Speak up or miss out
The right – and wrong – ways to tell your story
Your story is a secret weapon for turning your audience into a community. But how much of that story should you share? At what point does compassion become cringeworthy, and openness become oversharing?
The audience vs. community distinction is important. Entrepreneur and founder of Smart Passive Income, Pat Flynn, illustrated it beautifully:
“An audience is like a group of people sitting in a large room while you’re on the stage presenting to them. …Community is the large room you’re all inside after the presentation, where people are meeting and getting to know each other.”
Communities are popping up like dandelions. As the people in your audience decide which virtual space they want to join, one of the deciding factors will be how much they relate to your story.
The question is – how much of your story should you tell?
Hive members recently had a wonderful back and forth around this topic. From that conversation, I’ve drawn some of The Hive Mind’s guidelines around sharing your story.
1. Share the bloopers as well as the highlight reel.
Of course you want to share the highlights of your story. They’re inspiring, and they’re the reason people trust you.
Trust is important to an audience. But to a community, so is connection. It’s hard to connect with someone who seems perfect.
For your audience to become your community, they must find you both knowledgeable and relatable. It’s a delicate balance between authority and empathy.
In an article in The Harvard Business Review, Warren Bennis and Robert J. Thomas wrote that one of the most reliable indicators of true leadership is a leader’s ability to share “crucible moments” – narratives of how they were faced with a negative event, met the challenge, and learned from it.
To do this well, tell a specific story about how you overcame a challenge in your business. Don’t sugarcoat your own crucible moment. That honest peek behind the curtain shows resilience and problem-solving skills, making you both inspirational and relatable.
2. But don’t take it too far.
While you share stories of your flops and foibles, be aware of the line between “empathetic” and just “pathetic.”
Share enough of your story to show you are human and relatable. But don’t share so many of your doubts and failures that you erode trust. Your audience must still be confident in your ability to lead and to guide.
3. Remember why you’re sharing this story.
Stories are for the benefit of the audience, not the storyteller. The tales you tell should add meaning to your audience’s struggles and desires.
That time you encountered a bear on the trail might make a great anecdote, but that doesn’t mean you should build content for your business community around it.Ask yourself: How is this story relevant to the person I'm trying to serve? How does it add value to their journey?
4. Telling your story can be cathartic, but beware of treating your audience like group therapy.
Don’t tell a story until you have enough emotional distance to see how your audience can draw value from it. As author Glennon Doyle said, “You have to be still with your pain before you can offer it up and use it to serve and connect with people you don’t know.”Theologian Nadia Bolz-Weber once advised to "Share from scars, not wounds." Your experiences can inspire others, but only after you've processed them yourself.
In the end, the story isn’t about you at all; it’s about how your audience feels when they hear it.
5. Invite others into the story.
People long to be part of something bigger than themselves. That’s a key reason we join communities in the first place.
As your community evolves and grows, your story becomes intertwined with the stories of your members. Their experiences become part of your collective narrative.
Look for ways to tell this shared story through the eyes of your members. Highlight real people not as self-congratulatory testimonials, but as relatable examples your audience can learn from and aspire to.
In the end, storytelling is like any other part of your community-building journey. Sometimes you’ll get it right, sometimes you won’t. But if you act from a place of empathy and keep your audience’s needs front and center, you’ll succeed more often than not.
Your story matters,
PS. Speaking of community members with inspiring stories, remember Hive member Amber Melanie Smith whom I told you about last week? Tomorrow, July 16, she's hosting a free workshop where she'll teach you how to use YouTube to grow your audience and convert subscribers into members. While The Hive's doors are currently closed, this workshop is a perfect opportunity to get a sneak peek inside. 🐝
If you're curious about using video to move people from your presentation to your virtual community space – i.e., from audience to community – you won't want to miss it. It's a great opportunity to learn how to leverage telling your story on YouTube to build a sense of belonging.
🐝 The Hive is a space where leaders learn together and support one another on their shared journey to build and scale profitable, meaningful communities.
Join the waitlist and be one of the first to know when doors open this fall.