The Power of Storytelling : How to transform your business and your life with Amanda Johnson

The power of storytelling, how to transform your business and your life with Amanda Johnson. I really enjoyed this conversation with Amanda. We traded so many stories about why stories are so powerful, getting into the why and making sure that you understand how that’s gonna impact your business. And impact the audience that you’re trying to engage.

There is so much to unpack in this episode and so many great tips and insights. You don’t wanna miss this. Let’s get into Biz Bites.

Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Biz Bites, and this is going to be a bit of a journey, I think today because we’re gonna be talking a lot about story and the power of story. And Amanda, thank you so much for being a part of this program. Thanks for inviting me. I’m excited. So Amanda, do you wanna start by telling us a little bit about what you do so we can give everyone some context?

Sure. So most of my career has been spent helping aspiring messengers become authors and speakers and coaches. So I am normally trying to help them figure out how to alchemize their story and their expertise into something that is really exciting and memorable for their audience. Get it on pages and stages really powerfully.

And along the way, very early on, I realized that. It was gonna be a little bit more than just giving them really good organisation and and a little bit of accountability. I figured out that a lot of the people, at least the ones who were landing in MySpace, were suffering writer’s block that was associated with their story.

There were parts of. Their message that they felt like they needed to share and their big why was in a story that they weren’t really excited to share or weren’t sure how to. So there’s a, I’m a partner in the writing and then I’m also a partner in the transformational process. And then the Save by Story is a publishing house.

So we take people from inspiration and impact. It is such a powerful thing to be able to share your story, but I wanna start with why people share their story. Why do you think it’s, it is so important for people to do it I think that you can answer that question from two angles.

For people who wanna be speakers or authors or coaches. Our goal is really to go into the world and help other people, right? We’re trying to share a message, and the question that everyone is asking when you’re sharing your message is, I wonder why this person cares about this. And the why is in the story.

Usually the solutions that we’re bringing to the world, the insights, the paradigm changes, those are all associated with everything that we’ve learned along our journey. And so telling that story is a really. Powerful way to connect with the audience, help them to understand, not only understand the message more intuitively, let’s say, but it’s really a powerful way to connect with them, to create that level of attunement and trust that we all need if we’re gonna take people on a journey.

And then from the personal angle, I think that, I’ve had some people come through. With really big visions of what they would do on the other side of the book. I’m gonna be a speaker, I’m gonna hit all these big stages, and they had their list of conferences they wanted to speak at, and then they got into the writing and that personal transformation that happened.

They realized that was actually what made them want to tell their story, that there was something that. They weren’t remembering correctly or some sort of insight that they needed to take back or some part of their story that needed what we say it’s saving. Go back and save your story.

There’s all of these parts of us that get left back in these, hard times and also in the good times. And so going back and just seeing that whole narrative. I think it adds a huge amount of confidence when we’re sharing our messages with people. We know, like we know that what we’re saying is coming from an A 100% authentic integrated space.

Yeah, it’s I having worked in that space as well in terms of asking people about their, why it’s such a powerful thing. And you are almost border on being a therapist feeling like that, don’t you, when you start getting into and prodding people? I have been called such, yes. Yes. In fact, I had one client who.

We wrote a book co-wrote a book with a bunch of my clients called, you can’t make this story up, because the things that would happen inside of the creative process were just so synchronistic magical, fill the blank. It was just hard to believe you couldn’t make these things up. And so I asked them to write their stories about what happened while they were working with me.

And then I got the opportunity to write why they came into my life. ’cause each client has driven my own personal and professional story forward in a really important way. So I had one client who wrote her chapter for this and shared it with one of her therapist friends. She’s also a social worker, and he said he sent her an email back and said, does Amanda know that she’s a therapist?

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We will do everything to design a program that suits you. From the strategy right through to publishing and of course helping you share it. So come talk to us podcast done for you.com au Details in the show notes below. Now back to Biz Bites. So I had one client who wrote her chapter for this and shared it with one of her therapist friends.

She’s also a. Social worker and he said he sent her an email back and said, does Amanda know that she’s a therapist?

Yes, it’s happened. Yeah. It’s I think one of, a couple of my favorite stories of doing something similar. One was with, actually with a friend and I was prodding him about his why I. And it led him back to a memory that he hadn’t thought about since he was, he was in his early teens, I think when this, when it happened.

And it, it involved a going to a markets with his father and that going into the whole story. The interesting thing about it was that. It had set him up for his entire career and he didn’t know why he loved what he did. And where since finding that out, it’s changed his perspective completely.

And ma, as you say, it made him a lot more confident as a result of it. And also that willingness to be able to share it and give people that perspective. ’cause we are a product of our upbringing. Yeah. And it affects, it shapes the way that we deliver everything into the world too. I had, when you were sharing that, I was thinking about one of my clients who I worked with, oh, a decade ago or so, and same thing.

Got her all of the organisation, we figured it out which stories are gonna go where and how she was gonna help these young professionals figure out how to be successful. And she came to me knowing that her, the wisdom that her mother shared with her when she was very young was extremely important. She knew that would be a hallmark throughout the book because she knew that’s what set her apart when she was a young professional, like she had all that wisdom.

She didn’t have to go searching for it or developing it. Her mom really imbued her with it at a young age. But this woman cannot write this book. She just sit down and get absolutely stuck. And so I said, you know what? Why don’t you just let’s rent a cabin in the mountains. I was living in Oregon at the time, and we’ll just hang out and get the writing done.

Just, I just need you to like, get into the momentum of it. First day, no writing. No writing. Stuck stuck. Second day. I’m making breakfast this little cabin, and this woman is asking me a hundred million questions about what I’m making. What are the ingredients? Where did I get the recipe? Why do I do it like this?

How does this deal with my, she’s asking me and I thought, are you like a foodie? Is this part of your story that I don’t know? She said, oh, yeah, I’m a trained chef. Okay. So I thought maybe there’s a way to integrate her love of food, because this was something that was really important.

Do you use food when you’re working with young professionals? Oh yeah. I invite them into my kitchen all the time. I bring them stuff at work, coffee croissants. This is how, this is the then environment in which these little bits of wisdom are being transferred. And so I thought that’s interesting.

I wonder. When did your mom share these little tidbits of wisdom with you? And she said, while she was cooking our dinners, bingo. This love of food was deeply connected to all of her expertise, all of her wisdom and everything that she wanted to share. And it was so hard for her to be able to deliver that without.

The ingredients that mattered. And so once we infu infused food and this idea of ingredients for success into the process, the book was written so quickly, it would make your head spin. I was gonna say, you didn’t end up, did you end up turning over the kitchen and eating lots while you wrote the book?

We did we eat, excuse me, we eat a lot when we’re on retreat together. It’s it’s good fuel, it’s good connection time. It’s good. Currency for story, what do you do when you break bread with other people? How was your day working on it? It, and it is and I think if people that are listening or watching in now, don’t believe us.

Just go and look at, pick your TV channel these days. Whether it’s Lifestyle Channel or SBS or any of those. I, one of my favorite shows that I watched in recent times was the Stanley Tucci series where he goes in Italy and it’s really him eating food. And telling stories with people. And it’s just fascinating and it’s just, you feel like you’re there and a part of it. And I think it’s so powerful that mix of those two things. And it actually doesn’t really matter what’s being eaten. It’s just the sharing of it and it’s, and food is quite personal. It’s when you’re sharing it.

It is, it’s absolutely personal and it’s one of those personal, and I’ve heard one of the thought leaders that I love to follow talks about. How primal it is that very primal social connective tissue of our families, sitting around a table and what happens to a culture when we stop doing that and when we stop doing it, around the water cooler at work or in these different places where we go and connect with each other.

When we miss out on that, the sharing that happens over food and stories. It’s, and it’s funny you say that is while you were talking, I was thinking. Thinking back on a few of the business conferences that I’ve attended over the last couple of years, and the most memorable parts of all of them were the sitting down and for want of a better term, breaking bread with people.

Yes. And it was just the casual conversations that you have while you’re sitting down and you’re. Having, eating something, drinking something, and it didn’t matter what it was. And I’ve had some incredibly memorable moments and discussions around those things, which is not to say that the conference themselves wasn’t incredibly powerful, it was, but the more memorable parts that stick with me were the stories that came out of it.

Definitely. And, I tried for the first year of my work working with these. High achieving overperforming, helping professionals who were just, out there changing the world like crazy, trying to get them to sit down and find some time in their lives to write a chapter or even a paragraph was hard.

And so it really is very early that I needed to. I kidnap them with consent, get them away to a place. And so I developed a retreat model, and that’s what I found very quickly was that here I had all of these, well-crafted exercises and all of these experiences that were designed to really pull the deep stories and the content out of them.

When I got the best content over the meals. Late at night when we were eating popcorn or dark chocolate together and this, all of those, all of the defenses and those perceived, needs to have a certain sort of persona associated with the expertise that they were bringing into the space.

With all of that gone. Over a good story of, and a piece of dark chocolate. All of a sudden I had a whole bunch of content that I needed like what happened with that client, over a meal. All of a sudden, boom, there’s that little bit of information that makes the message so much more memorable and powerful for the reader.

And it’s, and it is a good tip for people that are listening in and wondering how to get to some of this content that they’re trying to unlock for different reasons. Sometimes it is just walking away from the office, going and sitting down, and whether it’s with someone or on your own, but going and having a meal that’s.

Taking you away and taking you to and I think often it’s something that whether you are put yourself in a situation where you’ve gone to a nice restaurant and it’s a beautiful view, or whether you’re at home and cooked something for yourself that has meaning for you. If it’s something that, your mom used to make or any of those kinds of things, it’s often a great way of doing that.

And I mentioned before I had a another client that I was very memorable. And it was interesting because we’d done this whole. Exercise around trying to get to her why? And she really gave me nothing. Like we were just, we got bare bone stories, but I was getting yes, no responses. And it was a really tough session in that respect.

And I left it with her. And then as it turned out, that night around dinnertime, I had to go out with my wife and we were in a, we were in a shop and so it was like 7 30, 8 o’clock at night. And the phone rings and it’s this woman. And I’m like, why is she calling me now at this time? I wouldn’t normally, clients don’t call me at that time of night.

So I picked up the phone and she said, oh my God, I’ve got it. I’ve got it. And she was just so excited because it had suddenly clicked for her. I got more words out of her in a, two minute phone conversation than I did for the sort of one hour session that we were together. And it was just that, that she was, she had been sitting down at home having a meal and suddenly it clicked.

And I think that is a, it is a powerful thing to take yourself away. It is. And to do things. If you think about food, it’s so sensory. It’s the smells and the tastes and the textures and the, like a whole experience. It’s a different setting, and so it is a story in and of itself.

And those are the. Those are the elements that make a story re, memorable inside of someone’s mind, right? Like we, when we look back, we don’t remember the everyday mundane things. We remember the moments that have a lot of sensory experience, how we felt, what we smelled, what we saw when we were in that moment.

And so I think when. That is one of those secrets of, a little bit more immersive of an experience that’s touching on all of those senses, activating all those neural pathways. And if you do that with the intention of calling something up, who knows what’s possible. I. It’s funny, isn’t it?

’cause I think we can all do this exercise and just go, what are some of our favorite memories as a child? And and I was thinking about it then as you were speaking that I remember when I was probably about four I. My grandparents used to come and come over on a Saturday and they always brought like a gingerbread man or something like that.

And I’ve got a memory of that and that, you know what? You know that they used to take we little bikes and things, whatever. My sister and I, whatever you had at that age, and they used to pretend that we could. Cycle up a tree or something where they just lift us up. We were little obviously at that point, and that’s, that is a full sensory kind of memory, because I can, it’s the smell of the gingerbread man.

It’s the, them arriving, it’s, they’re pushing us along and whatever bike we had, it’s, that whole experience is very memorable. And I think that’s something that’s. The reason we are talking about this is because it’s so important in a business sense as well to be able to deliver that to people.

Because if you just rely on, and you, we see it all the time on LinkedIn, for example, people just telling very flat. Stories. And and it’s just yeah, it just it drives you mad, doesn’t it? It’s and it must be for you, be frustrating for you as well as a as someone who is trying to bring out stories from people to read these things and going, what are you doing?

Yes. Yes, exactly. Exactly. And I mean if we want people to come along on any journey, any sort of growth journey, personal, professional, if we want them to learn anything, we have to establish a connection with them. And that connection, if you keep it a completely mental connection, here are my great ideas.

That’s as far as the learning can go. Oh, there’s a good idea. I. But if you start to, to your point, start to include some of the other senses, and you start to ask questions that evoke emotion, and you start to connect that emotion with the physical senses that are happening in their body, all of a sudden, all of that person is listening to you.

All of that person is totally engaged. And so whatever you deliver after that, it’s being soaked in at a completely different level. And that sort of idea of that immersive experience is so incredibly powerful. It’s, and if most people in business think about it, when people get to touch, feel, experience, whether it’s a product or a service that you have, then it’s completely different to just, here’s what we’re going to do in a lovely PowerPoint presentation.

It’s not the same. It’s not and you have to and the power of story is that whilst that may not always be practical and possible to give that, you can try and bring people into that by a great story. And I think that’s the power of it, isn’t it? Yeah. And it doesn’t even have to be your own story.

I think it’s more powerful when it’s your own story, but making that initial connection through story. If you can make it meaningful and authentic and from your own particular journey, fantastic. But if you’re in a professional setting where the culture isn’t one that’s, completely open and authentic and vulnerable, then why not use story itself to begin to make those connections?

What are you watching right now? Whatcha reading right now? Yeah. What are you, what story has you like gripped? Like we’re here in this meeting and you’re thinking about what’s gonna happen when you turn that next episode on, what is that? And all of a sudden you get this little window into someone’s soul and what their.

Interested in and what they’re what type of medicine they’re looking for in the world. Because I, I think that all of our story addictions are attempts to, get some medicine out of what we’re watching, some sort of hero’s journey that we’re trying to. Figure out on our own.

And if no one tells us, Hey, there’s medicine in there, then we’re just watching it. We’re just consumed by it for, a good 10 episode run. And then we’re onto the next one because we didn’t get the medicine. Yeah, it’s interesting about that, isn’t it? Is it? And I always find those discussions are quite fascinating when you have, with people, when they say, what are you watching at the moment?

What’s good? And sometimes you listen to and you go yeah, that that’s not my thing. And you wonder if they’re thinking exactly the same thing when you’re telling them, oh, you’ve gotta watch this. And then it’s of course if they do watch it, then you go, did they get the same thing out of it?

Did they enjoy it as much as you did when when you were watching it? So it’s but you’re right, it is, there’s something that’s in there. We, yes, it’s not just entertainment for entertainment’s sake, because otherwise we would literally all be watching the same thing if we were, if we all had the same interests.

I know even in my household, we’re not all watching the same thing. It’s quite rare when we all just, there’s only one or two TV shows where we sit down and we are all watching it. The rest of the time it’s, I’m usually off in another room watching the sport while they’re watching something, some documentary that I’m, that I don’t wanna follow.

So it’s, but it is it is those windows in which allow. People to want to engage with you. And whilst that works on a friendship level, it works on a level of business as well. Because when you allow people into the stories that are making you tick, that are driving your business forward, that are experiences that you are willing to share, brings people in who are interested in those, or interested in those experience or find them relatable.

Yeah, we’re all wrestling with universal themes and I think that anytime you show real curiosity in another human being, I. Unfortunately in our culture, that’s a refreshing thing. You know it when someone says, oh, how are you doing? I’m fine. What if they really meant it?

Like, how are you doing? And they followed it up with I, what are what are you interested in? What are you working on right now? What are you watching? Any sort of. Additional attempt at curiosity and connection. It matters in our co and it matters in our world right now, where we’re all pulling up information on our phones in two seconds and, we’re so highly connected in some ways and so disconnected from each other in other way.

Absolutely. Your story. Yeah. And I think that’s so important that you. Have those engagements. I think, we talked about LinkedIn before and I’m sure when there’ll be people that’ll be seeing little clips on LinkedIn for this as well, and hopefully diving into the full episode.

But the real value in LinkedIn is actually connecting with people individually because the post, they’re great. They go out and more people might see you, but you’re at the mercy of the algorithms. You’re not at the mercy of an algorithm when you reach out individually to people. And just taking a moment to en engage with them in whatever level that might be, whether it’s.

Because it’s a special occasion, or whether it’s just because you’ve got something they might be interested in or you just wanted to touch base with them. All of those things are so incredibly powerful because the more that you build a relationship with people, the more opportunity you have to engage with them and their networks.

Yeah, absolutely. And I also think it’s really fun to think in terms of. Sharing client stories and sharing and asking clients to share their story of working with you. To me that’s one of the fun things that I love to see happening. It’s one thing for me to share the story of, this incredible event that happened with this client, this big transformation or book launch or something.

But it’s another for them to then talk about their experience in the process of creating that in our company and then go out and share that with the world. It’s just, the reciprocity of stories and what’s possible and the networking. I’m fascinated with that and I am, I’m really, I was just sharing with one of my clients this morning.

I. I wanna, I want a new model for that. No. One of my, one of my favorite things to do very early on I had this, my very first client, I. As this dynamic connector, she’s a sales coach, powerful human being, walked into a room and just knew how to connect with everybody. And I marveled because I was very introverted, had just spent, years at home with a toddler.

Can I talk to another adult again? What would I about adults talk about these days? The same thing they said five years ago. But that was one of our favorite things to do in networking was to tell our stories of working with each other because I was her coach helping her with all of her books, and she was my coach helping me to grow my business.

And so when we walked into spaces, we were listening for opportunities to tell our stories about the other person, and we just drove so much business to each other. It was crazy. It was so much more fun than going in and constantly introducing myself to people and telling my own story over and over again.

Yeah, it’s and it’s funny isn’t how the networking in those ki in, in those, when you go to those functions. Can be so hard because people go with the wrong attitude, I find most of the time, but also they’re not really listening. Yeah. And so if you take the time to just be listening and to respond to what they’re saying, it’s again, we go back to the story and I think you, it.

You relate to people so much more when you’re trading stories with one another as we’ve been doing. We’ve been trading stories for this during this podcast and that. Makes us more relatable to one another. Hopefully makes us more relatable to all of the people that are interested in what we do.

And I love the fact that, what you are trying to do is bring people into writing their books and writing their writing stories in that way. I’m doing it through the art of podcasting, but it’s the same. We’re driving for the same purpose, ultimately to make them more relatable.

Absolutely relatable and memorable because when you find that story, like the one of this, this client who had these incredible moments with her mom when she was a youngster, these very memorable, I remember the moments with her mom almost more than I remember. The moments that she had as a, young professional because they, they were so sweet.

And every time I think about her, that’s what I think about, and so they just make it easy for people to recognize you and I. Also to continue sharing stories about you after they’ve met you. Oh, I just, met this other person who told me this great story. What is it that she does again?

Oh yeah. She would be a great connection for you, yeah. It’s, and so let me ask you this. You’ve talked about one or two of your stories. So what have you got some favorites of people that you’ve worked with over the years and what made them favorite? Are you asking favorite stories of the writing process or favorite stories that they’ve told?

Favorite stories of the of the writing process first. Yeah. So the writing process, there’s always, I always love telling this one because it surprised both of us so oftentimes, many years I would work with someone and it would be pretty clear we’d be connecting their expertise and their story in a very important way throughout the book.

And I. And so it became obvious which chapters held the stories that were hard for them or that they were wrestling with, maybe outside the process of writing. These are things that story loops that are continuing to show up. They figured it out in the world of their profession, but this story loop is still happening back here in this part of my personal life, right?

And it always became the opportunity to say, that reminds me of this story over here. Could you apply the same method that you used here over there? And maybe improve that situation. But one of these clients decided she wanted to put her expertise into a fiction. So she is a social worker helping.

Very hard cases. Parents in high conflict divorces who were wrestling over custody for the children and, high conflict, high emotion. They’re making decisions out of hurt or revenge or like all of these motivations that are happening. She said, I could just write a bland.

How to, here’s how to prepare for your custody evaluation and to maximize your opportunity for getting more custody for your child. But I really want people to see themselves and to see the outcomes of their choices when they don’t put their children at the center. Okay, so she opted for a, do you remember those books, the Choose Your Own Adventure books when we were younger?

You get to the end of a chapter and you get to make a choice, and then it sends you in one direction or another. She created a book like this. And so she took a family where the parents were going through high conflict divorce, and the children were, of course, immersed in the very messy process of that.

And she took these characters and she gave the mom and the dad both three different choices. And all three choices sounded really good. This is probably the choice that this, that every parent should make, but only one of those three choices. Actually ended up with their children thriving and any sort of amicable experience between the parents.

And so it was this fascinating experience of watching her, mapping this out for the first time. It was a brain bender, first of all, ’cause I’d never done anything like that before. But as she started to write. I started to see a character on the page that reminded me of a character that she was constantly complaining about, interrupting her process of writing, and I thought, uhoh, I wonder if she’s writing her own story.

She’s, she hasn’t said anything about her marriage. She hasn’t talked about any sort of high conflict custody, anything like this is her profession. But this character reminded me a lot of what she was telling me about her husband. And I thought, oh dear. And so I, as I do I’m an, I call myself an Oracle.

I’m not the person who’s gonna tell you the way things are going. I’m gonna ask questions so that when you’re ready, you can put those pieces together for yourself. And so for 18 months, Anthony I tried to make these connections while she was writing this and. She couldn’t see it. Couldn’t see it.

Couldn’t see it. But she kept showing up for the retreats and doing the story saving work, and doing some of our writing quests. And 18 months in, I got a phone call from her that said, I think I just realized I’ve been writing my own story. And I said, oh, thank God. And she said, what? You knew. And I suspected.

And why didn’t you tell me? Oh girl, I tried to tell you like at least once a month for the last 18 months, and she couldn’t believe it. And so the beauty of what had happened was that, being inside of a space where she was able to write this story that had a lot of. Dark humor to it that gave her the ability to really get clear on who this character actually was in her life before she connected the dots, that was the character in her life.

As soon as it became an awareness for her that this was her life, she knew exactly what to do. She’d already written the book about it. She knew all of the right choices to make. She knew all of the ones to stay away from, and she was able to move through that phase of her life and like completely change her.

Not just her own personal story, but the generational narrative because she went on to find out that the same dynamic that had happened for her had been happening for generations before her. And she thought, what would’ve happened if I hadn’t seen this and my kids had been raised in it? My daughter, my son might have ended up in the same.

Sort of dynamic and she just ended it by writing the story, seeing it for what it was, and then taking the pen back in her own life and changing her own personal story. I. So incredibly powerful when people can do that. And and in the meeting it has and ’cause we are a product of our upbringing.

We’re a product of all of the things that have gone on around us and what have been told as being the norms. This is what what you’re expected to do. And and. Has played out different ways in different generations. A few generations ago it wasn’t unusual for parents to very strongly dictate what their children would study.

A little bit less so these days, but doesn’t mean there aren’t expectations there are around. Things and and what you end up doing, how you end up doing it, all these things. And you’re, I was talking with someone regarding finance yesterday and how that, your upbringing is such an impact on the way you think about money.

And so all of these stories that you’ve. Being told. And the stories that you tell yourself, and then the stories that you tell other people have this ongoing impact. And that’s why unpacking these is so incredibly powerful for, pers but and I think that’s the interesting thing here is that blend that you’ve got between what’s happening at a personal level, but then what can happen at a business level as a result of it.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and it’s, it really is amazing when people have the opportunity to really see their whole story a little bit more, honestly, because it’s the stories that we’re told and, but it’s also how the stories shape us, and not just the stories that we’re living, but the roles that we’re cast in.

You know what the identities, this is the role that you play in the story. If you’re always a supporting character, how fun is that when you’re trying to grow a business? Not so much. You have to be the main character. If you’re out there growing the business, you have to figure out where did that story come from?

Where I’m the supporting character, and how do I change that? How do I become, what do they call an A-list actor? How do I change my own story about the role that I’m playing in the bigger story and that, there’s hardly any there are hardly any places in our culture and especially our education system that have any of us thinking about that at a young age.

We have to run into the end of a painful story to look up and say, okay, this isn’t working. Is there another story available instead of having people when we’re young, my son and I wrote a book called Raised by Story, and I wrote that because when he was born, I did not have any good stories to tell him.

I was like I’m nobody, but all of my stories don’t seem to be playing out. We need to write one. And because I didn’t have the religion or the dogma or any of that to figure out how to raise. A healthy, responsible human who could survive and not just survive, but thrive in the world. All I had left was the great stories, and so I got to instead of just, sit there and consume them with him, I sat on the couch with him and I asked him really hard questions.

Not at first when he was really young. They weren’t hard questions, but, building critical thinking and asking what would you do in that circumstance, he always hated it when I paused the movie to ask the question but it started to build that pause for him inside.

He started to ask those questions by himself without me. And what ended up happening was he just figured out okay, I’ve walked millions of miles and a whole bunch of character shoes who’ve made a whole lot of mistakes. I know what not to do. And what, if we had that, what if we had the opportunity to, when we were young, to think I could write this story the way that I want to.

I don’t have to necessarily be, I can be shaped, but not defined by my early story. Have you got any tips for people in terms of how to, what is the, is there a perfect construct for a story? I don’t think so. Right now I’m working on a program I. Where we’re talking about all of the different structures, so nonfiction when someone’s trying to include their personal story.

There are all different ways that plays out. But for me, I’m always looking, like I said, for the alchemy between the story and the expertise really to, so that the story is driving. The reader forward more than the concepts. The concepts are all deeply embedded, but it’s really the story that has the person, okay, what’s the next, what’s the next chapter gonna look like?

As it relates to, fiction, I. I think that we have that blueprint inside of us. If we’ve been paying any attention at all to the great stories, that are on in great books and on big screens that completely grip the world, we have that pattern inside of us. And I have one client who’s actually a partner now who.

She had this amazing idea for this story, wrote the entire, the plot out, had a whole bunch of scene work done, but something wasn’t working. And so she started to explore all of these different structures. Oh, I’ll plug all of my content into this structure, and I think this is true for.

Fiction and nonfiction, right? I’m trying to plug it in. Here’s the conflict and here’s the this, and here’s the that. And what started to happen was her, like the essence of what she was trying to bring. It got choked out. She got to the point where she felt like she was trying to put puzzle pieces together instead of enjoy the process of writing a story.

And so when I asked her to, pull her gripped fingertips off of those structures that were choking her message out and just right. What happened was unbelievable. In fact she’s an avid reader herself, so knows the blueprint since she was four years old and started to read and what was hilarious was we get to the end of the manuscript and I said, okay, now go back and look at all of those structures, the hero’s journey, the all of these different frameworks, and see how your book lays out next to them.

And do you know that it fit most of those structures just like to a t. But not because she’d been forcing and shifting and choking and reshaping and carving pieces of her character experience out, but because she just went with it, she just knew story innately and let it come out of her. And of course there were things to do around perspective and seeing work and those types of things that made it even more powerful.

But man, I think we all have that blueprint inside of us. I agree. You know this. There’s no one that you’ve, that you meet that can’t tell you a story and. How they tell it is always going to be different depending on the situation and things. But people can tell stories innately. They’re part of who we are as human beings and being able to bring them out is again, so important.

I wanted to ask you as well, what have you seen as being the impact? You’ve once, once someone has brought out their story, particularly, not just in a personal sense, but also in a business sense, what’s been the impact of being able to do that? I have a few, I have a few stories. One of them is I worked with this all my clients were brilliant in their own ways.

This one in particular was like an Ivy League trained. Educator who had gone through a very intense personal trauma that like this type of trauma upon trauma of losing her child, blew open her nervous system. And so she went from being this. Very functional, very, left-brained human, somewhat intuitive to all of a sudden feeling and hearing everything like she could.

She knew what people, where people were hurting in their bodies. She could hear some of the thoughts that people were having. She was like, wait a minute. This isn’t, I can’t continue living. I can’t be a mother like this. And so she went on a journey of repairing her nervous system and learning how to do that.

I. And so when I met her, she was in the process of trying to get this business off the ground of helping other intuitive empaths figure out how to be more productive in the world, right? Not to be burning out and to be overwhelmed with everyone’s empathic overload all of the time. And so when I asked her, what do you wanna write about?

She said, bliss. I said that, that didn’t ding me at all. What else you got? Are there any other stories that you’ve been thinking about or messages you’ve been thinking about sharing? And she admitted that there was one story that was this story. And she said, I’ve been thinking that eventually I’ll have to write that book about feeling other people’s pain.

I. That was the connection to her audience, not bliss. Bliss is so far away from individuals who are barely making it every day because they’re so overloaded with empathy and their nervous systems are all out of whack. And so that, I feel Your Pain was this perfect way to connect with her audience. And then she thought I’m gonna grow the coaching business and the certification business out of this.

And so she had this big plan and she was working it. And then the book got into the hands of someone at a university, and the university said, we have a problem with empathic overload and neurodivergence, and we need your help. And so I remember her calling me and saying am I giving up my, my am I selling out my mission, my vision?

There are all of these opportunities available to her. More impact, stable income, all these things that new entrepreneurs struggle with. I. And I, of course I was listening to her and we talked about it. Eventually she took the job and within a very short amount of time, she was working with big districts, helping all of these helping professionals and educators figure out how to regulate their nervous systems, completely changing classrooms and districts, and now has a global audience.

And it was all because she got clear on the impact of that story that, no one wants to go back and rehash that type of loss and pain and everything that happened after, and the wrestling match. That was the journey of finding the solution. But it turns out that’s what our audiences need.

They need to know that we have been there. That we have figured it out, that we have steps that they can take. And when they see us taking those steps, it’s a whole, it’s a whole new opportunity, a portal of possibility that opens up for them. I love that. I. So much more that we could talk about. But I do have to wrap things up and I wanted to ask you, the one question that I like to ask all of my guests is, what’s the aha moment that people have when they after they’ve been working with you for a little while, that you wish more people would know about in advance?

So you’re gonna get more people coming to work with you? The aha moment that they all have is at some point. Usually around the 60 to 70% mark, which is a funny thing. If you look at the hero’s journey and all of those story structures of the 60 to 70% mark of the writing, I get a phone call very similar to that one I told you about with that client where they say, okay.

I think the thing that I have been really challenged the challenge that has been keeping me from working on this project and moving my message and my business and my life forward. I could actually solve that if I just stop saying the same stupid script over and over again. Do you notice that every time this happens, I say yes when I should say no?

Do you notice that every time I should stay there and confront that person? I turn tail and run. I. Yes, I’ve noticed that in your story. And that’s the moment where I say they, they really have the opportunity to be the co-author because until then they are absolutely driven by a story. They’re the character in a story that is happening to them.

But when they have a moment where they realize, oh, if I just change the script. If I just walked off the stage, instead of keeping the stupid show going, I can change the trajectory of everything. That’s the aha moment. I’m always excited and waiting for. I love that. Thank you so much for sharing so many great stories and what those stories have meant to people and how they’ve changed people.

I think it’s such an incredibly powerful thing to be a part of. And I can see the absolute joy that you have and what you do every day. So thank you for being a part of the program. Thank you for the invitation. And of course we will have all of the information about how to get in contact with you, including some free resources and things that you have on your website.

And a link to your podcast as well that you’ve got as well that where you get into some deep stories with with some of the people you’ve worked with. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much and thank you everyone for listening in to Biz Bites and stay tuned. Of course, for the next episode. Hey, thanks for listening to Biz Bites.

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