The Signature Story Map™

Share the content of your life experiences and defining moments that have helped you overcome the problems you now solve for your clients.

The Signature Story Map™ Training Will Help You Do 3 Things:

1. Attract Hot Leads to get the now buyers to stop their scroll and listen intently to what you have to say.

2. Show potential buyers exactly why you are their best choice when choosing a coach and trainer.

3. Craft relevant stories for your marketing that proves you can solve their biggest problems so they are compelled to buy.

Download your workbook here:
https://www.peoplebuildersinstitute.com.au/signature-story-map

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FULL TRANSCRIPT

In today's training, we will talk about the Signature Story Map™. This is all about you being able to share your content of your own life experiences and those defining moments in your life that helped you overcome the problems you now help your clients solve. 

You say one of the challenges is that as a coach, we've been taught that it's not about us; it's all about the client. I find that belief to be not very helpful because what it does is it stops you from taking from those experiences of your overcoming and helping your clients.

Now, obviously, we're doing this in a way that will ensure that they still see the relevance for them - because it’s all about them. But there's so much you have in your life experiences that you can tell stories about to help your clients overcome.

So, let's have a look at some of the problems. This is part of the work we do in the Growth Accelerator, particularly around the area of content.

When coaches share their stories, there are three things you've got to consider: 

1. Stories must Engage.

2. Your stories need to Entice. There are so many other things people could listen to in this busy world.

3. The whole purpose of sharing your story is to Enlist them. We're talking about this in the context of your marketing and using your stories so that people are relating to you and, therefore, want to work with you.

But the big frustrations and challenges that I see are that a lot of coaches when they share stories, they're pointless. It's just, speaking on a story, it's a dialogue, but it doesn't engage the listener.

When you learn to do this well (I will show you how to do that in this training), your stories go from being pointless to being relevant.

If you haven't got the worksheet, you can download a copy here: https://www.peoplebuildersinstitute.com.au/signature-story-map

 

When you talk about enticing people to listen, one of the challenges that I see here is that stories are all about facts. So it's actually just telling people about the story, and that is not what entices people. That is not what gets them to lean in. We've got to be able to engage with their feelings so that it's an emotive experience that they go through.

When you come to enlisting listeners (potential clients using our stories), many coaches just inform. So the whole purpose of the story is just to inform them of what happened, what the outcome was, how that can help them etc.

To create from your story a compelling copy and an experience that people go, “Hey, I want to know more about that. And I want you to help me go through similar problems," is you need to go from informing to inspiring. By doing this, what you’re going to do is you’re going to get people who will take the next step. So, they'll go beyond just listening to a story. They'll actually see themselves in the story, and they'll know the core premise of the story, and they'll go, “you know what, that relates to me.”

This week, I put a very vulnerable story in the group thread to get people ready for this live. The story was about my childhood - what I found out then when I was 15 and my experience around that. The amount of interaction that I've had and people sending me private messages is amazing.

 I just had a message from someone I went to school with back in those days, who was really touched by the story. She said to me, “I couldn't have told that you had those issues going on internally.” And the story was really impacting her and many other people.

So, what I want to do right now is give you three key ideas that you need to understand when you are preparing your story when you're getting your story, and turning it into something palatable and usable.

 1. You need to keep it relevant.

It needs to be relevant. It needs to be something where they can go, “Yeah. I see the point of that.” 

If it's a story about sharpening an ax, if it's a story about honing your skills, if that's what you're leading people to do, then people will be able to draw that visual picture. 

So, your story needs to become a metaphor of the point that you're trying to make as a part of your enticing them to want to come and work with you. So it needs to be relevant. Because if it's not relevant to them, they would just scroll on. They won't listen. They have no idea what it means to them, and it becomes just noise.

2. Is the story going to draw them in? 

It is like watching a great movie where that hook at the start or the first scene really draws you in. And the more you get into the story and see yourself as a part of that story, the more you just need to keep your eyes on it.

So, that's what your signature stories need to be. You need to engage people, draw them into the story, and keep them there so that they don't just scroll on and listen to the next story.

3. Help them to connect the dots.

So, this is the story. This is what it relates to. This is the core premise. This is the big idea behind it. Then, you help them join the dots to their own story

through that story.

Your story is not about you (even though it is); Your story is about them. A great storyteller allows the person that they're telling the story to come on into the story. So the story content might be different. But what a great storyteller does is helps the listener to put the content into their own story, to conclude the story that they're hearing about you and their own life. 

Over the last couple of days, I've been getting many people commenting and sending me messages about that - how their story (their content) was different, but the overall was the same.

To do that, I've given you a signature story map, a template that you can go through to sort your story from just being a story to put it into how it needs to be so that people can engage with it so that it enlists them.

By the way, if you haven't got the worksheet, you can download a copy here: https://www.peoplebuildersinstitute.com.au/signature-story-map

 

Let's have a look at the three components of the story.

So, you may have heard of the hero's journey.

What I have done here is I have taken three components of that which are:

The Call.

The Struggle.

The Victory.

The Call is when you were first called to do what you're doing now. It was that defining moment. 

The Struggle is all about the Struggle you went through since making that decision and going through what you were going through.

And the Victory is coming out the other side with the wins and the lessons you now have that you can help others with.

So for me, I work with coaches who build their coaching practice. Therefore, I can talk about when I felt led to get into coaching. I can talk about the struggles that I've overcome and the challenges that I went through ( and by the way, there were plenty) And I can talk about the victories, and what I've learned out of that Struggle.

I can use that story or other stories (depending on the context) to draw them in. And for them to conclude that this person is like me, they've gone through a similar journey, and they've actually come out to where I want to be. And that's what it is that you want to do. You want to help them understand that it's okay to be going through what they're going through because they can come out the other side, just like you.

In fact, they've then drawn a conclusion that you've got the answers for what they need to do next, and they get in your program.

In your workbook, you go through the Signature Story Map where it’s mapped out there for you. You will go through an outline and narrative and bring it into some context. Then get into the actual solutions to the problems that come out of the story and come up with a script (not so that you can read a script, but this will help you have an outline of what your story is about) so that it will entice people to want to take that next step with you.

So, there you have it. if you haven't got the workbook, you can download a copy here: https://www.peoplebuildersinstitute.com.au/signature-story-map

 

If you want to learn more about how to take this Story Map and craft your signature stories so that you can use it in compelling marketing copy - when you are speaking, when you are working with people, running webinars, whatever it is that you're doing - then all you need to do is just connect and drop me a message, and say, “Hey, I'd like to know more about how I can do that.” And I'll tell you more about our Growth Accelerator and how we work with coaches to go deeper into things like this and to allow them to grow their practice so that they can have more influence, grow their income, and make the impact that they wanted to make as a coach.

So, go ahead and just let me know if you need some help, and let me know if you need the workbook. I look forward to seeing you again in next week's training. Bye for now.

Share the content of your life experiences and defining moments that have helped you overcome the problems you now solve for your clients.

The Signature Story Map™ Training Will Help You Do 3 Things:

1. Attract Hot Leads to get the now buyers to stop their scroll and listen intently to what you have to say.

2. Show potential buyers exactly why you are their best choice when choosing a coach and trainer.

3. Craft relevant stories for your marketing that proves you can solve their biggest problems so they are compelled to buy.

Download your workbook here:
https://www.peoplebuildersinstitute.com.au/signature-story-map