Small Business Content Series: Fine Tuning Your Story
Last time we created our story, we took that Jimmy Valvano framework - where you were, where you are, where you're going. Just to remind you, we looked at your origin story. Why did you start the business or why did you get into it where you are right now? What are you doing that's helping your customers and clients? How are you trying to get the word out more? How are you building a community around your products and services and where do you want to be? How do you want to help people through your products and services?
Now we're at a point where you should have an idea of a story and it should flow. So your next thing that you want to do is take where you were, where you are, where you want to be, and turn it into maybe one paragraph, maybe two paragraphs. You can be detailed, you can be high level.
Take my story for example:
Where I was:
I found myself laid off from a tech startup with barely any money in the bank, my MacBook and living in a house in Boston with three other people. I felt like I needed to be my own person, I needed to have my own house, I needed to prove something to myself. And on top of that, I just started dating my girlfriend, who is now my wife. I thought if I want to make this woman my wife and I want to support her, how am I going to do it? And that's where I started putting things together - networking, rubbing elbows and getting clients to start my marketing agency. I didn't know what I was doing, but I learned on the job and made sure that I was delivering value to my clients.
Where I am:
As a result, I started growing more and more clients over the years. And now I find myself at a place where I've acquired another company. I have a business partner who runs all the operations. We have a team spread out throughout the country that's helping us to provide services for our clients. We have a great client retention rate because we're driving value and giving them results. I'm now a speaker for Grow with Google. If you had asked me 10 years ago when I started the business what I'd be doing, I never would have thought that I'd be on a national stage helping business owners to understand how to get online.
Where I want to be:
I want to serve, I don't just want to transact. I don't want to charge people, I want to help people grow their businesses. I want to help 10,000 businesses get found online.I want them to be able to focus on what they need to focus on and make sure that they have a good foundation so that they can ultimately run their businesses smoothly and be sure that they're getting new clients and have a process to retain their customers so that they can ultimately build a bigger, better small business. That is my goal, and that's where I want to be. That's my story.
So if you read that or if you watched a video of it or you saw me post little bits about my story, wouldn't you consider working with me? Wouldn't you say, wow, that guy's come really far from being laid off and having just a computer to helping all these businesses.
You can see it right there, you can connect with me. I'm doing it all for good reasons now - I have a family, I have two beautiful kids, two dogs and we live in the house of our dreams. We worked hard to get here.
What Is Your Story?
I want you to really think about your personal story and how you can figure out how you look at where you were, where you are, where you're going, and turn it into something that helps people connect with you. Great friend of mine and a sales coach for Sandler Sales Training Steve Borseti says, “Hey, guys, before they buy your product, they have to buy you.” And I'd say that that applies to every small business as well. They have to like you as the business owner before they're going to consider opening their wallet or their purse, before giving you a credit card or paying on Apple pay or giving you cash or writing a check. It's a big, big action for someone to take. How do you get them to take it with you?
Final Thoughts
Next time we'll talk about how to start looking at your story and breaking it down into different pieces of content so that you can truly convince people that you're the person they want to work with when it comes to your products and services.