#208: 10 Places to Share Your Story (and Grow Your Biz)

Welcome back to another episode of the Course Creation Incubator podcast. I’m your host Gina Onativia, here to help you move forward to take that expertise out of your head into a course or a live cohort or program that’s going to generate real revenue for you so you can move beyond the one to ones that maybe, maybe you’re a little tired of, maybe you’re a little burnt out on.

And that’s really what I’m here to help you do, to figure out how to take your expertise, your genius out to the market in new and exciting ways. And did you listen to last week’s episode about the Special Olympics course and how it changed my mindset and change a little bit about how I design courses, particularly for special audiences.

If you haven’t listened to that yet, please go back. Check it out. Today, I want to talk more about the power of stories in your business. And I’ve been talking about this for the last few weeks in this podcast, and basically we never stop talking about it because I’ve completely bought in to the power of stories. We’ve had the powerful storyteller both use and on and his wife, Dawn Eason, and they’ve been on here to talk about how with stories there’s nothing that helps you build trust faster In a world without trust or where there’s distrust is rampant, you need stories to help you connect and build rapport in new ways.

And I recently had a meeting with a financial advisor. It was him and his team and they have a few offices. They’re very prolific in the East Coast and they’re helping a lot of people out in terms of their retirement. And this financial advisor is everywhere in his market. He’s on TV, he’s on radio. This radio show becomes a podcast and he goes on there and he’s giving him retirement advice.

And I was just listening to this retirement show here in San Diego as well. I’m sure you have your own on the radio. You see these guys on TV, these guys and gals. And what the differentiator is for these advisors to me is the stories, the richness of the examples of who they’re working with day in and day out.

And I said to him, I’d love for you to develop a story culture inside of your offices, because I could see so many places where you could talk up different stories, not just TV and radio, but other places inside your business. And I’m sure you have remarkable stories from your own clients and then your own personal anecdotes. And when you build a story culture, so many powerful things happen in terms of connecting you with clients in a new way from the get go.

Like I mentioned before, it builds trust. It has that instant intimacy. So when I was talking to him about building up the story culture, we were coming up with a few ideas of how he can make that happen inside of his business because he understands the value of story and he understands value of those examples and sharing with that greater audience.

So that’s something that his office is going to work on. And it got me thinking, why don’t we talk more on this podcast about where we can use stories and then how we can get those stories and how we can create a story culture for ourselves. So this is going to be a two parter. In this episode, we’re going to talk about all the different places where you can share your stories.

Then next week, I want to talk about how we’re going to get it done, how we can create a real story culture in your business and what that would look like. So like I mentioned, this is going to be a two parter. Today. We’re going to talk about the wear next week, a little bit more about the how.

Now before I dive in, wanted to mention, this episode is brought to you by our Done for you course creation. We’ve been doing a ton of certification courses. I’ve brought that up on the podcast as well. If you are ready to share your brilliant expertise with the world and certify others and what you do, reach out and book a call with us.

We’re doing two certification courses right now. We do other thought leadership courses, starter courses, signatures, and we take the guesswork completely out of it and we boss you around a little bit. We would love to do that for you. Get you out to market quickly. Of course creation boutique dot com slash course to book a call with us and I’ll link to that in the show notes as well.

So back to stories and what kind of stories work with different places so let’s walk through ten places where you can share your story. By the way, I’m mentioning ten. There’s going to be more. Some of these might work for your business, some of them may not. Some of them may work for the future. I want you to while I’m talking through these so think about one or two places you can add if you’re not already telling stories here or one place, right?

If you’re like, Gina, I’m completely not telling you any stories. Well, let’s start at one place and then build from there and see where else you might be able to add some stories and examples into what you do now. First place hahaha, you know what I’m going to say? It’s online courses. Of course we want to tell stories in our digital courses, our live courses and we want to weave them into our lessons anywhere that we can add that richness that connects our audience to us.

It’s a game changer. So for your lessons, want you starting with a personal anecdote, or maybe while you’re teaching your core framework, you’re weaving in stories, could be stories about you, stories about folks that you’ve worked with, that you’ve gotten results for. It could be research that you’ve done, could be examples. I love giving examples. I don’t just give examples of people that I’ve worked with and gotten results.

I love to tell stories of people that I’ve done calls with and they had a challenge, but I didn’t end up working with them. But it was still a great example and very illustrative of of what I wanted to teach. So there’s also that doesn’t mean you have to get a result with someone in order to share that story, because the stories help engagement helps them from the very get go from the start.

And we talked about this, how to make a binge worthy course. We’ll link to that in the show notes. You want to hook them because that’s what gets them to the finish line with your live courses. I talked about this as well in a recent episode that you want to start off with a really great story because we want to engage it from the get go.

So they keep showing up live. Just because they’ve paid money doesn’t mean they’re going to show up live. I know, sad but true. So we want to give them an incentive. Stories, examples, give them an incentive. That’s the kind of stuff that they’ll remember. All right. The second place where I want you adding stories are in your weekly content, weekly, monthly content.

Whatever cadence you’re putting out, your podcast, your blogs, everywhere that you were creating content stories because they’re sticky, because people remember details. A lot of times people won’t remember your content, especially the first time around. And that’s why repetition is the mother of skill. As my old boss, Tony Robbins used to say. So sometimes they get people saying like, Well, Gina didn’t really teach us content.

Well, you got to teach him again and then again and again. And then stories helps your content stick because they might not remember the specific content, but they’ll remember laughing at your story or feeling moved by it. They’ll remember being connected to you in a special way, and then they’re more likely to remember the content. So this goes for your courses, okay.

And that’s why we’re sharing stories. Think about your day to day and how you connect with your friends. You’re not necessarily saying like, Hey, I saw this great three part framework, but you’re seeing stories about your favorite show. Like I’m sharing a story with my husband about the behind the scenes of severance and talking through that. We connect through stories.

That’s what we remember. So that’s number two, telling stories with every piece of content that you put out, guess every piece. Okay. I told a story upfront about my financial advisor client. I tell personal stories all the time. I try to mix it up and I try to slow down. Remember, this is how I connect with you guys via stories.

A third place you can use stories is your media appearances, or when you’re doing guest spots. So you’re doing guest podcasts, you’re being quoted in an online article or something like that. Share stories lead with a compelling story to connect with that audience. So especially these TV clips. So I have another client, Dr. Wagner, all linked to her episode in the show notes.

She gets on TV all the time as a therapist, as a psychologist. She’s on there for 90 seconds. How do you make that instant connection? You tell a quick story, you tell an example, and then you feel connected to that person, right? And then you want to learn more. We don’t just start with dry knowledge and facts. We start with an example, a rich example, a fourth place to share or email sequences.

Of course, we want to share our stories inside our newsletters, or if we’re doing emails for a campaign, we want to make that connection with your audience. I just got off a paid media call for a client, and with so many offers and so much competition out there today, people are really choosing people rather than brands. They’re choosing people because they feel like they have a connection because they want to be in your orbit.

So they want to know those personal details about you. They want to know your lifestyle. I know it feels weird sometimes to share these details, like sometimes like, do people really care about Kristen playing tennis and all these details? And I know it connects me to you and that’s why I want to share it. And it also reveals something about me and the kind of teacher I am and the kind of strategist I could be for you.

So don’t be afraid when you’re writing your emails and doing your campaigns to share those stories, personal again, case studies, etc.. And our fifth place is, of course, our sales pages, because we want to add that story driven social proof and something that emotionally connects us with our people, our prospects. People buy an emotion and they don’t buy on features.

All right. I bought a dishwasher recently because I wanted the feeling of efficiency and I knew it was going to save me time because our old dishwasher was from the 1980s. Okay, not that old guys, but it was old. And at Home Depot, they’re trying to show me all the features. And I said, Stop, stop, stop. I don’t care about these features.

I just want to know if there’s a fast version of the wash. And I go, Yeah, sure. Right here. Mike Great. Is it consistent? Great. Yes. That’s all I care about, right? I care about the convenience it’s going to bring me and I would rather hear stories about working moms that have used this dishwasher and got ours back in their weeks rather than whatever power wash features inside of that dishwasher.

So it’s the same thing for our sales pages. I know you’re listening right now. We’re not selling dishwashers. We’re selling courses in live cohorts, but same principles apply testimonials, case studies. So important. We’ve talked about this a few weeks ago because people are looking to see, is this for me stories and case studies allow us to do that.

The sixth place that I want you sharing story are social posts, so you can use micro stories to stop people from scrolling these are the best kind of things to post on social when you’re posting stories. For example, put a story against it, not just a beautiful picture so you could put just a cactus up there. But is it so much more meaningful if you add a little note that you decided to hop on a plane and go out to the desert today because your friend reached out and said, hey, let’s camp for the night.

Right? And you just threw caution to the wind and decided to go out there and camp under the stars. Now there’s a story against it and it makes it a thousand times more interesting. That’s why stories are so important with social posts. Seventh area for stories. Ad campaigns. If you’re running Facebook, Insta YouTube, Google story driven ads convert way better than people telling you about their brand.

We’ve done marketing for UCSB for one of their master’s programs, and by far the stories of graduates have done the best. How this biology major became a product manager. That’s compelling. That’s what people want to see. We could bring the benefits home all day and talk about what a great program it is, but having someone else talk about it so much more powerful.

A place to share your stories on, Discover your sales calls. You’re sharing those examples. You’re sharing results in advance. I always get questions about, Hey, do you work with other people in my industry? And I bring up examples. Do you know someone who has made money or has made revenue off of courses and these different kind of courses?

I’m ready with examples. You want to have those stories at the ready to say, Hey, here’s the results, here’s what I did for someone else, here’s what I can do for you. Ninth place webinars and masterclasses, weaving your stories up front to create that connection, immediately weaving your case studies throughout and show the power of the transformation that you could provide.

So I mentioned Bo Esten at the start of this podcast, and he provides really powerful examples of how he helps people in different ways from working with him in a group setting to working in his mastermind, whatever that looks like, whatever that setting is. He’s always talking about how he gets results for people. You want to show them results in advance, the power of what you’ve done, how you get there, the 10th and final place I know up through these, but hopefully it’s got you thinking a little bit about where you can start putting some stories in and not be afraid to go for it.

Speaking at events and starting again with the story of front, this is what Bo is always teaching us. Don’t start with, Hey, welcome guys. It’s really great to see you. But starting with a powerful story that connects you to your audience instantly or when you’re networking, having those stories and examples at the ready, really powerful way to then build rapport.

Hopefully this was helpful. Hopefully it’s got you thinking. Okay, Gina, there are a few places I could use. Story more. Next week we’re going to talk about how do we create a story culture to grow our businesses. So hopefully this is give you a couple of areas where you can think to use story. Think about two areas. Like I said, you’re not going to start with 17 areas, right?

 

You got to start with two. Just take immediate action. That’s all I ever want for you guys. And if this made any kind of impact, please leave me a review. I would love it until next week. Go create, be you and be brilliant and get it done.