BOOK MARKETING: How to Tell Powerful Stories to Attract High-Value Clients Interview with Lisa Bloom Welcome to Book Marketing Mentors, the weekly podcast where you learn proven strategies, tools, ideas and tips from the masters. Every week I introduce you to a marketing master who will share their expertise to help you market and sell more books. Today, my special guest is a storytelling expert. Lisa Bloom works with entrepreneurs and business owners to help them find confidence, attract ideal clients and find their success story. She also trains coaches to use storytelling as a powerful approach to generate transformations for their clients and grow their business. She grew up in a traditional home in Ireland, surrounded by beautiful countryside, amazing stories of pixies and leprechauns. And she grew up listening and telling stories. After many years traveling the world, she realized she had a passion for adult learning, and combined with her years of experience in learning and development, coaching and performance storytelling through her company Story Coach, she now empowers people and business worldwide through her keynote and workshop presentations. Her book, Cinderella and the Coach: The Power of Storytelling Success was published in December 2011. A new friend and colleague all the way from Israel, Lisa welcome to the show and thank you for being this week's guest expert and mentor. Thank you so much, it's great to be here. So Lisa, storytelling. Let's talk about the importance of it and why we need to use stories in our business. Well, everybody tells stories all the time and story is what makes things interesting. And it's amazing, if you hear somebody speak and they're giving you lots of information, we tend to kind of blank out. We tend to kind of just let it float by us. But the minute someone tells a good story, that's when we remember, that's when we start paying attention. And the story meets us in a different place. Not only do we pay attention, we actually retain the information much better. So, I discovered storytelling Page 1
as that thing I've been doing my whole life and hadn't quite noticed actually, strangely enough. But what I noticed initially in learning and development, is I was in a classroom of people doing training courses. I started telling stories and noticing that people just paid very different types of attention. It was a very different type of engagement, and that they were retaining the information better and they were enjoying the training sessions more. And so, I began to realize that the story is what made the difference. And when I went out on my own, I noticed that the people who were telling great stories were the ones who were getting the business, because firstly it makes you stand out and it makes you memorable, but also, it creates this very powerful connection, this very powerful sense of trust when you can tell a story, an authentic story and people can connect with that. So, it's absolutely critical to business, and it's literally like that. The leaders who tell stories, people follow them and love to follow them. The businesses that tell stories get more business and have more loyal clients. It's literally as simple as that. So, what recommendations would you have for our listeners who perhaps might find it hard to tell those stories? Where would they begin? Well, story is really only ever in a single moment. And what I mean by that is story happens in these interactions, in these small moments where something changes and something happens. And I often hear people talk about they complain, "Oh, I don't have any stories," or, "I haven't had a near death experience, so what would I tell about? I haven't had these very extreme situations that you hear about people telling." So, if I haven't had an experience like that, why would my story be interesting? But the reality is that when we experience something that's unusual in out lives, our most basic human instinct is to go tell someone. So, something happens, you go tell your partner, you tell your friend, you tell your colleagues, you tell your clients. And that's how we communicate. It's how we communicate in the most powerful way. So, if you're trying to get across a point, if you're writing a book, if you're making a speech, if you're talking about what you do, if you can tell a story, that's where people connect and where they listen, because they can relate to it for themselves. Page 2
So, it doesn't have to be in this great extreme and this moment of great drams. It can be in the single moment of shift, in the single moment of recognition that something has changed. A simple conversation or an observation. And the clue is that you feel something. You're not quite the same after this thing has happened as you were before. That's where there's a story worthy moment, and it's literally in the moment. And rather than try and understand firstly what it means, just notice what actually happened and tell the story literally of what happened. And once you've told that story, you'll begin to understand why it created a shift and what it meant for you. So, an example could be as simple as you have an interaction with somebody in a store, and that interaction either makes you or it makes you very frustrated. And again, our most basic human instinct is to go tell someone. And notice that you tell them, "Well, I did this and he said that, and then I did this and he says that," and it's literally the moment by moment that's interesting. And then at the end of it all, you begin to realize, "Oh, this is why I'm frustrated," or, "This is why I'm joyful." And then that becomes the lesson of the story. So, it's actually a very simple thing that we're doing every day. And if you think as you're listening to this, any of you listeners, if you're thinking, "Oh, I don't have any stories," notice the last time you shared an experience with someone, you were actually telling a story. What I'm talking about is just simply doing it with a little bit more intention and crafting. That's interesting because I remember saying those words, "I don't have any stories." And I was like, and the person responded in exactly the same way, "Of course you do. You've done all these things. You've traveled around the world. You've got lots of stories." And I suddenly thought about and I was like, "Of course I do." But I just didn't know how to tell them. So, is there a way that we should look at how we should tell these stories? One of the best ways personally, to access the moment of story is to notice how you felt. So, if I were to say to you, "Do you remember the first time you felt very strongly about a person?" Like you had a very strong sense of friendship, for example, it'll probably take you to a single moment. Or if I ask you, "Can you remember a hat that you loved?" You might find one. Or an item of clothing that you really loved and you didn't want to get rid of, but it was getting old and you had to? Page 3
So it's like, again, the more specific you get, the more easy it is to access these moments of story. And once you have access, the mistake that often people make is that they tell about the story rather than tell the story itself. So, what I mean by that is, is simply tell what happened and add in lots of details. It's the difference between saying, "So, there's this story about a kid who discovered that he really liked being outdoors and he enjoyed getting away and it would cause a lot of trouble for him." So, what I just told is not terribly interesting. But the opposite of that is to say something like, "It was a Tuesday morning. It was 9:30, and John was supposed to have been in school. But in fact, as he went towards the school he saw this little lane that led towards the forest. He followed the path and found himself in this huge forest with tall, tall oak trees. And as he moved through the oak trees, his sense of peace fell upon him like he hadn't remembered, ever. He was only 12, but he knew there was something about this place that would always call him." I mean, I just made that up, but you can see that they're two very different ways of telling a very same story. And one of them is story and makes you feel something. It makes you imagine the trees, it makes you see the forest and feel what it's like to get outside and to escape from a place. And the other is just this very drab kind of dialogue about a child. And so the difference is that you actually have to put in time, place, observations, imagery, what you see, what you feel, and then you begin to actually tell a story. That's what I call the crafting of the story. So, that was a lovely little story. How would I take that story and use it in a business context? But that particular story I kind of just made up as an example of the difference between a story and what isn't. But you take a personal experience, and then you realize what the lesson is, and that might be how you can transfer it into business. So, I'll give you an example: One of my sons, at the time was about nine years old. And I grew up, as you mentioned, I grew up in Ireland and I think I learned to ride a bicycle when I was about four. But I spend most of my childhood years just cycling around and bicycle meant freedom and it meant getting away and just getting out and I loved it. So, here I have this nine-year-old son, and he is the kind of kid who is not a very physical kid. He doesn't have great balance. And I kept saying, "Come on, let's, I want to teach you how to ride a bicycle." And he kept saying, "Oh no, I don't want to. I don't want to." Page 4
And I'd kind of drag him out, I'd get him on the bike, I'd hold the back, I'd hold the front, and I'd say, "Okay, we're going to do this." And inevitably he'd fall over, start crying, and "I don't want to do this!" And he'd go back into the house. And this went on for a long time. And eventually I was like, "Okay, I'm just going to leave it. This is crazy. I'm just going to let go." And six months go by, a year go by, and I've just let go of this whole thing. And one day I come home and the kid says to me, "Look, I've decided I want to go on the bike. I want to try the bike again." So, I was like, "Great, yeah let's do it." So, I'm rolling up my sleeves, getting ready to take him out and get him on the bike. And we go outside, I say to him, "Okay, let's go." He says, "No Mum, I want to go onto the road." Now, we live in a very quiet neighborhood, so he says, "There's space here. I want to go on the road." And I said, "Sure." So, we go outside, we get on the road. I said to him, "Okay. Here we go. You get on. I'll hold the bike. You hold the front." He's like, "No Mum, it's okay." And he literally gets on the bike and cycles away. And as I see him cycle away, I was just amazed by this what seemed to be an absolute miracle. But what I realized in that instant was he was just ready. He was ready. And what it told me, and this is where the business contacts come in is, this is so much about the way I do things. At that time, I was like, I had this tendency to, I would get an idea in my head, and I would push at it and push at it and keep trying and keep trying. And there was no sense of just allowing things to happen at the right time if I was going to forcefully make it happen. And it was catching me out in business, and it was such a lesson for me seeing my son cycle off in the distance I realized there are certain things you just have to wait for the right time. And that's okay. An trust that it will happen when it's ready to happen. And when I went back into the house as he wobbled off into the distance, I mean, it still was the first time and he was a bit wobbly, but as I saw him cycle off and I returned back into the house, I thought to myself, this is such a great lesson for me in trusting that I can put things in place and then allow them to happen in time. So, that obviously is something that can be transferred, because I think many people experience that. I know that one of the things that you teach is to help people build a powerful business story. How would you go about doing that? Page 5
Well, assuming that the business you're in is a business that you actually care about and that it means something to you, there is a reason that you're in that business, and there's a connection that you have that's quite personal. And so, the first thing I would do is help people to really think about what's the reason that I'm doing this? Why am I doing this? Why do I care about this? And what was the moment that can illustrate from true experience how much this matters to me? And so, and I can give you an example, I've spent a lot of time in the coaching world working with coaches and so on, and I began to notice over the years that coaches are very special people because they usually have a real passion for something. And I also noticed that coaches can barely scrape a living. And they're not very good at talking about what they do. They're so kind of enamored and so excited about the coaching itself that they tend to talk about the process and not really talk about what coaching can achieve for you. And so, they're not terribly good marketers. And I was at a conference some years ago and I just heard coach after coach after coach say to me, and I would say to them, "What do you do?" They'd say, "Oh, I'm a coach," and they'd tell me the same as everybody else told me, and I knew that's why they're not getting business. And I also know that if I could help them tell a really powerful story, they could get clients and they could create a good business and they could go out and do this great work in the world. And that was so important to me that it became one of my goals is to work with coaches and with entrepreneurs who are equally passionate about what they do, to help them articulate what they do in way that's as good as what they actually do itself. What I mean is, it's not enough to be good at what you do, you have to be able to talk about it in a way that is inspiring to others and is compelling to potential clients so that you can get the business in. Because you can be great at what you do. If you don't have any clients, it makes no difference. And it's the same, I think, with writing books and articulating through that forum. You can have all the best information in the world. If you can't illustrate your information with compelling story, people are not going to finish your book. They're not going to get through it. And so, story is so important as a way to just, to get that engagement and to get that connection and to get people really feeling something as they read your information. Page 6
So, one of the things that I always had a hard time with was revealing something personal about myself in a professional capacity. What would you say would be the remedy for that? Well, I do think that not everything has to be shared. And so, some people say, "Oh, you have to tell everything." I don't think you have to tell everything. I think every story needs to be told to yourself and the people that it matters to. But not every story has to be told to the world. And at the same time, I think that there are, there's an amazing power to opening up and sharing something, but only if it's relevant to your audience. And that, by the way, is one of the cardinal rule for storytelling in general, which is that storytelling is not about serving yourself as the storyteller. The story is never about you, the teller. The story is about the audience and it's there to serve the audience. So if you've had an experience, no matter how personal it is, if it's something that can really serve the audience that you care about serving, then I really think that's it almost like an obligation to share that so that you can help them, but only if you're ready to. So, I share a lot through my blogging and through my speaking. I share a lot of personal things. Sometimes I get email from my sister saying, "Oh my God, you're so out there. I can't believe you shared that." Or she'll say, "Oh, I'm crying in the memory of something to do with our childhood," or whatever. But I only share what I'm ready to share, and if it's something that's too personal it feels too vulnerable, I'm not going to share it. Because it's not appropriate, it's not appropriate for me or for my audience. If I can find moments in my experience that I'm ready to share because I truly believe that that would help mu audience understand and transform whatever difficulty they're in, then I really feel that that's something I can do that's very, very helpful. And the moment when you can't share something personal is often the moment where you're not fully empowered by that personal experience. And I truly believe that if you, no matter how difficult and challenging that experience was, if you can't tell it it's probably because you're still interpreting it in a way that has shame or pain that you haven't resolved. And so, part of my work as a story [inaudible 00:16:01] is to help people learn to tell the story so that their experience empowers them no matter how challenging it was in that moment. How about mistakes, Lisa? You've been in this business a long time. You've heard a lot of stories. You've worked with a lot of coaches, Page 7
business people. What are some of the mistakes that you see people make when it comes to telling stories. Oh, there's so many. So one mistake is actually related to what I just said, which is telling a story that they're not ready to tell, so it's too vulnerable and it makes them and the audience uncomfortable, and at the end it actually doesn't serve anybody. Another thing is telling a story to serve you ego because you think it's a great story, but not because it actually has any purpose or intentionality around serving the audience. Another mistake is believing that we all only have one story. And it's very popular in kind of the entrepreneurial world to say, "Oh, you've got to find your story," as if you only have one. We all have many, many stories. And so, I think it's about finding the right story at the right time to illustrate the right point to the right audience. And that requires some thinking and some work and perhaps having a kind of a cache of stories, a group of stories that you can use that are going to really illustrate and help you to connect. Your story is super, super powerful, but at the end of the day, it's not what it's about. What it's about is using story to help you influence or to help you impact other people. And so, finding the right story is always dependent on the situation and the audience. It can't ever be just one simple story. It has to be a group of experiences, apart from which we're creating stories every single day. I mean, literally every day we're having experiences that can be transformed and crafted into powerful stories. So, why would you tell the same story all the time again and again? And I hear entrepreneurs do this. They get up on stages, year in, year out, and tell the same story from 20 years ago, and this experience that they had as if this one experience defines everything. And I don't think that's the case. I think we have many stories. It's about identifying which ones are appropriate and powerful to tell and then crafting them in such a way that they really do connect and meet with the audience. Because there's nothing, nothing better to build your credibility and to create connection and trust with an audience than telling a powerful, authentic story. Now, as a speaker and listening to many speakers speak, many of my speaker colleagues have what they call a signature story, one like you said, that they tell over and over again. What are your thoughts on that? I think it's limiting. I don't think we need one story. I do think that we have certain stories that are outstanding, that are great to use. But I Page 8
think, as I said before, story is happening every moment of our lives. Why limit yourself to one story? There is a sense of a core story, meaning what you stand for, who you are. But that's not articulated in one story. It's articulated in many, many stories. And I do actually help people discover their core story, which is essentially the themes of what I call the story of you. It's looking at these moments of story in your life and seeing the patterns that show you how you show up. When I ask people, "What's your story," oftentimes they'll give me this kind of blow by blow chronological list of all the things that have happened to them from when they were a child to now. And not only is that story itself not terribly interesting, but what is interesting for absolutely everybody is that in the moments where life happens to you, it's how you react. It's how you respond. So, we are not defined by the things that happen to us, most of which we can't control and we have no say about. What we are defined by is the way we show up in the world when these things happen. And that's what ultimately interesting. So, what I love to encourage people to do is to look at these moments where things have happened to you, good and bad, and notice how you're showing up. Because that's the story of you. That's the fact that you might be incredibly innovative or courageous. Or it's the fact that you happen to have a strength that you almost didn't see in yourself. All these things that show up again and again, no matter how much diversity you face. No matter how much challenge, or difficulty. Or no matter how much joy is in your life. The same reaction, the same response happens again and again and again from when we're children right up to our adult life. That's the core story. And then you can take any moment that's interesting that caused this shift that I spoke about earlier, where you're not quite the same after as you were before. And you can illustrate who you are through this moment as it connects to your audience. So, I would say to the speakers who are telling the same story again and again and again, it's great that you feel comfortable with one story, but build up a repertoire. You're going to want to do that if you're going to take speaking seriously, you need to be able to use lots of stories. Because story isn't just about the moment that people start listening to get that engagement. It's about how you interact going forward all the time. I find that I've ended up just speaking in story. I'm constantly telling stories. But it means that people are interested in what I have to say, and that can be the difference from having a successful business or not having one at all. Page 9
Now, do you have a particular technique as to how you capture those stories? Do you write them down? How do you keep track of them? Well, one of the ways that I've written down stories over the last ten years in fact, is by blogging. So, I had a wonderful coach about ten years ago who said to me, "Lisa, if you want to build a community, you've got to send out emails." Not just once a month as I was doing, but once every week. My immediate reaction was, "Oh my goodness, my life isn't that interesting. I don't have a story to write every week." But she said, "I'm sure you'll manage. And I trust you." And I went ahead, and I've literally been writing stories pretty much every week ever since. So, on way of noticing life and noticing the stories in my life is to write them down and to blog them, but also to simply tell them. Of course, I have a filing system and I keep stories, and because I come from a traditional storytelling background, I love to use fairytales and folktales and all kinds of stories that I pick up along the way. And I store them in all kinds of different ways in my computer and in my office and in books, these tons and tons of books in my bookshelves. But the personal stories, I like to, I write them down. And right now, what I do with them mostly is blog them. So, that helps us find ideas for blogging. People always want to know, "What should I write about?" You're telling us exactly. Yeah, and notice the moments in your life when you experience an emotional shift. There's a story in there somewhere. Just spend some time reflecting on it and write about it. That's where the stories live. And Lisa, if our listeners want to get a hold of you, find out more about your storytelling services, you story coaching services, how can they do that? So, my website is story-coach.com. And aside from the website, pretty much social media everywhere, you put in story coach and you'll find me. But the best place to start is story-coach.com. There's an e-book there called Using Stories to Get Clients. They can download that. And reach out to me either through the website, through social media and I'll be happy to continue to conversation. That's lovely. And if you were to leave our listeners with a golden nugget, what would that be, Lisa? Page 10
Well, my first reaction is, oh my goodness, there's so many. Where do I start? And I actually want to do two if that's okay. So, the first one is what I said earlier which is that story is only ever in a single moment. So, notice the moment, and you'll find the story there. But one other thing which I want to say which is that if you're experiencing any conflict, any difficulty, if you're not managing to write, if you're not finding a story, if you're having any kind of conflict in your life. If you sit and reflect for a moment, you'll notice that you're telling yourself a story about that situation. And it's a story that clearly doesn't serve you because it's keeping you stuck. And what I want to say to you is that no matter what the situation is, I can pretty much guarantee you that if it's creating conflict and pain and difficulty, the chances are that that story is not true. It never is. And so if you can take a look at the story that you're telling yourself and manage to let it go, you'll probably find that the conflict resolves pretty quickly. That's so powerful. I'm like, "Oh my goodness." There are going through my mind are resilient things about all the different stories and how I react to them. So, I'm going to take that to heart. And I'm sure our listeners will too. So, thank you so much, Lisa, for sharing your wisdom. And thank you all for taking time our of your precious day to listen this interview, and I sincerely hope that it sparks some ideas you can use to sell more books. Here's wishing you much book marketing success. Page 11