Do you remember the first time you truly discovered entrepreneurship?

If I ask you to tell me about this moment in time, it’s likely that this will evolve into a story. One that has twists, turns, successes, and failures.

And ultimately teach something that you learned along the way.

That’s the power of storytelling and as leaders we must find ways to use story throughout our communication.

In this episode I go through a couple of tips that I’ve used to improve my own storytelling in a very natural way.

Whether you’re a natural storyteller or not, this episode will help you elevate your skills to have an even greater impact.

Links

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

Activate The Warrior Within https://www.adamliette.com/awaken-the-warrior

​

Transcript

Adam Liette
This is the smooth operator Podcast. I'm Adam Liette, director of operations for a seven figure online business and eight year veteran of Army Special Operations. On this show begin with the tactical, nitty gritty of what it really takes to run a thriving online business. Because at the end of the day, operators, lead the way. What's going on Smith operators, welcome to this episode, hope you're having a great day I am geared up to continue our conversation from earlier in the week on storytelling. So I had Karen Kurian Thermicon on the show. And we talked a lot about his book, The seven essential stories of charismatic leaders, and they got me really thinking and really examining how I live my life, how I work for as a leader, how it work in the organizations that I get the privilege of leading, and how story is such an essential part of that. And it's something I literally have just made into part of how I communicate, part of how I compel people to action part of how I tell the direction that we're going, especially in my role. And for many of you, if you're in a leadership role, what we have to do is often it's casting the vision. And it's beginning with the end in mind, you know, all these different catchphrases that we hear, but We're inspiring our followers to follow us down to certain sets of sets of action. And you can do that through multiple ways. But I found story to be one of the most essential things because it does compel action. It moves people in a certain direction. But there's much more to it than that. You telling your stories allows you connect with people I want you to imagine. Or think about the last time you got together with your friends, and you're just sitting around a campfire or a kitchen table or a bar. What were you doing, you weren't talking about the news of the day God, I hope not because it's depressing right now.

Adam Liette
But you're likely telling stories from the things that you've done before. from past experiences from, from your life together, different experiences that you had shared. Stories allow us to connect with people in that way, just like you and your friends you're connecting through story, if you find a way to incorporate story into people that you've just meeting for the first time, you're going to connect in a much different way than just talking about, you know, more top level conversational things, you know, get into your story, find out your person story that you're talking to, and I guarantee you're gonna have a much more compelling conversation, as a leader story allows us to show our human side and our vulnerabilities in a very safe way, we can use it to talk about our failures or things where areas where we've come short, in a way that shows that we've learned from those. So it allows you to show that human side in a very nice way versus always, you know, sometimes it's hard to show that side of you to people that are, you know, they're following you, or they might be under you, or they might be working for you. It's hard to do that. But instead, this allows us to show us what we've learned, allow us to show how we learn from our failures from our shortcomings and move ahead. Matter of fact, I'll be posting about that I did post about that earlier this week on my Facebook page about a lesson I learned in leadership and how not to lead when I first got into that position when I was in the military so many years ago, but go to my Facebook fate page and check that out. It'll be linked here in the show notes for your convenience.

Adam Liette
So the big thing, though, is how to get started. So if you're like me, and you're like listen to podcasts and go into immediate action steps, so here's a couple for you to consider. The first is you have to be paying attention. Okay, I want you as you're listening to this, just scroll through a feed, or take a look into some of the interactions you've had and look for story in those. I guarantee you, if you scroll through your Facebook feed for more than about 10 seconds, you're gonna come across someone telling a story in their feed, especially if you follow a lot of entrepreneurs like I do have a lot of entrepreneurial friends. Storytelling is a big part of that. And the the posts that tend to go the most viral, I have a friend who wrote a extraordinarily long Facebook post, or all organic marketing. And that post went absolutely bonkers and actually made her millions of dollars, because it was such a compelling story that got people into action. So pay attention. See those stories while people are interacting them, maybe even save them. I do keep a swipe file of ads. I also keep a swipe file of stories, because I like to see how people are constructing them, how they're using narratives, how they're using language, even punctuation and spacing into their stories to really help make it much more compelling. Okay, well that's good, but those are their stories. What about my own Okay, Do me a favor, just literally just open up a fresh Google Doc or Evernote or note or whatever you use to just write down random ideas. And I want you to start drafting various stories. It could be a story of your first day at college could be a story of an ad campaign that you ran a Black Friday promotion could be a story about a sporting event, a time where you were performing on stage. I don't know what type of stuff you're into. But there's so many different ways, or different stories we can tell. You're just allowing, you're not. You're wanting to look for the Big Bang story. And there's only usually one or two of those. Instead, focus on all of them. Like really just start from the beginning.

Adam Liette
Stories from your childhood things that you remember, again, if you're sitting around a campfire with your best friends, what are the stories that come up? What are the things that you tell and just start writing them down. Starting with a list and not stopping, keeping that list alive, adding to it when you think of news stories when your your memories jogged, and you remember, write them down. I'm not saying you're going to tell every one of those stories you're not. But the point is that you're documenting. And that gives you now a bank to pull from. Okay, we need that bank. It's a bit like copywriting. If you've ever written headlines for copywriting, I've, I've always found, like my first ones, okay, my second one's a little better. My third one, our talk and my fourth, fifth through 10th are usually pretty crap. And 15 through 20 are really hard because I'm running out of ideas. But around 3040 45 headlines, that's when I really start to get the good ones. It's from just staying in flow and staying with writing and making myself keep going not to say you have to make it hard, don't make it hard. This should be easy and fun. Then I want you to just take one of those stories, the one you liked the most and develop your story. Make it interesting. If you've ever watched the movie, Reservoir Dogs, one of my favorite movies, early Quentin Tarantino, there's a scene where Tim Roth is. He's he's being he's undercover. He's trying to infiltrate this gang this plan in this robbery. thing is he needs a story. Like and they're talking about, like, you're gonna be at a bar, you're gonna be with these guys, you gotta be able to tell a really good story. And so he's developing this story. And you you see how he's adding details, adding color to the story. Our stories can be like really simple and start with that for sure. But it's all the color and the details that make it worth it and make it something truly compelling.

Adam Liette
So if I'm telling a story about for example, you know how we reacted to all the lockdowns in 2020, I can talk about feeling the anxiety and that pit in the bottom my stomach as I walked into my office, turn on my computer, and I felt even my computer was telling me, what are you doing? This isn't time. Everything is chaos, what what's going on, and I felt the stillness in the room almost like as a crypt. And then my computer came on. And I opened up a document and I had the blinking cursor. And the hardest word to write was the first one. And once I did, things start to flow, and I got on a zoom call. And we just we started to go back and forth give different ideas. And over the next 48 hours, you see how like all these things. It's, it's developing it that makes a difference. What you were drinking, what you're eating, what you smelled, what was going on in the room, how it felt, how you felt how you reacted. All these things are what make it interesting. Go back and watch Reservoir Dogs if you need to. If you really need an excuse to watch Reservoir Dogs, I don't It's a great movie. So go ahead and watch that again and see how he develops that story over several iterations. And the last thing is to practice your story. Okay. Most times you're going to be in delivery mode when you get these like I was mentioning the Facebook stories that you're looking for. Yes, that's a very defined art of writing a story that way, but most of the times we're telling our stories in using verbal communication, which isn't the easiest thing for most people to do. It definitely takes practice. Part of the reason I actually have this podcast is because it makes me practice my verbal communication. So hidden bonus skill. Thanks for having me. Broadcast. But I want you to practice your own story. Take

Adam Liette
those details that you wrote down. And literally just open up your phone, pull up the recording app and tell the story, then listen back to it. And tell the story again. And listen to it again, what you're going to find is you get better delivery, you get better at the performance, because this is a performance, especially if you're telling stories, for the purpose of inspiring people leading people moving people into action. That story has to be shit hot. Like you have to have pauses in the right way, you have to raise your vocal inflection. See how I'm like raising my vocal inflection get a little more excited right now, all of these things matter. Even that slight slowdown that I did right there, that was very much with intention. Now I can do this. Very instinctively, I didn't practice this episode, before I recorded I just hit record. Because I practice this enough times where I can do this on the fly, I can really feel how the story is moving field, I want the narrative to go know how I want the audience to be reacting to it. Because I know you're a podcast listener, I'm a podcast listener, I know how we tend to react, and how we tend to receive information in this way. But that doesn't come without practice. So go ahead and do that. Just like a sports, an athlete, or a musician or an actor. It all lies in the practice and how we're doing these things. And I think at the end of the day, you're going to find that you do have very interesting stories in your life, you have things that have made you uniquely you that have helped create the person that is on the other side of that Zoom screen or on the other side of that table. That your fault your followers, your team, the person you're trying to sell to whatever it is that you're doing in your day to day, you have ways to connect with them.

Adam Liette
You have ways to inspire them, motivate them, move them into action. And story is one of the most compelling ways to do it. I hope this inspires you as well to find those stories, to move into action, and to make this part of your routine, because I tell you, you won't regret it it becomes super fun. And just a wonderful way to connect in a world where we are just absolutely consumed by 10 Second 15 Second, sound bites and reels. There's nothing like a short story to move people in action. I hope this helped hope you enjoyed this episode and you are now just gearing up to tell your own story. I would love to hear your story. So please connect with me. You can find me on facebook link in the comments. Here. You can also email me directly Adam at Adam liette.com. I would love to get to know you and your story so that I can help you bring your message to the masses. Thank you so much for joining me until next time operators lead the way.

Adam Liette
Hey operators, I believe that within each and every one of us lies a warrior in waiting this warrior is able to conquer any obstacle that comes their way to discover how to awaken your warrior spirit and conquer what's holding you back. Go to Adam liette.com and join awaken the Warrior Within