The Power of Telling Stories

Episode 952: The Power of Telling Stories, with Lindsay Hotmire

The power of telling stories is that it can change lives. Learn how to take advantage of the power of telling stories.

Master message coach and copy expert Lindsay Hotmire loves to work with coaches and leaders who know there’s nothing formulaic about authenticity. To date, Lindsay has helped 200+ clients (and counting) ditch one-size-fits-all frameworks and formulas so they can simply and genuinely align their message with their beliefs, their values, and (ever-so-importantly) their audience. She believes that the power of telling stories can change lives and create in-depth connections, which is why this will be the topic of focus in this podcast episode.

Once upon a time (before Google changed the world), Lindsay was a high school English teacher. And while she still gets a bit nerdy over sentence diagrams, she adamantly refuses to take sides on the Oxford comma. These days, she unapologetically geeks out over introducing a little bit of woo to a whole lot of science, and she’s used her intuition, creativity, and slightly dusty math skills to help her clients create $10,000 to $1M campaigns all without losing sight of their true, authentic selves.

What you will learn from this episode about the power of telling stories:

• How Lindsay began as a high school teacher before working on a variety of projects, and how she got into her current work helping entrepreneurs tell their stories in new ways
• Why Lindsay believes that the power of telling stories can change lives, and why stories can create authentic human connections
• What a “validating circle of inquiry” is, and how it relates to a concept called the “phenomenological nod”, and why this is the goal of storytelling in marketing
• Why assumption bias, leading with what we think we know, is a real problem in modern-day marketing
• Linsday shares examples of costly assumption bias marketing mistakes from major brands Pontiac and Walmart
• Why many entrepreneurs and business owners are being forced to pivot because they didn’t put in the time to do the values work pre-pandemic
• Where Lindsay recommends you begin doing the important value work, and how a tool called the Authenticity Inventory can help determine what work you need to do
• Why your behavior must align with your beliefs, and why too often we think we’re aligned when we really aren’t
• How the global pandemic has changed people’s needs and has altered the world of business coaching as a result
• How a staggering 86% of consumers are looking to brands to fill the gaps that the government doesn’t fill
• How real diamonds and fake diamonds differ, and how that applies to your company’s right messaging
• How you will take advantage of the power of telling stories and apply it for your next campaign

Resources:

• Download Free Authenticity Guide at https://lindsayhotmire.com/
• Website: https://lindsayhotmire.com/
• LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/lindsayhotmire/
• Instagram: @lindsayhotmire
• Harness the power of telling stories by downloading these free resources

Additional Resources:

• Sell With Authority by Drew McLellan and Stephen Woessner: https://amzn.to/39y7x13
• Predictive ROI Free Resource Library: https://predictiveroi.com/resources/
• Stephen Woessner’s LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/stephenwoessner/
• Listen to this related podcast about the power of telling stories from our guest, Nic Natarella

 

 

The Power of Telling Stories: Full Episode Transcript

 

Get ready to find your recipe for success by harnessing the power of telling stories from America’s top business owners here at Onward Nation with your host, Stephen Woessner.

 

Good morning. I’m Stephen Woessner, CEO of Predictive ROI and your host for Onward Nation, where I interview today’s top business owners so we can learn their recipe for success, how they built and how they scaled their business. In fact, my team at Predictive ROI, well, we recently rebuilt, and you’ve probably heard me talking about this over the last several weeks and months about how we’re constantly rebuilding our free resources library on PredictiveROI.com.

 

So you can now download free, practical and tactical guides for how to build your own authority sales machine. Everything you need in how to create your ideal client avatar, how to creative value ladder, how to build out a sales funnel. How to make sure your content strategy aligns with the ten truths to what makes someone an authority within their niche. Just go to PredictiveROI.com/Resources and as always, everything you request, we will send it right to your inbox. 

 

Before we welcome today’s very special guest, Lindsay Hotmire, let me share some additional context around why I was super, super excited when Lindsay and I started going back and forth about having this conversation. So just some context here first. Lindsay is without a doubt, and you’re going to hear that during this conversation.

 

She is a master, a master at messaging. She’s a great coach. She’s exceptional. Well, it sounds silly to say you are an exceptional copy expert. She is, without a doubt, a copy expert. She loves working with business owners in order to really get at that level of authenticity, not the formulaic stuff. There’s so many recipes that are out there, and you’ll hear that in her voice that she is absolutely, without a doubt, all about authenticity.

 

Why is that key? Well, right now, obviously we’re working through. There is no normal anymore. The status quo is gone. There is so much that has changed. And so getting advice from somebody like Lindsay is phenomenal. Sure. We’re going to go back to the basics about talking about avatars and really understanding voices and why that’s so important to be genuine and authentic.

 

It was important then, is it critical now? And so I wanted Lindsay to be able to come on and join us as a guest on Onward Nation, because I knew that she was in the trenches and working with hundreds of business owners just like you to help them generate sometimes multimillion dollar campaigns. That type of insight and wisdom was going to be critical as you are building out your content strategy for what will hopefully then be the new normal.

 

So that’s why this conversation is so critically important. So without further ado, welcome to Onward Nation, Lindsay. 

 

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The Power of Telling Stories: Lindsay Hotmire’s Introduction

 

Thanks so much, Stephen. I think that, listening to you, I think you just need to have you introduce me to myself every morning.

 

Oh, my gosh. I’ll be like, yes. You know, it’s like that SNL skit, that old one with Chris Farley was like. No, it wasn’t Chris Farley. It was, oh, I can’t remember. He became a senator. You know who I’m talking about? Or like Chris Farley, he’s like, not in. My gosh, I know exactly who you’re talking about.

 

That’s the introduction you made every morning. Well. And you are exactly it. You are exactly awesome. and so thanks for saying yes, but so before we dive into, the, the litany of things that I want to be asking you and getting your advice on, before we do that, actually take us behind the curtain, Lindsay, and tell us more about you, your path, your journey.

 

That would be great context for Onward Nation. Sure, sure. I’ve been doing this on my own as a business since 2016, but my professional journey really started way back in 1999. I started out as a high school English teacher. And you know, as I look back on the 20 plus years of my just professional life. It’s been an interesting journey.

 

It’s always fun to look back because that’s how you get to see that these pieces of life that felt so almost incongruent and haphazard all somehow connect. And so I taught for a few years and then quit when we had baby number two. I’m a mom of four children and they’re all getting old. I’m getting really close to empty nest syndrome.

 

I’m not sure how I feel about that, but our oldest is 19 and then we, our youngest is 13. And, so when I had baby number two, I just took some time off just to really focus on being home with the kids. And I did all sorts of other things. During that time, though, I founded a nonprofit.

 

I worked for university, I worked in a law office, and I became a lead organizer, a community project that was in response to really a form of activism in my community. And it’s a long story, and I don’t need to delve into that. But I became this, this unlikely activist and it was really during that time that probably would have been 2006, that I realized just my passion for not only story, but the power of story to be able to change lives and it was like, that was the moment for me.

 

Like what you need to be doing with your life legacy is helping other people tell their story. That’s going to be your avenue to creating that change in the world that you want. And so then fast forward to 2014. I was a marketing director for a small university and really just knew I wanted to do the type of work that I was really passionate about.

 

I needed to do this on my own. And so since 2016, I’ve been helping brands and entrepreneurs, specifically female creatives, CEOs, entrepreneurs tell their story. But being the perpetual contrarian that I am, I kind of dove into that kind of with this question of why is everybody telling their story the same way, and why is everybody following the exact same formulas and created this method that I call the, brand method?

 

That is really a way that I help my clients kind of delve into their own story in a way that is authentic to them and their audience. And so that’s really my passion. That’s my focus is helping people navigate through the hard mess of messaging and kind of finding your identity and that messaging in a way that doesn’t feel so formulaic and same, same as what is out there.

 

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The Power of Telling Stories: Stories Can Change Lives

 

This is going to be such a fantastic conversation Onward Nation because I’m so excited for Lindsay to be able to share her insights in wisdom, around the power of telling stories around this sea of sameness that we’re seeing, because there could be no more critical time than now for you to be Onward Nation, for you to be stepping into your authenticity and speaking genuinely and ultimately using the power of story and a unique and different story.

 

A story that is uniquely yours for you to step into. The shoes that you rightfully own, to be helpful to your clients and prospects. This is the time. And so that’s why you’re having this conversation with somebody like Lindsay, who has this depth of expertise that is going to be so very helpful. So, Lindsay, let’s start with the power of telling stories.

 

So when you said the power of story to change lives like what. That’s pretty emphatic. I mean, that’s a strong statement. I don’t disagree with the statement, but I would really love to get your perspective on why you feel so strongly about the power of telling stories. I think a few things. I think that when you’re really talking about a true story, in that story, that’s been manufactured or, you know, given the marketing treatment, when you’re really delving into somebody’s true story, that just becomes something that is unique and powerful because it creates authentic human connection.

 

And so part of my work with my method, the UN brand method, it really is all structured around something, a philosophy or a philosophical tool called phenomenology. And the whole point of phenomenology is to dig into kind of the true essence of the phenomenon, on or off somebody’s story, or what is it that really makes this authentic human connection happen?

 

And, it’s just kind of clearing away all of the clutter in the biases and the assumptions and just delving down and really listening and then trying to create something that phenomenologists call the validating circle of inquiry, which is really can somebody else read your story and nod their head? It’s called the Phenomenological nod. Can somebody nod their head and say, yeah, I can see that as a possible experience.

 

And that is really the goal of any marketing, of any story, of any message is to get our broader audience to be able to listen in to our own story and say, I get that, I get that. So much because I can either connect or relate to it. I’ve been there or it just feels real and authentic.

 

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The Power of Telling Stories: How The Story Affects Your Readers

 

And I can see that being a genuine story. Does that answer the question? Well, it does, but then as you are seeing that and I’m tracking in my notes here, you laugh. If you see the scribbles that I’m doing all over the place. So there’s arrows and underlines and parentheses. But as you were talking about phenomenology, which is a really cool term, I’ve never heard that term before.

 

That’s read it so well on the first right. I almost spelled it out phonetically on my notes. I won’t mess it up but as you’re describing that and that when somebody is reading the story, not only does it resonate with them, but they’re nodding to it. All of that, and I can see that person in my head.

 

I’m thinking, okay, if somebody gets that right, then there’s things that are coming through the sincerity, the genuineness, the authenticity of the story. It’s not about them. It’s actually about the reader in the outcome that they’re trying to create, the experience they’re trying to create for the reader because they want to break through that, see the sameness, and they want to be helpful in doing that.

 

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The Power of Telling Stories: Put The Needs and Truths First

 

Right? Right. Yeah. You know, it’s interesting the parallel because for the phenomenologist, for that researcher, it’s not about them, it’s the researcher. And so the whole the biggest point of phenomenology is you’ve got to set aside your assumptions and your biases that you’ve kind of set aside what you think you know, so that you can really get to the truth of the story.

 

Because if you don’t set that aside, if you don’t acknowledge it, then that’s going to taint and drive everything you do. And for me, I see so much assumption bias, leading with what we think we know happening in marketing and messaging. And I think that’s why the power of the story is diluted. That’s why things look so similar, because too many of us are leading with assumption and bias first, as opposed to setting those aside just and truly just listening and putting the needs of the story and the truth of the story first.

 

Okay, so break those down assumptions and biases. I actually just put it together with my notes assumption bias. So tell us a little bit more about that. And really the trap and like like so to really if you’re able to even like pull an example and it maybe has to be confidential, but so that Onward Nation business owners can really start to detect it because my guess is what you’re doing here, which is great, is you’re really challenging communication norms here.

 

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The Power of Telling Stories: Breaking Down Assumptions and Biases

 

And I want Onward Nation business owners to not be like to think, oh, now I get it. That’s what she’s talking about with assumption bias. So take this piece a little bit deeper here. So an example just from a pure marketing research perspective, this isn’t even a personal example. These are just two examples.

 

So in 2005 the Pontiac Aztek wanted to create, you know, they wanted this car to be this great car. And so they did what most marketers do, which is let’s bring a focus group together. But once they gathered the data from that focus group, they twisted the data. They editorialized the data so that it would fit within the framework, the hypothesis that they wanted it to.

 

And so they took all of that data and made it fit within their square box that they had already created. Went ahead with it. And the Aztec was a failure. I don’t think GM even broke even with the ABS tech. Walmart did the same type of thing in 2009. They came out. This is more of an example of leading your audience to reply with the answer you’re expecting.

 

They ask their audience, hey, do you want Walmart to be less cluttered? Well, number one, Walmart is on my list of stores that I’m not allowed to go into anymore. Because last time I think I totally embarrassed my husband when I had a meltdown and in the aisle, like, it just turned me into a terrible person.

 

So who’s not going to say yes? Please make the aisles less cluttered. Hey, so everybody did, everybody replied with that, and Walmart listened and they lost almost $2 billion because that wasn’t really at the heart of what people were wanting. They didn’t dig deep enough to really figure it wasn’t necessarily cluttering. It was other things that people were really looking for.

 

And so when we lead with those types of things, leading questions or we twist data to fit within our boxes, which happens all the time. Well, it might look good for a little while and it might work. It might drive us forward, but eventually it’s going to catch up with us. Okay. Phenomenal. In fact, just yesterday, our research partner, her name is Susan Baier.

 

Brilliant. She runs a company called Audience Audit, and we just recently did. And shared the results of a study, around the ROI of thought leadership. And, and so when we decided to partner on that study, you know, this is going to be really, really valuable research, and indeed it is. But I’m also coming at it from the business owner mentality.

 

So when it came time for the survey method, panel of participants and all of that and the actual question design, I stepped out of it, right? And I’m like, I can go. I, for a myriad of reasons, leave that to Susan and her team because she’s a professional and an expert in that area. And I knew that if I were to do that, whether consciously or unconsciously, I would inject my own bias.

 

Exactly. And so that goes back to the whole aspect of phenomenology, that there’s several camps, but the camp of phenomenology that I like myself with says exactly what you just did. You can’t necessarily eliminate your bias. It’s going to be there, but you can at least recognize that it’s there and then take the appropriate steps to mitigate it.

 

And that’s what you did. Yeah. And I love to tinker with things. And as you know, I love to be a practitioner and I want to be involved in it. But at the end of the day, I’m at now, in retrospect, after talking with Susan about the results and now hearing from you, I’m like, wow. Like, I’m really glad that I stepped out of it.

 

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The Power of Telling Stories: Do The Value-Driven Work

 

Okay, so let’s go back to some of the things that we were talking about in the green room before we, you know, started recording and we were talking about some of the communication fundamentals, like content strategy. Fundamentals about knowing your audience and avatar and really getting your voice down and so forth. These are my words on whether or not Lindsay’s.

 

It’ll sound much better coming from Lindsay. So give us some of the fundamentals, because the fundamentals are more important today than they ever have been. Would you agree? Absolutely. And I think that we’re seeing that as you know, the word pivot is probably the one of the most used words in our sphere today. Would you say, you know, how many times have you heard that, you know, pivoting on the pivot?

 

Yes. And it’s not that it’s not an important word or an important thing to think about, but I think that there are some companies, some entrepreneurs who are faced with pivoting because they didn’t take the time to do some of that deep, value driven work from the get go. And so now when the floor falls out from underneath you, you have nothing to stand on.

 

And so I think it’s important when you’re standing in the midst of a crisis and everything has stopped. Now is as good a time as any and the best time, you know, the best time is it’s before you even start. But it’s been handed to you now. There is the gift in this crisis and that you have the time to look back and say, who am I to be in with?

 

Who really are we serving? And I know who we want to serve, but who really are we serving? And what is the impact that we need to be making? Those questions become critical in those answers. Become critical pieces of your foundation as a brand. You know, Jim Collins talks about this as the whole idea of values that your values never change as a company, that your values don’t change, your strategies, your practices, those shifts. 

 

But your values are our fixed point. They go with you no matter where you go. And a lot of people don’t start at that point. This is so great. because my my guess is combination business owners are some of them maybe thinking, well, I’m really behind the eight ball because I didn’t start that process, but I think it’s what the, it’s often quoted the Chinese proverb of the best time to plant a shade tree was 20 years ago.

 

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The Power of Telling Stories: Starting a Business Requires Hard Work

 

The second best time is today, right? And so I think what you’re astutely pointing us back to is okay. No matter if you did this work, maybe it’s time to reevaluate it. or if you didn’t do the work and you’re in crisis, now is the second best time in your business’s history to do that work.

 

But would you say that this is just my sense and in either validate contradict this because you’re in the trenches working with clients on this is the reason to not do it? Is it because the work is hard, that it’s deep, that maybe it challenges their assumptions and that makes them feel uncomfortable? Why not do this work?

 

I think it’s all of those things that you mentioned. It is hard work. I think that when you tune in, you know, if I’m going to if I’m starting a business and I’m going to Google how to start a business or how to build a brand, I’m going to find a lot of downloadable resources that give me a lot of step-by-step formulas to follow.

 

There’s a lot of, you know, promises out there. There’s a lot of experts out there that are making a lot of money selling you their way of doing things, saying, if you just follow my way, you’re going to become, you know, a successful entrepreneur and so that has become the starting line for many entrepreneurs is to start with those formulas and to lead by following somebody else’s process.

 

There is room and there is a place for those formulas, and there is a place for somebody else’s process. But those formulas and those processes do not belong at the starting line of somebody’s brand. And it’s hard. It’s so much easier to follow somebody else than it is to look to do that work. Be honest, be vulnerable with somebody else.

 

And to admit that maybe I don’t have it figured out. I have a client who is really uneasy about me talking to her potential clients. Because what if she says, Lindsay? What if they say bad things? And I just know myself well enough that I’m not going to be able to move past that? and I said, I get that.

 

And, you know, talk to her about there’s a couple of ways that we can handle that. Number one, it’s not like I’m digging for dirt when I talk to your clients. two, this could be my information that then I distill into feelings and nuggets of information and pass on to you. You don’t have to expose yourself to the transcripts.

 

If you know yourself well enough that you can’t handle it. But that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t gather the information. You know, you took yourself out of the picture with the research because you knew where you would go if your hands were in it. and so just because we are uncomfortable with a certain step doesn’t mean that we should avoid it completely.

 

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The Power of Telling Stories: The Starting Line

 

Maybe we need to think about how we can approach that step in a different way. This is super helpful. So let’s take this piece even deeper, because I want Onward Nation to get a super crystal clear view of what path that you’re taking us down here about the starting line. Right. It’s that value driven work is the deepness of being vulnerable and so forth.

 

So describe the starting line again. So that Onward Nation really knows where they need to start. Yeah. You know there’s a couple there. There’s a couple ways that I approach this with my clients. But I think for the sake of today’s conversation, one of the most simple tools and approaches that I think helps to just kind of encapsulate, this is where you need to start and really look at have I have I even done this because sometimes you think you’ve done the work but you really haven’t.

 

It’s something called the authenticity inventory. And it’s by two researchers, Carnis and Goldman, who in 2006 developed this because really, when we’re talking about authenticity, research on authenticity, like flat out, you know, flat out authenticity really didn’t start until about 2000. You can go back to Aristotle and, you know, all these philosophers and they’re talking about these principles and ideas.

 

But really delving in didn’t start until the 2000s and Curtis and Goldman developed this authenticity inventory and said, you know, authenticity really boils down to these four things: awareness, unbiased processing behavior, and relationships. And I think that if you would take these four things and I’ll talk about them here in a little, in a minute. If you take these four things and bring them down to your starting line as sort of your lens, that you allow yourself to view everything else through, that’s going to give you a stronger foundation.

 

So awareness is do you know and trust your own motives, feelings, desires and knowledge. Unbiased processing is can you look at your positives and your negatives objectively? The answer to that is no. Like how many of us are truly unbiased when it comes to processing our positives and negatives? None. And so that’s why it becomes so critical to do audience feedback surveys, to let other people tune into your audience, to have hard conversations with people who know you and love you enough to be honest with you.

 

That’s because you can’t do that on your own. You cannot be unbiased on your own behavior. This is a big one for me. How do you align what you do with what you believe? And this one that I think really comes back to the number one question in my own brand method is what is my why?

 

Which really goes back to, really goes back way beyond Simon Sinek. But Simon made it popular, you know, you know your why and the thing about that is there are a lot of us who think we have our why. But if we’re honest and we look at how we’re actually living, living it out, we’re going to see that it’s not quite aligning.

 

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The Power of Telling Stories: Leading With Your Values

 

We’re not quite doing the things in real life that conceptually we say that we believe in. So it’s really important to look at that behavior and to make sure, am I really aligning what I do with what I believe? Because your audience will see that before you do. And so if you’re not always asking yourself that question, that’s when you’re going to come across as very inauthentic and hypocritical to your audience.

 

And you wind up losing their trust in self-serving. Right? Yes. Very self-serving. You know, audiences are savvy. They know when you’re showing up in a way, just to make a buck versus when you’re truly genuine. I think that’s why some people can step out and flounder and make mistakes, but still, down the line, survive versus other brands who have made some missteps and that’s it.

 

They’re done. And then the last is relationships, which goes kind of back to what we were just talking about with behavior. Do your relationships pursue and reflect openness, sincerity and truthfulness? And you know, that really starts with your immediate relationships outside of your business. And then you filter that through to everything else that you do. You know, my relationships with my family and with my friends, my relationships with my employees, my relationships with my audience.

 

It’s going to be really hard for you to have, you know, for you to show up as a jerk every day at work with your employees, but then try to put on another persona to your audience. Eventually those two are going to collide and you’re going to be exposed. And so I think those are four things that you can really work through to start to uncover your authenticity, your values, your connection to your audience.

 

How well, you know, your audience, and how well your audience knows you. And this is where the whole idea of leading with your values comes into play. Because if you’re a brand right now, in the midst of Covid that has never once talked about your values, and now you’re showing up saying, okay, now we’re in the middle of a crisis, let’s talk about how important you are to us as a consumer.

 

But you’ve never once demonstrated that to me, that feels really inauthentic. So now is the time to really take a deep, hard look at what are those values that have been driving us all along that we really need to look at and really need to talk about how we’re living those out? Yeah, because it feels like the flavor of the month marketing ploy.

 

Oh, they must have read a book about values. So now they’re going to create a TV campaign about how much we care, right. And then it’s just a flavor of the month marketing ploy. And then three months later, if the economy gets better than it’s, then it’s on to something else, right? Right. And I think that partly is do you know, I thought a lot about that, you know, just the mere branding that we are seeing going on right now with all the Covid messaging and I’ve equated that.

 

I’ve almost excused it with some brands. Just when I think about the concept of Maslow’s hierarchy and how I think for a long time, as the economy has been roaring, I think consumers were at those top two levels of the hierarchy. They were in the self-actualization and esteem phase. And that’s where you could see coaches really, you know, kind of coast through with their messaging and just be able to hit on those esteem and self-actualization segments of that hierarchy.

 

But I think with Covid, it’s knocked the consumer back down to the lower levels. Physiological safety, love and belonging. And so it’s really hard to speak to the levels of self-actualization and esteem when people are worried about how in the world they’re going to pay their rent tomorrow, or if they can get toilet paper at the grocery store.

 

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The Power of Telling Stories: The Hierarchy of Needs

 

These are the things they’re worried about. And so I think that’s why the messaging has remained so sanguine is because that’s what’s safe. And there is some of that need to reinforce the physiological and the safety needs on the hierarchy. And so I think that’s really critical for brands to acknowledge that, number one, the hierarchy of needs has shifted with the consumer and it’s going to change.

 

It’s going, you know, the consumer is going to go back up that hierarchy. And that’s really our job as a brand to help them go back up. You know, you and I were talking about the trust barometer earlier and it talks about the elements that the trust barometer talks about. I think it’s like 86%. It may be higher than that, but 86% of consumers are looking at brands to fill the gaps that the government doesn’t fill.

 

That’s incredible. The purpose of the brand has shifted into becoming a guardian of the people. I think Jasmine being in talks about that. In her podcast, she has a podcast. She’s a female marketing leader and when you recognize that as a brand, as a brand leader, your consumers, your audience is looking at you not just as a provider of goods, but really as a driver.

 

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The Power of Telling Stories: What Makes a Brand Leader

 

Morality, physical, psychological need that places a bigger bonus on you as a brand leader to be really in touch with who you are, because it’s hard to lead well if you don’t have that foundation. Super smart. And I love how you hooked it back to the trust barometer, because it was so smart to do that and super relevant and in that trust barometer obviously trust being the focus. But when your audience Onward Nation, when your clients and prospects sense that you might be violating that trust.

 

They’re so definitive in the findings of this research that those brands, those companies, those businesses that violate the trust intentionally or unintentionally, they’re done in the minds of those consumers. And so this is the time, unlike any other time in human history to be communicating through the awareness and the unbiased processing, the behavior and the relationships and having all of that cognizant in front of you as part of your communication strategy because of how important this is and what your audience wants from you now more than ever is for you to be their trusted advisor, their authority, the thought leader, the expert that will help them navigate this crisis.

 

And you can’t do that if you’re not communicating with authenticity. So, Lindsay, this has been awesome. So I know that we’re getting close to our end, and we’re quickly running out of time. And I appreciate you taking time out of your compressed schedule. But before we go, before we close out and say goodbye, any final advice that you like to share on the power of telling stories, anything you think we might have missed?

 

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The Power of Telling Stories: Final Advice from Lindsay

 

And then please tell Onward Nation business owners the best way to connect with you. Sure. You know, I think I’ll close out because I am and I. Enough. Jay, as I told you earlier, I live in the world of metaphor. And so I think that I will close out just as you think as brand leaders think about their messaging.

 

Somewhere in my research, I stumbled across the difference between a fake diamond and a real diamond. And I think that it’s important to think of messaging with kind of within that frame of the metaphor of being the real diamond versus the fake diamond. And here, here, it’s the explanation. Real diamonds have imperfections. They aren’t flawless. They reflect their own light versus green, yellow or gray.

 

That is reflected by fake diamonds. There’s a special magnifying glass that’s used by jewelers so that the jewelers can look closely to find the clarity. real diamonds don’t fog up from the air that hits them. You cannot see through them because of how it reflects light. And it can withstand the heat. And so when you’re thinking about your own messaging, you have to realize you’re not going to be perfect a lie, a formula and framework tells you if you just follow this, it’s going to be perfect.

 

What? That’s not true. Finding your right messaging is an experiment. You know, it’s it’s tuning into your audience, learning who they are, knowing that their needs are going to shift. So your messaging is going to have to shift, you reflect your own light. You’re not reflecting somebody else’s. You look closely to discover and rediscover clarity, to process.

 

That happens over and over again. And it only happens when you look close and do that deep work. You aren’t swayed by the changing trends, by the air of the changing trends. You’re not one dimensional. So that means your paths aren’t always going to be linear. And again, that goes back to the formulas and the frameworks that are sold as the sure way up when we’re hit face to face with the crisis.

 

Those fail. And that’s where people get shaken. Like, now what do I do? Because everything’s not so straightforward anymore. But when you do that deep work in the center, everything you say and do on the foundation of you, those values don’t shift. No matter what. So that’s the metaphor I would leave to just kind of think through as you think about what it is that you want to say and how you want to say it, and how you connect with your audience.

 

Just think of those differences. Are you going to be the real diamond, or are you going to be the fake diamond? There’s a lot of fake diamonds out there. Be the real one. I have such a huge smile on my face. I know you can’t see me right now, but holy bananas. And see, that was awesome. Great, great.

 

Muster the power of telling stories by checking out these free resources

 

The Power of Telling Stories: How to Get in Touch with Lindsay

 

I hope it’s helpful. Very helpful. So the best way for Onward Nation to get in touch with you. They can find me online at LindsayHotmire.com there. Right now I have a downloadable resource that just goes through about nine questions. You know if they are struggling to find clarity, you know, they are in the midst of holy smokes, I don’t know what I need to do.

 

Who in who even should I be right now? There’s a resource that just takes them through some of those nine deep dive questions. It doesn’t get too deep, but deep enough to start helping them find some of that clarity that they need. So I would encourage them to start there as well. Okay. Onward Nation, no matter how many notes you took or how often you go back and re-listen to Lindsay’s words of wisdom, which I sure hope that you do.

 

The key is you have to take what she so generously shared with you today, take it and apply it in. Accelerate your results because of it. In Lindsay, we all have the same 86,400 seconds in a day. And I’m grateful again that you said yes, to come on to the show, to be our mentor and guide, to help us move our businesses and navigate our businesses through this crisis.

 

Thank you so much, Lindsay, for your insights on the power of telling stories. Thanks so much for having me. This episode is complete. So head over to OnwardNation.com for show notes and more food to fuel your ambition. Continue to find your recipe for success here at Onward Nation.

 

Muster the power of telling stories by checking out these free resources