Tell Your Story: 3 Steps To Sharing Your Message

I took a deep breath, smiled, and stood up in front of a room full of people. My hands were getting instantly sweaty, and I probably looked like a scared kid. It was the first time I was doing a sales presentation to the employees of a new client. I had practiced this so many times. I started to tell my story and as I got to the part about how we landed in the middle of the street, I couldn’t help but start tearing up. 

Here’s the story. My husband was picking me up from work on his motorcycle for a date night. He leaned back as we stopped at a red light and said, “Did you know the moon is 10,000 miles closer tonight?” in a cute trying to be romantic kind of way. The next thing I knew, my world went topsy turvy. Like riding one of those gyroscope rides at the fair where you’re going all different directions in the middle of a sphere. It was January 2010, it was a Friday night, and when we were hit from behind, we were launched 70 feet into the air, over the 3 cars in front of us, and landed in the intersection. The air was knocked out of us, and there was a lady suddenly beside us saying “Stay Down! Stay Down!” 

Ready for a bad joke? (inserted for my own comic relief) I tell my husband it’s a good thing he’s so full of hot air as he cushioned my fall. Here’s where I started tearing up. 

The accident caused him to have 11 fractured vertebrae, and gave him a brain contusion. I walked away with bruises and whiplash. I had to figure out very quickly how we were going to pay our bills and make ends meet because he was now incapacitated for an unknown amount of time. We went from a two income household, to one, and had additional bills coming in. 

This is where I would start my sales pitch with “How many of you would know exactly what you would do in this situation?”. Most of the time people would answer that they would be screwed financially. We were super lucky that didn’t happen to us. Just over a year and a half after our accident, I started my business. 

It took a long time for me to figure out my messaging, I didn’t have any idea how I could convey how important it was for people to have what I was selling. It’s hard to stand up in front of people to share your story, we expect judgment, and believe that there will be haters commenting and putting us down. Bonus that typically it’s something very close to us, a traumatic event, or an awakening inside of us. We struggle with putting ourselves out there and our experiences into words.  Or at least I did, maybe you have struggled or are struggling with the same thing.

My hope is that by sharing my experience with you, you’re able to take away some of the things I learned in my journey, apply them, and go become who you need to be. With that in mind, here’s the 3 steps I took, that anyone can apply, to learn how to share my story. 

Step 1: Find an environment that will allow you to process your story out loud, aka what happened, without judgment. For me, I found women specific groups who were there to learn together. Other places could be a close friend group, a coach, or even therapy. If you haven’t processed what happened, you won’t be able to share what you learned from it, and how you can help others. 

Step 2: Write it out. This gives your brain, heart, and soul time to put the words together that are difficult at first. You can adjust where you put a certain phrase, or how you’re describing things to draw people in. Descriptive words are a big part of how you help people experience what you went through, and if it resonates with them they respond to your message. 

Step 3: Practice. Practice. Practice. Internalize your story to the point where it comes back out as natural conversation. It won’t come out perfect every time, and that’s OK! The goal is that it’s authentically you. Think about it like this, actors in a movie have a script they work from right? But they’ve practiced it so much, if they are good at their job, that it comes out as if the words were their own. Pro tip, video yourself (a super uncomfortable thing for most of us to do) and watch it to see where you want to improve. 

Once you’ve done these three steps, the last thing you MUST do is start sharing your story. The world needs you. They need your story, and your passion, the reason you were put on this planet is to be the greatest YOU that you can be. You are here, in this moment of time, for a reason. Sometimes it can be difficult to understand the reason, but when you look back it will all align. So I’ll end this by saying, shine bright, so that others are encouraged to do the same.