This post is by Michael Pollock, the original owner of Small Business Branding. Yaro Starak now owns and produces the latest content for this blog.
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I remember when my daughter was younger, like 2-3 y/o. Like any child, she loved a good bedtime story. One of her favorites was (and still is) the story of her birth. I’d start at the moment when her mother was awakened at 6:00 am by a sharp pinch in her abdominal area, which signaled that her water had just broken. And I’d tell the story in colorful detail all the way up to the point where she popped into the world about 6 hours later on 12:18 p.m. EST, Aug 5, 1993. She would sit and listen intently with a huge grin on her face.
We all like a great story. Seth Godin makes that eminently clear in his latest book: All Marketers Are Liars: The Power of Telling Authentic Stories in a Low Trust World.
"Before marketing, before shopping carts and long before infomercials, people started telling themselves stories.
"We noticed things. We noticed that the sun rose every morning and we invented a story about Helios and his chariot. People got sick and we made up stories about humors and bloodletting and we sent them to the barber to get well.
"Stories make it easier to understand the world. Stories are the only way we know to spread an idea."
What do you notice about the world or your industry? Are you telling a story about that?
I notice a bunch savvy individuals running around writing blogs, doing podcasts, serving their network and making a name for themselves within that network. So I tell the story of a changing world and the the new breed of solopreneur – the savvy solopreneur – who has adapted to thrive in that new world.
Like the story of my daughter’s birth, it’s a story that I know intimately and in colorful detail. It’s a story that I can tell over and over again, and I get that twinge of excitement each time I tell it. Excitement because it’s my story and it’s a story that I believe with every fiber of my being.