The 3 biggest mistakes we make when sharing our stories in business: I have been fortunate to meet and hear some of the most INCREDIBLE stories over the past 4 years of hundreds of brave women who have wanted to share a small piece of themselves in one of our Overcoming Mediocrity books. While not all of these women endured horrific circumstances, each of them did triumph through some pretty challenging times and felt compelled to share the wisdom they learned along the way throughout the pages of one of our books. For that I applaud them all!!!
When I first started on this journey, I knew how beneficial co-authoring a collaborative book could be for someone’s business if leveraged correctly. Heck, it was my experience in a similar project that led me to create our own. But, even though our marketing efforts have consistently resulted in massive benefits for our authors, I see now how in the beginning I was not equipped to help them determine what part of their story to share in our books and how. But throughout the years, I have not only seen the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs have made when sharing our stories, I have discovered the best strategy for them to follow when they want to create their own Personal Power Story and leverage it in a way that results in unlimited business growth.
Everyone has a Personal Power Story. Whether you have struggled through some very tough times or you are fortunate to have been spared that season of your life journey so far. There are however, always other people in the world who would be inspired by you and the story you share with them through words. More importantly, your story can be the connective tissue that bonds your current and future clients to you and creates a loyalty with them that cannot be easily broken. The challenge we have is what part of our story should we share and how do we most effectively share it?
In a past article, I shared a few additional reasons why you want to share your Personal Power Story, but in this article, I will be sharing the 3 biggest mistakes we make when sharing our Personal Power Stories in business and a simple strategy to share them successfully to achieve unlimited business growth results.
The 3 Biggest Mistakes We Make when Sharing our Stories in Business
1. It’s Not About You!
The biggest piece of advice and the hardest to follow is that we need to always remember that we are sharing our stories for the benefit of the reader, not for our own benefit. We need to not share everything about our past, but only the parts of our life that are relative to the journey we are taking the reader on to help them live a better life.
It is so easy to get caught up in the emotional side of our stories that we forget to: REMAIN FOCUSED ONLY ON THE STORY OR STORIES THAT WILL DEMONSTRATE HOW WE ARE THE EXPERT AT OVERCOMING AND MASTERING THIS AREA OF CHALLENGE.
2. What is the Moral of Your Story?
The next challenging mission we have when sharing our stories, is to use it as the vehicle to take our readers on a journey with us through the storm of our life and then out to witness us overcome the worst of odds. We want them to connect with us and feel our pain. We want them to see a little bit of themselves in us and our struggles. We also want them to cheer with us as we celebrate our success through sheer bravery, persistence, strength and/or faith.
But most importantly, none of this will matter unless we can: HELP THEM LIVE A BETTER LIFE BY TEACHING, INSPIRING OR ENCOURAGING THEM TO DUPLICATE OUR SUCCESS. We need to determine the moral of our story right from the get-go and keep that in mind when we are choosing what stories to share.
3. How Can You Help the Reader More?
As women we quite often feel uncomfortable or “car salesy” when offering our products or services to prospects. We get in our own way and completely forget that we believe in what we are doing and the benefit we offer our clients so we don’t take that last step and invite the reader to get more support from us. Without that critical last step, we may be losing out on valuable future business and we certainly are not doing the most we can to serve the person who just connected with us through our story.
When we share our stories in business in a way that positions us as an expert, we need to: HAVE A CLEARLY DEFINED PLAN MAPPED OUT THAT PROVIDES FUTURE DIALOGUE AND SUPPORT. It could be as simple as a free report, guide or eBook that provides additional valuable information to them in exchange for their contact information on an opt-in form. I use and love Optin Monster’s platform because it provides multiple opt-in formats that are user as well as administrator friendly, but there are lots of options out there. Explore a few and choose one that works best for you.
