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Ariel: Telling Your Story

moving into Part two of telling your story. Um, I call it the signature story, and it's truly the foundation of great social media. And I would argue that it's the foundation of great business, especially in today's world. It is more and more important to us who is telling us this story. Who are we learning this from? Especially now in the world of social responsibility. I think it's becoming more and more important that we look at this story. We're resonating with the story. There's so much stuff you can buy out there. Don't you want to buy the thing that resonates and connects with you? So your signature story is not a bio. Your signature story is a heart centred story that tells the truth. It reveals something personal, something private or something painful. So if you think about the best people who you resonate with and why they've done that, they've done it subtly. They've done it on a big platform. Sometimes they haven't done it in a heart gut wrenching way. Ellen DeGeneres did ...

not made. She made jokes about coming out. I just I was flipping through the TV the other night, and I heard her talking about her coming out, and she did an interpretive dance and it was hilarious. Like she just got sick of talking about it and she thought, OK, we need to address this. How would I do it? Ellen style? Here's the one that I think many, many women resonate with. And this was a quote I found, which is perfect for Oprah. This is her story. Her story is, I don't think of myself as a poor, deprived ghetto girl who made good. I think of myself as somebody who, from an early age, new spelled wrong. I was responsible for myself, and I had to make good. So everybody at women love Oprah. They love her honesty. They love her weight struggle. They love her horrible family history. They love that. She's been telling the truth the whole time, and the more she tells the truth. And the deeper she goes, the more money she makes. It's incredible, right? The more she just keeps peeling back the layers of her own personal story. Onion, the more people go, I want that I like that. That's what I resonate with. Be a big fan or not be a big fan. I picked up her magazine on the airplane on the way here, and I read it cover to cover. It's one of the few women's magazines that won't make you feel bad about yourself, ladies, right? I mean, it's really people and really, you know, this is this is a formula. Now we don't want to be billionaires. You don't have to when I also talking about niches and especially when I start using words like Thought leader later and today you not everybody has to go Oprah or go Richard Branson or go, you know, to the stratospheric levels of thought leadership I want to do thought leadership for the rest of us us. Mere mortals that just want to touch a few people you know, make a little money and speak our souls Truth. So this is really an amazing signature story captured. And what's cool about having a blawg and a social media presence in general is you can continually share things as it comes up for you, and as it feels appropriate and right, um, I've had a business for 17 years, and at the top of this year, I ran a crowdfunding campaign, and I asked everyone I'd ever met to give me a lot of money, and it was the most confronting thing I've ever done. And social media, by the way, should be used for this. You want to build the tribes so that they can support you and help you make your dreams come true, which is what happened to me. But what I found was, as I moved myself through this crowdfunding campaign, I started sharing stuff I never thought I would share. I started really getting honest with myself and my community, and I actually shared the story of when I went on the Oprah Winfrey Show and how it was the worst day of my life. And I cannot tell you how profound the effect waas. I didn't do it because I wanted to show off. I didn't do it. I just had this secret that I hadn't told the world about why I really like social media and why I really like to do this stuff. And the minute I told the secret, the whole world open their arms and it was an amazing feeling. And with that amazing feeling also came people who did not open their arms. And that's another thing that will happen. And another reason why a lot of us are a little resistant and allergic to this. There are people who will not agree with you, especially as you begin to get a higher profile online. You might be married to some of those people they might be related to you on. We'll talk about that later to later in the day. So this part of the talk is really, really very short. So if there's anyone that sort of has a, you know, come up with your signature story I mean, how I would say to identify that signature story is really Take yourself on, like, 20 questions like Why do I do what I dio? Why do I love what I dio? What I like to spend my time with? Why do you know if you think about how you move around the world? Um, maybe you're a very helpful person. Are you helpful because your mother wasn't helpful around the house? Maybe you're a very loving person. Are you very loving? Because maybe your dad wasn't there for you? I don't know these air personal questions, but I think, Ah, lot of what dictates who we are and how we show up in the world. In any businesses, we're solving a problem that wasn't solved for us. This is this is a winning formula and can be a great connection to your signature story. Yes, My So does our signature story go on our about a section of our site? Or is that something that comes up re occurring? Lee, in block posts that we do are all of the above, all of the above. So, you know, you obviously don't want a signature story that, like people will be weeping on page one. But, you know, you might, you might. It depends on really what your tone is, but I think you can allude to that. You don't have to be. You know, I think that we don't talk about failure a lot, and failure is part of building a business. I mean, I wouldn't put all your failures in your bio, but I mean, you could certainly on the about us page, I feel a little more real than the average. I mean, who wants to read a bio? That's just like I'm fabulous and then I was wonderful, you know? I mean, maybe perhaps there could be something on the side, like after I failed out of grad school. You know, I did this or after I didn't have any money to finish college. I decided to start my own business. I mean, there's there's a lot of truth that you can tell. And then as you go and as it feels right, reveal and again reveal does not mean I'm getting a divorce and I'm posting it on Facebook. I've seen this. I've seen this and we also saw around the elections, and you're now seeing it around the whole Trevan thing. People have strong, strong opinions. This is not about espousing opinions that people could be really polarized about. Unless that's your thing. This is really just telling the truth. And again I go back to over because I love the way she's told the truth. She's told the truth over and over and over and over, and it it disarms people. People like it. Barbara Walters tells the truth. You know, there's there's there's amazing people that do this, and they do it in an amazing way. So all of the above. This is the actual answer there. And, you know, you might have seen that Oprah story. I was on Oprah and, like, 2001 or something, I kept that in my back pocket for all these years. It wasn't appropriate. It didn't fit into what I was doing in business. But now that I'm moving into thought leadership and moving into really talking about the differences between old media, new media and how the world perceives media, it was the time to talk about it. So there might be something that you're sitting on. We have an amazing artist named Keefe D. On whose father suffered horrible post traumatic stress from the Vietnam War. And he just sent me a story that, like, made my whole staff cry. He's not ready to go out with that story yet, but this is definitely something that will profoundly affect what he chooses to share and why, and what tribe will come towards him. He's not ready for that right now. He's doing music way, can use our signature story to kind of help us define our niche as well and then kind of absolute. After that, two different yeah and That's why I said on the first slide, the first bullet was Look in the mirror because that is relational to your audience. And that's relational to the whole tribe that will be attracted to you. And sometimes it's small like my cat hunter C. Thompson, C for cat. I post photos of her, and I'm not doing that because I'm like a crazy cat person. I'm doing that cause actually love living with an animal, and I you know I'm into it so But, you know, that doesn't have to be the theme every single day that just comes up once in a while, and it matters to me to make a difference for animals. And so that's my cause. CC Chapman was talking earlier about causes and aligning with causes and why that's such a fabulous business strategy. It's because it shows a humanitarian side to you, and there's so many causes. I mean, Children and animals, I think, are the two neutral ones who's gonna get mad if you're trying to, you know, stop hunger or charity water. You know you don't again have to be have to be polarizing in your in your choice of charity although if you would like Teoh, there are niches available galore for going deep. Okay, we have a couple more questions that are very on topic to exactly what you are talking about. Wear a lot of people who want to know. Um, can't you? Okay, Calix is asking. Must your signature story tied to your niche? Can it be apples and oranges? A little? It can a little bit. I mean, you don't want to be wildly over here. If yes, it can remember social media and building a social media platform normally circulates around you, you or your brand or your business. And I think it's I think the more we get to know about the person that runs that or the person behind that again, Like I was saying, the more relevant it feels. So I think that it absolutely can. And I think that I think that if you search inside yourself, you'll figure out you know how it ties together. Maybe it doesn't, but I bet it does. So I'm wondering, And if anybody in here now now thinking about Oprah signature story would be willing to kind of give a give a try at sharing yours. And then we could get Orioles feedback on that. Sure. Anyone. If anyone wants looking for volunteers, And how long? How long should these be? Is this an appropriate length? No, this is just sort of, You know, I was I looked around. This is sort of a condensed version of so many. I mean, if you've watched Oprah for years, you know, like, she begins to attack different things as she moves through her career and big, more things begin to become, um, prevalent A she she moves through. This is a journey, right? I think thought leaders and people that are establishing themselves for business. It doesn't all just come all at once, right? It's It's ah, process. Social media is a process. And what you're doing is you're seeding as you go. You know, what I was talking about three years ago is different from what I'm talking about today. It evolves as you of all we grow up, we get over whatever it was we used to be talking about. So go ahead. What's yours now that I can't even feel my own breath like that, I say I would talk about, um after a year marriage. Now I'm starting my life completely over again, and it's just something that I'm sitting here and becoming more aware of. What you're saying is is someone had asked me earlier, What do I like to take pictures off? And I thought, I take a lot of pictures of a lot of different things. I've done all sorts of photography, but what I really love this turning my camera around two women and saying, Look how beautifully are because I think there's a lot of women who gave up that for such a long time. And so for me, that's where I get excited. That's where my passion is, because when I watched myself give myself away for so long, and now I want to bring that back for other women. I mean, how many people are divorced? You think a few a few too many, right? And now that we're living to 100 how many people need to start their lives over multiple times throughout their lives? Right, right. And this is something that you know the old way says we're not really supposed to do that right. You're supposed to start in the mail room and end up a CEO. Well, hello. We all have 10 different careers. And whether photography is the main artery of that career or not, it will go in different ways. Depend, I mean, think about you. Had to go digital pretty recently. It was a whole other world not long ago, right? So this is huge, I think to me, and we'll talk about why in a bit. But you know, women showing women they look at what Charles Samberg's just done like her hater. I don't care. The point is, she started a conversation again about women still getting paid 77 cents to the dollar. Women being marginalized, women choosing not to lean in but to lean out. This is a conversation that should continue Hannah Rose and having it to to happen, and you could jump right into that. There are so many female empowerment blog's I'm getting chills thinking about your strategy and what I'm gonna do for you. Amazing. So much to learn. All I said, You're right, right? I think about when Harry met Sally. They're going out getting divorced. Someone says you're gonna love terror. Me Sue, What's that? You'll find out, you know, like it's all the things that you learn. So I mean, you could do it in a funny way. You can do it in a heavy way. You can mix that up good, Good. It should be in your than it should be. Maybe it's not. Maybe it's not. Maybe for some people, it's not funny. It's torturers and you can choose your tone. But I mean, this is phenomenal. How? What percentage of your clients are women? Well, I'm just starting up, but that's where what I'm saying is what I'm finding that I love. I mean, that's where when you said people take pictures of feet or what have you? Yeah. I mean, that's when I turned my Cameron's look how beautiful you are. And I think that's a part of me that wanted to know. I waas yeah, instead of not knowing yeah, so I mean, not only is that a visual blogged, there's tweets there. There's inspirational quotes. I mean, there's a 1,000,000 things you can do just going on that theme, and that theme is a platform that can be put upon any type of business that you build right. I mean, you can have that if you go to photograph corporate executives. That can still be your theme to see what I mean. Like, that's amazing. That is a huge mission to stand on. So you nailed it. Totally nailed it. Totally amazing. Yeah, well done. I feel my heart beating. Thank you for sharing. That's great. That is awesome. How, as a photographer, she's totally gonna stand up. You're looking for a photographer, you know, you have one, and B and your story resonates with someone because actually, Professor X was asking something similar. Can you not overshare but go to personal where it's harmful for your niche? Or have you lost your job at some point? Yeah, so I mean, I think we're seeing with Millennials. This is lovely Generation, that I manage my office at home who I do love them. But there's a lot of them. Get in trouble with the over sharing. And if any of your parents of teenagers, you might be mortified. I work with a lot of women in their fifties and they have teenage kids and they, you know, Snapchat and horrible. You know I am and bullying online. There's a lot. A lot. A lot of reasons to really feel allergic to this stuff. You know, I would say before you dive in and totally overshare you might want to test the waters, But you might also want to look at statistical evidence. One in five people is molested. Six out of 10 women are raped by meeting on and on like this. There's horrible statistics that are just true there, riel. If you began to write about that or if you began to really uncover your own story, how many people are on, you know, pharmaceutical medication for depression? I mean, there's a 1,000,000 things and you will find your niche talking about it. So, um, I don't think you can get too deep, but you might want a test first and just go a little bit deep. You know, um, I find also, when you run with a pack, this is a really great thing to do. And I'll talk about that in the tactics part of this talk. When you run with the pack and they begin to have the same similarities of you and they can shine a little bit of a light on those things It feels very different when it comes from someone else. So that's another way of revealing yourself again. This is not just a me journey.