June 10, 2024
Ali Abdaal has grown his channel by 5.4 million subscribers within a few years.
His latest videos have gotten 500,000 views on average.
But how does Ali get so many views?
What does he know that we don’t?
To find out, I spent a week studying as many of his videos as I could possibly find and I started to realize something:
His best-performing videos had one thing in common:
They included stories.
But not just any stories. Stories that follow the exact 4 steps every single time.
And this article will walk you through them all.
His first step is absolutely crucial.
Ali uses a short, 10-second hook to get us excited about the rest of the story.
But not just any hook. He uses a hook that follows the same structure for most of his stories:
First, he introduces the character with a short sentence.
Example: “This is Chris Langhan”
Second, he shares a surprising fact about that character. Something that triggers our curiosity.
Example: “And he’s one of the most intelligent people in the world with an estimated IQ of 195.”
And third, he asks a rhetorical question to his audience. The moment he puts out that question, we as listeners want to know the answer.
Example: “But why haven’t you heard of him?”
His hooks work so incredibly effectively because they create multiple unanswered questions in our minds.
We’re like,
We as humans love mystery. Anytime that someone puts a question out there, we need to know the answer.
But once he has our attention he moves to the second step.
In the second step, he tells us more about the character.
But, more interestingly, he uses a special technique to describe the character:
He shows the character as the underdog.
As someone who is just normal, weak, or struggling.
That is a specific strategy to make us care about the character.
The moment we hear the character struggling, we sympathize with the character, we start cheering for them, and we want to know how it turns out.
Notice that he keeps the description of the character pretty concise. Usually about 10-20 seconds. Just enough to make us care about the character.
He knows that he needs to move to the third and most important step as quickly as possible.
After giving a glimpse into the character’s life, Ali shares the moment that changed everything.
The one trigger event that changed the character’s life.
This moment is so beautiful, because it’s unexpected.
Surprise makes any story immediately more interesting.
That surprise can be anything unexpected – an unusual activity, reaction, or event.
When listeners hear something unexpected, they’re like “Wow, I didn’t see that coming. I better pay close attention now. Otherwise, I might miss something important.”
Up to this point, it’s a story about a random person.
But Ali knows, in order to make his story land really well, he needs to make it relevant for his listeners.
And that’s when he moves into the last step.
In the last step, he shares the takeaway.
What is the meaning or the lesson of that story?
But notice that he doesn’t say, “Here are my 10 takeaways from that story.”
He knows that if he shared 10 takeaways for each story, he’d overwhelm his listeners.
They’d forget all of them.
Instead, he shares just 1-2 things that the listeners should take away. That’s it.
This is the 4-step storytelling formula that Ali Abdaal uses to tell viral stories.
But he also uses very specific techniques to spice up his stories.
If you want to tell stories like Ali, you may want to check out this next article, in which you’ll learn how to turn any moment into an incredible story.
Enjoy!
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