When I first came into the online space, I remember struggling so much with creating content that people were actually engaging with. I was following all of these other coaches and influencers, and I never saw them selling.

I never saw them talking about their products.

I never saw them talking about their programs.
If they did talk about it, it was very subtle. It was a very soft sell; just like a little suggestion.
And, nobody could take their stuff and copy/paste it, because it was so unique to their brand and their message.

I realized: they were incredible storytellers.
That truly is the secret sauce for the people who are so successful. They know how to tell story. That’s it. It’s so simple, right?
One thing that I hear from a lot of people is, “Well, I don’t have a story….” Yes. You do.
As Shakespeare said, we are all players on the stage.
We are experiencing and creating stories every moment of every day.
What I hope that you get out of this is that you start looking at every moment of your life saying, “How can I frame this?” This is something that you start to do over time. I go through each day and think, “Can there be a story from this experience? Is there a lesson that I want to share? How can I package that and deliver it to empower my audience?”

Number One: When you start using story in your content, you become more memorable.
If you think about a top influencer that you follow, you probably know her story. “Did you know that she was completely bankrupt and her brother’s cousin’s friend stole all her money and then her sibling had cancer???”  

You know her story because she tells it consistently. She tweaks it a little bit every time, and you start to root for her. Even if she is already successful, you’re not hating on her. You’re rooting for her, because you know what she has been through to get to where she is.
Story makes you memorable. And when you deliver your message using story as the vehicle, it actually increases brain activity.
If you’re just delivering quote memes all day long, it’s nice but it doesn’t really evoke that much;  unless it’s something that’s really resonant to what’s happening to us in that moment. Most of the time, we just scroll past. But, with a story, pictures start popping up in our head. We start smelling and tasting and experiencing what’s happening in that story.
There are so many studies where your brain actually starts to light up; this ultimately is going to intensify the emotional connection between you and the person reading your story. And, it also increases recall.
A friend of mine went to one of Jim Quick’s events,  and he told everybody to get up. A group of people get up on stage. They introduced themselves with their name, what they do, and then they shared a little bit of their story. He didn’t give any explanation of what exactly this exercise was, so people weren’t knowing what they were getting into. After, they all sat down.
A couple hours later, Jim brought everybody back on stage and said, “What’s this person’s name?” People didn’t remember. But then, he said, “Can you tell me something about them?” And they remembered the person’s entire story.

That is such a powerful example of how a story is going to create that really intimate connection. That’s what’s triggering your brain to encode. When I was in high school, I was in an AP psychology class. I remember going up to my teacher and saying, “I understand that we are learning the map of the brain, but this is too confusing for me. Why can’t I remember it?” And he said, “You’re not encoding it.”  Basically, I wasn’t attaching any kind of emotional connection to what I was looking at. So, that’s really why story is so important.

I remember when I first became a business coach, I had started going to some Toastmasters meetings. I only went to two. At the time, I was not comfortable just getting up in front of people and talking. I was good when I had planned, but I’m not a good improviser.

Obviously now, from doing so many live videos, I don’t feel that way anymore. But, I was physically shaking because I was so nervous to get up and speak. If you’ve never been to a Toastmasters, at the very end of the meeting, they give you random prompts and you have two minutes to give a response in front of everyone. My question was, “What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever gotten?” I got up and I shared a little bit of a story. Most people were just starting with, “This is the best piece of advice and here’s why.” I got up and I didn’t start with that. I shared my entrepreneur story. And I said, “And the best piece of advice that I had ever gotten was to stop taking advice from unhappy, unsuccessful people who don’t have successful businesses” I sat down, and I won! I was the newbie, and I won this little certificate for being the best two minute response.
People came up and asked me, “Hey, you’re good. How did you create something that was so captivating?”
The cool part was I had created and written out all of these stories prior.
Because I share my story of my business on social media.
Which leads into the next point…

What happened?  What was the moment that you broke down?  What was your rock bottom moment? I was on a call with Nicole, peeling back these layers one at a time. At first, there were a lot of blanket emotions, like “I was anxious.” OK, but, can you unbox that?  She told me about a specific day and a specific moment where that happened. She was so frustrated with her business that she kicked a hole in the door. Her husband came running into the room and said, “What are you doing?  Whatever is happening with you, this isn’t you.” Literally as soon as he said that, she broke down in tears. As she was sharing it with me, she started crying because she was reliving it. Her husband said, “We’ve got to figure out a better way for you to run this business, because this is not you and this is not this is not healthy.”

So now, she’s able to take that story and share it so beautifully.
You can tell that it still brings out some very present emotion in her life.
She still sees and feels everything that she experienced in that moment, but not in a painful way; just recognizing that it was a difficult moment.

I think this was October 2016 when we mapped out this story. But, she still uses this story all the time. It still is able to help her create so much connection with my followers.

When you start to really break it down, you’ll have a couple of stories that you are able to use over and over and over again.

What I do is I have a couple of stories that are my go-to’s, depending on what I’m launching or what emotion I want to evoke that day.  I have them all stored inside a document and I’ll recycle or reuse them. I’ll use them in emails or use them in posts.

What is your rock bottom moment?
What is that thing that you want to share?
Now, I’m not saying to air out your dirty laundry if it’s something that you haven’t healed from. You do not want people coming to you and comforting you because you haven’t healed from it.  

Number Three: You’ll be able to teach instead of preach.
My health coach clients may come out of a certification program, such as the Institute of Integrative Nutrition or something.  They may be like, “I want to tell people that dairy is bad and you shouldn’t be eating dairy.” But, they feel like they’re reading from a textbook on social media. Their people aren’t scientists; they really don’t want to know exactly what carbohydrates are doing to their body. But the beautiful thing is: if you teach with story, it won’t come off as preaching.

When you’re able to communicate your message and educate your audience without feeling like you’re reading from a textbook or standing on a soapbox, it’s going to be delivered in such a more powerful way.

I mean, think about religious texts. Before we even had the ability to write, we passed down stories from generation to generation. That information was kept alive. If it was just dry textbook information, people would probably forget it because they weren’t encoding it. But because it evoked some emotion, they were able to increase their memory and recall. This is something you want to do with your followers as well. Not just on social media and not just in your programs, but you want to also do this if you are creating trainings.

Story is one of the most powerful ways to help people learn.

Think about something right now in your business that you’ve wanted to teach your audience,  but you weren’t sure how to package and deliver it. Is there some kind of story that you can use along with this? Is there some metaphor or example that you can use to help people understand how it works?  Can you create some kind of picture for them, as they might be a visual learner? They might be an auditory learner or they might be a kinesthetic learner.

You want to make sure that you’re tickling all the different senses and all the different ways that people take in information.
In school, I was a total visual learner. So, I always seemed to end up in the classes with the kinesthetic teachers or auditory teachers; teachers who just wanted to lecture. They wouldn’t write any notes, and I’d be so confused. I needed a system. Give me a structure that I can execute. But, they didn’t have clear frameworks for what they were teaching. And then there were the kinesthetic teachers who would do lessons outside of the book. It was so not me; not how I learn best.  But, as you grow, you learn to adopt and take different things from different styles.

Think about how you learn, and then realize there may be some gaps in the way that you are teaching. Story may be the perfect way for you to tie all of it together.

When you are creating a story, I want you to ask yourself: what emotions are you trying to evoke? What is it that you want your ideal buyer or your customer to feel? This is a really good tool that you can use for email especially. What message or point do you want to make?

If you tell your story, nobody is copying and pasting.
You are standing out in a unique way.
That’s what’s going to get people to not just enjoy your posts the news feed, but actually type in your name to go and check out your stuff on a daily basis. If you can get to that level, that’s golden.

Mike Dooley is one of my favorite people, because he’s so damn good at creating visual aids for everything that he explains. He’s really just a ninja storyteller. So, let’s say you want to try to explain to somebody how the law of attraction works. You could say, “Well, think about your desires so you will have an energetic vibration, and then you attract to you whatever you put out there.”

Some people will be like, “…What did you say?” You wouldn’t be able to recall that or repeat that.

Mike Dooley says, “Think of a GPS.”
“You want to get from New York to Los Angeles, and you put it out into the universe.  There are an infinite number of ways to get there: a car, a plane, on a bus. I can walk there. There are truly an infinite number of routes in all different types of transportation. But, as long as I know where I want to go (Los Angeles), does it really matter how long it takes or does it really matter how I get there? Nope. As long as I get there.”

A lot of people don’t set a clear intention for where they want to go or what they desire. They only get from New York to let’s say South Carolina. They’re like, “Well, nowhere near LA, I guess it didn’t work.” But, when you’re in the car and you’re getting to a destination, you might be only a mile away, but can you see it? No. How close do you have to be to that thing in order to see that it’s there? so this is kind of the idea that you need to see it to believe it.

A lot of people operate on the idea that seeing is believing.
But really, you need to believe it to see it.  

As long as you hold that vibration and trust that the universe is bringing you to your desired end result, there’s a guarantee you’re getting there as long as you stay the course. There’s no right or wrong way to get there.

That example right there may have helped you understand when people talk about the law of attraction, manifestation, and surrendering to the universe. So, that’s number three: teach instead of preach.

For those of you who are loving the content that you’re learning from your certification programs or from your schooling, break it down to three bullet points.  When I’m writing out my live videos, I always pretty much have three bullet points. Then, I try to figure out what’s a story or an example that I can use to illustrate each point.

I want to help people really understand and integrate it into their DNA.