Have you ever worked in the gig economy?

Taking odd jobs and working in the industry can expose you to many best (and worst) practices of how businesses are being operated. And there are many lessons to be learned.

Now, what do you do with those lessons?

Today I’m joined by Angel Pretot from French Fluency. He has used the hard-learned lessons from learning languages to teach French in a much simpler way. As a former gig economy worker, he’s been able to take that same mindset into how he manages his own business.

In this interview, we discuss:

- Why working in the gig economy enabled his success in his business

- How to beat those that are heavily financed by bootstrapping your business

- Transitioning from 1-1 coaching into a group coaching program

- Creating personalized plans to maximize success with your clients

- How monthly payments simplify your business and provide stability

It’s been a pleasure getting to know Angel and I’m thrilled to be able to explore these topics with him.

Connect with Angel here: https://www.frenchfluency.net/

Learn more at https://www.adamliette.com

Discover how to work with me: https://www.adamliette.com/work-with-me

Transcript

What's up smooth operators, man, how's it going, hope you having a good time, hope you're getting after it hope you're accomplishing the things you're after. And making a greater contribution to everything that you're doing. Just know this man, like your people need you. And I want you to know that, like you have an important role in your companies, you are a leader, people will follow you. They will follow you to the ends of the earth, if you lead them. leadership's one of those things like people talk about in vague terms. But leadership really is just about inspiring people to follow you. About it's inspiring that moment of saying that's the guy. And people like I found like people don't say that, like they don't talk that way. Like you'll never hear someone say that it's a real leader. You'll hear it occasionally. But it's not. It's not a thing you'll ever hear in your organization. Like people won't say that's the leader. Right. But people naturally follow someone. It's not always the funny thing about leadership. It's not always the person at the top. It's not always the person who's in that position. Leadership is not a position of leadership isn't, is an attitude. Leadership is a perception that everyone has a view. And I want to talk about one way that I like to use leadership. One way I really like to motivate people, is through the use of stories.

I think there's a was it Seth Godin. Seth Godin wrote this great book is called good marketers tell stories. I think that's what it's called. I don't want to go rooting through my book stack right now to find it again. Good. marketers do tell stories, what good leaders do tell stories as well. Because storytelling is part of the human experience. I mean, the first things ever written, were stories go back to Genesis one is a story. So like literally the beginning of time, if you if you're a Christian is a story. The story of creation. Holy cow, you mean stories go back all the way that far? Yes. Because storytelling is part of the human experience that existed before language and existed before the written word stories have always been a part of humanity, and they always will be. So why wouldn't you leverage that and become a better storyteller yourself. And I think in this day and age, to be completely honest with all this dang micro content, and, like 15 Second things like somebody to actually tell a good story. Like that's a skill unto itself and go to my tic tock account I did. It's like a four or five video series on some storytelling bits. From the movie Reservoir Dogs remember that very Tarantino fan? I am. There's this great scene about storytelling in that movie that dude, you got to watch that movie again. But look at watch that movie after listening to this podcast, so don't pause the podcast, stay here. But go watch Reservoir Dogs not just because it's a great movie, but because you're gonna learn a lot about storytelling and how to get really good at it.

But overall, through our stories, we're able to motivate and move people into places of momentum, we're able to get them off their ass, and get moving to where they want to go to. So if we go back to last week's episode, about like, empowering your team and I talked about casting the vision, like part of the way you cast the vision is through storytelling. Okay, that's this is a tool to do it. And if you think about it, like every major influencer, or every leader you've ever followed, whether you call them a leader and I every person that has influence, you can think about their stories. You know, and many of the influencers that we know well and we follow, like we know their stories. I know exactly how Russell Brunson got started with the potato launcher, right. Everyone knows that story who's a Click Funnels guy like we all know it. I saw Ed my lead speak not too long ago. Oh my gosh, that guy like rocked my face off. He's so good. And he told stories the whole time. He's a motivational speaker through stories. Holy crap. Like, all you do is tell stories and you're You're a motivational speaker making millions and millions of dollars shipped, maybe I need to change what I'm doing. I'm kidding, I like what I do quite a bit. So, with that in mind, let's just let's just think about the different ways you can do this within your team. Because we run into scenarios all the time on our team, where we need to motivate someone, where we need to cast that vision for the team. And one thing I always like to do, you know, we think a lot about sales conversations, and storytelling and sales. That's a good thing. Every good salesperson has that story that they're trying to sell. And they're trying to do that through their copy. I always like to do like a major product launch with a story unto itself. So I prep the team for the product launch with a story, am I not, it's not the same story, we're telling the audience because we're casting a different vision to the audience, we're trying to sell them to the product, I'm trying to sell the team to the work. And, you know, executing on that work and accomplishing major things.

And there's three different types of stories that we can use in this case. And that's really what I want to get into is the three different types of stories because they don't all have to be yours. That's the greatest part about storytelling, when you get really good at it, you can take stories from elsewhere. And that's where we're going to get into. But first, you know, that first category of stories is your personal stories, those do tend to have the most impact. Because you can tell it from a personal point of view, you can add those in in those little details. But think about the personal stories that you have from your own life, if you think for yourself to don't have any stories. Yeah, you do. Yes, you do, I guarantee you do. And if you ever doubt it, go sit with some friends around a campfire and just chat for a while and tell me that stories aren't going to come up. Tell me someone's not going to start telling a story, they might be telling a story about you. Here's what I would do. If I if I were you. And I'm like, I don't have any stories about myself. I just wait to hear the stories that other people tell about me. So that's a nice little hack. They're the stories that other people tell about you. Obviously, that made an impact on them in some way they were counted enough to tell a story. So make a mental marker that make a note of wow, this guy told this story about me. Holy cow, I'm gonna write that down. What I do, I have a little Evernote file that I just it's just like Adam stories. And literally I just add to it on a random basis. I'll think of a story and I'll put it in my stories list. This like this file is like really long at this point. There's hundreds and hundreds of stories in there. But it's just me documenting them and over time I've started to categorize them so I can like pull them up and pull them out of my back pocket when needed. But these are stories I have ingrained in me I can tell them at a moment's notice. And it's something I developed that's a whole nother subject unto itself as developing yourself as a storyteller. But start with just knowing your stories, writing them down.

Having those stories will inspire people, you know your your team members, they're going to be more likely to take action on your ideas. If they trust you, if they feel like you've been through this experience before if you have a story that is similar to that experience that's connecting with them on that different level. That's building that trust that's showing I've been here before brother I'm with you. I got it humanizes everything and ultimately allows you to then make that higher impact that you're going to be able to make because you're not talking in vague bullcrap you're talking in specific here's what happened. Here's the problem I had here's how I solved it here was the end result. We don't want vagaries people don't want vagaries. People want details, and they want the story. They don't need flowery bullcrap. So embrace it, man, embrace your stories and use your personal stories to inspire and motivate those around you. We also have people stories. So this is something you can use all the time. We're all watching videos. We're all bringing taking in stories on all the time. If you take in a story that you find to be amazing catalogue that no one can just you're not stealing it. You're not going to try to pass it off as your story. Right but can you tell a story about someone else in a moment where you need to pull out a story? Absolutely. All you got to do is say hey, you know I read this story about and you're off

Think about it, think about the number of stories you've heard. That could help you in a moment where leadership is needed, or your team needs motivation, or they need to be empathized with, right? And you can tell the story about how someone else did it. And if it's someone famous, you know, that can work. It doesn't have to be though that's thing, it doesn't have to be anyone that they've ever met. Just make sure it's real. Okay? People can smell bullcrap, don't feed it to him, make it a real story.

But they're all over the place out there. So just like with the Evernote file, you know, I keep lists of my own stories, I keep a list of other stories that are super inspiring to me. I keep them in my back pocket. And literally, if it's my phone, it's literally in my back pocket. Sorry, it's a army phrasal, well, you know, he keeps him in your back pocket means it's ready to go. But keep that on hand. And when you're getting into a situation where you need it, it's right there. And you can reference that list. The final type of story is symbol stories. So when we can use symbolism, you know that I think this is probably the the least effective of of the types of stories. But symbolism is a big part of our humanity as well, we associate what we're doing with many, many, many, many symbols, everything from religious symbols to colors to, you know, even different fonts can have aspect of symbolism to them. Buildings, you know, physical, physical, you know, geographical features. All these can be symbols that we can use to talk about, hey, we're combining the two we can talk about climbing Mount Everest, right? I haven't done it I doubt you have, but many people have. And Everest itself can be an analogy, can we use as a symbol, and also use the personal story of someone accomplishing that. So we're really doing kind of both things at the same time. Symbols can also have, you know, evolving meetings meanings over time. So be a little careful about what that symbol might mean for the particular culture that you're speaking to.

Just because they do change, I'll never forget, I was in Bali. And there's all these Hindi structures all over the place, because Hinduism is huge, and Bali, it's like 95%, Hindu, well, like one of the Hindu symbols is the swastika. And it's all over the place on the island of Bali. Well, obviously, that this is an example of symbols changing meanings, it means something very different. And then it was, you know, reappropriated by someone else. But there's this great story that I read when I was preparing for this about a politician who used the story about this bridge crossing the Hudson River and how it had been a bad shape, and everyone is going to replace it. And instead, they chose to fortify it and rebuild it and make it better. And so it's this beautiful symbol of their fortitude, and how they're able to take something old and make it new again. So that's just one example of symbols, you know, I'm sure you can find multiple other examples that you can use. But that's the third category of stories you can tell. I tend not to use many symbolism stories just because I, they tend to be the weakest. And I'm a big fan of personal stories. But you know, if that's something that inspires you, and something that motivates you, I did want to be clear and like present you all the different options. So, what do you do here? How do you get better at this? How do you evolve yourself as a storyteller? First thing is just like I said, create that list of stories. Okay, create that list and doesn't have to be long. It can be five. If you're starting with five, you're already doing better than most because you have them written down. The next step is where the game changer happens.

And that's through practicing your stories. You have to practice the delivery of your story. It has to have different cadences different emotional, that was weird. different inflections in your voice, different details. And that's where you're gonna, you're gonna learn that in Reservoir Dogs and go watch that. It's the details and the way that we talk. And we slow down speed up, get louder, gets softer. That's what brings the story really to life. Practice those stories. You're going to feel I like to call myself like one of the biggest crazy men in the world because I will walk around my office With my phone in my hand, on voice recorder, telling stories, what am I doing, I'm practicing my stories. If I if I'm going into a major meeting, and I'm going, I want to tell this story, as part of my reveal, as part of my influence technique, I'm gonna practice that story about 10 times, I'm gonna make it really, really, really good. And the way I do that is through recording it. Because I record it, I'll listen back, I'll make changes, I'll record it, I'll listen back, I'll improve it, record record record, it, recording has that added benefit of adding a little bit of pressure, a little bit of stress. So that makes it more real makes it more tangible, then you go back and listen to it. Because a lot of people get really freaked out once that record button goes on, get over that, conquer that little bit of stage fright. And then you're going to be better off when you get into the actual delivery. So think about a couple of stories that you'd like to tell as part of your team. And today, I want you to take one of those stories and perfect it. Take one of those stories and make it performance ready, make it ready to jump on a zoom call with hundreds of people and tell that story in a compelling way.

If you need any help doing that, or feel like you're just not a natural storyteller, dude, no one's a natural storyteller. This is all a skill that's developed. Okay, so stop telling yourself that bullshit. Every good storyteller practiced it, they worked at it. And so you can do it too. So forget whatever stuff you're bringing into the equation. And start telling stories. If you need motivation, find those storytellers that inspire you. Watch them tell stories, watch how they're delivering. You can mimic some of your stuff based on the way they're doing things. And that's perfectly fine. But just get started telling your own stories. Record the process, see how you like it, and improve it, because it will get better. And you'll become more and more astute at this you'll become more comfortable, you'll start to love the process and do it whenever you can. Thanks so much for joining me us like I said story is one of my favorite ways to lead a team and I think it's gonna go a long way for you as well. When you need that little extra push a motivation to get a team to cross the finish line. Until next time, this is smooth operator. I did tell you to go listen to Reservoir Dogs but before you do that, go bounce on over to iTunes, give us a review. Or join us on the Facebook group man. So just Adam liette.com join the Facebook group. Until next time, brothers I will see you later in operators lead the way.