Small Business Content Series: Practice Telling Your Story
Last time we talked about how you should think about your story and I used the framework to tell you a very high level version of my own story. Now, there's plenty more that goes into it but if I was just telling that to someone they would have an idea of what I do and why I'm doing it and what I want to do in the future. If you tell a story well enough and if you paint a picture well enough, you have a much better chance of them wanting to come along for the ride.
Telling Effective Stories
Think about this. People have stories about transformation, getting in shape. You see those people and you see them document from when they're chubby - they have love handles or a stomach or a double chin. And basically I'm describing myself right now. So when they are showing off and they have a flat stomach, they've got muscular arms or they're toned and looking healthy, they're smiling.
The viewer or reader wants to get there - they want to be there just like you're there. It's the same thing. If you can tell a good story and tell it well enough that people can get behind it they want to see you succeed.
Workshopping Your Story
Now let's talk about your story. You should, by this point, have your story down. If you have your story down, then now we've got to figure out how do we actually publish it? How do we get people to see it now?
The first thing you're going to do is make sure it is one to two paragraphs — anywhere from one to five sentences, up to eight or ten. It doesn’t have to be super long. You want to make sure you cut it down, leave out the fluff and get to the points down the road. You can add the fluff later. You can add on some pomp and circumstance, some shiny bells and whistles down the road. Right now, all you need is just to have the outline of your story, where you were, where you are, where you're going. Thanks to the late, great Jimmy Valvano.
So now that we have the story, we've got to figure out how to tell it. You don't just want to regurgitate your story. If I just made a post and said, “this is why I started and I got laid off and then I needed money and I had a girlfriend, so I needed to get customers. So I got customers. And then, hey, here I am presenting for Grow With Google.” We can't do that. We need to tell it in a way where people can connect with us.
I want you to picture yourself at a campfire, not in an elevator. This isn’t an elevator pitch. This is different. Once you imagine yourself around like a campfire or one of those fire pits or a fire table where you're sitting with your friends, family, someone that you haven't seen for a while, especially with a pandemic, you're catching up. And I want you to think about how you can tell them your story. You might have some intimacy there. You might add in a couple of details here and there and that's totally fine.
Get Comfortable Telling Your Story
Do what you need to do to get comfortable telling your story. What I'm actually doing to record this blog post is I'm using the voice recorder tool on my phone, so I'm talking to my phone. Sometimes talking helps you get it out. You can record a video if you feel comfortable. You can even record a video with you off screen just talking. If you want another way to do it you can actually have someone prompt you. Work with your roommate or a friend or family member and have them ask the questions: where did you start? Why did you start where? Where are you now? Where are you going? Pick whatever method works for you.
Whatever makes you perform the best when it comes to telling a story. And I'll tell you, from experience, when I'm prompted oh boy, I can go. When I'm sitting here and I'm just talking to myself in my car, which is what I'm doing right now, I can get lost in my thoughts a little bit and then I start stuttering because I'm thinking of something or I pause or I hesitate and it's a little bit more difficult. It’s all about practice.
So you start telling your story more and more. As you start telling your story, I want you to tell it to more people, just like a stand up comedian. I love stand up comedy. You've got these guys and girls that are on stage, basically psychologists that are just observing things and observing human behavior.
One thing that stand-up comedians do is they practice. They're doing the same jokes over and over. They'll go to a little small club with ten or fifteen or twenty five people practice their jokes, and then they go to another venue, and another and with the same jokes. They're fine tuning it. The more you tell your story, the better you're going to tell it. Stand up comedians, the first time they tell a joke, they might totally bomb because their timing's off or they forget to say something and they'll pick it up.
If you can record yourself as you're telling it, listen to yourself. You'll say, “You know what? I should put this here, I should put that there.” Trust me, I do this with videos all the time.
What I want you to do is take your story and I want you to tell it. Not once, not twice, 10 times, 20 times, tell it to your friends or to your family, tell to your kids, see how they react, tell to your husband, wife, partner, boyfriend, girlfriend, cousin, nephew, aunt, uncle, whatever. Tell your story and see the reaction you get and ask them, does that give you a good enough idea of who I am, what the business is about, what I want, where I want to be?
Once you have your story down, like muscle memory, you should be able to pull it out of a hat. And if someone asks, what do you do, you know what? Let me tell you a quick story so that you have a better idea. Here's where I was. Here's where I am. Here's where I'm going. The more you have that down, the more you can pull out on a quick social post or write a blog or record a video based off of your story.
Final Thoughts
I want you to start practicing your story once you have it down, once you've practiced quite a bit, then you'll be ready for the next post where we talk about taking that story and breaking it into smaller, digestible chunks.