feeling in your gut, a part of everything you do, that you don’t even need to express it anymore. You forget how much it matters.

当你沉浸在“是什么”中时，你会领先于他人。你以为每个人都能看到你所看到的。但他们看不到。他们没有花上数周、数月、数年的时间在这上面。所以你需要停下来，清晰地阐述“为什么”，然后才能说服别人关心“是什么”。

When you get wrapped up in the “what,” you get ahead of people. You think everyone can see what you see. But they don’t. They haven’t been working on it for weeks, months, years. So you need to pause and clearly articulate the “why” before you can convince anyone to care about the “what.”

无论你做什么产品都是如此——即使你销售的是 B2B 支付软件。即使你为还不存在的客户构建深科技解决方案。即使你向一家二十年来一直购买同一种润滑油的工厂销售润滑油。

That’s the case no matter what you make—even if you sell B2B payments software. Even if you build deep-tech solutions for customers who don’t exist yet. Even if you sell lubricants to a factory that’s been buying the same thing for twenty years.

市场份额的竞争和心智份额的竞争同时存在。如果你的竞争对手比你更会讲故事，如果他们在玩这个游戏而你没有，那么即使他们的产品更差也没关系。他们会获得关注。对于任何粗略搜索的客户、投资者、合作伙伴或人才来说，他们看起来就像是这个品类的领导者。谈论他们的人越多，他们的心智份额就越大，谈论他们的人也就越多。

There’s a competition for market share and a competition for mind share. If your competitors are telling better stories than you, if they’re playing the game and you’re not, then it doesn’t matter if their product is worse. They will get the attention. To any customers, investors, partners, or talent doing a cursory search, they will appear to be the leaders in the category. The more people talk about them, the greater their mind share, and the more people will talk about them.

一个好故事是一种共情行为。它认识到受众的需求。它融合了事实和情感，让客户两者兼得。首先，你需要足够的见解和具体信息，让你的论点不会显得过于飘渺和空洞。这足以让人们相信你基于真实事实。但你也可能做得过火——如果你的故事只有信息，那么人们完全可能同意你的观点，但觉得还不够有说服力，不会立即采取行动。也许下个月，也许明年。

A good story is an act of empathy. It recognizes the needs of its audience. And it blends facts and feelings so the customer gets enough of both. First you need enough insights and concrete information that your argument doesn’t feel too floaty and insubstantial. It doesn’t to convince people that you’re anchored in real facts. But you can overdo it—if your story is only informational, then it’s entirely possible that people will agree with you but decide it’s not compelling enough to act on just yet. Maybe next month. Maybe next year.

所以你必须诉诸情感——与他们关心的事物建立联系。他们的担忧，他们的恐惧。或者向他们展示一个引人入胜的未来愿景：举一个真实的例子。讲述一个真实的人将如何体验这个产品——他们的一天、他们的家庭、他们的工作、他们将经历的变化。只是不要过于偏向情感连接，以至于你所主张的东西让人觉得新奇，但并非必要。

So you have to appeal to their emotions—connect with something they care about. Their worries, their fears. Or show them a compelling vision of the future: give a human example. Walk through how a real person will experience this product—their day, their family, their work, the change they’ll experience. Just don’t lean so far into the emotional connection that what you’re arguing for feels novel, but not necessary.

这就是为什么类比在讲故事中如此有用。它们为复杂概念创造了一种速记法——一座直接通向共同经验的桥梁。

That’s why analogies can be such a useful tool in storytelling. They create a shorthand for complicated concepts—a bridge directly to a common experience.

这是我从史蒂夫·乔布斯那里学到的另一件事。他总是说，类比赋予客户超能力。一个好的类比能让客户立刻理解一个困难的功能，然后向他人描述这个功能。这就是为什么“口袋里的一千首歌”如此强大。每个人都有 CD 和磁带，装在笨重的播放器里，一次只能听 10 到 15 首歌，一张专辑一张专辑地听。所以“口袋里的一千首歌”是一个惊人的对比——它让人们想象这个无形的东西——他们所有喜爱的音乐都集中在一个地方，容易找到，容易携带——并给了他们一种方式告诉朋友和家人为什么这个新的 iPod 如此酷。

That’s another thing I learned from Steve Jobs. He’d always say that analogies give customers superpowers. A great analogy allows a customer to instantly grasp a difficult feature and then describe that feature to others. That’s why “1,000 songs in your pocket” was so powerful. Everyone had CDs and tapes in bulky players that only let you listen to 10–15 songs, one album at a time. So “1,000 songs in your pocket” was an incredible contrast—it let people visualize this intangible thing—all the music they loved all together in one place, easy to find, easy to hold—and gave them a way to tell their friends and family why this new iPod thing was so cool.

在 Nest，一切都浸透着类比。它们充满了我们的网站、视频、广告，甚至我们的支持文章和安装指南。它们必须如此。因为要真正理解我们产品的许多功能，你需要深入了解 HVAC 系统、电网以及烟雾如何通过激光折射来探测火灾——这些知识几乎没有人拥有。所以我们作弊了。我们没有试图解释一切。我们只是用了类比。

Everything at Nest was steeped in analogies. They filled our website and our videos and our ads and even our support articles, our installation guides. They had to. Because to truly understand many of the features of our products, you’d need a deep well of knowledge about HVAC systems and power grids and the way smoke refracts through a laser to detect fire—knowledge almost nobody had. So we cheated. We didn’t try to explain everything. We just used an analogy.

我记得有一个复杂的功能，旨在减轻发电厂在最热或最冷的日子里的负荷，那时每个人都同时打开暖气或空调。通常这只是在下午的几个小时，一年中的几天——一个或多个燃煤电厂会被启动以避免停电。所以我们设计了一个功能，预测这些时刻何时到来，然后 Nest 恒温器在关键的峰值时段之前额外开启空调或暖气，并在其他人调高温度时调低。任何注册该计划的人都会在能源账单上获得积分。随着越来越多的人加入该计划，结果是双赢的——人们保持舒适，节省了钱，而能源公司不必启动他们最脏的发电厂。

I remember there was one complex feature that was designed to lighten the load on power plants on the hottest or coldest days of the year when everyone cranked up the heat or AC at once. It usually came down to just a few hours in the afternoon, a few days a year—one or more coal power plants would be brought online to avoid blackouts. So we designed a feature that predicted when these moments would come, then the Nest Thermostat would crank the AC or heat up extra before the crucial peak hours and turn it down when everyone else was turning it up. Anyone who signed up for the program got a credit on their energy bill. As more and more people joined the program, the result was a win-win—people stayed comfortable, they saved money, and the energy companies didn’t have to turn on their dirtiest plants.

这一切都很好，但我花了 150 个字来解释。所以在无数小时的思考和尝试所有可能的解决方案后，我们决定用三个字来概括：高峰时段奖励。

And that is all well and good, but it just took me 150 words to explain. So after countless hours of thinking about it and trying all the possible solutions, we settled on doing it in three: Rush Hour Rewards.

每个人都理解高峰时段的概念——太多人同时上路，交通变得缓慢。能源也是如此。

Everyone understands the concept of a rush hour—the Moment when way too many people get on the road together and traffic slows to a creep. Same thing happens with energy.

托尼·法德尔 [图片：Wei Leng Tay/Bloomberg via Getty Images]我们不需要解释更多——高峰时段是个问题，但当出现能源高峰时段时，你可以从中获得一些东西。你可以获得奖励。你实际上可以省钱，而不是和其他人一起被困住。

Tony Faddell [Photo: Wei Leng Tay/Bloomberg via Getty Images]We didn’t need to explain much more than that—rush hours are a problem, but when there’s an energy rush hour, you can get something out of it. You can get a reward. You can actually save money rather than getting stuck with everyone else.

我们制作了一个完整的网页，上面有汽车图形和小发电厂在冒烟。我们可能过分强调了这一点，并延伸了比喻——但我们知道大多数人不会深入探究。

We made a whole webpage about it with a car graphic and little power plants puffing away. We probably belabored the point and stretched the metaphor—but we knew most people wouldn’t dig in that far.

对于绝大多数客户，我们让它变得简单。用三个词和一个类比，我们帮助人们理解——当出现能源高峰时段时，你的 Nest 恒温器可以为你省钱。

For the vast majority of customers, we made it simple. With three words and one analogy we helped people get it—when there’s an energy rush hour, your Nest Thermostat can save you money.

简短的故事容易记住。更重要的是，容易重复。别人讲述你的故事，总是比你在自己的平台上谈论自己更能触达更多人，更能说服他们购买你的产品。你应该始终努力讲述一个如此精彩的故事，以至于它不再属于你——这样你的客户就会学习它、喜爱它、内化它、拥有它。然后把它告诉他们认识的每一个人。

Quick stories are easy to remember. And, more importantly, easy to repeat. Someone else telling your story will always reach more people and do more to convince them to buy your product than any amount of talking you do about yourself on your own platforms. You should always be striving to tell a story so good that it stops being yours—so your customer learns it, loves it, internalizes it, owns it. And tells it to everyone they know.

托尼·法德尔在硅谷的 30 年职业生涯始于 General Magic，这是最具影响力的初创公司，却鲜为人知。随后他创造了 iPod 和 iPhone，创立了 Nest，并创造了 Nest 学习恒温器。在他的职业生涯中，托尼拥有超过 300 项专利。他现在领导投资和咨询公司 Future Shape，指导下一代改变世界的初创公司。

Tony Fadell started his 30-year Silicon Valley career at General Magic, the most influential startup nobody has ever heard of. Then he went on to make the iPod and iPhone, start Nest, and create the Nest Learning Thermostat. Throughout his career, Tony has authored more than 300 patents. He now leads the investment and advisory firm Future Shape, where he mentors the next generation of startups that are changing the world.