The Perfect Story 📖

Hello Reader,

👉 Quick Note: I'm doing another YouTube Live next week—come hang out if you're free, it'll be loads of fun, I promise!

After my newsletter last week about the story of my hair (I hope you enjoyed it), someone replied and asked me how do I always have a story for everything?

I wish I could answer that I'm just an inherently gifted storyteller with a Rolodex of perfect stories in my brain. But that would be a lie—and truthfulness is something I always promise.

So how do I always have a story for every occasion?

**drumroll**

I write them down.

I teach this inside Summer of SEO (the waitlist is open, folks!), but here's the lightweight version of what I do to always have a story at hand, whether we're talking general marketing, this newsletter, my blog posts, or even client work.

First of all, I've trained myself to listen. I know, I know, I go on and on about how listening is one of the best skills you can learn if you want to be comfortable and confident with your marketing. Even this newsletter is an example: someone asked me a question, and based on my experience, I quickly realized this would be something of interest to other folks.

Seriously, cultivate really listening to what people do or do not tell you—it's an invaluable tool in your "being a human" toolkit. (And it really makes all this heavy feeling marketing stuff lighter too.)

So, when it comes to little stories, anecdotes, newsy things, or even statistics, when I notice that something resonates, I make a note. Literally a note. On paper—with a pen. This is part of how I remember things, has been since I was a kid, so I just go with it.

Then, when I have a moment, I take that little handwritten note (I have three different notebooks going at a time—it's my process, okay?) and enter it into a database I keep in Notion. I recently up-leveled my Notion database (it's the one I give my SOSers, by the way) so instead of fiddling with a spreadsheet, I fill out a quick form which magically populates the system.

My form has a few fields, including the details of the story, why it's relevant, and some other details including if it connects to some marketing I have planned. (Most of the time it doesn't, I'm just filing things away for future reference because I know it's probably worthwhile.)

This maybe takes five minutes. It's not a heavy lift to keep this kind of information organized and accessible to you, when you need it. If you have a team, this is even better. You can mix in curated research as well as these fun stories so they're always working with "you-approved" info in your marketing. (Don't be too hands-off, though—if you're the leader of the business, leading marketing is part of your job!)

Even though it doesn't take much work at all, I think the question remains why I take the time at all, given how busy modern life is. Honestly, it's simple: I want people to be able to understand—overwhelm is many people's constant state, and I get that. So, I look for easier ways to convey a message.

Oftentimes, a non-business or non-industry story actually conveys the message better. As much as we joke about them, the old fashioned business fables like the massive pumpkin story from The Pumpkin Plan (I actually quite like that book, for the record, and I am a BookShop affiliate) actually make complicated concepts less intimidating and easier to digest.

That's why having a story bank can be so useful. If you do something hard—and you probably do because you're a subject matter expert and your audience is not an expert in your subject—making things easier to digest is always a wise move.

Talk soon,

Sarah