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You —  the Complex, Creative, Maverick Soul Who Wants to Be Seen, Valued, and Understood

You want to create opportunities to get paid to do the work you love.

You may be struggling with the belief that who you are is too much: too intense, too complex.

Or that your work is hard for people to understand and value.

Most likely neither are true.

Why Storytelling Matters

One of the most effective ways to communicate who you are and what you do is to tell stories about your work in the world.

Stories that make the power of what you do come to life in all its complexity.

Stories that make you or the clients (or the protagonists in your story) feel real and nuanced

Not cheesy rags-to-riches.

Not oversimplified testimonials.

Stories that connect you to real humans having real challenges.

Stories that have unexpected shifts.

Stories that illuminate certain lessons without banging people over the head with them.

Stories that help prospective clients picture themselves going on the same journey as your clients did.

What I’ve seen consistently is that most folks either:

• Don’t understand what makes a good business story
• Don’t feel confident in their storytelling
• Don’t make time to collect and put into writing stories they can use them regularly in their marketing.

Our Business Storytelling event solves all three problems. You’ll get tips and suggestions to write stronger stories, you’ll practice writing stronger stories, and you’ll have time to write stories you can turn around and use in your business.

A Certain Style of Business Storytelling

Business Storytelling is more than writing a testimonial.

A testimonial might say “wow, this person is great, work with them!” but it often doesn’t give enough detail for people to actually witness a transformation.

Business Storytelling is telling people your origin story, your watershed moments. But without the oversimplified “life was terrible, and now it’s great” superficiality you sometime see. Or the implication that JUST ONE CHANGE resulted in everything changing overnight.

Your audience is smart. They can smell the difference between a genuine story of courageous change and something overly polished that trivializes what actually went into that change.

Good business storytelling has many of the elements of good creative writing:

• a beginning, a middle, and and end
• concrete, sensory details
• a protagonist you relate to
• complexity and nuance

We’ll be playing with some of these fundamental writing skills on Friday.

Why Me?

Seeing the architecture of good business communication is one of my freaky superpowers.

I’ve been in business since 1994 and mentored hundreds of folks to start or grow their businesses and describe their funky, out of the box work to the world.

I’ve also been a creative writer since about 1989. I’ve practiced free writing guided by Natalie Goldberg and her seminal work Writing Down the Bones. For ten years, I attended Jen Louden’s Taos writing retreats. I wrote several monologues playing with creative variations on Grimm’s fairy tales. I wrote all the content for the ezine Wordz created by Thomas Leonard that looked at how knowing more words expands who you are as a human being. I wrote a handful of good poems. I’ve completed a first draft of a memoir and make big stroke changes in the second half.

I’ve been wanting to pioneer a format I call Business Memoir that brings some of the intimacy, immediacy, and emotional honesty of memoir writing to the Business Storytelling format.

How the Business Storytelling Day works

During our half-day together, you will:

• Write about your watershed moments
• Write about your clients’ pivotal shifts
• Play with concrete detail and sensory language
• Practice emotional vulnerability

We’ll meet at the top of each hour, and the end of the last hour, on Zoom to connect and share.

In between, you’ll have time to work on the given assignment, feeling supported knowing there are lots of kindred souls working alongside of you.

You’ll have a workbook to guide you through the process. If you need to show up late or leave early, that’s ok. You can use the workbook to catch up or work on your own.

The event will be recorded and recordings will be posted within the week. You will have access to the workbook and the recordings for some time after the event.

But I gotta say, there is magic in being there live for as much of the day as you can.

The Monies – What Makes Good Sense for You

You choose what you pay for the Business Storytelling event

I love leading this event, and it does require a good amount of my time and presence and admin support to make it happen. I’d love for our exchange in this to be balanced.

First, decide if this is an experience you want to have. If so, then come on board!

Then, take a moment to feel into what’s right to give in exchange for this experience. Don’t worry about getting it perfect. I will circulate an email after the event in case you decide that you’d like to contribute more.

1. The suggested payment for the Business Storytelling retreat is $180. This is the price that makes offering this sustainable for me. Contributions above $180 help subsidize those who contribute less.
2. The requested minimum payment is $90. This helps to cover my admin costs and some of my time for the event. If contributing at this level would prevent you from joining us, you may pay less.
3. The following people are invited to participate for free:
   • 2021 Nine-month Trueing Adventure clients
   • 2022 ongoing or messaging private clients

I look forward to having you on board!

Friday, April 15 from noon to 4:30pm ET

Suggested Payment: $180
(When the cart comes up, you’ll see $180 entered in the box called “Contribution for 2022 Business Storytelling”. To enter a different amount, type the new amount in the box  and hit ENTER. Make sure you see the new amount where it says “Total”.)