I’ve been a writer and storyteller basically my entire life. In third grade, I got my first diary (it was white with colorful hearts all over it) and it had a tiny little lock on it. I may have had more fun finding hiding spots in my room for that tiny little key than I did writing at that time, but it kicked off my life’s work of documenting everything with words.
My kid-sized diaries turned into teen-sized journals and I kept a detailed record of my life and what everyone was doing in my life. I’ve looked back at these journals but quickly have to close them because the cringe is out of this world haha. I’m happy I have them, but there’s no need to re-read them.
I continued to journal and document my life until college. I can’t remember exactly when I stopped writing my story but I want to say my social life, and the amount of papers I needed to write in college made that hobby slowly dwindle somewhere in the middle of my college years. That’s also about the time I started working on my college’s student newspaper and began telling other people’s stories.
When I became a journalist, I stopped telling my own stories privately and publicly and started telling other people’s stories. I’m good at it! I’m great at pulling out the important parts of someone’s life and crafting a great story around it. I made it my career for nearly 20 years. I was on staff at newspapers, news websites and finally landed my dream job as an editor at a travel website. I had made it! I was traveling and writing about travel. It was a sweet gig.
But after a few years, the allure of the free office lunches, the fantastic health benefits, and the extravagant holiday parties began to dwindle a little. Believe me, I loved all of those things! I’m not complaining, trust me!
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But it had started to click that I was undervalued. The free lunches were great, but I would have preferred a salary bump in recognition of my hard work. The health benefits were of course fantastic but I would have preferred the promotion I was owed two years earlier. The holiday parties were awesome (wedding like really) but I would have enjoyed a hell of a lot more creativity in what I was expected to write and create for the company. We knew what worked, and we did it on repeat. There was little creativity, and as a creative person that sucked.
The travel never stopped being amazing. That’s what kept me there. There was always another trip around the corner. And because there was always another trip around the corner, I never would have quit that job. You don’t quit a job like that, it was the epitome of golden handcuffs.
Instead, I was laid off from that job in the pandemic.
It took some time, but after that layoff I decided I would follow my dream of always wanting to own a business. I had wanted to have my own business since I was a child and my dad (who owned a contracting company) took me to work with him on take your daughter to work day. But what kind of business can a writer run? It took me some more time to answer that question for myself but once I found the coaching space and realized I could use my storytelling expertise to help other business owners – the pages of my business story began to write themselves.
Well, sorta.
See, I had forgotten how to write about myself. I had been writing other people’s stories for so many years and I had gotten so great at doing that. But I had forgotten who that little girl was with her lock and key to her diary. I had to unlock my own story again. I had to unlearn rules of journalism that you never insert yourself in a story. I had to re-insert myself into my own narrative.
It didn’t happen overnight. I started my business and yeah, I would talk about myself. But I wasn’t reallllly talking about myself.
Slowly, I started to gather my own puzzle pieces, build my foundation and fit my pieces together. I started to share about me again. I unlocked that diary and showed the real me – and THAT is when my business started to grow. That is when I began to connect with clients and make connections in the DM’s on a deeper level. That is when my story and ME came back to life.
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The price of not sharing your story is like putting a lock on your journal and throwing away the key. Your community misses out on getting to know the real you and you miss out on connections that you didn’t even know you needed in your life! Those connections and that authenticity is what allows for your business to grow and expand.
I encourage you to share a piece of your story with one person or many people today. Hop on Instagram and share something significant about your story. Or if that’s too scary, share it with someone you know but who may not know this part of your story.
Don’t lock your story up. Share it today!
If you’d like help with learning how to unlock your story and gain clarity in your business messaging and content, my 1:1 program is for you and I’d love to chat with you about it.
In my 1:1 program we squash fear, and stomp out imposter syndrome and we insert YOU back into your business narrative. I use the power of storytelling in my STORY Method to move your business forward and expand it to the next level, no matter if you’re starting at zero or 100.
Imagine if your messaging was so freaking, authentically you, that clients just appeared in your inbox!
THAT is what my 1:1 program is about! Finding you inside your business!
