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297-SYB-Intergrating-Your-Stories-Into-Your-Talks.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Carol Cox:
How can you integrate your story into your talks and how do you even choose the best story to begin with? Join me in this conversation with Diane Diaz and Joy Spencer on this episode of The Speaking Your Brand podcast. More and more women are making an impact by starting businesses running for office and speaking up for what matters. With my background as a TV political analyst, entrepreneur and speaker. I interview and coach purpose driven women to shape their brands, grow their companies and become recognized as influencers in their field. This is Speaking Your Brand, your place to learn how to persuasively communicate your message to your audience. Hi there and welcome to the Speaking Your Brand podcast. I’m your host, Carol Cox. Joining me today are two of our speaking coaches here, Speaking Your Brand, our lead speaking coach, Diane Diaz.

Diane Diaz:
Hi, everybody.

Carol Cox:
And speaking coach Joy Spencer.

Joy Spencer:
Hello, everyone.

Carol Cox:
So glad to have both of you here with us. You have heard both of them on the podcast here and there throughout the past couple of years. Of course, Diane has been with us since early 2019, so over three and one half years. And Joy really has been with us for over two years. Joy did some coaching for the speakers at our table beyond Live Virtual summits about 2020 and 2021. And Joy is now working with us in our Thought Leader Academy as a speaking and storytelling coach. So we are so glad to have both Diane and Joy part of the team. We are going to dive in today with this idea of integrating your story into your message. So identifying what makes a good story. Which of your stories would be a good one to include in your talks? There’s different frameworks that you can use for integrating your stories, so we’re going to go through some of those as well as some examples, because if you’ve been listening to the podcast a while or you’ve just been kind of around the business and speaking space, you know how important storytelling is, is how you can connect with your audiences in a deeper way, how they can understand, even if you’re doing a lead generation talk at kind of a training or teaching type of talk.

Carol Cox:
Integrating stories helps them to understand and apply what you’re teaching them. And of course, if you’re doing a TED talk or a keynote talk, we know that stories are so central to to making those compelling and engaging for the audience. So first let us dive into what different frameworks are for how we can integrate stories into our talks. So one of the ones that we talk about in the Thought Leader Academy we talked about on the podcast before as well a couple of years ago with Joy Spencer is public narrative. So public narrative and Joy will tell us the more details about it is a framework that you can use and kind of we’ve adapted part of it to the frameworks that we teach in the Thought Leader Academy, where you take your own story, but then you universalize it for your audience and then you also give them a call to action, something to do with what they’ve learned. Joy can you tell us a little bit more about public narrative?

Joy Spencer:
Public narrative is a really understood as a leadership practice and the two words that are important to know. It’s like the word leadership in practice, because the goal is to help bring together a community around shared purpose during uncertain times and lead people into action. It was created by Marshall Ganz, who is now a professor at Harvard Kennedy School and came out of his work in organizing and sort of like labor rights work. And if you’ve listened to any Obama speeches, you’ll hear the public narrative framework show up. So it’s something that’s also very much used a lot in political advocacy movement, building worlds and work. So public narrative has three parts. It has like three, three stories. It’s like there’s a story of self, there’s a story of us and the story of Now, which are designed to bring you from your personal story, which is your story of self, which helps us understand why you care about this issue or topic or whatever it is that you’re talking about, giving us a personal connection to you and an understanding of your own personal stake in it. And then the story of us is where you bring us to you bring all of us into that story, and it’s bringing us around our shared values and our shared experiences.

Joy Spencer:
It’s not about our shared backgrounds or our shared demographic markers, but our shared values and experiences. And that’s why this is such a unique and important model, because it really helps you get to down to what universalize a message. And then the story of now is about why is this important right now if there’s no sense of urgency and something for us to do at this particular point in time, it’s sort of like you’re telling a story without a point. So the point is the story of now there’s something we need to do, there’s some direction we need to move in, there’s something we need to think about. That’s what we need to do now. So all three together, they, they you bring people through on this journey to bring your your community along with you to participate. And that word participate is important because that’s what narratives do. They invite people to participate and they’re different from stories, even though this public narrative is made up of stories, but a narrative is inviting people to participate. And so that’s what you want folks to do, participate and take. Action in some way. Public narrative is sort of like a great model for you to do that with.

Carol Cox:
Very helpful, Joy. Thank you. And it reminds me of a talk that I gave about a year ago. It was for a fundraising organization and they had given me the topic, which they wanted me to talk about finding your purpose. Now, that’s not a topic that I traditionally talk about, but I said, okay, sure, I’m happy to talk about it, but I’m going to find my own unique angle because I’m not just going to talk about kind of the the three things to find your purpose that we’ve all heard about before. So I really thought about a personal story that would relate to this idea. And then I discovered that really finding your purpose is all great until you get backlash or you hit until you hit resistance that prevents you from moving forward in your purpose. Sometimes that resistance is internal, so things that are going on with your own mindset or limiting beliefs, sometimes those forces are external. So other people or entities or institutions that don’t want you to go forward in your purpose. And my lesson in the keynote was if you’re not facing resistance in your purpose, you may not be pushing far enough or deep enough with what you want to see change in your industry or in your society. But I couldn’t just say that and kind of like in a theoretical way, I had to share a personal story.

Carol Cox:
So I shared about this professional experience that had happened when I was chairperson of my local Democratic Party and being a woman with a very public voice and a very public presence. And the backlash that I got as a result of that and losing my purpose and losing my voice and losing my confidence for several years after that. So that was my story of self. But then I had to connect it to the audience, and I knew that people in the audience had never been chairperson of a political party. They hadn’t experienced that same thing that I had. So here are the magic sentence that I use, and you can write this down and use it to This is how you connect Story of self, the story of us. You may not have had this particular experience, but you may have had a time in your life where you too lost your voice or lost your confidence and lost your purpose. And what did you do next? And that’s your bridge into the rest of your talk. And Diane, I know when you did your summit speeches for our table Beyond Live Virtual Summits, we use this framework for our ten minute talks as well with what some of the personal stories that you shared.

Diane Diaz:
Yes. Yeah. The the one that comes to mind in particular was the second summit that we did where I talked about a personal story of mine. But my mother’s, as she was my memory of being at this birthday party as a young child and then remembering the balloons everywhere, but seeing her crawling across the floor to get to the door because she was hyperventilating. Yes. Not everybody has been through trauma, But, you know, for me, that was a realization of a time when I realized I had to find my voice and I had to use it because and then, of course, as you said, the way to then bring it to the US is not everybody has experienced trauma, but there’s probably a time when you realize that you needed to use your voice too. So that’s that same way to make that connection.

Carol Cox:
And you don’t have to be that explicit with it, cause I know Joy. Right, right, right. One of the things that you teach is in the Thought Leader Academy is like I always start with, here are the guidelines, like learn the guidelines, be explicit about it, but then you can kind of adjust it and and make it your own. So, Joy, I know you have a story that you oftentimes share in the trainings that you do of an experience you had when you went overseas in college.

Joy Spencer:
Yeah, and I often talk about that. So it was the story of when I went to teach English in Bosnia and then had the real, you know, I was so excited. And then I get there and I have the realization that everyone is staring at me because I’m the only black person. And now I don’t know what type of experience I was going to get. And then I was trying to determine, okay, am I going to stay or am I going to go? And then I decided to stay and had this amazing experience. So what I was doing with that arc was and what you touched on, Carol, is bringing the listener through an experience, through my challenge. Right? So, so challenge, choice and outcome are three elements of public narrative. And essentially, if you’re trying to figure out, do I have a story, your story needs to have a challenge and a choice and an outcome. And so there’s essentially an obstacle, something that is getting in the way of what it is that you want or whoever you’re telling the story wants and desires. And then then there’s some sort of choice point that has to happen around that. And obviously we’re going to get an outcome. The same applies with the story of us, right? So even when you’re connecting into an US and bringing everyone else into that shared experience or shared values you can speak to, this is our shared challenge right now. This is what we’re all facing right now together, either as a society or as a room, or of those of us who have this particular value. And what is it? What are we going to do? You know, just asking that question brings your your listeners to a choice point, and then you can paint the picture of a.

Joy Spencer:
Potential outcome that you want them to see or experience. So you can use you can talk folks through a story of us when you’re connecting through, or you can even share other stories, stories of different people, stories of public figures, stories that are sort of like in the public sphere that everyone will know and kind of identify with and connect with. And that’s another way to sort of like bring in all these other pieces around us. But the important thing to remember is that what you’re trying to connect to is shared experiences and shared values, speaking to what we all believe, what we all care about, or what we’re all afraid of, or even if it’s not, even if we don’t have the same experiences you can speak to, to the values as well. So there are a lot of different ways that you can go about it, but try not to to hit the nail right on the head. Too obvious, I tell people, do not say the words challenge. Do not say the word choice. Do not say the word outcome. And now I’m trying to ban people from saying. And then I realized that really it was that clear in that crystal. And then I decided. So they’re like certain words that I’m like, now when I’m working with people, I’m like, No, we can’t use that word because it’s getting too formulaic. But but models are designed to give you some sort of support and a way forward.

Diane Diaz:
You know, I think a good example of that was the speech that you shared in our Thought Leader Academy when Michelle Obama was for the unveiling of her portrait at the White House. And she talked about her story and then what that meant for other people and where we wanted to go forward with that. Right. And what might happen if we don’t continue that work and continue making that progress. So I felt like that was a really good example where she it was such a heartfelt story of her own. And then then she made the pivot to what it means for all of us.

Joy Spencer:
Yeah, I think that the Obamas are very good at at public public narrative. Once, you know, public narrative and you listen to any Obama’s speech, you’re like, yes, I know. I know what you’re doing. I know when you’re switching over, I know what’s going on. But but it works. But even when you know what it is. Right. And and that’s the thing. Even when you know what the model is, it still works. It’s still powerful, it’s still impactful, which just sort of shows the the great value of it. And you don’t have to do it in order either. You can intersperse it. It’s just knowing what the pieces and the elements are and why they are there, what the purpose is that they serve there and making sure that it’s aligned with what you’re doing. And you can’t sort of fail to have an impactful message that you’re sharing.

Carol Cox:
Perfect. So for those of you listening, if you’re trying to figure out what’s a good story to share in your talk, think about those three elements Challenge, choice and outcome. A lot of we’re very good at sharing anecdotes, usually within stories like, Oh, I know I had this client and they were facing this or I did this, but the story is lacking. It’s not fully fleshed out. So anecdotes are fine here and there. But if you really if you’re especially if you’re doing a keynote or a TEDx talk, you need to have one central story that’s really strong and it needs to have that challenge, choice and outcome in it to make it that if you are doing a lead generation signature talk so you can work on both of those in the Thought Leader Academy. So we have training and guidance and the VIP day for both the keynote and the lead generation talk. For lead generation, you still want to include stories in it and what you can do is you can thread your story throughout your talk, so you can maybe towards the beginning of your talk and act. One of our framework you may bring up one aspect of your story could be the beginning of your story. It could be the end of the story. It could be somewhere in the middle. And then you can kind of go back to different points of time in your story as you go through the three acts. The nice thing about not making your story linear as you tell it is you can add a little bit of suspense into your talk and keep your audience engaged because you can say something like that in Act one. So here I was in this conference.

Diane Diaz:
Room.

Carol Cox:
Getting ready to do X, Y, Z. Like, how did I end up here? Well, hold on. We’ll come back to that in a few minutes. And then what happens is your audience has this open loop in their mind subconsciously, and they want to know what happens to the rest of that story. So they’re going to keep paying attention to you until you come back to that as some further part in your talk, either in the middle or at the end. So those are some ideas of how to centralize your story in your talk and then also ways to thread it throughout your talk, depending on kind of what type of talk that you’re doing and what your goal is. Let’s take a look at some examples now of women that we’ve worked with and how they have connected their their story to their overall message, to their big idea. One of them is Cindy Roe. She was on the podcast just a few months ago in July. Diane had interviewed her. That was episode 284. That’s an excellent one to go back and listen to if you haven’t already, because you, Diane and Cindy, really go through how Cindy took different ideas that she had and really coalesced them into one big idea and they connected her story into that. There’s another woman who recently graduated from our Thought Leader Academy, Terry DeLuca. Diane, I know that you worked with Terri in her VIP day, so you can tell us a little bit about how she integrated her story into her message and what the results were.

Diane Diaz:
Yeah, Terri was really fun to work with. She she’s in the educational field. She’s a consultant. An educational consultant. And she’s obviously she’s been an education for a long time. And so she had some really personal stories of her experiences in education and how they can relate to the message that she had for her audience, which is that there are things that we can do as educators and administrators and education for them to create the change that they wanted to see. But she based her talk on her personal experience. Obviously, as a person coming in as a consultant, to let the audience know that she understands where they’re coming from and she understands firsthand what they’re dealing with. But she shared several stories with me, and then we sort of pick the one that we thought would have the most impact. And then she really she really did a great job of going into the details of that story and getting really granular with it. So that I think the audience being an audience full of people in education, they were in the room with her in that story, like they really felt like they were part of this experience that she was talking about and what she felt at the time and how she felt defeated, because they’ve all been there, right? So they felt those same feelings. And then she connected it to the message that she had of what they could do to start making the change that they wanted to see. And and her talk went phenomenally. They her audience really responded to it. And I think because it wasn’t just a story and it wasn’t just a story to make them feel something, but it was a story that they knew she really felt where they were coming from and that she felt like one of them. And they could see that, like they can really see that she got them. So they connected really well with that story. So her message that she wanted to share resonated with them on such a deeper level because of that personal experience that she shared.

Joy Spencer:
Diane, I think you’re making an important point about why it’s important to tell your personal story, that I think people sometimes might feel like, Oh, well, I’m giving I’m giving an important talk about this topic and like, why am I why should I talk about myself? Isn’t that narcissistic or whatever they might think? But when you tell your personal story and you’re able to connect to yourself, you unlock other people’s ability to connect to you and also to themselves. And so there is a deep level of connection that’s happening in the room wherever the story is being told that lays the foundation for everything else that comes next, helps people to hear what you’re saying, helps people to really get whatever information that you’re trying to deliver. So it’s not just about self expression, You know, you’re not just doing this, this thing that’s just all about yourself. It’s a real powerful work of actually connecting to other people. So I just wanted to make that point so that people, if they feel like, why should I tell my personal story? What’s that got to do with anything? It’s not doing this. It’s not doing anything other than just gassing me up. It’s like, No, you’re making real deep connections with whoever is listening to you.

Diane Diaz:
I’m so glad you made that point, because that’s often the question that I hear during a VIP day or in the Thought Leader Academy as well. Why should I share my personal story? Why is my audience going to care? So that point you just made is that’s exactly why your personal story should become part of your talk, because it at the beginning of your telling it, it establishes rapport. Then it brings them on the journey. Then it establishes common ground. And I get you. You get me. Now we’re in this together and we’re going to solve this problem or we’re going to address this topic or we’re going to create change or whatever it is we’re going to do.

Carol Cox:
Yes. And I will tend to add what Joy and Diane were just talking about is the stories to share are not the ones that make you look great without without any struggle in there whatsoever. And again, I know that we hear this from a lot of clients. And I understand also as women, especially women in male dominated industries, you may be speaking at a conference where it is a coed conference and you don’t want to look like like an imposter or like like you don’t belong there. So there’s definitely a fine balance between how you share your story. However, I will say this if you share a story which is all the successes and kind of like the facade of everything was perfect, or maybe I had this like this little tiny obstacle in the beginning, but I managed to get through it. Your audience is going to call BS on you and they’re not going to relate to your story. You’re actually going to. It may even backfire on you. I did an episode earlier this year, February, called Finding the Emotional Heart of Your Message of your Story. And really, you have to dig deep and share the things that you don’t want to share. Share the things that you think are embarrassing again, that you have processed and work through because you’re not TMI in front of your audience, but you have to dig deep and share the things that you know that don’t necessarily put you in the best light. When I did that keynote talk and I. Said I wasn’t the empowered woman that I thought I was. Like, I didn’t stand up to the bullies and to the critics. I decided just to put my head down and go away. Like, I don’t like that I chose that, but I did. And at the lessons that I’m going to share now, the lessons that I took from that. Then you can also, number one, don’t feel bad if you also made a similar choice at some point in your life. And then what did you learn from and how can you help others?

Joy Spencer:
Because that reveals another important thing about story. It needs to show transformation. There needs to have been some sort of change. And so if it’s if it stories are flat, if it’s sort of like everything was great and then it was still great and then it was great, yay, the end. Like that’s there’s no story there. But, you know, even if it was like things were great and then there was a dip, there was a valley, there was a struggle, there was challenge, and then there was this process that I had to go through. And then now this is how things are different. So so that brings up a different model, which is by Kendra Hall, who has two great books about storytelling, and she just uses a simple model of normal explosion, new normal. It’s just literally like, what was what was what’s the status quo? How did things start out and then explosion. Something changes things up. Something there’s a there’s a wrench that’s thrown into things. And then there’s this whole process and this whole transformation and things happen, and then there’s a new normal. So there are endless different sort of models that you can use to sort of like help you think and see is there enough change and shift and really dynamism in this story that’s going to make it a good story for me to choose to use on this in this talk or wherever it is that I’m using it.

Carol Cox:
That’s a great example. Thank you, Joy, for that. Let’s talk about a few more examples of some of the women that we’ve worked with. And Diane, I know that you worked with Michelle Taylor, who recently graduated from our Thought Leader Academy. Michelle is a leader in the supply chain space, and that’s basically all that the most detail that I can give about it, maybe give a little bit more. I know there’s like supply and diversity within supply chains is also a big thing. And I know that’s where Michelle focuses. But she had her own business before then.

Diane Diaz:
She did. And that that is, you know, when we first started in her VIP day and actually kind of leading up to it, she wasn’t sure what we would make her talk even about because, you know, it’s supply chain and diversity and like, what can I turn into a talk? Right. So so in talking about what might be a story or what might be the setting for her talk, she shared with me that she had owned her own business and that they had to close it. She and her husband had to close their business. And so obviously that brings us to that. Like there’s that challenge, right? The choice. And then like what? What was the outcome of that? And so she had all of these learnings that she takes, those learnings now and applies them to the work she does in supply chain diversity and how she helps her organization deal with all the challenges that come along with managing the supply chain. And I’ll be honest, I don’t fully understand what she does either because she’s so smart that sometimes it’s like Woo right over my head because she’s so smart. But what we use her story of her business as the foundation because she wanted to talk to other groups of business owners on how they could protect themselves and their businesses when challenges come, like how do you plan for those things and how do you not recession proof your business, but how do you be prepared for the challenges that are going to come inevitably when you do own a business? So we use that story of the trajectory of her, the growth of her business, and then sort of when she saw the writing on the wall and when things declined and then what she did with what all she learned from that experience.

Diane Diaz:
And then wrapping that into this talk of what she could share with her audience as well, what do I do now? What can I do now to help me kind of prepare for those things that are yet to come? So we really took a story that she she didn’t think there was really it’s not that she didn’t think it was a meaningful story, but she didn’t see how it connected to what she could share with anybody. How can my how can the failure of my business be meaningful for anyone? But we talked it through to arrive at her learnings like looking back on what she learned as and now in hindsight she sees what she should have done and now that is what she can share with her audience going forward. So her her story of the joy was saying like, it’s not just like, yeah, it was successful and then it was great and then it was even greater know it was she had challenges and then her business closed and that was, you know, and we even brought in the human elements of that. What does it mean when your business closes, not just for you personally in your own business and the money you were making, but there were real human beings working for you who had lives and families to take care of, too. And so we brought even the names of the people in. And then I remember Joe and. His family. And I remember Susan and her family, and that is really where she brought in those emotional elements.

Carol Cox:
That’s a great example, Diane. And I just must say that I love the women who come through our Thought Leader Academy because we have such a wide variety of industries that they come from. We have women in STEM. We have women who are in kind of like marketing, coaching, consulting. We have women who are therapists, doctors. It really does run across the board. And I learned so much from them and what they do. We even have a woman right now in the Thought Leader Academy who is a nuclear physicist. My gosh, yes, she is so smart.

Diane Diaz:
So smart.

Carol Cox:
And so, Joy, I know that you worked with several of the of our speakers at our table Beyond Live Virtual Summit. And those were ten minute TEDx style talks that we worked with them on for them to create and deliver at our summit. And then you also work with one of our Thought Leader Academy clients, Tanya Bosa. She was on the podcast back a couple of years ago talking about her TEDx talk that she delivered in early 2021 and is also going to end up being a book. She’s a she’s a professor of sociology. Joy, can you tell us a little bit about working with Tanya on her TEDx talk and how her story really was helped to keep the audience engaged and what could have been a very academic topic for her talk.

Joy Spencer:
Yeah, the great thing about Tanya was that she lived her talk in many ways, right? So her entire life experience of growing up in D.C. and watching gentrification happen in DC was what she went on to do work and research around. So when we went back and were thinking through her story, we interwove her journey and her sort of unfolding and coming of age story with all these facts and data and all these different things that she was sharing in her talk like, So when you have a talk or something that’s like very data rich and data data heavy and research based trust your story. You can really trust the story to be the anchor and the foundation, because that’s what people, especially people who are not as versed in the research and background of what even people who are, but especially those who are not as versed in the research and background of what you’re talking about. They will they will anchor themselves in the story that you’re sharing and be able to follow that thread and be able to absorb all the other information that you’re sharing along the way. So it really can only help and support. It doesn’t detract pretty much. And I think that people who come from very academic backgrounds or or who have a lot of data may feel like, well, I don’t want this fluffy story to detract from the seriousness of what I’m bringing to the world.

Joy Spencer:
And it’s like, don’t worry, it won’t. It’s actually going to support and facilitate that because that’s just how our brains and our minds work. Even the folks who are more academic and they think that they’re coming to this research in this sort of like barebones way, they don’t realize the stories that they already have that are supporting their understanding of what it is that they’re coming to. So what you need to do is bring your audience along, give them stories and things to anchor themselves, and so that they can also come along in the journey with you and have a deeper understanding of what you’re talking about. But yeah. Tonya Tonya’s talk was amazing. Working with her through it was was a learning experience for me as well, to learn all these different things about what had happened in DC and her neighborhood. She made it very specific about her neighborhood and, and so it was just very insightful, especially since I also live in DC. So I was able to make that connection and still be very engaged with what she was sharing as well. As we work together.

Carol Cox:
And I’ll make sure to include a link to Tanya’s said talk in the show notes. And this is also an important point, is that the more specific you are with the story and the details of your story, the better it is for your audience to connect with it. And I remember in Tanya’s talk she opened with something like Close your Eyes or Close your Eyes or imagine your the city that you live in now. Did it always look like this and always have a yoga studio and a gourmet pizza place and so on. And then she went into the the part of DC that she grew up in and what it looked like when she was growing up in the 1980s and then what it looks like today. And so she brought us like the smells, the sights, the sounds in the restaurants and then the people that she grew up, her friends, and tragically, what happened to some of them. And so it just really goes to show. And so I remember those details. I don’t remember the stats. You know, the stats are important. I don’t remember. But the overall impression I have is, oh, this is what happened to the neighborhood that was gentrified.

Joy Spencer:
Yes. And if Tanya calls you up and tells you to sign a petition, you’re probably going to sign it because you’re like, I trust her. That’s the other thing that a good story does. It helps to build that trust with those who are listening to you. You trust what other information they’re going to say and share and bring with you going forward. And so, yeah. You can’t go wrong with telling your story.

Carol Cox:
We have so many more examples that we could include of women that we worked with. I will include links in the show notes to some of the podcast episodes with some of these clients who where we specifically talked about stories and storytelling so that you can go check those out as well. Let me give a recap here before we get the final thoughts from Diane and Joy. So we shared some different frameworks that you can use when you start thinking about your storytelling within your talks. We have public narrative. That’s the story of self, story of us, story of now, really thinking about those shared experiences and shared values between you and your audience. The challenge choice, outcome for when you think about what kind, what specific story should you be sharing in your talk? What is a story that impacted you that had this challenge, choice and outcome? And then how can you take that personal story and universalize it to the bigger lessons that you want to share with your audience? We talked about for lead generation talks. It can be helpful to thread a story throughout your talk in addition to your own story. Obviously, client stories as well. You can connect them. We talked about Kendra Hall’s transformation and the normal, the explosion and the new normal.

Carol Cox:
So there’s different ways that you can do this. And this is when you work with us in our Thought Leader Academy during the weekly group Zoom Calls, as well as the VIP day that you get to work through our Speaking Your Brand signature talk canvas framework. We’ve taken the best of all of these different frameworks and guides that are out there, and we make sure that your talk fits you. So it’s not cookie cutter. To Joy’s point, it’s not formulaic. We’re not like a viral post generator. When do we see on LinkedIn? You can tell those posts and we’re like, I was here and then this is what happened to me. And then I realized that this we don’t want to do that. We really make the talk yours. We want to leverage your strengths, amplify what is the best communication and speaking style for you and how you want to get your story and your message out there. If you want to work with us in the Thought Leader Academy, you can get all the details and submit your application as Speaking Your Brand academy and speakingyourbrand.com slash academy. Final thoughts?

Diane Diaz:
Diane I would say when you’re considering or thinking, who cares about my story? Why should I share it? Put yourself in your audience issues and think about yourself hearing that story before it happened. Like if someone had told you that story, what would have been the impact on you? If you heard that from someone else, how would it resonate with you? What would it change for you? What would it what would it make you want to do? How would it make you want to take action? Put yourself in your audience’s shoes to kind of see what the impact might be, because I think we just have this fear of being too vulnerable. But we forget that if we heard that story from someone, we would be moved by it, We would be moved by it, we would take action, we would be shocked, we would be challenged, we would be spurred to do something. So your audience will feel that way. So try to put yourself in your audiences shoes and see. Ask yourself how you would feel if you heard that story, because that will give you the courage to be able to tell that story.

Joy Spencer:
Joy You can use your story to connect to anyone, no matter how different or similar they are to you. As long as you are tapping into the shared values and experiences that you share, and it can be any story of yours that you use as long as you can figure out what is the theme, what is the shared value? What is the experience behind the experience of what I’m sharing? And how does this connect with the people who I’m in the room with? So you can be an astrophysicist talking to florists. You could be you can be a dentist talking to plumbers. It doesn’t matter As long as you’re able to do those things. You can use your personal story to connect to any other group. If you keep in mind those things, what are our shared values and what are our shared experiences?

Carol Cox:
Beautiful. Thank you, Diane. Thank you, Joy, for coming on the Speaking Your Brand podcast. Always a pleasure to have you on. And until next time, thanks for listening.

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