[Transcript starts at 1:31]
Hello, hello, hello, my podcast people and thank you for joining me for yet another episode of my favorite podcast. Today we are talking about moving beyond personal narratives, success without all the backstory. If you're listening to this or watching it on the day that it drops it is Monday, March 4th, February was in a hurry.
It's gone. Welcome to March. So this episode is inspired by the Raise the Bar event that I was just at. Overall, it was great. They do a great job every year. I have really big love for the people that put it on. Uh, Nick and Derek. Derek is just, he's the sweetest. Derek and Angie, I just, I love them. So, great event overall.
Um, and my talk was really well received. I will say that. The, the title of the presentation I gave was “Dialed In: Turning Up What Matters Most for Scaling your Impact.” Uh, like I said, it was really well received and I think that there's something there as it relates to creating a new offer. I was kind of going back and forth with Rachel about this, I've spoken to, I want to say I've spoken to you all, but I've, I've spoken to you all and, you know, via podcast, um, about how I'm kind of toying with the idea of making something new and I want to make something new.
I'm not quite sure yet what it is, but, I think there's something there, just, it really resonated, and the reason I said it really resonated was one, people told me, but also the, the business inquiries that came afterwards. This is probably the most that I've received, um, and I'm really excited about them.
I was like, oh yeah, I would like to help you do these things and, you know, figure out your message and deepen your impact, scale your impact, grow your impact. Um, I really enjoy doing that side of things, of, of teasing out, what is the message? Who are you going after? What does this actually mean? What do you stand for?
So, I think there's something there, we'll see. You know what it is. I definitely am ready for something new and to help people in a little bit of a different way, or perhaps remove the vehicle and help people in a specific way that I've been doing, but like specifically articulate that and market it, but we'll see.
So quick updates before we hop into the episode. Uh, I unpacked or Lex, Lex actually unpacked the plant, that fake plant. We got it. It does look a little bit fake, but whatever. It's less headache than having a real plant. Um, so now I get to find a planter, which why didn't anyone tell me they're eleventy billion dollars?
Like what? What? I saw one for 800 and I was like, excuse me? No, but it's not even alive. Like what? So I'll keep you posted with that. I do enjoy this process, but I was just definitely a little like taken back by like the price of that. So yeah, the treadmill is still great. I'm standing on it right now. I'm obviously not walking on it, but I'm standing on it.
I am looking into getting like a treadmill chair. You know how it goes. Like you get something, you get something else for it, something else for it. We saw the, the, all of the markets that were created when CrossFit came about. Right. Uh, but. I think I need like a chair. I have, I'm looking over to the side right now.
I have my regular desk chair, but I don't want to fucking move the treadmill. I specifically got a treadmill that's light so that I can move it, but I'm also just like, I don't want to move. Uh, and I'm on this thing all the time. I stand. And so I'm thinking I want to get like a smaller one. I was just doing some research before recording this.
So we'll see. I'll keep you posted on all of that. All right, quick announcement. And then we'll jump in. Quick announcement is doors for round 15 of my Instagram intensive open next Monday, March 11th. If you don't know now, you know. The Instagram Intensive is my six week online group coaching program that teaches health and fitness professionals exactly, and I mean exactly, how to use Instagram for online business. I actually just got a DM today from one of my folks that's in my LextroMind,. Uh, and she's like, I have 10, 000 followers. And I'm like, yo, that's fucking amazing. The things that I'm teaching her, that's exactly what I teach in the Instagram Intensive.
Obviously the LextroMind, that's a more comprehensive program. And we're teaching people how to launch. Uh, helping the in person brick, brick and mortar business owners move into the online space, uh, Lex and myself. But I'm, this is the stuff that I teach as it relates to the online component, the social media component, the top of funnel component, and that shit works.
I don't guarantee success for everybody, or I should say, I don't guarantee virality for anybody. But if you want to learn exactly how to use Instagram for online business, this is the best course on the market. I will fucking say it. The investment it's 597. You get over 12 hours of direct coaching with me because it's six calls.
Each of them is about two hours, sometimes more. I stay on to the last until the last question is answered. And I break down literally everything. How to actually use Instagram, like the technical portion. And then we zoom out and it's how to use this for business. And then what to do to future proof yourself, or I guess we should say Instagram proof yourself so that if Instagram does die, your business is still okay.
So if you're looking for the instruction, the accountability, the community to help you start actually doing the thing, we'd love to have you, right? All the details will be on the sales page and we will start. March 19th.
All right, so we'll hop on into today's episode, which is breaking down. Well, it's not breaking down.
Wow. I'm getting excited. It's beyond personal narratives: success without the backstory. So like I said, in the beginning of this episode, this episode is inspired by the Raise the Bar Conference I was just at and the talks that were given. Now the Raise the Bar Conference is a fitness conference. And yeah.
Something that we see a lot in the fitness space is I did this thing and now I want to help other people do it, too. Nothing wrong with that. I am, you know, in that category somewhat as well. Um, we see it less in the, in the physical therapy space because you're kind of treating everybody, right? Where you're, it's, often times maybe you got into it because you're like, I had an injury, I got better, and now I want to help people.
But, maybe not. Maybe it's, you didn't have a neuro injury, but you are really passionate about it. Or, you know, you have this ortho injury and now you're helping all different kinds of ortho cases. Right. But we see it a lot in the fitness space where it's, you know, I had this transformation. I want to help other people achieve that same transformation.
Nothing wrong with that. But the point of this episode is to state two things. Number one. If you're giving a presentation, you're at a conference, someone gifted you a microphone and a stage, your story should be a very small part of that presentation. Unless the talk is literally about your story, right?
I'm going to encourage you to build rapport by providing value in the form of digestible and actionable information. All right. The pushback here, you know, if we play devil's advocate is that folks may say, well, people don't like to be told what to do. Yes and, the pushback I'm going to give you is that people are at that conference literally to have people tell them what to do.
They paid for it. They're like, tell me what to do. Help me. So tell them. It's literally what they're there for. One slide, one, is all that you need so that you can provide some context and directly state why they should listen to you. They're already bought in, right, because you're on this stage, so they're already like, okay, this person has something to offer.
And they trust the people who put on this conference. Ideally, the people who put on the conference know you and like you, so they've introduced you and they've kind of hyped it up. You don't need to spend fucking 30 hours talking about yourself. That shit drives me crazy, right? I will say, Kelsey Heenan, Luka, Luka Hocevar, they did a phenomenal job with this where, like, they're incredibly successful and, like, their personal backstory was like, the smallest part of it, if anything, of it.
Like, you don't need to spend that much fucking time on it. You don't. This conference is very generous with their time. They give you an hour to speak. Most conferences that you're at, you'll typically have less time than that. If you're fucking 15 minutes, 20 minutes into your talk, and you're still talking about yourself, you fucked up.
I said what I said. Okay? So that's point number one.
Point number two, which is probably the more important part, the first part was a little bit ranty, but the second point of this episode, that's probably the more important part. You do not need to be your niche, right? Your avatar does not need to be a past version of yourself.
Big shout out here to my girl, Kendra. We had a big discussion about this in the DMs. Um, she gave me some words and she gave me some inspiration for this, for this point. So you're the best. I'm going to start out with the most obvious example that proves the point that you do not need to be your niche in order to succeed, nor does your avatar need to be a past version of yourself: all of the fucking men out there that are specializing in women's hormones! And all of the women who eat it up. You can't see me if you're listening, but know that my hands are in the air and I have a face on. Big shout out to Ali Gilbert for flipping the script on this and specializing in men's hormones as a female.
There's nothing wrong with doing this inherently. Again, I'm just using this as a point that you don't have to be your own avatar. You don't have to be your niche. Your avatar doesn't need to be a former version of yourself, right? I really want to drive home this second point that you don't have to be your niche.
Nor does your avatar need to be a former, you know, version of yourself, because the opposite is something that's taught a bunch in the online space, which is fine. And it is true, right? Oftentimes it is much easier if your avatar is a past version of you, right? For me, that would be like working with soccer players who have torn their ACL.
It would be easy. I understand. I've been there. This works great for some folks and terrible for others. I speak to health and fitness pros, right? That's my audience. I get a lot of yogis in my space, not just physical therapists. I would love to speak to more people with completely different backgrounds than me, who can listen around the edges and realize that what I'm sharing is for them.
I love when I receive emails from people on my email list and they tell me that they're not my target audience, but they love reading my stuff. And I'm like, spoiler, you totally are because this is what I want. The stuff that I'm talking about is applicable to everybody, but I do, you know, tend to market directly to physical therapists, or I don't even fuck with therapists, market directly to people in the health and fitness profession because there's inherently that like underlying trust there.
But I will say if we flip the script on this, and this has been my approach for so long, if you can learn from people who aren't like you, you'll learn faster. You'll learn more. You'll learn better things. We tend to just be like, oh, I gotta see myself in that person, which I will say I haven't always had the privilege of doing which maybe is why I'm so, you know, keen or apt to do it.
Right? If you listening to this or watching this look like, I'm not even saying the global majority because it's not the global majority. If you look like a lot of people that are in the space with you, then maybe yeah, you're waiting to see someone else who looks like you do it, or you're like more apt to listen to somebody else that looks like you.
But I will promise you, if you can listen to other people that don't look like you, that don't have the same background as you, you will learn more and you will learn faster. I promise you. I promise you. I promise you. I promise you.
So I will say that, and this is why I've done it, it is easier from a traditional marketing approach to if your target audience is a former version of you.
And the reason it's easier is that you can identify their pain points, their problems that they want solved before you actually work with them because you had those problems. But this is not a prerequisite for success. This is not a prerequisite for being in the online space or starting a business, especially in the online space, right?
You can put out content that you're interested in, that you have expertise in, attract a small audience, work with one person at a time, truly listen to them, and then share the pain points that they share with you and share the solutions that you've worked through with them and then attract more people like them, right?
You can lean on your expertise instead of your personal experience to grow your business.
Okay, I'm, I'm really excited about this episode. I'm really happy about this episode. Just because it's something that's been in my head for a bit. And this narrative is pushed. I was talking to Mike. I mean, he's a speaking, he's a speaking coach.
And I was like, I was DMing with him while I was at the conference because he shared a thread about this. Or shared a story or something like that about this. Like, that basically people have been taught by like, Inc. com. that they need to share their story. All the time. And I'm like, but you don't, but you don't. I really don't.
And I don't do it intentionally. It kind of do, but I kind of don't. It's just that that's not what I'm here to, uh, build a relationship around. I'm here to build a relationship around the fact that like, I know what I'm talking about, and I can help you, and I get started. So I do have an episode, it's old, I think it's from 2020, about my backstory.
Uh, Courtney, if you could link that, thank you. I have a, a post, a post, wow, an episode about it, but it is not a big part of how I market, because to me it doesn't matter. I, I get the utility of it, but the flip side is that it feels narrowing to me, and restricting to me, and also it feels, I don't want to say it feels untrue, but that whole, I did it, you can do it too, is bullshit.
Just because I did it doesn't mean you could do it. Just because you did it doesn't mean I can do it. It means it's possible. So we can lean on that for sure. But it feels like, I feel like it's a slippery slope of, you know, that kind of N of one. Like there's a time and a place for N equals one and like leaning on that, especially when the N of one is the other person that you're working with and being like, yeah, your case is unique and here's how we're going to go about helping you. But when you're the N of one, and then everything's built around that, that becomes a little tough, unless you are explicitly stating your entire background, your privileges, your leg up that you had, all of the things so that people can be like, okay, I can completely compare to you and say like, yes, you did it and we are the same, and so I could do it too. Right.
So I think that there's something to be said about it. And I have been thinking about this for quite some time and after this weekend, I was just like, Oh, I gotta say something about this because one, I take presenting very seriously. I love it. I feel that it is truly an honor.
And if someone invites me to speak on their stage, you bet your ass that I'm going to take it so seriously. And my whole goal is to provide so much value to the audience. I personally do not think that there's a lot of value in me just telling my story. I get it. Value is determined by the consumer. But I'm not here to just tell a story.
I'm here to provide information so that other people have tactical things, things that they can actually implement, things they can actually digest in order to move forward. I'm not here to just provide entertainment. I shouldn't say just, I'm not here to only provide entertainment. And to me, simply telling a backstory or some, you know, personal story is more of an entertainment side of things, which is fine, all right?
And again, I get it. People can, they determine the value and they could say like, wow, that backstory, like, really inspired me. But it's been my experience that most people who just kind of listen to those, like, Tony Robbins kind of things, they don't, like, actually do anything. They don't change anything. I want people to take action, and so, you know, there's two parts, two people involved in this relating, and so while, yes, the recipient, the person in the audience gets to determine the value, I'm part of this as well, and I get to decide how I want to show up and what I want to share, and I am always going to lean on sharing things that are directly applicable and that can be implemented. I will infuse story. I will infuse just, you know, my natural whatever, how I am and looking to get my, the activator in me. But to me, if you are 15 minutes into A presentation, and you're still talking about yourself and your story and how you got here, unless that presentation is literally called, This is my life story, you fucked up. And I think there's a, you know, better things you could be presenting to help the audience, right?
So, gonna wrap it up here, just summarizing those two points that I really want to put out into the ether. Number one, when you're given a presentation, Your personal story should be a very small part of it.
One slide is all that you need. Number two, perhaps more importantly, and more applicable to a lot of people here, are here, the people that are, you folks watching and listening, you do not need to be your niche. Your avatar does not need to be a past version of yourself, right? You can lean on your expertise instead of your personal experience to grow your business, right?
Don't forget doors for round 15 of my Instagram intensive open next Monday, March 11th, mark your little calendars so you can do the thing. All right, I'm going to wrap it up there as always endlessly, endlessly appreciative for every single one of you until next time, friends, Maestro out.
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