Boost something where you could just spend your way out of the problem. And I've tried many different tactics to get people to become more visible to their communities and to their prospective employers or clients. And they're just slow going. So I think what we're doing with a series of calls is to kill two birds with one stone. We're going to help you create content that's most natural to you, the easiest way without images. I say that with an asterisk. And then from there, I think we start to find out who we are. We find our voice and we build community around that and we enroll people in our story. As I said before, I read in this book before on storyboarding it says, to know me is to know my story. And I was always confused about that before, because I teach the stuff, right, but it's like, who wants to know my story? I'm so boring. There's nothing here and diverts your attention elsewhere, and I get that feeling, so I'm there with you. And I'm starting to figure out what works for people and also stepping out of my own comfort zone into a place where I'm sharing more as well. And annaleigh, who's not on our call today, who's one of our mods? She said. Chris, I want to hear more of your story. Stop reading. Stop telling us the things that you've learned. Just tell us your story. And I know some of you have expressed this already. Like, is it pick who said, oh, that's all the story I got. I told one story and I'm done. There is no more story here that cannot be the case unless you're like one-day-old. You have another story, so I'm going to help you figure out what your story is Ok? having said that, let's just jump into this and I'm going to share my deck here and I'm going to switch over it here. Can you guys see this? Tell me you can see it, Mo. Oh, yes, we can see a Black screen, that's all we can see a Black screen. Mm-hmm Let's try and get a little fancy with my technology. OK, so simple is better. My mentor told me that two minutes ago, no better tech is better. I rewired my system yesterday, and it apparently is a fail. So this is just up to share this with you. And now I'll share the deck. Now you can see it, right? Yep OK, so this is part two. It's we're calling this stories that win hearts and minds because we have to do both. And this is called officially number five. And the agenda for today's call is that I want to tell you what the goal of stories are. We want to be able to create an objective way to measure whether or not you have a good story or not. In academic circles, it's called a rubric, and I'll explain what that is. So for those of you who've never heard that word before, you have a new word of the day, you're at what word of the day and what we'll do is we'll review some of the posts and that people had shared last week. I grabbed for they posted early in the attack me, so I know what they are. It's no preference here, but we'll dissect it a little bit. And then I want to challenge you, if it's your first time to create a story post or to do it again, applying what you know. And so what we want to do with any piece of content that we make is it's got to be returned for the effort to Roi. So we want to create a highly engaging content that really connects with our audience of choice, and we're going to start with just reflecting on who we are. The expression your vibe attracts your tribe, it rings true. So we can't attract a tribe if we don't know who they are and we can't attract a tribe if we don't know what we stand for. So we're going to help you by breaking it down this way. So this is what I would consider the gold standard of stories. Now I say gold standard because I sometimes I'm only a silver or bronze standard. I don't hit my own gold standard. And usually the results almost always reflect this. So this is the part you need to remember here. You want to tell a personal story. So you have to be in your story as have your voice. It can't be something that somebody else writes, and we kind of have to see your writing creative DNA in your story. This is really critically important. That means you have to reveal something of yourself that no one else can claim. It's not as hard as it sounds. We've been too busy hiding ourselves. Now it's time to show a little bit of it, OK, that if this is at all possible, that elicits an emotional response. We want people to get angry. We want people to get tearful. To feel relieved or inspired, we want them to feel something. This separates you from a machine and a robot. You're not a copy and paste creative. So we have to filter this through your lens and draw an emotional response, and that way we connect. Human to human. Each stage. And the stories can be good and can be dramatic, but if it's going to have a lesson in it, it's going to be memorable. So we want to have a clear takeaway, not take. Just one takeaway. If you build it around this, you might actually have more takeaways. But if you try to do too much, you might have zero. OK, so what we want to do is tell a personal story that elicits an emotional response with a clear takeaway. OK, so as I was training with Dr. Holtzman for the last six weeks, he shared with me a worksheet that he gives all new instructors. And he asked them this question, how can we know that they know what we want them to know? How can we, the instructors know that the students know what we want them to know? How can we measure that? How can we do this objectively and hence the word rubric pops up? And it looked this up in Wikipedia, it's a scoring guide used to evaluate the quality of students' It's that simple. So when you're writing your story, you're creating a logo or a website or something, you're never quite sure if it's working, so you just put more energy into it. And you don't have a clear compass or a direction to go in, and it feels almost always that when the deadline appears, it's good enough it's time to deliver it. But we want to move away from that. So what I want to do is create an objective scale where we can look at our own ideas and the ideas of other people. And this is how we have fair and transparent critique process where we can determine if the idea is true or false, or if it's better or worse or right or wrong. But we all almost want to be binary in it because it removes the guesswork. When we introduce feelings of subjective observations, it makes it much harder. To figure out if we're on the right path. If I tell you write a good story. Well, what is good? But if I tell you to write a story that has 400 characters in it, we know we can hit that. It either has 400 or it does not. OK so when I said, tell a personal story, I want to elicit your help to get you or enlist your help, I'm sorry, not illicit. Enlist your help in defining what personal means, and we're going to do this a couple of times. So we're going to do is we're going to do a little mini workshop and we'll create a breakout group in a second. I want to figure out questions that we can ask ourselves where the answer is either Yes or no. True or false positive or negative. To determine. If the story is personal or not. So we're going to spin you off in your little breakout groups in a second, probably groups of four. And when I asked you just to silently write for a few minutes, some questions, how can we determine if the story is personal or not? With a Yes or no answer, either? The answer is meant to be Yes or no. And then you guys will. Share and you'll try to share some of the best questions, and we're going to use this as our rubric. OK, so we're going to workshop this. I'm going to give you a little less than 10 minutes, they said 10 minutes here, but I think that's actually too long. Spend three minutes just writing quietly and then three minutes sharing and defining what you think is the best questions to ask. It has to be binary and its answer, it can't be. How do you feel about this? Because that's not a binary answer. So I want you to determine the criteria. If the story is personal or not, does that make sense, everybody? OK, any questions? And I hope it is my sincerest hope that by doing this together, you're going to start to see how I will be teaching classes and workshops in the very future. We begin at the end. We need to know what the learning outcome is. So I want you to all to be able to create personal stories that listen an emotional response that has a clear takeaway. That's the learning outcome. So how do I know that? You know what? I know what you know, whatever. We're going to create this rubric. Any questions, if not, I'm going to send you off to a group. You you want to ask me right now because otherwise it's going to get really confusing inside your groups. Hi hi, Chris. Hello can you give us a quick example of a criteria? Yeah, Yeah. Let me pull out my notebook. See, I came prepared. Thank you. OK, very good. Thanks for asking that question. Here we go. So how do we determine if the story's personal? My question would be, can someone else write this story other than you? If the answer is yes, go back to the starting point. Now, I have several other questions I've written down here, but I think each one of us. There are 45 of us. If we all contribute half of a question, we have more than enough questions because I only need four or five questions and I'll explain later if you remind me why I'm doing it this way. There's a really good reason, ok? And if you guys played his game with me and you actually go through this entire process, you are one step closer to being an instructor yourself. And I want to be able to help you. So we're learning together. OK, so Mandy, thank you very much for asking that question. Am I not the host? What can you make me the host? On it. Sherry, what's your question? Thanks for raising your hand. I'm sorry, I'm in the hospital right now. Do we need to write our story again? Just just the questions right now we're just working on the questions. And yes, you will have to write another story, ok? And I would say, you get to write the story, not you have to. OK, so first of all, stay safe in your hospital, wherever you're at, whatever you're doing. Stay safe. OK, so you're going to get another opportunity to write another story. And I'm going to be right there with you, because I'll write my stories too. OK, OK, thank you. I'll see the results. I promise you, if you just do it, wonderful things are going to happen to you. Thanks I should say Jim Mohammed the host now. Yes, I am. Yes, you're the host. I'm going to create. Like 10 breakout rooms, right? Yeah, that should be good. Now, again, once again. Don't worry if you can't speak where you're at, you have little children or there's a mini disaster emergency happening in your house. Just jump into your group and just stay silent. And everybody's cool with that. So whoever can talk, talk. And if you can't, don't worry about it. And if you don't want to go to the room, you don't have to either. I encourage you to, because it's good to know your community, ok? These are going to be your partners in life, your brothers and sisters who when you're feeling down and need a little boost, they're here to help you. We're here to help each other, so you got to get to know your friends in this group. So I'm going to create a group and then I'm going to say, go for it. OK, here we go, opening all the rooms. I will see you guys in about six or seven minutes. We're going to do this multiple times. OK, so I'll see you all a little bit. Hitting record here was not enough time, everybody, 10 minutes. You know, it's like an eternity. This time was OK. You one more time. No, it was perfect. OK, 10 minutes then. I love how you're telling us to respond to you, Chris, but there's no way to respond to you. There's no way to, you know, say no, I need to. I need more time. There's no way to do that. Well, there is a way. There is there's always a way. Mo figured it out. Mo, tell people how you responded to me. I left my group, came and talked to him. He left the group and said, hey, what's up? And then he left again. He rejoined his group. OK, OK, so here we are. Hopefully, I mean, this one's going to be tough, but I'm going to share the screen so we can work on this together. I'm going first. So Anna Marie doesn't say the question that I already have in my notebook. I'm going to go ahead and go first. It's you and your group. No, no. I'm representing the group here just so we can get it on the board. You know what I'm saying? I think our group should go first. No, no, no. Already called dibs. It's all good. Go ahead, mod. Cut in line. Does it address a struggle or is a struggle addressed? OK on the board a whole lot before you high five yourself and bash up on the back, so are all struggles going to elicit an emotional response? That's the question I have for you. What do you guys think? Give me a thumbs up on the emotion emoticon thing, if you think that's true. Do all struggles elicit an emotional response? You've got to do it all at the same time and not seeing a lot of thumbs up? Mo got to be patient. The question is this the audience's emotional response or your personal emotional response? No, it's the audience audience to elicit. It's to draw out an emotional response from the audience. It's emotional for you, even if you can't tell in a way that other people would feel. There's a high probability, then it's not going to go anywhere. OK, Mo, I'm not seeing a lot of thumbs up or any thumbs up, actually. I mistakenly saw people raising their hand as thumbs up as a vote of confidence. Let's try again. OK OK, go ahead. I have. Is there an act of love or a cry for help? Oh kind of playing on that. Tony Robbins quote that you talk. Yes is there a cry for help or an expression of love, right? All right, let's try that one. OK thumbs up emoticons. Thumbs up, and we think this is a good criteria for whether the most thumbs down. Oh my God. You can just go. Now it's all over the place. OK, I'm seeing a lot of thumbs up, though. OK, so I'm going to let this one live. OK, we're learning how the system works. This is like Rome, guys, and I'm seeing. Live or die. What happened? Audience has spoken live. OK, let's do another one. This one's tough one. Go ahead. Uh, our group got one, actually. So can the audience describe how you felt after reading this story? Ok? can the audience describe how you felt after reading the story? OK Romans does a live, or does it die? Use emoticons, I can't. It's much easier to see the emoticons. Go ahead, populate with emoticons. It's come on. I only have two emoticons. Here we go. Here we go. I'm seeing them now I'm seeing them. OK it lives. OK I only have clap and thumbs up for my. No, you don't. Mo it's a positive group. Stop dragging down with your negative energy. If you don't vote thumbs up, I automatically assume it's a thumbs down. See, by default, it works. All right. Let's go with one more. Three people connect, oh, too many people talking at the same time, I heard a deep voice first. Who's got the deep, bassy voice? It's me. It's me. I was. I was just when we had was, does it elicit a? Does it trigger a physical response? Oh, I like that. Does it trigger? So he quickly changed. You listen. I love that he's thinking his feet. Does it trigger a physical response? OK let's vote this one. Vote thumbs up if you think that's a good question. I'm voting Yes. Look, you can't vote yourself. All right. All right, that was a pretty unanimous. That may be our best questions so far. OK, we can take a few more, but I think this is pretty good. I think you guys are getting the hang of this. How does it feel so far, people? How's it feel? Can hang on this. Yeah gee, thanks, I feel great now. I'll just throw it. How can we know that the audience feels this way? How do it has a physical? I have. It's true. Well, you know, when you read a story and then there's zero chance of it triggering a physical response from the audience. You had some work to do. Maybe we can write a. Something isn't possible. I can wordsmith this later. But you're right, I can work on this. So is it like, is there a potential? Is there a potential trigger? Can it trigger beautiful? It's even better because it's shorter. Might it trigger, you know, we're there, ok? Go ahead. I'll take a couple more suggestions. Go ahead, fire away. Who's who's next? Have hands raised, so order OK. Sorry, Shari is next. Shari, go. Thank you. So can people connect? Can people connect? That's a little ambiguous. Is there more to this question? It's almost too short. Can people relate to what you're saying like, can you have that connection with people? Like, are they engaged? People connect and relate with this story. OK, we want to vote up or down who says this is a criteria? OK sorry, that might be a strikeout there. I see there's one sympathy vote there to sympathy. OK I love the program. OK that one's not going to make it today. Next, who's up? Mo, what if you just get to empathize and not connect? Can people empathize with the story? I didn't get help from my question like that, I wish I would have got some help like that. Actually, I wanted to support this. Is it a relatable story? Is it something that other people have experienced or are experience? I think this is what sharing means. You know, and if you talk about that, is it relatable? How do we know if it's relatable? So if I'm a millionaire or a billionaire, I tell my story. I like that sentiment. Is it something that happens to many people? You know, but even if you're amazing, you're still human. Whatever you leave, even if I don't have millions, you can go for something. But even if, for example, if you take depression or mental health, we may not go for the same things. But if you talk about mental health, I will sympathize because I know that I went through something similar, if that makes sense. So you have that feeling when you tell the story. I think that the reason why it's so popular and people want to be good at this is because you have that response and people can actually engage. It's probably the best way you communicate. If I'm not wrong. OK, OK, OK, OK. So Ana, what did you say to? I asked you if it's a relatable story. OK, so so for example, the word relates here, right? Yeah so I think because it's much easier to get to that heart string is something that happened to you, you know? I think so. Watch this. This is what Dr. Baker would do to me. You're ready to go. Dr. Holtzman would say, how do the story is relatable? And it's something that happened to you, too. And how would I know it happened to me to? How do you know? You know, what I know is author, Yeah. If it happened to other people, I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one. You know, if I'm left handed, I'm pretty sure that at least 1,000 people out there wouldn't, you know? OK, so let me take another way almost. I can't think of a single story that you could tell that somebody else on planet Earth has an experience. You see where I'm getting here. It's almost a default, yes, because we're human. Shari was saying, even if you're a millionaire, a billionaire is still human, you still have human experiences and somebody out there will relate. So that's why some of these questions are a little tricky. OK, let's go on with another idea, but we have the word relate already in here, so it survives what Adam Adam is next. But before that, Dave ray, where did my question? I have to put that on record. Does the story address a universal struggle? Now, OK. Adam that's what I was going to get into a little bit, right, because you're right, I put my hand up right when you put out your question because what your initial statement was essentially conditional, right? So we trying to address everyone because emotion is going to be struck different depending on, you know, who's reading the story, their current state and the story that you're picturing, right? It's like we're looking at it for the sake of time. What's the question? No, I raised my hand earlier when Mo was, he's like, he's like, no support. And I'm like, well, it's conditional. So like, I'll tell you what you guys private chat each other. We don't need to hear all this stuff. You guys love each other. You support one another. I like it. You're very relatable. You empathize with each other story. We get it. We totally get it. We have to move on. So I wrote down two questions here. I wasn't sure if these were good, so I was hoping that the group would save me. But I wrote, can you remain indifferent after reading this? That's question number one. And I just wrote something very simple in broad and generic, but maybe it works. Does it make you feel something by reading this? So those are two of the same questions, what do you guys think? I'm pretty sure that second one, just rephrase the question. First of all, yeah, which one do you like better? Alec like the first one, a lot better. OK, let me try to remain indifferent, I think is a lot better. One I love that one. It implies that there is a response and that my whole problem with answering this question is really need the response, right? Like, you know, if someone felt something, if they respond with emotion, right? Right but you can't. We're trying to rate this before they respond. And so that might be a good criteria. So there's two ways that we can look at this. After you write your story, you need to go through this checklist and see if you hit it. If you can't score positive or whatever the affirmative is on each one of these. Then you have to go back and say, well, what can I do to engineer a story that's going to do this? If you don't have a struggle in there, it's going to be problematic. I already know that. OK And then the second part to this is when your performance partner or your chat buddies post their story and they say, what do you think? We don't want to just say, I like it. I don't like it. We want to say, well, I don't recognize where the struggle is. Or I'm not feeling anything after reading this. And it would be more relatable and empathetic if you did this. You see how it changes it from being subjective to being much more objective and neutral without judgment. And that way we're not reacting or defending. We're hearing, we're going to respond. That's the goal. OK the takeaway? This one is not going to be 10 minutes. We don't have enough time. I think so. I'm going to give you guys six minutes. And we're going to do the takeaway, is there a let's go back to here? With a clear takeaway, it has to have a clear takeaway. OK, so what criteria are we going to use to determine if the story as the clear takeaway? Criteria, OK, use only Yes or no questions. OK, that's it. Here you guys go. Everybody clear about that. Six minutes opening all the rooms. See you guys in six minutes. Right here, we're back on the record, so I'm going to share my screen again. Where are you? Screen? all right. So let's figure out what you guys came up with. If there's a clear takeaway. All right. Who's go ahead and raise your hands? I wouldn't do this democratically, just without explanation, without story. Just tell me what the question is. Ok? and Alec, why don't you take over and tell me who's up? All right, it looks like kezia is first. Uh-huh because, yeah, so we were in room 3 and we came up, but did it start a conversation? OK did it start a conversation, ok? This one feels a little off to me in terms of a clear takeaway. Well Yeah. A takeaway, something I can walk away with. So it almost is the opposite. If it did a start, a conversation. OK, so all right. I'm saying. Yeah, OK. Another one. Go ahead. Did you change someone's perspective? OK did you change someone's? Perspective, ok? Did it change someone's perspective, OK, let's vote in terms of is this the criteria we need to use to make sure there's a clear takeaway? Thumbs up, everybody that thinks this. OK, I'm not seeing an overwhelming amount. Yeah, I'm sorry, I have to actually agree with the group here. OK, let's move on to the next person, Alec, who's up next? Thank you very much for trying, keziah. Well, next is Tim Mintzer, Tim, who I just spoke to. What's that part of your group? Yes, go ahead. My question is, does this story have a clear lesson or does it have a clear lesson? OK does the story have a clear lesson? OK OK. I almost feel like this is almost literally exactly describing the word take, but just using a different word. So this story have a clear takeaway. And another synonym for takeaway is lesson. Uh, as the admin here, I'm going to say that's not super helpful. But if you said this is a story, you have a singular point. Well, a clear take away can have multiple points. I'd argue. Let's keep going. How do we know when you see something, when you see or another way story? But is there a lesson to be learned? Is there a lesson to be learned? OK, Chris, I have an idea for us to get through all this. Real quick, how about we rapid fire everyone? Say the question, you write them down and then we vote afterwards instead of discussing each question individually. I can't write that fast, OK, but I have another suggestion. I'm going to tell you some of the questions I wrote. Maybe they'll help, but I did think about this and see, it's like, we think that we're pros now and we're still trying to struggle through this. So here's the criteria I use if I read something, if I watch a video, what actions do I take that? Let me know it's valuable. That there's a takeaway here. OK, I'm not going to tell you my answer just yet. You see what I'm saying, like when you read a book, what lets that's a good book, that it's full of nougat. When you watch a video, what do you do? What actions do you take? That let you know it's full of takeaways. And when you read a post on Instagram, or on LinkedIn, what do you do, what actions do you take? OK, I hope that helps. Now please use that as a filter. Look at the question that you were going to volunteer as part of your group and see if that changes your answer because I'm trying to live. Facilitate this with you. What I want to do, and this is a larger kind of discussion about pedagogy and teaching methodologies, which is I want to create the circumstances in which you can arrive at the answer without me telling you. Because I could have just started this video and told you everything, all the answers in five minutes and we wouldn't have to think at all. But if you don't think you don't own it and I want you to own this, I want you to learn the process and the framework and to be super critical when you are trying to design your own course. OK, so what actions do you take on a personal level when you see something that has a clear takeaway, somebody else give me a question based on that. You share this story. OK OK. Who's who's this talking? Go ahead. Can you share it? OK all right. That's that's the one right there. OK are you likely to share this? No take away, no sharing. That's pretty fair. Yeah yeah, what comes to mind to me is, do I save it and do I take notes on it? So if I see something good? Yes, Yes. Hold on one time. Sure will you save this and are you likely to take notes? OK, and there's a female voice before you jumped in there because there are two women who said something. Who's the other person? Yes, it was me, and I was also going to talk about taking notes. Beautiful see, now it's starting to make sense. You guys see this. You guys are getting the game. Yeah OK. A couple of nuts, everybody else. Give me the stone face, I get it. That's fine. But I have one question about this, Chris, because this is again, this is towards the audience. This is as an author, we don't know if the audience is going to take notes. Right, right. So, Tim, you're absolutely right. But here's the thing. We're using this to judge ourselves, and we're using this to help our friends and partners in this. So just can switch your brain off for a second and say, if I'm reading somebody else's story, am I likely to share this? Will I save this? Am I likely to take notes? That's you become an ally. You know, it's a really good indicator that this is becoming This is a piece of valuable content. OK, so Moe is saying, do you become an ally? I'm not sure I can have takeaways without becoming an ally. Is this actionable? Can you take immediate action? OK, have you. Have you seen something where it's a clear takeaway, but it's not actionable? Yeah. And I take one more. Go ahead. I think there is a question in the emotional section, but I think it fits perfectly here. It's can you remain indifferent after reading this? Ok? well, since it's already an emotional part, we'll save it for the emotional and we won't duplicate it here. Yeah and may I ask one more high, Walmart, does it, does it force the reader to create a task on to do list? Well, that's a lot of strong language there. Yeah, go ahead. Are you going to? I'll read, I'll read something and it's like, yes, I must like create my freelancer matrix in the next three months. That's what kind of comes to mind. That's a to do list. It has a date, and I have to do it. OK I think that's my personal opinion. It's almost too strong of a criteria because I know I watch videos and read books all the time. I'm not jumping to do list. Right, OK. But if I'm likely to share it, if I'm highlighting things as a part of my note taking, and if I'm saving this for later, which I do, often I drag a meme off the internet and put it into a folder to deal with because I know there's something there, it's good. So this is pretty strong, I think if somebody has a really good one, I'll hear it, but otherwise I think we're pretty good. I need to do something else and I can't spend more time on this, unfortunately. Does anybody have a super strong when they're just dying to tell me? It might have something as found here. Was there a specific aha moment? I think that's pretty good. Just really quickly, is that the same as challenging your beliefs, having that aha moment? No, it isn't. I don't think so. Peter, I want to answer that question, but it's going to derail me. So let's just hold on. OK all right. OK, here's what I need to do because we're going to run out of time here. I'm going to review. The work. OK, so I'm going to stop sharing this way so I can go full screen. And I'm going to share it this way. OK, now a few people participate in this, and I like that you did, because there's opportunities to learn. So first up is Mo and Mo. He has got the deep, bassy voice that you've heard before. And here's his story. Copy and paste it from LinkedIn. And the picture that you see here is the image that he shared with this post. And I want you to remember this picture as we're going to look over his post. OK, now I've reformat it because it was hard to kind of put Fonda characters on one page. So we can see what I've done is I've used two colors to identify two key things that are necessary for almost all stories. I have to find the conflict. And so I highlighted the conflict in yellow. He is struggling with his identity. And the lesson learned is the green. This is the ordinary world to the new world where Mo learn to embrace his own uniqueness. Does that make sense. So far? So now I'm looking through his story. And I'm trying to find details of his struggle. And I see descriptions, but not so much him in it. I don't see his pain. He he writes in a very intellectual way, this turned me into a cultural was that camera and multi cross hybrid due to the very nature of modern culture, it's almost too professorial. So the language in which he's using. Starts to create barriers for people to read into, and we have to be very careful about this communication isn't using a big vocabulary, it's about using the language that connects with your audience. And so my suggestion in my critique tomorrow is I love the two parts. I struggled with my identity. I braced my own uniqueness. Now there's two parts of this one. I need more information about you and specifically like what you dealt with your identity in very real ways. Strip away the academic language. Stop being a professor and just tell me as a human like Chris, you know this is what's happened. Like, you're just telling a friend at a bar. And when you learn to embrace your own uniqueness, what were the benefits of that? I also didn't see that in here. So there's some details here. And he says in this last paragraph, it's very clever writing, there's no critique on how he's crafting the story, but I feel like there's still a barrier I have to get through to get to know the real Mo. And he says this in the last sentence, I am comfortable in my dark skin, which is him embracing his own uniqueness, and the clever part is I dream in five languages that talks to his kind of multicultural background. But I want to go deeper with Mao. So here are the questions I have for him is how did you struggle? What were the consequences? And my suggestion is by describing the story in a way that allows us to walk in your shoes to look at the world through your eyes, I'm going to connect with you. And maybe he's still going through this, so he doesn't have yet to tell us what the new world it's like, because in the hero's journey, the hero returns to the ordinary world to share the gifts of his lessons. We need to know what that's like. The last thing I want to say is this picture. I think we need to find a picture that's more vulnerable. That's kind of in whatever environment that you're in, but not looking at camera like as a selfie. I'd like to see something candid, something real. Maybe from back when you were in Senegal or in Saudi Arabia or something that really speaks to culture, so that one image almost tells the entire story. The details are in the words you choose. OK, next up is Lee Hanson. I may have misspelled annaliese name there. OK this is annaliese picture. So it's so remember this picture. And then let's look at the story. Now, I've added something here, and I've underlined key words or phrases because they support the story, so the struggle was I was afraid people would laugh at me. And so she paints the picture, an analyst, very good at tapping into her emotions and her vulnerabilities. So she's saying, I'm nervous, I'm going to share my dream. Which I couldn't even say out loud, that sounds nuts. Is she afraid and why is she nervous? Well, because she can't speak English. She thinks she's not good enough. Those are the parts I highlighted. And then she says, but my dream is stronger than my fears. That's the takeaway. Let your dreams drive you versus living under your fears. And then we're now also not seeing the benefits of this take away this life lesson. The reason why it's this case is because it's fairly new, it's very recent that this has happened. So if you dive deeper back into your history and your timeline, you'll be able to pull out stories that you already know the consequences and the benefits of. And we'll see that in a second. OK, so here is what was the ordinary world? The green is what's the takeaway in the outcome, and it's clear the dream to dream and let your dream be stronger than your fears. And if she can drive that point more clearly, it'll make the story even stronger. And here is when she talks about and this is a question for you as you're reading other people's stories. How did they cross the threshold for her? It was jumping on an Instagram live, exposing herself to her English and speaking to someone me that she was nervous to talk to. There's the very good points in this story. Lots to learn. And now here's Matthew and Zena just crushing it. Here are the images that he chose, and he chose three images. I just put two up here. The awkward, doubtful like it's see, it's candid. It's like weird. It shows like even the way it's framed, like he's lower than me in this picture, even though we're very similar in height, right? So there's a sense of vulnerability there, and then he shows the outcome, so you don't even need to read the rest of the story. These two images tell it. OK Matthew struggle, no one will care about what I have to say. Look how you begins the story right up the car crash. The proximity of the struggle to the beginning of the story, I think increases the chances that somebody will read all of your story. What's the conflict, he says? So right up front and look at how many underlying things I pointed out here in his story. So no one will care about my story. I have doubts. I teach something on YouTube. That's nuts, right? Coming up with ideas. Please put yourself on mute being on camera. He wanted to be perfect. He hated the sound of his voice. He wasn't good enough. He didn't want to look bad. And he had 26 versions of doing something. Look how clearly he paints this very vivid picture for you to understand the struggle, the details here. Allow you to relate to him or not. Each time he gives you a detail, the audience is not literally doing this, but they're raising their hand and they're saying, me too. I've been there. So, Mo, if you can look at this and are like, OK, this is the clue. So you struggle with identity, I want to know how they could be like short bit-sized phrases like this. A lot of good editing happening with Matthew story. And if I know Matthew and I think I do, he probably wrote this a lot of times and just crafted and crafted the hell out of this. So that's so compact and potent. The lesson learned, the green part is I switched my thinking to be valuable to others isn't quite phrased that way, but that is the lesson. And the result is I produced dozens of videos with millions of views. I'm better at articulating myself. I'm more comfortable. And now I'm invited to speak. See, the hero has returned and he's sharing the gifts or the boons of his adventure to this ordinary world. So he tells you. So in the story, he tells you how you cross the threshold, what the benefits of the decision were. And now you also maybe need to craft a little bit what the key takeaway is. So if he had a little bit of that in there, it would have sharpened the lesson. The takeaway would be super, super clear. And you can see and the reactions of his post, how many people are cheering him on. OK last but not least. Mo Ismail, so to modes in the group here. Different Mo. So here's Mo's story. OK the conflict, the struggle is dreaming way too small. So he come he came to the realization he was dreaming too small. Look how far into his story that appears. Notice also. Not a lot of details about how he's dreamt small. I'm looking through there and I'm not seeing a whole lot. He's almost transcribing a real experience. And that's not necessarily helpful for a storyteller. The takeaway is dream bigger, it's the opposite of what he did, which was he was dreaming too small, so the answers to dream bigger. Duh so it would have been more powerful and persuasive if you found a way to say this in a different way versus just flipping the statement, you know, dream small. Dream big. Not a gigantic aha moment to Peter Lamb's question. Like a big revelation. The benefits. We don't know, because this is also very recent. So when you tell a story that you're going through in real time, you're going to struggle a little bit more with the benefits, and that's OK. So spend more time talking about the pain and the struggle and what challenges await you as you continue down this journey. OK that's where you have the relapse and the Resurrection, so you can focus on the relapse where you catch yourself reverting to the old ways. So we don't know where the refuse of the call is. The takeaway wasn't super sharp because dream bigger. Yeah, I get it. What was it? Call to action? It was right there. Hey, man, you're dreaming too small. OK, so we're coming up to the end of our call today. Here's challenge number two. It's going to sound familiar to everybody that's participating and challenge number one. I'm hoping for a greater percentage participation. Of course, I'm not here to police you to tell you what to do. I'm just going to encourage you quietly on the side here, which is to write a story. So this will look really familiar, because it's literally where we started. I want you all to write a story to tell it, tell a personal story that lists it's an emotional response with a clear takeaway. I will be posting the rubric, the grading criteria for you to look at your own story so you can evaluate it for yourself. OK, so I've simplified this from last time the story elements. There's a character that's you, and the character has to be attractive, meaning there's details about you. There's struggles and imperfect characters and attractive character. A character that has a worldview that might polarize people is attractive. So Mo talked about his multiculturalism, about growing up in one place and moving around and speaking five different languages, maybe never feeling quite at home and trying to find a place for himself that's highly relatable. So what does he want? He wants to learn to love his dark skin and his multiculturalism. His obstacles may be his environment, his own self-belief, so he has that anxiety of a call. OK, so the post limit on LinkedIn is 400 characters. That's not a lot. That's just a little bit more than Twitter, it feels like tag for friends from the group, your breakout group, have them comment on your post and you comment on their posts using the rubric. Now to drive engagement. To drive engagement, you want to post thoughtful commentary, not Yo, bro. You nailed it or straight fire because that doesn't really drive engagement. If you want to establish yourself as a thought leader, someone to pay attention to, really take the time. Use the rubric and use that as a lens in which to provide. Meaningful, critical, constructive feedback. And you'll start to see your growers or your followers or on LinkedIn and people who want to connect with you. We'll start to increase. It's a challenge, I know. Let's talk about this a little bit. Van had posted something like, Oh my god, it was. It was hard to get 400 characters, so she did something. She created an article and articles do not perform as well as posts. Last I checked. OK, so you have to learn, and I'm going to share with you right now. My my document. So it's going to show you how nuts I am, too. So I just want to let you know I'm just as crazy as you are even crazier. Here we go, I'm going to share this. It's here. OK who this is. The original draft of something I posted with my face on the brand's magazine. It's just a mess and there's like fragments down here. You see this, it's like, Oh my god, I can't get anywhere about this, ok? And then I write it again. Here it is. It's getting shorter. OK, it's starting to work. And then I pasted this into LinkedIn and says, you're 1,400 characters over the limit. I read it again. I read it again. And then I think this is the semifinal draft here. This is a lot how much storage space you have to use to tell your story. It's not a lot. But what's interesting is I don't look at the limitations of the character limit is something to hold me back. It just forces me to remove unnecessary details. If you start with the struggle, if you focus on the key takeaway, you'll then only add the elements that are necessary to construct a story to pay off in the struggle and then the learning outcome, which is your takeaway. Does that make sense. Because I can tell you my entire life story and it's not going to, it's not going to matter, it's not going to add up to the story that I want to tell. This is really critical. Use the limitation to force yourself to reduce it down to the absolute essential. Another thing I noticed, I saw this on Mo Mo's post, he was using a lot of line breaks and quotes, and he was almost writing it like a screenplay or a rap or something. And you'll notice on LinkedIn it only previews a couple of lines. If you space is so far out, they're going to read 1 and 1/2 lines and they better be really hooky 1 and 1/2 lines because otherwise nobody's going to look at it. Something else I notice about Moe he hadn't posted in like eight or nine months because his last previous post was ages ago. So his inactivity is not going to help him. So what we want to do is we will make the intentional. Take intentional action every single day to develop a new habit. You got to do it because algorithm the algorithm is going to love you for it. Don't let it between now and the next full moon to write your next post. I'd love to see you right, at least one story, but if you can do more than one, you're off to something good. If you can go back into your archives and find an image that's going to grab people's attention as kind of like the illustration to your story, you're going to get the two working for you in synchronicity, image and words combined together make a very powerful thing. OK, Mo, you wanted to say something your hands up. No sorry, can you hear me? I can hear you now. OK awesome. I just remember Matthew, when he posted his piece, he had the short version version on LinkedIn, but then repurposed his like a previous draft that was longer on medium. So he's sort of extending the shelf life of one article. And I was wondering because Anna gave me feedback on my article and a lot of the things that you've mentioned. Was lack of courage basically? Which now I'm aware of, and I sort of want to push that a step further with giving specific examples of what those struggles were. And so on and so forth. Now that piece is out there, does it make sense to rewrite it and say post it on Facebook or somewhere? Or did I miss that? I miss a momentum? Should I wait a little bit longer. And so on and so forth? No, no, no. OK, a couple of things you brought up here. Very good points. So what's really beautiful is you can learn how to tell a short story. You can learn how to tell a long story. It doesn't always work the opposite way. If you can say in a tweet, you really know what you're saying because it's hard to write it something profound in Twitter's character limitations, right? So you'll have multiple drafts and I like Matthew strategy, which is to make one piece of content work really hard for you. So medium, there's no character limit on Facebook. don't think there's a character limit, either. You can write pretty long. So if you feel so compelled that once you got your short story right, go go write the long article and see if that works for you. What I would do is I would not go back to LinkedIn to rewrite that story right now because it feel like I just read this, but use what you've learned. Apply to another platform. And based on the results on how you feel about that at some point, go back and tell another version of the story. Zoom all the way in into one moment and really paint a very vivid picture of a time when you felt you didn't know your own identity. OK because there are many, I promise you, there are many, almost an unlimited amount. OK, thank you very much, Mo. Anna and what is the criteria for you to pick the story for a critic, for a critic? What is my criteria? Yeah first of people who tagged me the first four people who attacked me that I can remember last night at midnight. I'm like, Oh my god, I'm so tired right now. What are those four stories again? I just crawl through the internet. I just pulled them off real quick. But it's encouraging for people who worked on it for an entire week. You know, like, I don't know how to answer that question. There are hundreds of you and I don't know what to do. How should I do it on AI don't know. You tell the criteria. What is the. I just told you the criteria I would do the worst. want to work for a criticism. What should I do? I'll critique your work next time. No, I think that's unfair to the other people. So you have to give yourself something, ok? I don't know what you want to be first. Take me, make it like, you know, like, get some energy behind it and then I will read it for sure. And then is the problem if it's not on anything, I don't have it yet, I'm already too spread out. Oh no. It's also looking on LinkedIn right now because the criteria for this group is to help you get business leads to generate opportunities for you as a speaker, as a writer, clients, whatever, as a person of influence. And I think right now LinkedIn is really where you need to spend your energy. And Instagram. OK make it on Instagram, then OK, then you have to copy paste the story for me so I can have the text. It's tricky like that. But here's the thing. OK, so what is teaching all about, right? So in the beginning, students model themselves after the teacher. So the teacher does demos. But there's a kind of more modern approach to this, which is a transference of how the teacher observes the world and how the teacher decides or how they make choices. So what I want to do is to make the greater like habit of sharing with you how I look at things so you can figure out how you look at things. This is the way I do it. How do you want to do it? Here's how I'm making decisions as to this is good or this needs improvement or this is not good. And if I share those choices with you and we did it together more or less, then you have the same skills of observation and decision making. So the idea is you should be able to critique your work as good as anybody in this group, including myself. That's the goal. I'm working towards that goal. So, Anna, you will feel like god, I have the exact same feedback as I would have. If you were doing a one on one with me. That's the goal. That's a long way of me saying there are no guarantees post early. I respond to first movers. That's just the bottom line. If you're a first mover and it's piece of crap, I probably won't respond, so it still has to be good. But take action. Immediate action have a bias towards action. That's how you get results. Chris, can you post this? Oh, go ahead, Ana and then Mo. No, and then Tim, I'll post it on Instagram. I'm just saying, OK, OK, talk may soon. Fast, ok? All right. Hello go ahead. Can you post this deck? Maybe just a part of the criticism so we can see what people did right and wrong and the questions you asked. Yes and I'll really make it clear, like almost all the questions were Yes. Maybe one of them was meant to be no. So like, they should all be yeses. All right. Whatever it is. Use this as your own checklist, please. Tim, did you want to say something? I saw a little movement from, you know? OK, good. Anybody else? David Coe said there was a bunch of messages and people had their hands up. I'm so sorry. I mean, I have to push through the call at some point. We have these long breakout rooms. And so David, is there something that you saw that I missed that I need to address? Now, OK, good. OK any final thoughts? Because I have a question for you, if there are no final thoughts. OK my question for you is what is holding you back from posting? I'd love to know if you didn't participate in the last challenge and you were on the call. I just want to know because I want to help. I have a question. I feel like if I just keep telling my stories and I'm not focusing on being a brand strategist and talking about brand strategy, then people won't get that. I'm a brand strategist. Oh, that's very interesting. OK, Maggie. So this is where I'm going to say to you, this is a long game. It's the infinite game. And if you try to think one effort equals 1 client, I think you're going to play a different game, you're going to play the game of advertising and you're just going to talk about your services and your products and your offerings all the time. And to point, you have to do that. But I don't think that's how you're going to build a community. And one of the best people that I know about who does branding is Aaron Kaplan, and all he does is tells his personal story all the time, and you get to know who he is and what better way than for you at some point in the near future in the next three to six months to build organically an audience that shows up for you as a person who tells their story in open and transparent and vulnerable ways, that's empowering and enriching the lives of others to say, shouldn't we pay attention to Maggie since she does such a wonderful job? Of branding herself, can we use that talent for us and why aren't we smart enough to hire her? OK play the long game. Remember, it's not about transaction, it's more about transformation, and if you can do that, you're going to create. So much more value for yourself. It takes time. This is not an overnight scheme, it's not. It's work, it's hard. And I want it to be hard and I want it to be hard work. OK, thank you very much, mahi. And Thanks for staying up with us, I know it's late or early, OK, anybody else? And then I have one quick story to share and then I'm going to bounce. Good once. OK, there's a lot of people were just saying in the chat. Fear of judgment, fear of judgment. OK, so you can do a meta post about your challenge to the challenge if you want. That is like an adaptation, that story where the writer could not convert the novel to a screenplay. So he wrote about the struggle of writing the screenplay of the novel. It's actually a pretty brilliant strategy. So give that a try. Say I was challenged like the call to action, I was challenged by my group and I struggle with being judged. And I'll tell you why, because growing up this happened. And it made me feel this way. And to this day, I have physical reactions to this idea. Look at my pits, get sweaty. I break out in hives, I get goosebumps just even telling you this. And then keep going on with the story. Having a clear struggle, and if you feel it in very real ways, we'll make the story better. OK at some point we just got to let that go. I see hero and Mo have their hand up hero quickly. So real quick. So just to confirm the insight. The goal, basically long term goal from what we're doing right now is to get people to connect with us more like to hear like I'm trying to just see what we should do that. Yes, OK. You want the long term plan? I'm happy to share with you the long term plan. The long term plan is to make it easier for people to find you than your competitor to make people fall in love with who you are as a creative human being and then to hire you for the services you want to sell them or the products you want to sell. Right now, we're just at the beginning stages of helping you find your voice in the world and to get used to creating content in a way that's not overly taxing on time, commitment and is really just the easiest thing to do, which is to tell your story. Find parts in your life. To share with other people that are lessons learned. Keep doing that. If you guys need a prompt, this is an easy problem. Think about every person. Who taught you a lesson? Tell that story because they were the mentor in your story? OK long term, it's a content game play for you to develop marketing skills, and if you trust me, I hope you do. If you trust me, I will take you to the promised land, but you have to do this work. I've tried many different ways to get you there, and this is my latest scheme. I will call it a scheme because that's what it is. OK, Mo quickly. And then I'm going to finish up. I just wanted to ask in terms of the nature of the content, you know, you also don't want to just share struggles. You don't want to be the guy that's that's, you know, has the heavy post or this or that. Like, how do you maintain interest by should you vary the takeaways like positive ones sharing teaching, like how do you balance the content that you create? I'm going to answer this in the most mysterious, enigmatic way possible. OK, Mo. Blade runner Harrison Ford says this is test work and he's like, show me a run. The tests on a positive and I'll show you a negative. So what I want you to do? That's a horrible way of describing that scene in Blade Runner Tyrell Corporation. I want you to go so deep and so vulnerable with a struggle point that you're like, there, I know what that looks like, and then you can back off on that. I want you to go to that level and then we'll see where to back off, and you'll see that the results will probably most likely shock and surprise you. OK in a very positive way. Now let's talk about something here, and I want to wrap up last week somebody reached out. And asked me if I'm interested in doing, I think it's called jumpstart for entrepreneurs organization, and if you know anything about eo, I've been to one of their meetings before to be a member of EO. I think you have to make more than a million a year. And the average that people make as entrepreneurs in Rio is 5 plus million. And they found me through Instagram. This woman who is in charge of the she staff at E0 and she's in charge of learning, she has a master's or PhD and in teaching. And she's, I think in South America. She reached out, and she's like, we would like to inquire, to see if you're interested in teaching an influencer social influence thing for our EEO members all over the world. And it's been a very interesting discussion. So she just sent an email to me last night and said, look, we don't have a lot of money to do this. I'm like, how could you not write? But we can start with $10,000 for you to teach us. To create a 21 day program where there's a lot of self-study. And then some lectures that you do, maybe three lectures or three meetings with us. And I thought, this is so wonderful. And of course, I asked her, how did you find me? And she's like, I just searched like business influence something and you just popped up all over the place. So what I'm talking about right now in answer to my question is we are like Johnny appleseed, we're planting a lot of seeds, some will bear fruit, some will die. Some will wither away. But we have to plant those seeds. And when you want to collect the fruits of your labor will be months, sometimes years from now. But the work needs to be done today if you want it to bear fruit. It does take time and I'm very excited because imagine at some point somebody's probably paying money to be in front of a global community of millionaires. Think how powerful that is and to position yourself as a person who can teach something that they might find to be valuable. See how this game works, hero. You plant the seeds today. You got to plant those seeds and I'm going to help you. Step by step, we'll get there together. All right. Now, having said that, I'm going to hit Stop on the recording. Thank you very much, everybody. The recording is.