Turning Mundane Life Events into Powerful Stories

Kathryn Thompson  00:00

INTRO

Welcome back, I'm super stoked that you're tuning into this week's episode. And I cannot wait to dive into today's topic, which is all-around storytelling. And why if you're not using it already, you need to start and how you can start to use it in your content, even if you want to say that you don't have anything interesting to share, or you don't have this, like rags to riches story, right, that we've all seen. And that works really well. But a lot of people have been telling me that they don't have this rags-to-riches story, you guys have been telling me, I don't have anything interesting in my life to share. Nobody wants to hear about the conversations I'm having with my husband or the shitshow that's going on in my household. And I'm going to call BS on that. But also, I've been hearing from you guys that like you just that you can't bring yourself to sharing some rags to riches story, because you don't really have one, you don't consider yourself to have hit rock bottom. And I want to share with you that it doesn't matter how your story has played out, and what your story looks like, I can guarantee you that when you share it, it's going to connect with the right people, right? Because your people are probably walking around going like I don't have this rock bottom thing. 

I don't relate to the people that have this rock bottom incident that happened in their life. And now they've overcome it. And this is how they've done it, they're looking around probably saying the same thing you do my life isn't that interesting, I don't know why would share anything about my life on social or whatever they're thinking the exact same things you are, which is the beauty of storytelling. Because when you can infuse story into what you're doing in the most authentic and genuine way or not trying to fit it into some preconceived script of what the story should be, you're going to connect with the hearts of the people that ultimately need to hear your story. And the ones that are going to sit in their house go, this person created this product specifically for me, or they've got to be related to me somehow they're like a brother or sister from another mother sort of thing that's going on. They're my soul sister or my soul brother, because they're speaking my language, it's like they're in my head. And that is the power of story. And there are three different types of stories or ways you can use storytelling in your content, it doesn't always have to be a story about you. 

Right, which is a big mistake I see a lot of business owners make they're like, I've got to tell this story of myself in 15 different ways so that I don't get bored with it. But you don't always have to be telling a story about you, the story about you, and your why and why you're doing it. And why you're qualified to do it is what I call your life story. Right? That's, that's to form sort of belief in what you're doing. It's to create that, you know, movement around the brand, so to speak, it's your brand story. But you can use other types of stories in your content on the daily like, I don't know, an interaction that you had at a grocery store, or like the story I just shared recently about the taxi driver in Portugal, we spent two and a half weeks traveling through Portugal. And at four o'clock in the morning, we were we're heading back home to Canada and our our Uber driver picked us up. And on the way to the airport, he was asking us, you know, where are you going? We said we're heading back home. And he was like, oh, air travel is so expensive. And accommodations are so expensive, in Portugal and in Europe. And my husband and I both realized how interesting because we actually thought the price was fairly cheap, compared to Canada and flying within country and Canada. 

But we also thought the accommodations in Portugal were also really cheap considering on average, we would pay 150 to 200 at a hotel or Airbnb in Canada, depending on the city that you're going to obviously. And so I shared this story, that price is relative, right? That there's always going to be somebody who thinks your prices are too high or too low, and that you shouldn't flip flop your prices, just because one person says that it's too expensive or too cheap and whatnot. That's a prime example of how you can take a daily story and interaction that you've had with somebody and turn it into something relevant for your audience. Now, if you're thinking but Katherine, we don't, I don't travel. I literally work out of my house or I spend my time in my brick and mortar business. Like I don't really have these interesting things. I'm going to call BS on that. Because you probably go to the grocery store, you probably go out for supper sometimes with your spouse or whatnot or friends. You probably have maybe kiddos and you we all know kids have pretty funny things to say. Or stories that come home from school from parent teacher interview or whatever it might be that you can take your what seems to be mundane and experiences and turn them into really funny, fabulous stories. Another really cool example that I want to share with you is Elise Myers. 

If you don't know her, I highly recommend that you go follow her on Instagram or tech talk, but she blew up during COVID. And basically created an account sharing tidbits of her life and stories of her childhood stories of what she's going through right now stories of work, you name it, and she was sharing it in bite sized pieces of content on Tik Tok and on Instagram, right, so in short snippets of videos, and her account blew up. And the reason it blew up was number one, she's super relatable, right? She showed up with messy hair, top notch, you name it, like she wasn't all done up with a ton of makeup, which there's nothing wrong if you want to wear makeup and look pretty and all of that, but it was sort of like this raw look into her life. And she shared really funny stories, but also really potent lessons that lessons about life. So for example, one of her teachers used to comment on her way, you know, and she shares the story now, as an adult of like, you know, we should never be commenting on on a kid's weight, you know, and a ton of lessons around that and why that's so, so wrong, you know, which again, garnered a lot of attention, because I'm sure, if you are a female, you've probably had some experience in your life, that somebody has inadvertently commented on your weight, the way that you look how pretty you are. You name it, right. And so she was sharing from the heart, which is really, really important. But she was also sharing snippets of her life that became really relatable. 

And she's has this amazing, beautiful community that she's cultivated now online, with millions of followers. And you just showed up genuinely and real and raw, she is shared about her anxiety shares about, you know, where she lives in Omaha, you know, like, it's, it's so beautiful to see that that's the thing that sort of like grabbed people's attention. But again, it goes to show the power of story. And that you can take what seems to be these mundane things in your life and turn them into something really beautiful life lessons, you name it. But also interactions, like I said, with things that are going on in the world around you, you know, an interaction you had at the grocery store, or something you even observed at the grocery store, right? It doesn't even have to be you having a conversation with someone, you could just see somebody, I don't know doing something funny at the grocery store and relating it back to what you do. Because when you do that, again, you form this connection. And the funny thing is, is I think with Elise Myers, just go back to her for a minute, is people started to go oh my god, she's saying things that I would never have the courage to say, and share with the world, right. Which again, is such a powerful way to empower people to step out and be themselves and give people permission to show up exactly as they are to say the things they ultimately want to say, but they're too fucking scared to say it, right. That's what her the essence of who she is. And what she does, she's just this empowering light, because she's saying literally things that you're like, I can't believe you would say that. 

Those are things that should stay in your head, or those are things that you don't want to share with millions of people on the internet. So again, we go back to how to turn your life into this, this mundane life of yours that you say that you have, and turn it into something really beautiful within your brand. And it doesn't have to be these long drawn out stories, again, working with my clients, to use the power of story in their content to move people through what I call a customer buying journey, right to build that know, like and trust is it doesn't have to be this long winded story. Sometimes we think, Oh, if I create this brand story, you know, I have to I have to tell everything you know, and I've got to throw the kitchen sink at it, so to speak. And really, you can which is proof that what Elise has done is that you can tell stories in 15 seconds, 30 seconds, 60 seconds. The whole goal of telling a story is one capturing or garner the attention of the people that you want to write. And keeping that to the end, right? That's the whole goal of it is like to garner and capture that attention and have them keep watching or listening or paying attention and then ultimately doing something with that right. Do they go and buy something from you? Do they follow you? Do they comment? You name it. 

I want to use Netflix, the series The Watcher as an example because sometimes people will say to me, well, Katherine, I just don't know how to even like put stuff into story. I don't know how to grab someone's attention, and then keep it And, you know, Netflix does this with their series in general, right? They'll drop a series, but they won't drop all of the episodes. So, for example, if you're a love is blind watcher, maybe you're not. And you're like, oh my god, I can't believe you watch Love is blind, Catherine, but I do. They'll drop, you know, the first four episodes are the first three episodes and then they release them in bits. They did this with the Queen's gabot Any of the series they do, right, that's to keep people having the anticipation number one of what's going to happen. But this anticipation of like, I can't wait till they drop the next episode, which I was super pissed off last night because I watched Love is blind and they started to get married or decide whether or not they wanted to get married. And now I have to wait till November 9, which is not that long, but I have to wait till November 9 for the season finale. So there's this bit of anticipation that Netflix has done, which is so amazing. But I want to break down the watcher for you as an example of how to grab people's attention. And it's ultimately going to depend on the people you're trying to grab their attention, right, this show is not going to appeal to everybody. But if you haven't heard of the watcher, you haven't watched it. It's a psychological thriller. It's based on real life events. And it's again around a family that buys a home. And they're in their house. And they get these like weird letters from somebody that's been watching them, right, absolutely freakin terrifying. So the first thing that people who are intrigued by this one, they're going to be intrigued by it, because if they're into psychological thrillers, and scary shows, and whatnot, but they're more so going to be interested in it, because it's based on real life events, right.

 So it's like, Oh, my God, this could happen in my neighborhood. And three, if you're a family of any size, even if you just are in coupling and you don't have children, you might have navigated buying a house, right, Buying Your Dream Home, finding that dream home and buying it and then getting into it. And then realizing, maybe the inspection didn't go that well. And you have a ton of rentals that are going to have to be done, because shit hit the fan. But in this case, we've got somebody that's watching this house and sending these weird letters and weird shit happening. And if you are a family, or somebody who's bought a house or navigated that, you know, the pressure and the angst and all of that goes into buying a house, I remember when I bought my first home, I remember signing the papers at 11 o'clock at night being like, almost really excited, but also feeling sick to my stomach, like what the hell am I doing, because it's a big commitment. It's a big investment, right? And I would have been, I don't know if I was 23 or 24. At the time, I was young. And I'm signing these papers at 11 o'clock at night, like freaking out. And so there's a lot of emotion that comes up just in general about the broad scope of the story, which is the first thing that you want to do to garner people's attention. Like what is that broad scope of the story? What can you tell that's going to grab people's attention, real life stories, something that actually happened, something that's going to like evoke emotion, investing in a home, having that dream home with your family, all of that is going to like spike some sort of interest. And then obviously, telling a bit about like the psychological thriller aspect behind it of like, there's this person watching and sending weird ass letters. 

Like who is the watcher, right? Everybody wants to know who the watcher is straight off the gate. So they're going to dive in and watch the show because they want to figure out who the watcher is. And then to keep people along the journey, right? That element of anticipation is like, on the first episode, you don't, you don't just like reveal who the watcher is, right? You got to tell the story to build up to revealing who the watcher is. So for example, if you've got this, I don't know this brand story, right of like, why you decided to start this business. Let's just say for example, for me, I have this passion of being able to help business owners and the reason why is number one, I'm skilled in marketing and communications, but I started my own business. So I started my own brick-and-mortar, and I realized how difficult it is to navigate in all elements operations, production for wine, staffing, but also marketing and sales, which is needed if you want to grow your business. And I was gifted in marketing and communication. So I was like, Holy crap. You know, there's a lot of local businesses here that aren't they're just really passionate about what they're doing. And that's one of the things they struggle with the most which is the thing they need the most if they want to grow and scale their business and so I had this like soft spot for business owners and helping business owners right. 

But if I just said that in like one sentence right off the hub, I'm not going to draw people into that story, right whereas the That's what the watcher did as well, right? The first episode, you're not learning who the watcher is, you have to watch to the end to figure out who the watcher is. Same with Love is blind, right? They build it up, they introduce people in the pods, they have these conversations, they fall in love over a period of time they get engaged, they show this journey of this couplings, you know, the ups and downs they have over a four week period. And the culmination of the story is like, are they going to get married? Are they going to say yes, at the altar, right? That's the premise of the show. Bachelorette is the same Bachelor in Paradise is same, like movies and books are done in the same way. Right is like you don't tell this the entire story or you don't reveal the outcome right off the hop. And so I want you to think about that when you're telling your story. And how to one grab the attention from that broad perspective, what's going to really speak to my audience, right, what is going to get them to click on the thing to actually read it, and what is going to keep their attention all the way along, right. So usually, there's a bit of a hook, right the hook is, for example, for the watcher, the hook was, it's a psychological thriller, there's this watcher, this weird stuff happening in this house, this family invested in their dream home, and it's based on real life events, that enough is going to get people paying attention merely because they want to understand who the watcher is, right. So that is the hook is like who's the watcher. 

That's the hook that's getting people signing up, then there's this whole storyline that's then laid out, which is what I call the body of your story. And if you're thinking about it from a social media post, you've got that first sentence that's going to hook somebody, and then you've got this body, which is basically you taking people on a journey to then the outcome at the end, right, which is usually a call to action of some sort, whether it's like comment below, in you know, like, comment, sign up, click here, buy whatever, right? So you've got your hook, you've got this body, which for the watcher, right? We've got this whole story of this family, you know, house hunting, finally buying this house, getting into it, some weird things kind of starting to happen them going, like what's really going on, then they start to get these letters, and then they're trying to figure out do I stay? Do I not I'm not going to reveal anymore, in case you haven't watched it, but they really lay this out over I think it's seven or eight episodes. With the whole piece of it is like who the heck's the watchword who's actually doing this. And so that's how you want to think about writing how to write stories that really move people along this journey with you one within just that post alone on social media or video that you've created? Or how you can do that with your content from an ecosystem perspective, like in bits of your content? Can you create a bit of a story over a period of time, right? So if you think about Netflix and their series, right, can you create one piece of content that leads into the next piece of content that needs it leads into the next piece of content? We see this a lot with podcasts, right? I could do this with my podcast, I could take this episode, and have a bit of a hook up front. 

Tell a bit of a story on this episode, and then leave you with a cliffhanger that's like now to hear what the next thing is, you've got to tune into the next episode, right? So that's another way that you can keep people moving along this journey, digesting your content consuming it, and really forming again, that know like and trust with you. So I want if there's anything that you walk away from this episode with is number one is that regardless of what your story is, it's relevant and that your people want to hear it. And you don't have to be living this lavish life of traveling around the world or having all these really exciting things going on for you. You can take what seems to be these mundane things in your life and turn them into really fun stories. And sometimes, in my opinion, those are like the best stories because they're so relatable. You know, most people aren't traveling around the world and flying and jet setting and whatever, like the majority of people live, what we call this sort of like mundane life, let's just say which we can garner so many facets out of that and so many cool things out of that. 

And so, I would love for you to walk away hoping that you've sort of like changed your perspective on storytelling and how to infuse it and how you can use like I said, just interactions that you have in your life and things that go on and funny things that happen I don't know if you go to the dog park with your dog and something that funny that happens there or you know there's so many things that you can you can use your kids coming home from school and the funny things they say are The teacher interviews and the things that the teachers are saying about your kids and, and relating it back to you growing up and going to school, you know, I can think I don't have kids but you know, I remember coming home from school and having the the school calling often and having to write, you know, lines and going in detention and all of that, you know, like, there's funny things that I could share about my childhood, if I have kids, you know, and share, you know, relate that back to my own childhood. And so, there's so many different ways, like I said, that you can infuse story into your content. And honestly, that's the stuff that's going to get people's attention, keep them listening or watching and have them engaging. So without further ado, I really hope that that has helped spark a fire for you to do that. Now on to next week's episode.

If you feel like you're not hitting those sales goals that you desire, or expected, or you feel like you're speaking into the void online or in your local business, or you feel like you're being friend zoned so you've got people that are inquiring, they're interested they tell you how much they love what you do, but they're actually not buying then you're gonna want to tune into this episode, so be sure to subscribe to the show, so you don't miss it when it drops. Cheers.