Running your speaker, author, coach business is as much about harnessing your past as it is about looking ahead and creating new things. Our past experiences inform the products, the programmes and the people we choose to work with in our future.
It’s the stories that people tell that connect us to them.
The same is true for the stories you tell. But it goes deeper than that. You can harness that connection to make the impact you want by telling stories. All that you are is made up of all you’ve done, learned and created. The people you’ve connected with, the events that have occurred.
Here are some prompts to make sure your stories are working for you:
- Think about the stories you tell to your prospects and clients.
Do they tell the full story of you? Do they portray you as you want to be seen? Do they connect the dots and make sense of why you do what you do and how you came to do so?
- Now think about the experiences you’ve had.
Which ones do you share as stories, which ones don’t you or could you be? Which ones do you dismiss as not relevant or appropriate?
- For the stories you do share, why did you choose these?
What impact are you hoping they will make or have on your prospects and clients?
- For the stories you don’t share or dismiss, why not?
Are they too vulnerable? Do you think your audience might not like you after sharing, or might not resonate?
What we know from experience of working with hundreds of speakers’, authors and coaches is that these stories are precisely the things that your ideal clients and prospects love to hear — because a lot of the time, your avatar is only two or three steps behind you in their journey and our vulnerable sharing actually serves to highlight the understanding you have of their situation. You become more relatable.
So today we invite you to look at what you share and what you don’t and why that is. Could you stretch a little? Could contextualise something you do, with something from your past that makes you make the little bit more sense to your audience?
If you want any support to do this, reach out for a call or join The Connection Hub to get access to over 200 resources to keep you growing your speaker, author, and coach business.