Comfort Zone? What Comfort Zone!

One of the things I hear a lot from speakers or founders is that they say they don’t have many stories. Pish! Everyone has stories, but often they don’t think of them as stories. Today I will tell you about my approach to this - which is not for everyone! And I will tell you what you can do to mine your own stories. But first, I guess we should take a quick look at the importance of personal stories.

Personal Stories

When you share some advice, whether from the stage or just chatting with someone, they want to know where this advice comes from. Because it is really easy for people to feel like you are just ‘preaching to’ or ‘lecturing’ them, and nobody likes that.

The way you can couch this is to talk about a personal story where you had a similar or equivalent type of problem, how it felt, and how you solved it. This gives you the right to talk about the problem and the solution. The next best thing, if you haven’t had that problem, is to talk about another who had that problem and how you helped them solve it, or one step further out, what you observed regarding someone who had that problem and either solved it or didn’t.

The key thing is that when you are talking about your personal experience, nobody can really challenge it. It was your experience.

The other key thing about sharing personal stories is how it creates a bond between you and your audience. This is the aspect I will focus on today. Friendships are built on shared experiences. Some of these experiences you and your friends did together, and some were things you did individually but shared with each other telling your stories.

Examples

For example, on Friday, I met with a couple of friends for a few drinks. I hadn’t seen Scott for probably a year. He regaled us with a blow-by-blow account of his biggest win in poker at the casino the previous night (he bought most of my drinks - Thanks, Scotty!). Karl talked about the reason that he has long hair (it involved GI-joes), and I told a brief story about going to the barbers, and when they used the mirror to check it was okay, I raised a laugh throughout the shop by complaining about the bald patch he left there, and couldn’t he do something about that.

None of these stories were earthshaking. -Scotty’s was the most impressive.

The point was that it is in sharing stories that we get to know people better. So you want to share stories. Big and small. Even the things that don’t seem relevant.

This morning I saw a video from Frank Kern selling his RainmakerAI product. Early in the video, Frank takes the camera out to the back of his house to show where the neighbour’s hedge caught on fire from some electrical thing and explains how the fire brigade and police were all over the place that night.

That fire had nothing to do with what he was selling on the video, but it was genius. It is how Frank has built his following, showing that he is a real person and real things happen, which is important as he goes on to talk about the million dollars he has made in the past few months.

Virality

Which brings me to the next great thing about telling stories. When you tell a good story, there is a chance it gets repeated. Sometimes it doesn’t have to be a great story, like Frank’s neighbour’s hedge fire, but it fits the context of what people are talking about and gets dropped seamlessly into conversation.

These stories are the bread and butter of celebrities. People like Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, Ryan Reynolds, Kevin Hart, etc., constantly tell stories. Some of these stories are then repeated, and their value increases as they become more known and more top of mind.

How to Get Stories

So I will tell you what I do to get stories, and as I warned you earlier, this is not for everyone.

Basically, I am open to everything, and I say yes to as much as I can. My default answer is yes, no matter what the ask is. Usually, the only reason it is a no is because of timing and clashes in the calendar.

Almost 10 years ago, a friend suggested I go with him to a meet-up of local filmmakers the following evening. I had no idea why. He didn’t know that I had done a little bit of stunt work in film some 15 years earlier. I had no particular interest in filmmaking, and honestly, I didn’t have much interest in film. I liked watching them but never remembered actors or directors.

But I said yes. I went. My friend didn’t show up. That was fine, I met some cool people. Ten years on, I have helped produce numerous short films, including one that won a couple of awards. I have acted in films, TV series, and ads. I have a network of creative friends that I would never have met otherwise.

Early this year, a colleague suggested I try the beginners’ Latin dance class, Rumba & Salsa. I said yes, even though I am hopeless, and my biggest issue is figuring out the beat in songs. But I have had stories from that, which I have shared in my podcast.

This coming week, 3rd of September (and again 17th of September), I am performing on stage at Improv Combat. Because somebody asked and I said yes. -And if you are wondering, yes, I am s***ting myself. But nobody will know on the night, and whether my part goes well or goes terribly, I know I will have a story to tell.

Finally, this week I am working on my stand-up set to perform at the local comedy club, hopefully in November. I have never done a stand-up set before, and this is probably the scariest thing I have done in a while. But again, good or bad, it will be a great story.

So this is my suggestion to you. Next time someone challenges you to do something you are inclined to say no to, consciously change your paradigm. Instead of thinking of the worst that can happen, which we all do, change that thought to how great a story you can make if the worst happens.
-Then everything is upside.

Mining the Past

But you don’t have to wait to be asked to do things to come up with stories. You already have a lifetime of stories that you can share. All you need to do is to mine your past to find them, and here’s how.

Most people, when they think about getting stories from the past, make the mistake of looking for events that stand out. They look for things that other people might think are cool or amazing. But I want you to start with the emotion. Even if you use the process I describe below and come up with the same experience, how you approach it will be different and far more effective.

On paper or on your device, create some lists with different emotions. Go big.

• Embarrassed

• Enraged

• Awestruck

• Grief Stricken

• Terrified

• Exultant

• Joyous

• ROFL -Rolling on the floor laughing

Then below the relevant headings, jot down your name for some of the stories that fit those emotions. You don’t need to write the story out because you already know it. Just write a name that will trigger your memory of it. For example, in my list under Embarrassing, I have “Playing Rugby for British Army”. Which immediately reminds me of that 2-minute story of my ultimate embarrassment.

The time to do this is now. Trust me. If you have Evernote or Keep or a similar program start building your list of stories now, because it becomes your own personal library for you to dip into when you are writing a talk or post.

The reason that you want to focus on the emotion is because it is the emotion that engages the audience and is what makes it memorable to them. They will remember the story and the sequence if you charge it with emotion. Without emotion, they will not remember it at all.

It is also important because if you are creating a talk or a pitch, you are performing on stage, and your performance should engage the audience’s emotions in a specific sequence for the best impact. When you are looking at your talk, you might say I want to bring them down to a low here and uplift them here. You can then look at your library of stories and select the best stories that match the emotional elements you need.

Final Word

There is far more to discuss in terms of personal and business stories, but I will leave those for future issues.

You might be wondering if all of my “Yes’s” for random things might not be a distraction from my business. With the exception of Latin dance, all these things are integral to communication, which I focus on. The lessons I have learned from all of these experiences have done a great deal to enhance my own understanding and how I can help others.

But more than this, life is experience.
The more you experience, the more you live.
There is a whole world of experience out there. Just say yes to it.

Snippets is a section where I take some interesting text I have come across in the previous week and comment on it.

This phrase grabbed me a while ago in the book Who Not How by Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy

Not only will it compel others to jump on board and help you reach that future, but you will also feel more excited and committed every time you tell the story.

It has been documented many times that it is often easier to get buy-in and support for a bigger audacious project than for a more modest one. And in many ways, it makes the bigger project more likely to succeed.

The issue we have is that we shy away from going big. We think of the negatives and not the potential. So perhaps focusing on the story we can tell if it fails can get us over this.

Who Not How is a great book I recommend, but this little snippet is not the main focus of the book.

Unpacking Wisdom is a weekly section where I dive into a famous (or not so famous) quote and explore how this can apply to the Compelling Communicator.

I’m a huge fan of Terry Pratchett, so when I was looking for a quote relating to experience for this week’s issue, I just had to go with Terry’s one!

The point Terry makes is that although everyone wants the shortcut to wisdom, the reality is that wisdom can really only be gained by doing stuff. And in more cases than not, the wisdom that sticks comes from the experience of stuffing it up somehow.

Let’s face it when you do something and everything works perfectly, then you haven’t really learned anything. It is difficult for you to tell others what to do and what not to do in the same situation because your experience of it was so one-dimensional.

You need to resign yourself to the reality that the only way to learn is to try it and then see what happens. But the “see what happens” should not be passive. You need to actively interrogate the results of your actions so you can see what did and didn’t work and consider alternatives to try next time.

In one of my most popular recent LinkedIn posts I wrote:

“Failure is inevitable. In my martial arts career, it would have been ludicrous to think that you would get in the ring and not get hit. How you respond to that hit determines your ultimate success.”

I believe Terry’s quote tells us to realise it is all part of the process and we need to expect to experience both the good and the bad or we won’t progress.

What I am up to this week…

Professionally:

I am on leave this week!! 😎

Recreationally:

I am taking some time to get grounded and relax. I will also be spending some time writing my stand-up routine for my comedy club debut.

What I am reading:

I have been re-reading Daniel Priestly’s Key Person of Influence. I think the most resonant books I want to really ingest are by Daniel Priestly, Mike Shreeve and Alex Hormozi, which all seem to work together.

What I am watching:

I have been watching the UC Berkley YouTube video series by Robert Reich titled Wealth and Poverty, a great educational resource on Economics and the politics of it.