Episode 217: Unlock Your Authentic Story - 5 Steps to Connect Deeper with Your Audience

Do you want to boost your business growth and brand success? I've got the solution for you to achieve that desired outcome. Let's dive into some storytelling techniques that will take your business to the next level. So grab a seat and let's get started!

In this episode, you will be able to:

• Unleash the power of storytelling to captivate your audience and drive business growth.
• Harness the influence of personal stories to elevate your business strategies and connect with your audience on a deeper level.
• Amplify your brand's authenticity through storytelling to forge genuine connections with your audience and foster brand loyalty.
• Explore the journey of finding a supportive community or mentor to gain invaluable insights and propel your business forward.
• Infuse your branding with personal experiences to create a unique and compelling narrative that resonates with your audience.

Master storytelling techniques
Business growth and brand expansion can be successfully propelled by mastering storytelling techniques. The art of telling a captivating story invites listeners into one's world, providing a platform for sharing personal experiences, challenges, and triumphs that can directly resonates with listeners. Harnessing this skill presents a powerful way to engage and connect with others, amplifying your brand and business in the most authentic way possible.

Remarkable Quote:

“If you're not authentic and you're not comfortable, you're not going to connect with anyone. People connect with people who are authentic and real.”

Find Us Online!

• Website: iamJulietHahn.com
• Instagram: @iamjuliethahn
• Twitter: @iamjuliethahn
• LinkedIn: Juliet Hahn
• FB: @iamjuliethahn
• Fireside: Juliet Hahn
• Clubhouse: @iamjuliethahn
• YouTube: Juliet Hahn

Transcript:

00:00:00
Welcome back to your next stop. This is Juliet Hahn. In this episode, I take you through some storytelling techniques that actually can help you grow your business and your brand.

00:00:13
Welcome back to your next stop. This is Juliet Hahn. So I'm doing another solo because I've had a number of people ask me how to grow their business and how to grow their brand through stories. And I've done podcasts on this, a lot of my podcasts. I touch on the exercises that I have given a lot of my storytelling clients.

00:00:35
As you guys know from the last episode, I have taken a job at Fettech as their chief communications officer. And so I still have my podcast. I still have your next stop, obviously. I still have wineness live with NFL thread, which we were just at the Super bowl. More to come on that on social media.

00:00:52
If you guys do not follow me, go to Juliet Hahn on pretty much all of the socials and then Juliet Hahn on LinkedIn. And that's J-U-L-I-E-T-H-A-H-N. You can kind of see what we did, the events that we did at the Super bowl. And I have word blindness as well. And what I do is I talk about different techniques, but I'm going to kind of lay it here so you guys can kind of take this and use this as a little bit of a toolkit.

00:01:20
So, because I recently took the job, I'm not taking clients. I only take one client a year. And that's really just someone that I work really well with. I vet them and do things like that. I do have stuff, again, that I do for free, but the more intensive stuff, I'm just taking one client a year because we can only do so much.

00:01:41
So since lately, people have said, okay, how do you do this? I've heard you on a different podcast, and I've done throughout the years. I talk about it, but I'm going to give you kind of that, really just lay it out here. So when I work with a client, this is what I do first, is we almost do it like a simulation podcast. And so if you do not have someone like a storytelling consultant or you do not have someone that you're working with, this is how you can do it on your own.

00:02:07
We all have cell phones, whether you are a green texter or you have an iPhone, you have the ability to leave yourself a voice note, or you can write. Now, I highly recommend leaving a voice note. A lot of people hate it. They're like, I don't want to listen to myself back. I hate this, if you truly want to grow your brand and you truly want to grow your business, you're going to have to get over it, frankly, is that if you're going on podcasts, you're going to have to listen to yourself speak because you're going to want to listen back to certain podcasts in the beginning, especially so you can see where you can improve and maybe what you liked and where you can kind of enhance and where you might want to be like, okay, you know what?

00:02:48
I need to be aware of that. I talk about this all the time. We just talked about this on word blindness, where you kind of have to go into your own self and do some work and think, okay, this is where I need work. This is a strength, this is a weakness. Here is the same thing.

00:03:02
If you want to actually grow your brand, grow your business wherever, if you have a brick and mortar, whether you have a coaching business, whether it's an online business, so many different things, you really have to do that self work to get you to that next level. So I recommend talking into a voice recorder and taking your life. This is what I do, but I do it on the other side. So I basically have my clients on the other side. We're on Zoom or Riverside, wherever, a video and I take them through kind of, and I break it up into chapters.

00:03:33
And so if you're doing this on your own, you're going to talk to yourself about your earliest memories and through. So I grew up and I'll take you right here. I grew up in Morristown, New Jersey. I went to Baker school, Morristown middle, I think it was Allen Middle School and Morristown High School. I am one of five.

00:03:54
My youngest is my brother. The rest of us are girls. My parents got divorced when I was around twelve. I played field hockey and lacrosse. I loved sports.

00:04:03
That's where I excelled. I really struggled in school. And I have some very early memories of in third grade where I was put into extra reading and the rest of the class, except for the troublemaker, and I went into special reading. The rest of them went to gifted and talented and I literally break it out. In middle school, I remember a math teacher telling me I was useless because I was a girl and I didn't understand.

00:04:31
And again, take it through. In high school, I had a teacher call me retarded in front of the whole class because I read a word wrong when I was reading out loud. You go through all these different things. I mean, I can take you through boyfriends because I've dove into my own life through being on podcasts, through talking to people, and growing myself as an individual. So this is the exercise they want you to do, and you break it up into different paths.

00:04:58
When I was little, I was fascinated with being a doctor. I loved how the body worked, but I also loved how things worked and were made and kind of gears and why there was soil and earthworms and science stuff. And then when I got to school and I realized that that was really where I struggled.

00:05:21
Math and science were where I put all my walls up. I am not smart. I'm not good. I'm not doing any of that. So I kind of lost that kind of curiosity in that world.

00:05:33
But then I maintained my curiosity in so many different places, thank goodness, because that is where I've grown a lot. So going through chapter one, chapter two, chapter three, chapter four, and how old you are. So, like early years, teenage years, college years, twenty s, thirty s and beyond, that's how you break it out. And you talk about all your earliest memories. All of your earliest memories.

00:06:03
Again, if you have a lot of trauma, you might want to do this with a professional. A professional, not like even just a storytelling consultant, but like a psychologist. You're really going into it. But if you've done the work, you should be able to do this. And then you're going to listen to yourself back and you're going to listen to see where you were excited.

00:06:23
And I kind of was very choppy there. You want to be more in your story kind of storytelling aspect, and you want to listen back to how you spoke, where your words, where you were like, oh, I got really excited there. Let's dive into that a little bit more. Or I really slowed down there. What happened in third grade?

00:06:43
Right? And I talk about this where I didn't remember really what happened in third grade. I just kept having this bad feeling every time third grade came up, and I was like, what was in third grade? And then I really kind of dove into it. So going through that and very introspectively feeling your feelings, listening to your voice, where I want to dive in now, this is also where you do the daydreaming.

00:07:07
So then I want you to find a spot that you can daydream. I talk about it. I need to walk. Some people call it meditate. Just a space that you can daydream and feel and think.

00:07:19
And I want you to start thinking of those times that you either were excited or not excited and feel what comes up and really dive into those. Some people now are going to want to write down things, they're going to get their notebook and write down, okay, in chapter one, these are the things that I really want to dive into more, or this is the feelings I had here. Others are going to keep with the voice, and they're going to keep with the voice notes. I do recommend organizing them. Naming.

00:07:45
Okay, this was my first go at talking about my story. Here's my second go around it. Here's my notes from chapter one. Chapter two, same. When you're writing it down, it will keep you organized and be able to go back.

00:07:59
And the whole reason why you're doing this is because once you get really comfortable with yourself and your own story and you're going out on podcasts, you're speaking in media, you're at networking events, you're at a school event, you're in line at the grocery store, and someone, you pipe up a conversation with someone and they're like, oh, what do you do? And you're able to talk about it, but you're able to know, okay, I can do, like, my two words here, my two words there. I can talk about something that excited me. You're going to connect with someone in a different way because you are very introspective. You know your own story.

00:08:33
You know what excites you. You know what people want to ask. So, like, for instance, when I am anywhere and someone asks me what I do, again, I'm the chief communications officer. I have three podcasts. I was a storytelling consultant.

00:08:47
What I used to do is I would always start with the things that I knew would have, and I didn't do this on purpose, but this is stuff that I've learned. I always knew that I would have someone be like, oh, wow, you do that? That's so exciting. I go to the Super Bowl. I do events, right?

00:09:02
So I do events at Know city, where the Super bowl is with Cynthia Zordich. You guys know that with yns, live with NFL thread, a lot of people are fascinated with that. Like, how did you get into that? And blah, blah, blah. Then I can go down.

00:09:14
The other stuff. I do word blindness, dyslexia. Now, sometimes I lead with the dyslexic podcast. Depending on who the person is. Again, they're going to want to know a little bit more about what I'm doing.

00:09:23
And that's how you network and also grow things. So I was just on a business trip with my husband. Someone came up to me and was like, I was heard you were talking about your podcast and some work that you're doing in the dyslexic world. Do you mind if I can ask you some questions now? And then we can get on a call later.

00:09:39
This person was a very high up executive that was touched by dyslexia and was going through something with their child and had a lot of questions and then said to me, wait, I want to help. How can I get involved in this? And it's just because I am super passionate when I talk about what I do because I love it so much. And that's where I want you guys to get and doing the work. By talking about it.

00:10:00
Yes. I am a very energetic person. Can you emulate all of what I'm saying here? No, you have to make it your own. So that's the other thing, is it's really important that you make it your own.

00:10:10
And you do that by doing this work, doing these exercises. So you're going back now again, you have the voice notes. You did the whole story. Then you're breaking it up in chapters, doing the work in each chapter. Okay, where do I feel here?

00:10:23
What did I feel here? Sometimes things come up that someone's just like, I really love how that felt. I really loved talking about that. How do I incorporate that? And then you need to, again, do some deep diving.

00:10:34
Also talk to other people in the space that you are like, hey, this came up. Do you think this is something that you would connect with? Right. And then you do the work by asking and talking and being curious. So, for instance, one of my guests, my podcast early on had a story about pink peonies.

00:10:52
I'm sure if you guys are a longtime listener, you know this story, because I talk about this a lot, but this was really exciting. She started to talk about, and then she's like, it's really not important. And I was like, no, I want to hear more because I could literally, because, you guys know, I can read people really well, and I can feel their voice and I mean, hear their voice, and I can see body language when someone's excited. And I was like, okay, this is going to be cool because she's going down a path, and if it's not, we can always edit it, right? We'll see where it goes.

00:11:17
She brought this story up, and it was really when she was leaving corporate America and starting her own business, but someone gave her a pink peony. Now, the thing that's really cool is it actually happened to be her grandmother's favorite flower, and she had all of these wonderful memories as a kid. And when I tell you she lit up and we kept it in. And I get messages from her occasionally. In the beginning, it was often like, I just got another client because that pink peony story, and that is exactly what it is.

00:11:47
It had nothing to do with her business, but it had to do with something that she was excited about and something that she was passionate about and people could feel it. So that's how she connected. So that's what I want for you guys. Again, if you're going out on the podcast circuit, if you've written a book, if, again, you have a small business online or brick and mortar, if you're going out on media, you need to know those little things that you get lit up about that people want to hear. You also want to know about things that could be important, but you're not as comfortable talking about.

00:12:18
So again, another client of mine, the beginning of her life, she had a lot of trauma and she did not like to talk about it. And she became very, very successful. And we worked together to bring in her trauma because her success and she's had a lot of success, and she had had some hills and mountains in between the success, but nothing like the beginning of her story. And the beginning of her story was going to really connect with people on a different level. She was Ivy League, top of her class.

00:12:49
All these different things that there's going to be a group of people that might not connect with her and might not hire her because they see her at a different level. But the fact that she had this trauma in her story was going to then bring a whole new audience that was going to connect with her there that would not have connected with her because know the Ivy League. So we worked really hard on incorporating her story. Now, there was things that she was not completely comfortable talking about because her parents were still alive and everyone was good. Everyone has did the work, but I was able to help her put the words to it to be comfortable.

00:13:22
So again, that's where you can do your own work. You can say, okay, these are things that I want to talk about, but I don't know how to talk about that and just kind of sit, meditate on, okay, what are some words, what are some phrases that I'm comfortable? That's where you also are listening to podcasts. You're listening to other people doing the work. You're listening to other people talk about their own story.

00:13:44
So not only are you doing the work on yourself, right? So again, the tools, the toolkit, you're sharing your own story to yourself. You're doing that work. You're listening things out, either talking to a friend, talking to there's people that a lot of times in the beginning of my career, when I didn't have the money to spend on someone else, I found someone that was in the kind of the same stage of business as I was. And once a week we would jump on and we would do work.

00:14:11
Like, this is working for me on social media. This is working for me here. What are some of the things that are working for you? We would do that and then that's how we grew in the beginning. So that's something that you can do.

00:14:22
You can look kind of for that mentor or that kind of partner. It doesn't have to even be a mentor that you guys can partner and kind of meet. So doing that and then going through your story, picking out those little pieces on the second kind of third kind of exercise and things is then going out and listening to podcasts or reading people's stories or listening to documentaries. But just how people share their own, see who you connect with. You know what?

00:14:49
I really liked how that person shared the story. What did they do? Again, making it your own, because if you're not authentic and you're not comfortable, you're not going to connect with anyone. I need to make that as clear as possible. Whether you're posting on social media, you're getting ideas.

00:15:03
But if you do not make it your own and you are not authentic, you're not going to grow your business because you're not going to connect with people. Because people connect with authenticity and real people connect with real people. That is super important. That is what you want to do is be real and authentic. But you can study other people if you are struggling in this department.

00:15:27
So I'm going to leave it at that. Thank you guys for listening to your next stop. I hope some of those tips helped. I hope you can go and do the work. If you want to email me, you can email me at [email protected] if you have a question, I'm happy to answer you.

00:15:42
I can leave you a voice message. We can jump on a 15 minutes. I'm happy to do that for people because I'm really passionate about this and I think there's so many people out there that can bring their business to a different level when then they're just going to help more, you know, free of charge, please. Again, you can email me at [email protected] you can also dm me Instagram. I am Juliet Hahn, and I'm happy to answer any of your questions.

00:16:09
You guys make it a great day, and we'll see you for another episode of your next stop. I hope you liked this episode of your next stop. Please subscribe to my channel, share with your friends, and join in each weekend.