Badass Is The New Black (Season 4) Episode #15- Using Your Story To Build Your Audience

What is your story and how can you use your story to grow your business? Your story is unique to you and you can leverage that to stand out from everyone else. This week I’m sharing some key ways to use your story to connect to your audience.

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Biz & Life Lessons Learned From The Quantum Level Up Retreat

Recently I spoke with Dave Braun from the Oola Guys on the podcast and we got to talking about branding and being intentional about developing your brand, understanding your brand, and really how you want to make someone feel. This led to the topic of your story, which I thought was important to bring to the podcast today because this is the one thing you have that is completely unique to you. Nobody else has your story, even if you have an identical twin and you shared a bedroom growing up, you had different experiences and you feel things differently. 

This is something that you can leverage to stand out. There are millions of people on social media and millions who have setup a business in the last year, maybe doing the same thing that you are. So what do you have that other people don’t have? Why and how you could attract someone to you versus them going and finding someone else. It's your story, right? It's also a way that you can connect with people. Connection is incredibly important. Claire and I discussed that last week when we debriefed our retreat with Ashley Gordon who was also on the podcast recently. 

If you haven't listened to those episodes from a few weeks back, do that. Your story is a way for you to be able to connect with other people and a way for you to be able to get vulnerable. Now, I'm not saying that you have to share your deepest, darkest secrets. That's not what I'm telling you. I'm telling you to use little pieces of your story, to connect with other people. Okay? I've shared many stories on this podcast from my life with you. If you're new here, you can go back and listen. If you've been listening for a while, you've heard me share lots of stories. I've shared stories about my dad. I've shared stories about my divorce. I've shared stories about my transition from nursing into entrepreneurship. I've shared stories about my children. I've shared lots of different stories and people will reach out to me and they will connect with me on some level. I've had several people reach out after mentioning that I was divorced. I was in a controlling marriage and they'd reach out and say, oh my gosh, I can completely relate to you. Not everyone can relate to that, but some people have, and they've connected with me.

Or I've shared about my stories of being a nurse and how I felt being a nurse. That transition of wanting to move into entrepreneurship and do something else and have time and freedom. People will reach out to me and say hey I’m a nurse too and I’d love to leave my nursing job too.

We found these little pieces in these little ways to connect with other people. 

Creating Content

So when you are creating content for social media it feels so overwhelming. I did an episode recently where I shared all these trends you can try on social media. I don’t call myself a social media expert but I shared what I do and what works. I looked at all of the things that they're saying, and I shared those with you. I have a feeling that you might've felt a little bit overwhelmed after you heard that podcast episode. But I don’t post every single day like some do, and I have a really successful business. If you look at the amount of followers I have, it’s like 30,000 but that’s because I did one of those giveaways where people follow you and I got way more followers than I was expecting and they aren’t necessarily my target audience. I would say I have around 3000 actual followers. You can have a super successful business with 500 followers or a thousand followers. 

So when you’re coming up with content, let’s say there’s a topic you want to talk about. Maybe you're in the health and wellness space and you want to talk about hormones. Instead of creating some content that is just very scientific, you know, this does this and that does that. Not everyone resonates with that. Of course, if you have people that love to know the science behind things, you love to share the science behind things then that's great, but let's bring your story into it. 

Speak to Your Dream Customer

So take your topic, hormones, and think of a story about you and your life. When you were dealing with maybe an imbalance of hormones and how it affected you, how did you feel? Were there things in your life that you weren't able to achieve? Be thinking about your dream customer, your ideal client, what are they feeling right now? So many about you out there doing network marketing, you got into the products because they helped you. Or you started selling the products because they helped you. You overcame that problem with the solution, which were your products. Now you can't help but share about them. 

Or maybe you're a coach, right? Like Claire and I teach people how to build a brand online and how to build their own website and set up amazing funnels through automation so that you can work less and enjoy more. I was once you sitting in your shoes at the very beginning saying what in the heck do I do? How do I get these people on my email list? How do I build a website? Now we teach that. 

So likely you do have stories deep down, go back many chapters and find that story that is relatable to what you want to talk about and bring that story in to share so you can create that connection. Use your dream client's language. Talk about how they're feeling right now. Are they stressed? Are they feeling anxious? Are they feeling hopeless? So use that language that they're using. If someone's coming to you saying I'm just feeling super overwhelmed with all of the things that I have to do for my business and use that language. Hey, are you feeling super overwhelmed with all the things you have to do for your business? I had so much on my to-do list. I was having panic attacks regularly, and then I did X, Y, Z. Then I realized that there was more, you know, fill in that story with them and then talk about desires. Talk about  what you wanted. I wanted to live in a space where I woke up refreshed, where I wasn't dying to take a nap after I took the kids to school.

So describing the desires of your dream customer, but they’re likely desires that you had to, and maybe you achieved and sharing those and your audience. 

Is Your Story Worth Sharing?

So your story is incredibly impactful. I'm curious out there, I've heard stories of people who had this earth shattering story, like maybe rags to riches. Right? I thought about this when I was doing this master class the other day. I asked them, how many of you feel like your story is not worth sharing? Like, there's nothing that great about it. I live a normal life. Middle-class family, grew up with nothing crazy. I had two parents, I had siblings. I had friends, you know, went to school. Nothing is earth shattering as opposed to some people who were maybe addicts and then all of a sudden I had a come to Jesus moment and this happened, and this happened. Now I make millions of dollars, right? That's not most people's stories. 

If you’re thinking that your story is not that transformational, that is just a lie. It’s a story that I told myself in my head, thank goodness it went in and it popped right back out. 

The reality is most people don't have those stories. Most people aren't that incredible rags to riches story. So the truth is that most people can't really relate. So I want to encourage you to continue to share your story. Even the little pieces of your story that you think might not matter because those little pieces are relatable to most other people.

Be Authentic

That's how you'll build that deep connection with someone online. That's how you build connections by sharing your story, letting them see more of who you are. That's what authenticity is. You hear that word floating around, authentic. What does it mean to be authentic? It just means to be you and to share you.

That's how you build connections with people that you're meant to build connections with. So today is short and sweet. I just want to encourage you to, in all the things that you do, share your story. Share what your past looks like, dream with other people, even what you want your future to look like.

Set the example for other people. You want them to dream big and have that vision and take action to get there. Show them you're doing that as well. And use your story to stand out from other people to connect with other people. That's it for today. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you feel inspired to share a little bit more of your story!

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