3 Critical Questions to Help Entrepreneurs Create a Story that Magnetizes Your Audience

photo by emdot

Entrepreneurs often tell me that they know they need to tell the story of why they do what they do, they just don’t know where to start.

So if you’re feeling blocked around your story, here are three critical questions to answer that will help you break through and get started with your story.

1. What is the purpose for telling your story? There are many ways to use stories in your business, so think about what your business objective is. Are you speaking to an audience and want to establish trust with them? Tell them your signature story. Are you launching a new product or program? Tell them a story that shows what could be possible for them. Are you enrolling a new client into your program? Share success stories from previous clients. Are you teaching? Tell a story that helps illustrates the point you want to make.
2. What is it that you want your audience to take away, do, change once they’ve heard your story? When it comes to our business, the story we tell may actually be quite cathartic for us personally but the bigger purpose of your story is to benefit your audience.  In other words, start with your message and reverse engineer your story around that. If you happen to be selling a product or program, use a story that relates to the message that you want to share based on that program.
3. What are the challenges, key moments or the pivotal times in your life that relate to that specific message? Brainstorm, write them down, and make a list. From that list, pick the one that most clearly and most compellingly illustrates your message. Remember, a story is all about the emotion and the credibility. You want to be authentic and credible and you want to make your audience feel something.

Where are you feeling stuck with your story? Let us know and I’ll do my best to respond to each comment, or if I notice a pattern of the same them, I’ll respond to that theme.