I asked y’all whats more difficult…
This kinda feels like a chicken or the egg question.
🐔 If you knew what stories to tell and you knew they mattered to your audience, would you be vulnerable to tell them?
🥚 Or, are you so fearful of being vulnerable that you struggle being honest with yourself to uncover the gold in every moment?
In either case, it’s a simple matter of practice.
Today I would love to help you:
- Be able to take any moment from life and turn it into a powerful story. Specifically, a powerful story that will help you grow your audience and business.
- Put an end to the idea that, “my story doesn’t matter” or “nobody wants to hear about this.”
Here we go!
Remember, the whole purpose of telling a story is that storytelling allows you to build deeper relationships with your audience. When your audience learns more about you and feels emotionallyconnected, they feel safer with you. If they feel safe with you, they will be more likely to buy from you.
Your goal when turning a moment into a story that builds your brand is to:
- Understand the true* meaning of the moment
by *true meaning, I am referring to you uncovering and speaking your truth. Not what you think will be a great hook or appeal to the masses. - How to connect that meaning to the work* that you do
*You started this business because you solved a problem for yourself. The work you do should be personal. It should really matter. If you started a business just to make money, this is not the newsletter for you.
1️⃣ Uncovering the True Meaning of a Moment
Here’s an example I completely made up on my walk.
Let’s say your kid gets sick and you have to take them to the doctor. You’re sitting in the waiting room with your sick kid next to you. 104 temp. Sweating and shivering. Threw up in the car. But all you can think about is the fact that you really need to get back to work. That you have content to make, clients to prepare for, emails to write, a podcast interview to prepare for, and 17 other things you can’t keep track of unless you rip your phone out right now and start making a list just to calm your nerves.
Your kid coughs and you look over at him pulling you from your reverie. That’s when you realize, shame on me for only thinking about my business while my child sits next to me sick as a dog.
You shame yourself because you feel like a bad mom. No… this makes you a bad mom. You should be 100% focused on your kid right now…
but the truth is…
You’re really focused on work and frustrated you’re at the doctors office right now.
Also it’d be nice if my husband would help out a little more. Why am I always the one who has to sacrifice time on my business? It’s just as important as his even if I don’t make as much money as him right now. Maybe I’d make some more money if I had a home office and not shoved in the nook in the hallway. But no… I should be grateful I get to do this at all—erm—I ‘get’ to be grateful? Ah fuck it I’m so annoyed. Maybe I should just get a “normal” job and this would all be so much easier.
Step 1, can we be honest the truth of how we’re feeling?
The shame and guilt. The anxiety over work. The fact that you really do wish you were at home working instead of at this godforsaken doctors office. Wishing your husband would help out more and take your business more seriously. Frustrated that you’re not making as much money as you’d like by now and wanting to just quit.
Okay, deep breath. We went deep. We got real honest with ourselves.
Not every story has to be so heavy or deep, but if you can tell this story, you can tell any story.
Step 2 is to identify and choose ONE internal conflict as the theme of the story
“No conflict, no story.” – A quote by a lot of famous writers
A story needs conflict. As a personal brand, you have an opportunity to develop a deeper connection with your audience by allowing them to relate their experience with yours. When you express your feelings, they will feel it too.
This story could be about MANY internal conflicts.
- Your relationship to work and how you truly are too attached.
- Communication with your husband and the fact that you actually haven’t ever said how you felt to him.
- The constant loop of shame you find yourself in which might be the real reason your business isn’t growing like you want it to.
With short form content, you don’t have time to break every aspect down. You could try, but that’s like a personal trainer telling you to, “squeeze your core, eyes up, knees out, keep your weight off your toes, use your lats…” It’s too much. People will get lost and confused and not know what they’re supposed to focus on, so they won’t focus on anything.
Ask yourself, “what is the core topic that I’d like to address here?” and tell THAT story.
Good news is: if you feel another topic needs to be addressed, great! You have another content idea.
Step 3 is to get to an empowered place.
“You admire a character for trying far more than their success.” – Pixar’s Number 1 Rule for Storytelling.
We got the conflict down which is necessary for any great story. Your audience will admire your success because it wasn’t easy, just like it’s not easy for them.
However, as leaders for our followers, we are not here to use social media for empathy. That is what your therapist, best friend, or mom is for. We are here to lead people to a better place. In that way, the story you tell should go from disempowered to empowered.
Once you have identified the one core conflict of the story, how did you get to an empowered place?
And maybe you didn’t in that moment…
Maybe the mom never felt empowered that day at the doctors office. That’s okay because it is RIGHT NOW in this process that you can get yourself to an empowered place. What will you do better next time? Or did you handle that moment better than you would have a year ago? That is a place of empowerment and that is a worthwhile story to share.
Time Out! Before we continue…
Maybe… Don’t share the story.
If you can’t get to an empowered place, you don’t have to share the story with your audience. In fact, I probably wouldn’t. Not sharing is not you being inauthentic, you’re being discerning. The same reason you may wait a few more years to tell your kids how babies are made. It’s just not the right time.
Instead this process is simply a beautiful lesson for yourself. Next time you’re in this situation (or similar), you can do better, and you will do better because of the time you’ve spent here reflecting and being intentional about your life’s experiences. If you’ve just reflected on a moment in life where you were totally disempowered and could have done better, then, in this “story unconvery process” you vow to do better next time, you will because we HATE being out of integrity.
☝️ So, if you realized you kinda botched that whole situation and you’re not at all excited to tell anyone about it, don’t. Just do better next time 😃
This is why I love storytelling + content creation.
It’s the ultimate personal growth tool.
You have reflected on this story with WAY more intention because you were considering posting it on the internet for potentially millions of people to see. If you’re gonna tell the internet a story, you’re going to be more intentional about uncovering the truth of the experience. And you will especially be considerate of the lesson you want to to share because you are a leader for your followers.
Telling a story publicly is an opportunity to become exactly who you say you are.
And one note on vulnerability: If this is feeling too vulnerable to share, that’s okay too. Don’t share it!
This work is always for YOU first. Instead, maybe you can uncover a different story that doesn’t feel as heavy. Then, as you get the reps, maybe in a few months, you’ll feel safer or more confident to share this story.
It’s just like working out. Each time you push your edge just a little, you have expanded your capacity to get more vulnerable. I didn’t start out this vulnerable, but little by little, a little becomes a lot.
2️⃣ Connect that meaning to your work
Alright, nice work.
This shit ain’t easy, but man, is it powerful.
At this point you may have an outline of your story (if you were playing along).
I had this external experience → which made me have this internal experience → here’s what I learned
Now, we want to make sure you are directing this story toward the work you do.
Remember at the beginning of this email when I said, “You started this business because you solved a problem for yourself. The work you do should be personal. It should really matter. If you started a business just to make money, this is not the newsletter for you.”
There are 2 distinctions you want to make about your business to make storytelling easier for you.
- Your business sells a solution to a problem People buy things because they solve problems. My solution to your problem is storytelling. I can tell stories about storytelling to show you why you need to be telling more stories. That is one option.
- Your deeper purpose Nobody actually wants your solution. Nobody wants to tell better stories. They want what storytelling gets them and they want to be apart of something bigger. They want to FEEL something (I have been italicizing every time I said the word “feel” or “feeling” in this post because that’s what this is really all about).
My biggest reason for helping you tell stories is not for follower and business growth, but something deeper. I have spent so much of my life not being fully myself. Just falling in line and doing what everyone else is doing. Instead, I want to create a life I love and that I choose! That’s what I’m offering you. A life where you own and pursue your truth authentically and unapologetically. If social media blew up and seized to exist, I would find another way to help people live their truth (i.e. I’d find something else to sell to enact my deeper purpose).
Having a deeper purpose is the same reason why Nike doesn’t make commercials about shoes and Coke makes commercials about Happiness. They are selling a feeling.
People don’t wear Nike’s because they’re the best shoe. Slapping on the Nike logo means something more than that. It makes you feel a certain way. Nike tells stories about people who just do it.
Consider this… you could just wear Nike’s to the feel a sense of belonging because everyone wears Nike’s and thats the cool thing to do. You could also specifically choose to never wear Nike’s for that same reason. Either way, you’re trying to fit in and feel a sense of belonging.
What do you want your audience to feel?
I’ll be teaching you exactly how to do this in the free training next week.
You don’t want to miss this.
Lets dive back into our example of the mom at the doctors office.
If I’m this mom at the doctor’s office but have the business I have (a storyteller helping you speak your truth online), I can see that this moment isn’t about storytelling. So I won’t go with option 1 above. However, it can easily be about learning to trust myself (my deeper purpose – what I want my audience to feel). So I’ll make the story about option 2.
Here are 2 of the topics I listed earlier that can easily fit this narrative.
- I’m too attached to my work? → Because I don’t trust myself to take time off and only work 8 hours a day.
- Communication with my husband and the fact that I actually never say how I feel to him → because I’m too afraid that if I speak my truth he’ll leave me or not love me.
As I mentioned in step 2, I will choose one of these, then craft my narrative around that core topic and remove other details of the story that don’t move the story forward in the direction of my one core point. If I choose to talk about my attachment to work, I won’t mention my poor communication with my husband (like I said earlier, that can always be another piece of content to make later).
There’s your story that builds your brand.
I had this external experience → which made me have this internal experience (feeling) → here’s what I learned
Can I double down on why storytelling like this is so effective?
It’s not so much about the external experience that matters as it is about the internal experience you’re having: “Am a bad mom? Am I too attached to my business? Should I get a “normal” job so I can be more attentive to my kids? I really need to communicate with my husband.”
Most people think, “Nobody cares about me going to the doctor and my kid being sick.”
And you’re kind of right.
We have our own issues, we don’t need to hear about yours.
Your job with the story is to get them to care. Your story is actually about them, not you.
By sharing (1) your external experience, it allows us to insert our external experience in yours. I don’t have a kid, but when I have a car problem, I hate having to go to the auto body shop because it’s taking time out of my day when I could be working on my business. I totally get that. I have found myself in your story through my own experiences.
Then as you share your (2) internal experience of the shame of being too attached to your business, I notice, “wow, I am also too attached to my business and work too much because I don’t really trust myself.”
Now we’ve built a deeper relationship together because I can then say to the mom, “You know, even though I’m not a mom I feel the same way!”
When you share similar feelings, you feel seen and heard and that builds trust faster than any educational piece of content that anyone with a ChatGPT account could have made. Even though I’m not a mom, I may hire her, because she really gets it. She gets me. And that feels really good. (Just imagine how much more effective it is if I am also a mom)
So you see, the external experience may be different, but don’t you worry, us humans naturally find a way to insert ourselves into your situation. It’s not really the external details that we relate to. Your stories matter because internal feelings like sadness, fear, anger, and disgust are ALL universal. When you focus on sharing that, that’s what really matters.
In summary
What you’re looking to do is actually spend time reflecting back on moments of the week or memories form your entire life.
There are bigger moments that you can connect back to your solution or deeper purpose. These may become signature stories for you once you more deeply understand how they’ve helped you become the coach that you are and, more importantly, the person you are.
Not all stories have to be so heavy. Some stories are happy memories that you can share to express bits of what makes you, you. Your first homerun. Your first kiss. Or the letter your brother snuck in your bag on the first day of college.
You have endless opportunities for your audience to get to know you and find a place where they feel like they belong.
The more stories you tell, the more you begin to remember things you once forgot. These new discoveries become nuggets of coal that you can harvest into beautiful sources of energy.
Remember, the stories are for you first. No pressure to share it all. Share what feels good and what makes sense to share.
With love,
Matt
P.S. I hope to see you LIVE next week for the free masterclass, Growth without the Gimmicks. Click here to sign up.
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