#209: How to Create a Story Culture in Your Business

Welcome back to another episode of the Course Creation Incubator podcast. I’m your host, Gina Onativia, here to help you move forward. Take action. Build up the online based business of your dreams. And today, we’re talking about stories. This is are part two of two. Last week we talked about where you can share your stories in order to grow your business.

And we talked a little bit about the value of storytelling. I mentioned both Ethan, our mentor, our friend, former NFL player, incredible storyteller, and the nuances of why story connects us and helps us build rapport in ways that you never thought possible. And how we want to use them all over our businesses, especially as course creators. And last week I mentioned ten places that you can share your story.

And in this second part and this continuation, I want to talk about how to implement story into your business and talk through three ways to create a story culture. And then go back to those ten places a little bit and talk through how you can add your stories to some of those areas. I wanted to get you thinking about implementing stories in specific spots and really growing your business by connecting in new ways.

And this episode, of course, is brought to you by our Done for You services, which helps you not only figure out the stories that you want to tell in your courses, but really assess how successful a course might be for you, how you can get your marketing off the ground and lead you step by step through the entire process.

Check out our Done for you course creation Course Creation Bootcamp slash course. And you can book a call and we’ll do a course assessment and talk more about your outcomes, your goals, and how to set you up to win in terms of your marketing. So I’ve mentioned before that I’ve been taking tennis lessons with my good friend Aurelia and Aurelia.

Son and my son Tristan are really good at tennis and we decided, Hey, it’s time for us to be able to at least hit the ball back and forth to get a rally going. So we decided to do a beginners clinic on a Tuesday night. Now, before I move forward with this story, I got to tell you a little bit about my tennis racket.

I bought it over 14 years ago before I met my husband. It’s an antique thing. Andre Agassi playing with cutoff jean shorts with his Prince racket. So one of the coaches at this clinic sees my racket, my antique, and she starts yelling, No, no, no, not this Wal-Mart special. And she yanks it for me and throws it on the bench.

And then she says, You go into the club right now and grab a demo. So meaning a demo racket for me to try out. And at first, I was taken aback. I mean, I knew it was an antique, but it was my racket, right? It was my ode to Andre Agassi, my favorite player. But the fact that she called me out was so awesome.

And then I took a beat and I thought, How awesome is this? She is finally pushed me to do what I need to do, which is buy a new round, get. And I laughed and I said, Thank you for the push. So I think sometimes people make us feel a little bit uncomfortable. And the first reaction might not be a great one.

But then we got to take a step back and say, Thank you for the push. Now I have a cool head racket that I love playing with, and every time I go out and do a lesson, I’m still not quite sure what I’m doing and I’m still getting used to this racket. But I’m excited because I have better equipment and I know I can live into my new potential thanks to this new racket.

So I encourage you to get out there and get uncomfortable and find coaches that are going to push you like seek, especially with your courses and building up your online business. And listen, I know it can get uncomfortable out there, especially when you’re building up your online course. And tennis keeps me honest. It keeps me vulnerable. And that’s why stories are so great, right?

Like the one I just told. They connect. They motivate and they stick. And that’s the power of having a story culture. So let’s get to the meat of this episode and talk through how you can create that story culture. And I’ve got three ways that I want to walk through today. The first is creating a capturing ritual, and this is what I do.

Any time I have a story or anecdote that I think is impactful or I think is funny or I think might move someone the next time I do a podcast or I talk to someone one on one and the humor piece is big. I come from New York originally. All my cousins think they’re going to be on an HBO or a Netflix special.

They think they’re stand up comedians. So humor has always been a big part of growing up for me. So I have this capture ritual with a little notebook where I’ll jot down great stories or great anecdotes like that story about the Wal-Mart special. I mean, what a great line, right? I couldn’t wait to come home and tell my tennis family about see Kay’s reaction to my racket.

And maybe I’ll exaggerated a little bit and add some details, but I’ll write down the lines that she said. I’ll write down the details of that story, and I’ll also write other stories about a failed launch or getting feedback in the moment. I’ll write those down in my little notebook as well. By the way, it doesn’t have to be a book.

Obviously. It could be an app on your phone, whatever works for you, whatever you are consistent with, that’s what you’re going to use. Now, for me, I like to write it down because that’s the way my brain works. And I know now if I’ve got a good story, I’m going to write it down. So I’ve got this ritual.

So whatever that looks like for you, create a ritual of when something pops, like you hear a story or you think about something, you’re going to get it down somehow. You’re going to create that ritual. That’s way number one. Another idea for you is to create a system with your calls, your coaching calls, your discovery calls, one on one calls to debrief afterwards and capture and get those stories.

So, again, maybe it’s in your journal or your little notebook. It’s on your app. You might feed them into Chachi. CBT My friend Selena was just telling me about this. She says that every coaching call afterwards, she puts her transcript into Chalkbeat and she asked for seven themes, for example, for her podcast, Boom. And then she thinks, okay, what stories can I tell based on these themes?

Or she just tell strategy? Beaty spit out the stories that I went through as part of this call. So again, it’s having that ritual, right, that consistent habit after your calls and having the discipline to do that and knowing you’re going to debrief afterwards. I mean, we do this with courses to we’re building out a certification course to courses right now, like I’ve been mentioning, and we’re providing highlights for one of the courses and we’ll put the transcript in and we’ll pull out the summary highlights, pull out the great stories and quotes, and then we’ll share those with our students.

And then a third way, you can make it part of your week or your month with ongoing meetings. You can schedule it. So if the story thing doesn’t come natural to you, this is a great option. So I was just talking to a client the other day and he says, you know, I don’t think in terms of stories, I really need help with that.

So if your brain doesn’t work that way, get somebody to interview you, Schedule time on your calendar where you’re pitching and catching with someone who can pull the stories out of you. They’re interviewing you. Hey, I heard you had these coaching calls this week, or I know you had a number of one two ones. Tell me more about them.

Give them questions to ask or just get a natural interviewer who can pull those out of you, but you need to schedule it. As my old boss, Tony Robbins would say, schedule it and make it real. Those are three options for you to create that story culture, that consistent part of stories in your schedule. So whatever you do, pick one to start.

All right. Now, in the second part of this episode, I want to go back to the places that we talked about last week, last episode, and how do you implement stories in those specific areas. For example, with courses I’ve talked about this before with scripting, but what I love to do is get an outline down and then get the core content right.

That’s my round one. And then I’m not going to beat myself up if I don’t have specific stories or examples to go with the content because I know there’s another round coming where I add that second layer. And by the way, Chatty Betty is a great place to use AI to help you get that content down and kind of fill it out.

But then you want to add your own personal stories and examples. This is something I can’t do for you. This is part of your genius. And by the way, don’t be afraid of doesn’t flow from the very beginning because just know you’re going to have that second round of your scripting to add those stories and that richness. Another place we talked about adding stories is podcasts or blogs or consistent content.

And with that, a lot of times my stories will spark content. So if I go in to my storybook, I told you that story about the tennis coach up front. I could have taught you something about getting uncomfortable. Five ways I’ve gotten uncomfortable lately that’s generated serious revenue for me. Boom. That could be a podcast episode. I could have done a whole outline about that.

So you’ve got your stories that could prompt content. I’ll also capture stories to tell upfront to make a connection with you. And again, I’ll go back to my story book for inspiration. Another place that we talked about using your stories is email sequences and your sales page. So it was my campaigns will come up with our overarching themes, our theme pillars of what we want to do.

Megan O’Leary and I did this with our copywriting playbook, and we asked ourselves, okay, if we’re going to go out there, say, over a course of a seven day launch, we’ll come up with three themes and all of core stories against those themes that I’ll share in emails on the sales page everywhere, social posts. So that’s another way I use stories then for my talks.

And if I’m teaching workshops and I’m speaking, I’ll have a core story bank of examples I love to use. So for example, if I’m teaching a workshop on core structures, core structures like Life Cohort or signature courses, onboarding courses, etc., there’s so many different types of courses, right? We keep talking about that here. It’s not one size fits all.

Sidebar but all of examples for each kind. Of course that I’ve built up over the years that I love to share. So I’ve got a Google doc with a story bank in my outlines for my speaking and for my workshops that are my go to and I’ll use them in my calls as well, my one on one calls and my coaching calls.

So I keep growing those case studies and those great stories about different clients. And you should too. If you’re listening right now, you should definitely have your own awesome client story bank or student story bank. This is what you’re going to use in your webinars and your master classes. This is what’s going to use on your sales pages.

We talked about that last time. I don’t want you struggling and think, Oh, I’ve got to fill this in. What’s a great example of this? You’re not going to have to struggle because you’re going to have that story bank ready to go. So hopefully this has inspired you to create a story culture and take action on a little bit what we talked about last week.

If you’re interested in done for, you, will help you pull out those stories in your scripts and get you across the finish line with your course and out to market. Check out course Creation Boutique e-commerce course. Make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss one single episode. And until next week, go create, be you and be brilliant and get it done.