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The Story Lab
The go-to podcast for business owners and marketers who want to harness the power of storytelling to stand out, connect, and grow their brands using the power of stories.
The Story Lab
The Green-Yellow-Red Method: Crafting A Business Story That Connects | Ep 2
Struggling with how much of your personal story to share in your business? You're not alone. This candid episode of The Story Lab tackles the challenging question that many entrepreneurs face: which parts of your founder story should you share, and which should remain private?
I walk you through my three-color framework that transforms the way you approach storytelling in business. You'll discover how to map your complete journey using green highlighting for must-share elements, red for the experiences you want to keep private, and yellow for the crucial "buffer zones" that maintain narrative coherence. These yellow sections might be the most important part of your story, they create bridges between significant moments while protecting your boundaries.
Drawing from my own experience of how a personal attack unexpectedly led to discovering the power of storytelling, I demonstrate why gaps in your narrative can create distrust, and how thoughtfully crafted connections build authentic relationships with your audience. The most powerful revelation? You don't need to be a completely open book to create meaningful connections. Strategic vulnerability... sharing selectively while ensuring your story flows naturally, creates more impact than oversharing ever could.
Whether you're crafting your founder's story, preparing content for social media, or looking to deepen audience connections, this episode provides a practical framework you can implement immediately. Get ready to transform how you approach your business narrative and make your story the one they remember. Ready to turn your mess into something better? Your real story awaits.
Your story, the one they remember, the truth that ignites the reason they stay. This is your time. You're brighter than ever, you've got something to say. Welcome to the Story Lab, guys, and I hope that you are ready to make your story the one they remember. And today we're going to talk about something that I often have in my business People asking me how do I share my story, how do I know what parts to share and what parts to not share? And today I'm going to give you a method I use with all my clients so that they know what parts to share and what parts to not share in their business.
Speaker 1:So the first thing that I tell everybody to do is write out your story. So the first thing that I tell everybody to do is write out your story, the story that you want to really share. When it started and it may start many years before your experience and it may start, you know, a little bit, right before. Whatever those aspects are the things that impacted, let's say, my business. I'm going to write out my story with where it started. Now, for me, my story of my business started when I was attacked. That story I told you guys in the last episode, so that's where I'm going to start writing my story and I'm going to write everything from there until where I am now and I write it all out. I create this big document, maybe, or I write it. I write out longhand always. That's why I always have my pen. I write longhand and once I'm done with that and it might take a day, might take a couple of days, but once I'm done with that then I'm going to review that story that I wrote. I'm going to take a look at that story and I am going to, first thing, go through and highlight in green pen all the things that I absolutely want to share. I'm going to go from the beginning to the end and for me, at the beginning is the moment that I found out that stories can make a difference, and that's attached to the attack. Now we're going to get back to the attack. So we're going to talk about when I learned that stories were amazing.
Speaker 1:I want to talk about how I, my first client I was able to really test this idea that stories would work in social media. That's a story I want to tell. And I want to tell a story about you know my how I learned the importance of video. Those are three stories that I absolutely want to tell, and then, after I highlight all those things and there's probably more, but I highlight all those things then I'm going to go and I'm going to find the things that I absolutely don't want to share, the things that I would rather have all my teeth pulled from my mouth without Novocaine than share those things. Those are things in my business I don't want to share.
Speaker 1:So I'm then going to go through and, in red pen, highlight the things I don't want to share. And maybe it's my divorce I don't want to share. Maybe it's when I lost my grandmother I don't want to share. And maybe it's a launch that I should have known better about. That I don't want to share. So those are the three things. I absolutely no way do I want to share these things.
Speaker 1:So now what I've got is a lot of in-between. Now these are the things that you either don't mind sharing or you could do without sharing. Either way, they're kind of in the middle and I call these your buffer. These are the things that you're going to highlight in yellow. So you're going to go through and say, okay, these are the parts I'm good with sharing. Maybe good without sharing, doesn't matter to me. I could go either way.
Speaker 1:Now, once you've gotten all three things highlighted, this is where you might have to make some tough decisions, because you need to see and make sure that it makes sense what you're sharing. You need to make sure that people aren't going to have a little bit of distrust because of something you put into your story, something that you maybe shared, but without any real reason why. So these are the yellow sections. You never want a red section to come right up against a green section, because when that happens, then there's confusion as to how you got from one place to the next place.
Speaker 1:Now this can be like what happened with me and my attack. My attack is what directly brought me to where I am in my business, because that's where I learned about the power of stories. But I couldn't just say I was attacked and I learned about stories and that's when I built my business, because people are going to be like wait, that doesn't make sense. So I need the in-between stuff, the things that I highlighted in yellow, In order for something that I'm going to be sharing. That's red, because I have to share this. It's a bad thing and most people wouldn't want to share it, but I have to find a way to share it because it directly impacts my business. So I'm looking for the yellow things that I can share that will explain the situation, because then there's no, there's no dramatic moment when I learned about the power of stories. There's no moment where it makes sense that I dove into stories in my business.
Speaker 1:So that's why it's really important for me to find that yellow space. So I'm going to share a little bit about the attack and then I'm going to share the time in between the attack and starting my business, what I did, because that's the yellow stuff that makes it make sense. And then I'm going to talk about how I started my business and then that moment where I learned that the stories I learned would change the world up at the beginning, when I was attacked. I'm going to apply that story to the thing that I want to share about my first client and how storytelling worked for him in his business, his business. So you see, what happens is I'm able to, with the yellow space, explain where I started my business, and that allows me to maybe leave out my divorce, which happened right before I started my own business Cause I don't want to talk about my divorce. So the yellow space is actually probably the most important aspects of your story, because it's going to create connections without, you know, throwing out the things that you don't want to share.
Speaker 1:Because I don't believe that you need to share everything. I don't believe that you have to be a full open book. Do you have to share things that make you human? Yes, but that doesn't mean you have to share all the things. You share Some of them. You don't share others, but you're going to have a flow that makes sense and builds trust. When you don't have that flow, when you go from a red to a green right away, without that buffer, it doesn't make sense for people.
Speaker 1:So I have my clients write this all out, I have them highlight all the things and then we take a look at it and I will take their story. So you could have anybody do this for you, take your story and read it back to you and ask you to be a little separate yourself from the story. What would you think if you were hearing this? So I do that with my clients and then I have them do read their story to me and I give them feedback as to how I would feel. And we do it again because in that time we're trying to figure out what the yellow yellow areas are, so that we have those connections, so that things are making sense, so that the thing she tells me doesn't make sense. When I'm sharing the story, she hears them firsthand and she goes Ooh, that's not right, that's going to make me sound like, or somebody is going to think that I did this.
Speaker 1:So we get all of that out, we figure out what yellow parts we want and then we build the main story this is really your founder's story and we build out that story. We write it out, we highlight the things that we want to be sharing on social media. We go through all of that. But that's how we tell what parts of the story we want to share. That's how we really show up in a way that makes it make sense.
Speaker 1:So when you're writing your story, make sure that it flows, make sure there's not gaps that are really like wait, whoa, how did you go from here to here? And make sure that the things that actually impacted what you're doing are explained. You don't have to explain everything, but the things that impacted what you're actually doing, make sure there's a connection in there and make sure something is explained in there so that it makes sense and it builds trust, because that's what we're doing with our story we're building trust. So hopefully that makes sense to you and you're ready to make your story the one they remember and I will see you next time on the story lab. Take care, turn your mess into something that's better. Stand up, speak out, say it loud, make your story the one they remember, the truth that ignites the reason they stay. This is your time, the brighter than ever. You've got something to say.
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