SPI 863: Storytelling Framework for Creators

SPI 863: Storytelling Framework for Creators

Pat Flynn: Right, if you’re a creator, entrepreneur, business owner, you have to learn how to tell better stories. If you do not do this, you will fall behind because you’re gonna fall into the information trap. There’s so much information out there already. You’re gonna get lost in it because you’re just regurgitating all the same things.

There’s no new information really. There really isn’t. It’s how you wrap that information, how you put a bow on it, how you present it. This is why in Japan, when you go to Japan, everything they do is neatly packaged because they want to increase the experience that you have and customer service and all that kind of stuff.

I mean, they represent that so, so well. I mean, they go a little overboard with work ethic and those kinds of things. Especially if, you know, I recently read an article that people who work in the anime industry there are working like 70, 80 hours a week, which is not okay, but. As far as the culture of giving, that’s what we do as entrepreneurs, as creators, we are in the business of giving, and if you’re just giving the same old information, it’s not gonna feel like a gift.

It was Ryan Trahan, a young and really popular YouTuber, who once said in an interview that he treats his videos like a gift to his audience. I love that because when you think about it that way, you wouldn’t just like scrap something together. If you truly wanted to give somebody a gift, you think about it, you present it, you wrap it in a nice bow and you offer it.

It’s Japanese culture. It’s good creator culture. My dogs agree. They just barked. ’cause my wife walked in the door. And I implore you, I beg you, learn how to tell story. And that’s exactly what I’m gonna teach you how to do today. Now, learning story just isn’t gonna happen overnight. However, there are some frameworks, there are some ideas, there are some principles that I want you to think about, and I’m again speaking about it in the sense of a creator online, a brand, a business, somebody wanting to connect with somebody before some movement, some actions, some transaction, whatever it might be.

There’s many different kinds of stories as you know. There are fiction and nonfiction books that each have story in it. There are fiction and nonfiction movies, television shows, screenplays, poems, et cetera. We’re talking about the online creator space, but a lot of these principles are the same throughout.

And then I’ll have some tips for you as well. This is a window of some of the stuff that I talked about in a recent workshop inside of the SPI community because. When there are hot topics, we wanna bring people on, and many times it’s myself to come on and teach certain things that are happening. I did a workshop about AI when that was coming on, and so this is one of the benefits of being in the SPI community is getting access immediately to things like that when we see patterns and such.

So let’s start by talking about why story matters. We talked a little bit about it, but knowing how to tell a good story is the most powerful skill that anyone can learn. As AI is here, as more and more information gets uploaded into the internet and force fed to everybody, it’s those stories that you tell that are really gonna connect with people.

So that’s number one. It’s a way to connect with people with more than just information. Number two, it transforms information into relatable experiences. And if you’re selling anything, maybe even selling a call to action, like a click to join your email list or to even just think about an idea when you shape that information into a story that’s relatable, when a person has an experience through your experience that you’re telling or somebody else’s whose story that you’re telling, it becomes something that grabs attention and it becomes something that helps a person go deeper with you.

That relatable experience. If you’ve been on Instagram or TikTok and shorts and you’ve seen a lot of short form video, you’ll notice that a lot of the videos that have popped off and have done really, really well, or even ones that you stick around and watch, are ones that begin with a story. I was at the grocery store and this woman came up to me.

Now you need to know what happens, right? Versus here are the top five reasons why you need to start a podcast, which again, I’ve been sharing that kind of information for years. But when I talk about the fact that a podcast led me to sit in a DeLorean for my own short film that I got to write and produce and see, I’ve captured your attention again and you’ll have to go back into the archives to find that story.

I might tell it on stage again at some point as far as how that came to be. Now, stories can take concepts that are complex and make them accessible and memorable for people. And that last part’s really important stories are things that we remember. And it’s also things that we then share both positive stories and dramatic and negative stories.

In fact, those dramatic and negative stories, those ones with consequence, those ones with drama, those are the things that seem to capture a lot of people’s attention. Hence, a lot of the drama that we love to watch as just human beings and just following other people’s lives and the drama that they go through.

It’s unfortunately something that just we as humans are interested in more than really anything. I’m not saying, just bring drama to bring drama. There’s enough drama in the world already, but when you can include dramatic ups and downs in the stories that you’re telling, you’re more dramatically able to make connections, create something memorable, create something shareable.

Stories inspire action. These are the things that get people to click, to buy, to do, to change, to transform. Stories can communicate your values without explicitly stating them, right? When you tell a story about an interaction that you’ve had, you are through that story sharing the kind of person that you are one way or another versus.

Hey guys, these are the three things you’ll love about me. I am honest, I am trustworthy, and I will, whatever. Like that just comes across as kind of arrogant versus here’s the story and here’s how I handled it. And then finally, stories help you stand out. Just that’s it. They help you stand out. So I’m gonna give you a framework, and this is very much mirroring a lot of frameworks that are out there.

It’s my own take on it. The hero’s journey is, maybe you’ve heard it before, a transformation of somebody in some way, shape, or form. That’s what we’re gonna go over here. But I have a specific way that I like to approach this when I’m creating content, when I’m telling story, and especially when I am. For example, on a podcast and trying to share information, or when I’m on an interview and I wanna, you know, present myself in a way that’s memorable.

I don’t just share facts, I wrap those facts inside of stories that are relatable. So it all starts with the normal life. And this is gonna be a circle that takes us back to the beginning, but in a different sort of way. And it starts with the normal life. So for me, many of you know my story of how I became an entrepreneur, but I’ll go over it here, within this framework.

I worked as an architect and was about to start a family. That was the normal life for me. I was on my way to becoming an architect. I had just gotten a promotion. I had just proposed, and things were great until they weren’t, and this is where a trigger happens, right? A lot of times in these heroes journeys you see sort of just like scene one, scene two, scene three, or act one, act two, act three, act four, kind of thing.

I have specific things that happen or actions moments that then take a person from one stage or one act to the next, and this first one from the normal life, there is a trigger, some trigger event that starts this whole thing off. And for me, my trigger event from the normal life was I got laid off that completely swept the rug under me and allowed me to not even know where I was going next because I had this plan and all of a sudden it was gone.

From there, we have the normal life. Then a trigger event or action or moment that then takes us to, well, what do we want now? What do I desire? What is the challenge that you’re now facing? And for me, I was just lost. I needed to make money and I had no plan B. This is what I wanted. I, I needed to make money, but, and I wanted to have this family and I lost my job. Then, attention point needs to come into play. So this event happened and you’re now in this situation. We need to amplify what is happening here in some way, shape, or form. So again, in my story, and by the way, I’ve told this story many times. I used to tell my story in a very light way. Yeah. I used to be an architect and then I became an entrepreneur and I started my business online.

That’s, that’s exactly how it happened, and unfortunately when I told it that way, and I wanted to tell it quickly because I didn’t think it was important to go into such depth with how this all happened. Rather, I just wanted to help people and answer more questions. But the truth is when I discovered that when you go deeper and these stories create connection, that the deeper I went the more intriguing I became, the more authoritative I became, the more trustworthy I became, and the more relatable I became. And this was on my own blog and then later my podcast, and of course on other podcast too. So although I’ve been interviewed hundreds of times before, a lot of interviewers say, pat, I know you’re probably tired of telling your story.

I say, no, I am not at all tired of telling my story for two reasons. Number one, I know it’s gonna be the thing that connects me to your audience who has probably never heard my story before. I. So that’s really important for me. I don’t brush over that. And number two, every time I tell my story, I can get better.

I can refine it, I can go deeper, I can understand more about it and what makes people want to then work with me or invest in me, in in my programs and such. So going back to where we were, the normal life. I was an architect. Trigger moment. I had gotten laid off where I am now as a result of that trigger.

I was lost. I didn’t have a job. I didn’t have any money coming in, and I really just wanted to survive. And then the amplification of that, the tension point, this amplifies and shows the reader, the listener, the viewer, just how bad things are. And for me, I found that this thing that I could then share, that would highlight this was I moved back in with my parents life was moving backwards.

That’s the tension point. The amplification of the challenge. I, now I didn’t, again, I didn’t know this framework. I had sort of discovered this and learned it and have adopted a lot of other people’s styles into my own. But when I randomly was interviewed on a podcast several years ago, I remember mentioning that I have moved back in with my parents and I remember a visceral, sort of like from the interviewer, like I heard an audible gasp, and that was my signal that, oh my gosh, this actually like made an impact. When I said this, again, I was just learning as I was going, but when I said, you know, I moved back with my parents. Really? Oh my gosh, what? What was that like? I leaned into that from that point forward. And it makes sense, right? That is like the opposite direction of where I wanted to go in normal life.

Normal life, this thriving career, climbing the corporate ladder, and after getting laid off, moving back in with my parents, that was like not just climbing down the ladder, that was like digging a hole. I. Right. So again, telling that story in a way that leans into those things. Next is then a discovery.

This is a moment of hope, a glimpse of some other world that I didn’t know about before. And for me, the discovery was the world of online business. And many of you, again, have heard the story before. I found a podcast called Internet Business Mastery, hosted by Sterling and Jay. I listened to one particular episode about a person named Cornelius.

Who is helping people pass the PM exam, the project management exam, and that was my discovery in that aha moment, as some people might call it right now. Does that mean I’m a success right after that? No. You have to go from discovery to self-doubt in some way. So again, when you’re telling this story, you see this glimpse of hope, but then all of a sudden it gets pulled back, right?

You see this in movies, there is the treasure, but then all of a sudden it gets swept away or it like gets thrown in the water and you lose it again, right? You’re so close. But then you get pulled back to where you are now feeling a lot of tension. Right? So for me, after discovering the world of online business and getting excited about it, and again, learning how to tell the story about what that excitement is like, I had dreamt about making sales online.

I had that bug in my stomach that we all feel when you’re excited about something. It’s all I could think about. I was reading and I was listening to multiple podcasts, and then eventually I built my own website, but then the imposter syndrome kept holding me back. I kept doubting whether or not I could actually serve this audience of architects that I wanted to serve with this exam website.

I didn’t believe I was qualified. In fact, I was finding proof that I was not qualified to teach. I barely passed the LEED exam. The exam that I was going to teach online, I barely passed, and I kept saying that to myself like, I’m a fraud. I can’t teach this stuff. I never went to business school. I was looking for every excuse in the book.

Again, these things that I’m saying now I’ve learned over time are things that can connect with an audience because. This self-doubt is relatable, right? This is the most important part because the self-doubt, the obstacles that are in the way or were in the way for you, or whoever’s story that you’re telling are the same obstacles or should be the same obstacles that your audience, your prospects, your leads are going through.

So my self-doubt was kicking in. For sure. And then comes the transformation. You get through something, you slay a dragon metaphorically, and something happens. And eureka a moment. And that moment for me was when I launched my ebook and I finally started to generate revenue. And I’ve leaned into that moment.

Right. You lean into it in that transformational moment, what happened exactly? Well. And again, in the beginning I was just like, yeah, I launched the book and I started to make money. Cool. But how impactful is to tell a story in that way and just get right to the end? I, versus describing in detail what happened, how you were feeling at the time, and using relatable visuals, even if you’re just speaking about this story, using relatable visuals, right?

Like when I say that I got an email, I opened my email at 8:00 AM in the morning, and I saw the email subject line, you have just got paid $18.18 cents from PayPal. I open the email and I see the dollar figure there. I couldn’t believe it. I log in, I forget my password, and as soon as I log in, I see there is money there.

That was not there the night before. I did it. I couldn’t believe it. And then more sales started pouring in and more and more emails. I. You see what I’m talking about here? There’s pacing involved, there’s intonation, there’s dynamics, there’s painting, pictures and visuals, and this is all stuff that can only come with practice, practice, practice, practice.

And remember, I’ve gone on hundreds of podcasts and have told this story multiple times. So I, in a way know exactly what words to say, which parts of this event can I pull out and visualize for people? And create that emotional connection. ’cause that’s what you want. You want an emotional response in some way, shape or form during the tension and the self-doubt parts.

You want that tension to go, oh gosh, I feel that with you because I felt that too. And then when you get into the transformation, you share what life is now like after slaying those metaphorical dragons or getting over those obstacles and self-doubt and giving people who are now listening to this story a beam of hope, something that they can look forward to now. And when you share this transformation in this story, in this way, people wanna now go on the same journey as you. And they’ll use the same tools. They’ll wanna learn from you. They’ll want to go to the same guide or go through the same path. Now we’re not quite done yet because after the transformation, you now have what I like to call the ultimate test.

It’s one thing to just have either a flash in the pan or have a moment where, okay, cool, I made a sale. But when you have a test that then defines that you are now in a new place, a new world, there is a new normal coming, then that kind of seals the deal. This is like the climax of the story. The climax of the story was not, in fact, my first sale.

It was the fact that my boss called me back. And this is a true story. My boss called me back. I started making sales. My boss, who let me go, called me back and he said, Pat, I wanna offer you a job back. The economy’s coming back. I have an office for you and I want to pay one year’s rent for you and your fiance to come to Irvine, California.

It will set you up so you can come back and work for me. What do you say? And I said, no. I said, I now know, even though I’ve never done this before, even though I was doubtful, I now know that although this offer is incredible, that I am now an entrepreneur, I will now be my own boss. And so I got to tell my boss that I’m now a boss too. I didn’t say that. I just made that up again. The cool thing is as you continue to tell the story, you get comfortable with now being creative in the ways that you tell it, right? I told the boss that I was the boss. Who’s the boss? I’m the boss. I don’t know. That’s, see, sometimes it doesn’t come out well either, but that’s how you learn.

You figure it out. You find your style, and this is the sort of sequence that you take people through, right? Normal life. A trigger moment. Now, a new place that you’re in, that you’ve never been before. The challenge, the want, the desire, the urge to wanna get back or survive or do something. Then a tension moment that heightens that, that amplifies that.

Then a discovery, an aha moment, but we’re not winning yet. There’s self-doubt that creeps in. There’s obstacles, there’s transformation that then happens, but then an ultimate test, an ultimate call to action, if you will, that allows me to enter this new door in this new life.

When I did this workshop in the SPI community, somebody had made a really smart comment and they said, this mimics a sales page. This mimics the journey that you take an audience on. When you meet them, you share with them the things that you’ve gone through that relate to them, and you share the transformations that they can go through.

Thanks to your help, thanks to your product, thanks to your software, whatever it might be. So this sequence, yes, is the hero’s journey, but in a content creator’s sort of style, right? Pulling out that trigger, what was that moment like pulling out the tension For me again, remember the moving back in with my parents, that just like plus one, how bad things were going for me.

The self-doubt, the obstacles, you call those things out, right? In your sales pages, you should know what those obstacles are and then you rebuttal them. You, you refute them. You have counters to each of them. And the transformation, the ultimate test. And boom, you’ve got a new life now. And we’ve taken this framework and put it into the Pokemon space.

If you’ve seen any of my videos, the long form videos on Deep Pocket Monster, you will see. And if you follow along, now this is what I love about this. When you learn these frameworks, it’s like. You see a new shade of light. And the reason why I say it like that is I remember when I went to architecture school, I remember sitting in drawing class and people were drawing things.

And the teacher told us like, it’s not what you draw. It’s how you place what you draw that makes it come to life. And so he would draw the shadows of the figures that we drew, and in real time we would see these things just like pop out of the page because of the shadows underneath and the way the light bounced off of these things.

So forever from that point forward, when I look at something like I’m looking around my room right now, I’m seeing my door, but not just the door. The shadows that the door frame makes, that outline it. On one side because the light’s coming from the other side and how the light gradients across it. And so I’d be able to now recreate this in a more drawing kind of way.

It’s the same thing when you learn how to tell story. When you watch movies now, when you read books, when you see Ted Talks, when you watch a Pokemon YouTube video from Deep Pocket Monster, you will see these stories come into play. How? Well, I’ll give you an example. We had a video series called Collect Every Gengar Ever.

Gengar is a poison/ghost type Pokemon, and it’s really popular, so we decide, okay, we’re gonna find all of them. And there are like 70 to 80 of them in English. The Japanese collection challenges this year, actually 2025. The 2024 one was just English only and our first video came out and it was 34 minutes long.

And after four months, it had 4.4 million views. Two months later, we came out with the second part where we finished it off, and that was a one hour and 13 minute video, which now has 4.5 million views. They’ve accounted for over 70,000 subscribers total just from one arc, one series, one story that we’re telling.

Now on the surface, it might seem like, okay, well it’s just a dude collecting Pokemon cards. But no, it goes way deeper than that. I. And I’ll tell you why. ’cause let’s go through the framework again. In the world of Pokemon and collecting every Gengar ever, and again, we put this in this framework to make it sticky, to make it relatable, and to bring something more than just like, oh, dude’s collecting Pokemon cards.

How do we make this relatable to anybody, whether they collect Pokemon or not. So here’s the normal life in this video series, this two video series of collecting every Gengar ever. The normal life was I have a perfectly organized, complete Pokemon collection. So in the videos, if you watch them, you’ll see that there are closeups of my shelves that have my binders perfectly aligned.

I get all the same binders for all my complete collections. I have perfectly dusted frames of cards. I have my neatly organized, sealed collection. Everything is perfect, everything is filled. And that’s how we set it up in the beginning. But now there’s a trigger. I purchased a collection and there is a Gengar collection that’s incomplete.

Now I have this collection that I purchased with this awesome Gengar collection that is 20% finished and it’s just like bothering me. It’s, it’s like a thorn in my side to enhance that in the visuals. It was placed in the binder that it was purchased in, which is kind of old, dilapidated, ugly, peeling. If you open this binder, it’s like the pages are kind of like orangy because it’s like 20 years old and there are the Gengars there, but there’s so many cards missing from this collection that it just irks me.

I speak to a little bit of perfectionism in here. Something that we can all relate to. Things being complete, things being perfect, right? Then the challenge, the watch, of course, is this hole in my collection that I now need to fill. I must catch them all, and that’s the Pokemon phrase. Gotta catch them all right?

And now there’s tension. Because as I go to try to complete this collection, the cards aren’t all in perfect condition. The list that I had of all the Gengars keeps growing because I keep discovering that there’s more, and this little board that I created to organize them all neatly in a perfect grid, I, I have to add more slots, which then remove the symmetry and just make it all messy, and I have to battle internally with that. Yes, these things are in fact a part of the story, but it’s done through the actions that I take, the voiceovers that I include. I’m not like telling people during the story, okay, now I’m in the tension part.

No, we show it, we demonstrate it, and then I have a discovery. The discovery being that in order to progress, I have to get a little messy. There is literally no way for me to finish a perfect collection unless I get a little messy, and then there’s self-doubt. There’s this struggle with perfectionism, me continuing to go back to try to rearrange my binder and to rearrange this board that I’m using to organize, and it’s just taking so much time and I’m saying no to certain people just because their cards aren’t perfect, and it’s really driving me nuts because I know that I won’t be able to complete it unless I’m okay with the imperfections that happen.

And then there’s a transformation. You can see internally me, there’s a point and a moment where I start to let go of the idea of things having to be perfect, and I start to embrace the fact that, yeah, trying to be perfect was in fact holding me back from collecting all these amazing cards to help me get forward in my collection goal.

And then the ultimate test was at the end when I had all the cards, I had this perfect binder sort of sitting since the beginning that was ready to fit into a slot in my binder shelf. It was a purple binder. This Pokemon is purple. I had this binder ready for it, and at the very end when I collected all of them, spoiler alert, I decided that, you know what?

I’m not gonna put ’em perfectly into my binder. I have this messy little board that I collected them on. With stickers and other things that people included over time in messy handwriting and stuff. And you know what, I’m gonna put that in a frame instead. And I framed it. I have a frame. It’s like a 48 by 30 board that is now framed messy to in fact, celebrate the imperfection and to celebrate the imbalance and everything to celebrate how messy the journey was. But also remember all those moments that happened to get to the point of completion and how joyful that was despite it not going the way that I thought it was going to. Right? I’ve learned that it doesn’t have to be iner order for me to be fulfilled, and that is a new life for me.

And so, as you can see, we’re getting deep in this story, but then you get comments like this. I’m gonna read a few of them for you. Why am I watching this? I don’t even play Pokemon or collect like anything. LOL. This is a comment on that series. Another comment. I don’t even collect Pokemon cards, but this is so entertaining.

I watch the full one hour vid. And here’s one more I’ll read for you. This story about hunting for Gengars had me hooked from the very beginning, and I don’t even know much about Pokemon cards. I really enjoyed how each trade visit to sellers success and failures were portrayed. The searches on eBay and the marketplace added so much to the journey.

I didn’t realize how much I enjoyed challenges of completing collections until I watched these videos. I truly enjoyed them. Greetings from Argentina. So as a result, millions of people have seen this story. Many, and I would probably guess most of them don’t really care for Gengar or Pokemon even yet.

We’re glued to the screen, and this is why we have a 45 minute watch time. Why we’ve generated tens of thousands of dollars from this particular series alone in ad revenue and have collected many, many more new subscribers. It’s pretty incredible. Now to finish up here, I wanna tell you about four types of stories that you can think about, right?

I want you to really focus on your origin story. That’s what I hope that you’ll focus on. But I wanted to share some other kinds of stories with you that you can draw out and some sort of quick tips about them. Because there’s millions of stories you can tell, but as a creator and a creator trying to connect with an audience and engage with an audience, I wanna share with you four types of stories, and I’ve already told you the first one and given you, again, the frameworks are pretty much the same.

In fact, they’re exactly the same. But the way that you approach ’em and like how you tell the parts of the story differ depending on the type of story. So story number one is the origin story. That’s, you have to nail that. And if you do believe that, you don’t have a great transformational moment to tell these stories, like I would actually argue against you for that.

Because the truth is we all have stories, and it might be as simple as just a little challenge during the day while you were in traffic. That could be a story. It doesn’t have to be something traumatic or dramatic. However, you might have to go back into your past to find something that is relatable and useful for you and your purpose of showing up online.

So origin stories. Next, let’s talk about. Your obstacle stories. So an obstacle story demonstrates your resilience, right? This is the purpose of this. Your problem solving abilities while creating trust through being vulnerable, really like an obstacle that you’ve gone through. You’re sharing the insights and your emotions and your thoughts behind it, which again, connect with your audience and it shows ’em that you understand their challenges because you’ve overcome similar ones yourself.

So here’s some questions to guide you through the obstacle stories. Number one, what is the biggest challenge you’ve overcome professionally? Think about that. What’s the biggest challenge you’ve overcome professionally? When did you face a seemingly impossible situation and prevail? Again, it could be a work thing, it could be a at-home thing.

These are just all things to help you get ideas and start writing things down for stories that you can draw and go deeper with later. What mistake taught you the most valuable lesson? Oftentimes our obstacles are our own fault, which can be great to share because we can show, hey, we’re not perfect, but we’re able to figure our way out of things.

And when did you have to pivot or change direction dramatically. Again, obstacle stories, the things that are in the way and how things once were before the obstacle that is now in its place. And again, a lot of these things will overlap with each other, right? Like my obstacle of getting laid off, that that is an obstacle, but that also happens to be my origin story.

But there are obstacles that I’ve overcome and, and have faced like. My $15,000 software horror story where I tried to complete a software and it didn’t work out, that’s an obstacle and I learned a lot from that. The bigger lesson coming outta that one was when I did things just for the money and if the money was the primary motive I lost.

And that has always rung true with every project I’ve worked on. If it was just for the money alone, and that’s the primary reason for doing something, it’s always been something that hasn’t worked out. An obstacle story for me, getting on stage and being frightened to death to get on stage, but sharing that moment at FinCon in Schaumburg, Illinois in 2011, 14 years ago.

My first talk on stage and now 300 some odd stages later, I believe I’m a pretty good world class speaker. I’ve been paid mid five figures to speak and have gotten really good results and good reviews, so I will say that to be true. Next vision stories. Now vision stories are ones that inspire action by planting a seed or a picture of a better future, right?

Inviting your audience to join you on a journey of dreaming of possibility of rather than just simply like consuming your product. Like what does the future look like? And then how does your product, your story, your blog, your podcast, your videos, how does that fit into this bigger vision that you have?

So what future are you working to create? The more you can let people in on where you want to go, the more likely people who are all about that will wanna come along for the ride. What transformation do you hope to bring to your industry? How do you want things to change? It is authoritative to say, Hey, things aren’t the way they should be.

They should be like this, and this is what we’re working toward. What problem are you uniquely positioned to solve? What unique advantages do you have? Your unfair advantage that you can bring into this space, and how this relates to the vision that you are bringing people along for the ride for. And how has your vision evolved over time?

And finally, insight stories. So we had your origin story, obstacle story, vision story, and now insight story. Insight stories, transform your lessons that you’ve learned into universal wisdom that offers immediate value to your audience, right? Positioning you as a guide rather than just a success story.

So this is where you can step forward and say, Hey, this is what I’ve learned and how I now see the world. I’ve created my own version of a hero’s journey and added my own spin into it for entrepreneurs, for creators that’s sharing some insight, sharing some lessons learned, curating all the noise that’s out there.

And trust me, there’s so much noise that is of value to people to curate all the noise out there and say, Hey, this is how you can look at this. This is a framework for you. This is a structure on how you can approach this thing. So here’s some questions to help you. What’s a counterintuitive lesson you’ve learned?

And that’s a great one because it directly relates to my book coming out in June, Lean Learning. Counterintuitive because you think you need to learn more to succeed, but the truth is you need to learn less. That’s why the subtitle is How to Achieve More by Learning Less. Pretty cool, right? It immediately positions me as somebody who has something to say, right?

Not just like regurgitating what everybody else is saying, but something counterintuitive that I’ve learned over time that’s helped me get to where I’m at today. When did you have an aha moment that changed your perspective? What wisdom would you share with someone just starting out and what principle guides your decisions that others might not understand?

So a lot of you have heard me say, serve first or your earnings or byproduct of how well you serve your audience. These are all phrases and quotes that I’ve created myself. I remember sitting down and saying, here are my values, okay, I can, I can write paragraphs about my values and what I believe in, but how can I paraphrase this?

How can I turn it into something memorable? How can I say what I wanna say in just a moment instead of a few pages? I didn’t have ChatGPT back then, but you could use ChatGPT for something like that. I like to say all kinds of things like you gotta be cringe before they binge. That is a response to people who are just afraid to get up there and post their videos or post their podcast episodes.

And I, again, I. That just was something I sat down, I was like, I need something clever for me to share these values that I believe in as a creator. And that is, you gotta be messy. You gotta be, as John Lee Dumas says, A disaster before you become the master. That’s his, I don’t even know if that’s his, uh, he, he’s the one who shared it with me.

So I created my own and in my own style and something I have lived through and believe in. You gotta be cringe before they binge. Right, and so that’s a phrase, but diving into the story, I could tell of course, a story about how cringe my first pieces of content were. And if you’ve been on any of my podcast webinars, you know this because I’ve played my first episode for you.

And that is absolutely cringe. But then I’ve shared some insight as a result of that. Remember, transformation here was life before it was sucky. I was bad at this. And look at where we are now. So that’s how I transition into the new world now, which is, you know, 80 plus million downloads, several podcast episodes, world class interviewer, et cetera.

The last thing I wanna share with you is the idea of building a story bank, and that is I want you to start a collection of stories that you may or may not use, however you choose to organize that, whether it’s just your notepad on your iPhone or Android, or maybe it’s a literal notepad that you keep in your pocket.

Whatever things that happen every day can be turned into a story that you could share in any way. That rhymes. But whether it’s a 60-second Short, or Reel, or TikTok, or a two hour long podcast episode about an event that happened, or a realization that you’ve had, whether it’s an origin story, a obstacle story, a vision story, or an insight story, these are things that, they’re happening all every day. And like a dream, you have to write them down or else you’re just gonna forget them. So write these things down and whatever system you use to organize that, do it. I learned that from Ramit Setti. I’ve learned this from Encina in action, from Stu McLaren. I’ve also seen Ali Abdal do the same thing, and I do the same thing too.

So all that to say, please story, learn it, live it, get better at it, practice it. And if there’s one call to action, it’s, think about your origin story today and start to refine that. And the next time you have a chance, record yourself or record a video or go on a podcast and tell that story and do it in that framework.

And I promise you, you’re gonna make a bigger impact as a result of that. Thank you so much for listening and I appreciate you and hit that subscribe button because we got a lot more stuff coming your way to help you transform from where you’re at to that new life that I know you want, that we can help you get to.

So thank you so much. I appreciate you all the best.