How to Speak to Sell Using Conversion Stories with Colin Boyd

You're listening to the PT Profit podcast, episode number 173. Today I'm sitting down with Colin Boyd, and we're talking all about how to speak to sell using conversion stories. Are you ready? Let's get started. Hi, I'm Beverly Simpson, former fitness manager turned online personal training business owner. And this podcast is where smart fitness professionals, including trainers and clinicians, discover how to increase client performance and movement, package and position their products and services and get out of their own way so that they can increase their revenue to live a life that they love without sleazy sales. Welcome to the PT Profit Podcast. What's up, coach? Thank you so much for pushing play on another episode of the PT Profit Podcast. I'm your host, Beverly Simpson, and if this is the first time you're here, welcome. Thank you so much for hanging out with me today. I'm very excited to bring to you this episode, which is a conversation I had with someone I really admire. I've learned a ton from, and that is Colin Boyd. Colin Boyd is the founder and creator of his signature program, Sell from Stage Academy. He helped people create and deliver presentations that connect with their audience and convert them into clients. He's obsessed with helping experts and entrepreneurs grow their business through virtual and live stages, specifically with the use of conversion stories, which we actually unpack in this episode. So when you stay till the end, you'll walk away knowing how best to create your conversion story so that you can start impacting more people, connecting with more people, and having more conversions. Colin is the CSP and NLP practitioner and ICF certified coach, and he's helped hundreds of entrepreneurs, and some of his clients include Coca Cola, Suncorp, Fiji, Hewlett Packard, just to name a few. So get ready for this episode, and without further ado, let's go ahead and roll that interview. What's up, Colin? Thanks so much for joining me on the show today. How are you?

Hey, it's a pleasure to be here, Beverly. I'm excited.

I am super excited to dive into today's episode. So for those of you who have not had the pleasure of learning from this brilliant genius, Colin, I'd love for you to share with us a little bit about who you are, who you serve and how you got there.

So I help people to craft and share a message from a stage so that people get clients rather than just claps. And so a lot of the people that I help are very good at what they do. They've got a solid skill set. They've done the research, they've done the learning but they have trouble communicating that in a way of absolute certainty to their audience where the audience doesn't just go, that was great information. They actually go, wow, how can we take this next step? And so that's how I help people.

That's amazing. So how did you get into that? Tell us a little bit about the journey.

I started out as a life coach. So I was studying life coaching. This was 13 years ago. I was in Australia at the time, we live in California right now. But I'd come out of training and development. I was in the corporate world. And then I heard about this idea of life coaching. I think my grandma said, like, how on earth can you be a life coach? You're like 20, 28 years old. And I look back now and she had it, she had a point. So I'm studying life coaching and I'm learning all about the structure of how to create change in people. And it was just phenomenal. Really enjoying the process. The problem was that I didn't have any clients. And so I'm sitting in my two bedroom office. I was newly married with my amazing wife. We've been married for 16 years and where. But I'm like a year into my marriage I'm wanting to like you know, be a great husband and make a difference. And I've got this like business that's basically. I had half a client, let's call it half a client because they would sometimes show up and sometimes pay me and I'm sure no one can relate to that. And so I'm sitting in my two bedroom apartment on the wrong side of the railway tracks, literally. And, and my phone rings of my landline and I pick it up and it's one of my buddies from the coaching space I was in and he said, hey, I've got this presentation coming up that I can't do. He said I was given it from one person and it was given to me. And he goes, I can't do it either. Can you do it? It's free. So obviously this is like a really high quality lead, right? So everyone's playing hot potato with it, no one wants it. And I go, sure, I'll take it. And I remember I spoke with the event organizer, I got really nervous about it and I came into the evening, it was literally a dark and stormy night. I'm walking up the stairs, the event organizer comes over to me and he's like, Colin, you wouldn't believe this biggest event we have ever had. We've got 137 people in the room and this is bad news. This is bad news. I'm just like way to deliver bad news because in my mind I'm just thinking I'm just going to look like an absolute idiot in front of more people. Right? That's, that was the meaning I'd created from this experience. And I, I get up there, I share. It was actually at a university event, so it was a master's program graduation night. It's like so random and I speak and I share and then at the end I made an offer. Now what I didn't realize at the time, it was an irresistible offer because out of the 137 people, 125 of them gave me their personal details. To follow up, I had a little fishbowl jar that I got from the 99 cent store at the back, but I literally had 125 pieces of paper with people's names and details on there. So I followed it up and did a whole bunch of like free coaching. And from there I ended up signing 12 full time paying clients. So I'm from zero to hero in my own mind of like building my coaching business. Four days later a director from HP calls me and says, love the presentation. Can you come and speak at our next global training day? And that ended up having five and a half thousand people at it at my first paid speaking event. And for me what happened was I had this like revelation that literally in one presentation, your entire business can change, your entire life can change. And so that for me got me really curious and obsessed about the idea of what does it mean to speak in a way that generates clients. And I really wanted to do it in a way that wasn't pushy and salesy and all that sort of stuff. And so that, that for me started, that was the trigger that started my journey of teaching what I do.

Now that's amazing. Now I do have a question on it, but just one quick follow up. Did your friends who couldn't go to the event, were they like kicking themselves.

They didn't do it? I have actually. I mean I chat the guy who referred me to it, I chat with him literally almost every other day still like he's an absolute legend and yeah, I should, I should ask him that. Thanks for my signature story.

Amazing. Ok, so this is a great lead in, is that, you know, in that moment, you know, in addition to having that irresistible offer, what would you say attributed to these, the success of communicating the value of this irresistible offer?

I think that, I mean there's so many elements to like communicating a valuable offer, but one, one of the big, one of the big things is making sure that you're really clear on the one belief that your audience has to believe in order to take the next step with you. And so this is essentially building a belief around or getting a clear articulation of your core premise, of the core thing that if the audience believes this, then taking the next step will be a logical thing. So when I'm teaching selling from stage, that's kind of where I usually start of like that core premise belief.

Okay, cool. So now they have their core premise and we know that, like, this is the one thing they have to be on board. So like, if we're going to talk about this in terms of science, it's like they have to believe that habit training is the way to get the fastest and fittest the fastest and most efficient way possible. Right. So then how do you start to craft the stories around them believing that this is the core premise?

Yeah, well, there's so many different ways that you can, you can like persuade someone to, to believe something. And it's not about getting them to believe something that isn't true or like is, is, you know, misleading. What it's about is, is realizing that your presentation, the purpose of your presentation essentially is to articulate an idea so that someone takes an action. And that action could be, maybe they change their habits, right? That might be the action that you get them to take. I mean, what, like there's no. If you, if you're presenting and you're not trying to persuade someone a certain way, what's the point of presenting? It's just a whole bunch of random information. And so first of all, you have to realize that, that if, if you don't study how to be persuasive in what you do, you're actually doing a disservice to your audience. Because what you're doing is you know the science, you know the information behind it, and if you don't know how to articulate it in a way that gets the audience to make a decision, you're actually doing disservice for them because they're going to still be in their research mode as opposed to their decision mode. And so the reason why people don't get results is because they don't make decisions on things. And so one of the most important things that you have to do in a presentation is help someone to make many decisions throughout the presentation so that at the end, when you ask them to make the big decision, whether it be to join your program or whether it be to work with you, or whether it be to make a habit change, that they're ready to make that big shift in their life because they've made like small decisions along the journey in your presentation.

Can you give us some example of small decisions that you bake into your presentations?

Yeah. So this is what we call micro decisions. It's part of like some of our infusion selling stuff. And infusion selling is essentially the big idea of infusion selling is, is speaking and selling at the same time. And so the issue is that we'll come back to the decision in a second. The biggest, the big issue is that people see speaking as, as separate to selling. So they say speaking. So like they speak and then if they have to sell, they transition into a really awkward pitch at the end where.

I laugh because you know it's true. It's like, I'm going to serve, serve, serve. And then they have this weird shift that like somehow selling is not. But then it gets all like clinky.

It gets awkward. Yeah, it gets awkward, exactly. And so like you have to see your presentation as the whole vehicle to selling them into the next thing. And selling is not getting them to do something they don't want to do. Selling is really, it's deeply understanding your audience. There's a lot of integrity to that. It's deeply understanding your audience and articulating your ideas in a way where they resonate. They go, wow, this person really gets me. They understand me to such a level that they build trust with you. And when you present a solution, they are actually willing to take that next step with you to go along the journey. And so there's a great degree of integrity with that. And it also is about aligning their, their desires with the vehicle or the thing that you can help them with. And so a lot of the times when people kind of have a hang up around selling is because they think they, they're taking something away from their audience as opposed to really just facilitating a decision that the audience has been wanting to make for a long time. But they haven't made the, they haven't made that decision because either the pain wasn't enough to change or the desire wasn't enough to drive them, or there is an underlining objection that is stopping them to make that decision. They're the usually the three things that are getting in the way. Not enough pain, not enough desire, or an underlining objection that they're believing that is stopping them to make the. The next thing. So if we come back to decisions, decisions is about. As you move through the presentation, rather than seeing it as just a whole, you know, let's open the fire hose of information on our audience. You actually pace yourself and you have moments of pause where you actually ask questions of the audience. And they could be rhetorical questions. So there could be a question like, you know, in hearing, you know, in hearing this information about this topic, wouldn't you agree that if we could make this decision, then that could create this type of result in our life? Who here can see that? And people would be like, yeah, I can see that. Right. And so it's like, it's a rhetorical question. It's not like a full question, but you can ask real questions as well. I. Whenever I'm helping people to build a webinar or something like that, I'll get them to ask questions like, you know, on a scale of 1 to 10, where are you in this. In this journey that we just unpack? So maybe you talk about, you know, some science around something. Around movement or something, and you say, you know, on a scale of 1 to 10, how well have you mastered this journey or how well have you mastered this skill? And people will be like, usually if you. If you say it well or teach it well, they'll be like, oh, I'm like a two or I'm a three. You know, I'm nowhere near. And then you get them to imagine what it would be like to actually have it at a 9 or a 10. Like, what could that create in their life, which is building desire? So. And then they start to articulate that. They're like, oh, my gosh, I could do this. I could move like that. I could have this relationship with my kids. I could. I could have freedom in my life, right? And then you ask them to actually make a decision to start that journey. And so essentially, you're getting them to commit to elements in your offer that you're going to offer at the end, by the way, you're getting them to commit to elements in your offer before you even reveal your offer. So when you reveal your offer, there is an unconscious decision that they've already made, or conscious decision that they've made throughout the presentation that that's the journey that they want to go on. Then you present your offer, and it just makes logical sense.

It just makes sense. That's so good. Now, one of the things that you said, and I definitely want to bring. I want to bring this up because I've Heard your work before is you were talking about the importance of building trust within your presentation. And I know you've said in the past that a lot of that trust comes from the stories that you tell, like your origin story or experiences that you've gone through that helps build rapport and unconscious rapport with the client. So that's going to encourage more of the yes and more of the decision to the desired outcome. So I'm curious, you know, with that, what are some of the most important stories that we need to bake into our presentations?

Yeah, well, I think one of the big mistakes that people make is, is they tell their origin story and their origin story is the story of the kind of the journey of their career and the evolution of their career and then why they studied what they're studying. And, and really, a lot of the time it's, it's. The purpose of it is like, hey, can. I'm going to, I want you to get to know me and I want you to, I want to show you that I'm credible. That's usually like the intention behind an origin story. I teach what I call a conversion story. And a conversion story may be your origin story or it may not be. And the reason why I say that is that a conversion story is essentially the story that when you share, transfers the belief that the audience needs to believe to say yes to your program or to say yes to the next step or whatever you're presenting. And so because for me, I could tell like 10 or 15 different stories about what I do. And I could, you know, I could tell so many different stories about, about, about my journey, my coaching, all that sort of stuff. But there is actually only about two stories that I share because they're my conversion stories. So there's one story about my first speech I ever presented, which was the one I shared. And then there's one story that I share about the first webinar I ever ran where I had 600 people sign up and only one person bought. And then eventually that product became a multi million dollar product. And I realized that, I realized that there's nothing wrong with the product. I just didn't know how to articulate the value of it. And so there's only two stories. They're the only two stories I share. And so that's because it's a conversion story. And so let's come back to it. The conversion story is the story that aligns with the core premise of what you're trying to articulate for them to believe in, to Take the next step.

Cool. So now part of the conversion story and the core, and the core premise. So what I loved you mentioned, as you said, that it doesn't necessarily have to be your origin story. So when I hear that, I'm thinking in my mind, well, if an example of it not being your origin story is if you help the client, like say you're not the client avatar, you don't always have to be. You want part of that client story to be part of your conversion story.

Yeah, this is an interesting one, especially with people who have a strong degree of like, expertise. Like they haven't maybe gone on the exact journey that their client has gone on. And one of the, this kind of layers to a conversion story, for me personally, the best conversion story is when you are the 2.0 avatar of who they are. So in other words, you, you have had the transformation that you're teaching that. That, that is usually the, the, the best conversion story like basis, raw data that we can draw from to build a conversion story. The next type of conversion story, next layer to it is usually a story where you, you had a big change in your life and you had to make a courageous decision. And then that led you potentially to getting obsessed with your topic. And so a lot of the time, because at the core of a really good presentation is that it helps the audience make a decision, a decision that they've been putting off or didn't know they had to make. And so a great conversion story is actually one where people make a decision where, where you talk about an experience where you had, you were in a tough spot and you had to make a courageous decision to see a big change in your life, and then you can somehow link it to the topic of what you teach. And then that got you obsessed about this topic and then that led you to study this, and then these were the results that you got. And so that's another one. And then the final one is where you're kind of sharing why you're obsessed about the topic and then a journey that a client went on. But the problem with the third type is that that's a case study and case studies absolutely need to be shared inside the presentation no matter what. But so that's why I always say to people like, let's try to find a story that you can share. That first of all, so some of the questions that you have to answer in the first, you know, 10 minutes of a presentation is the audience is asking, are you like me? So first of all they say, are you like me. And so they're trying to find out. And we do this in our story. Not necessarily, you know, do you have the same background? Are you the same ethnicity? Are you like. Like, it's none of that. It's actually, have you experienced struggle like I have? That's the question they're asking. So the first question is, are you like me? The second question is, do you get me? And that question is essentially when you're introducing your topic, your ideas, you're articulating in a way where you're actually hitting on the triggers that they're going, they're nodding. You'll see the audience nodding, right? Or they're typing, yes, that's fully me in the comments. If it's a webinar. And. And they're going, wow, this person, like, gets me. They're like me. They also get me. And the final question, which. Which needs to be revealed in your. In your conversion story is, is the. The question they're asking is, can you lead me? And if you can articulate that in your story that you have the knowledge, the experience, the reputation, that you are a trusted source, all of a sudden, their guard will go down and they are more ready to believe you to take on what you're saying and actually make a decision and trust you to take the next step.

Oh, I love this. So good. Okay, so based on what. What I heard you say, if you're not the avatar, you're having the conversions or having the conversion story connect to your deeper purpose, your why you care about this is truly going to be the first, the second layer, right?

Yes.

So what would you say? Now, this is super powerful. So I'm curious what you would say to someone who's potentially new. Right. So think back to your origin story of, like, when you had half a client and now you. To go into this, you know, share this story, share your expertise, perhaps without some of the evidence or the clinical work behind you to really make a case for why they should trust you. So what would you say to someone who's maybe, like, right at the beginning, how would they craft their origin story or their conversion story?

Well, I think, like, first of all, if you're right at the beginning, that's just part of your journey. Like, you can't be at the end if you're at the beginning. And so sometimes people wish that they were more developed than they were. So first of all, I just want you to realize, like, it's okay to embrace that and to. To do that. And one of the. One of the ways you do that is when you make an offer or when you take on the next thing, you do it from the sense of you actually pitch it as, this is a beta experience. This is something that it's not proven yet. It's something that I understand, it's something that we've worked on, but it's new. It's like a fresh experience. So I know for me, when we launched our, our main, flagship, flagship program, Cell from Stage Academy, first of all, I didn't have a name for it. It was like Colin's speaking program, right?

Colin's awesome beta.

It literally was. It's funny, I look at the testimonials and people are like, in Colin's program, it's like, because I just told him, I said, we don't know what it's called, so just say it's Colin's program, right? So everyone's like, just says, keep saying Colin's program. Like when you launch is that experience. And so first of all, that's okay to have that. I want to give you permission to have that. And when I first launched my beta experience, like, I, I charged very little. I think it was like one tenth of what my program costs now. And, and I told them that, you know, this was a beta experience. This is a trial kind of test run, right? I'm doing the science behind science testing behind this. And now with your origin story with that, I mean, for me, I still, I, I still had a story related around the topic. And so I think you can still have. Usually if you're selling something or you're doing a beta experience or you're into the topic, I mean, first of all, you probably would have some sort of like experience with the topic of if you don't, you probably shouldn't be selling it. So I'm assuming you've got some level of expertise, study experience with it. And so once again, I think you can bring it back to the why of why you're obsessed about this topic. And if you can tell a story about a transformational journey that you've been on or a big revelation that you've had about the topic and the results that it's seen, then usually that's good enough. And so because you want to think about it like stacking the deck for you to sell a program that's, you know, $12,000 from the, from a webinar, straight up someone to buy a 12 or 15 or $20,000 program, like, you need to have mega credibility. But to sell like a $97 program or 197 or something like that, which is kind of what I did when I first started. You actually don't need that much credibility. Like, you just need to be able to articulate what you do and clearly in a way that the audience understands. And they're like, okay, I can trust this guy or girl at this level to take just that next step. So I. I wouldn't stress too much about. Especially if you're starting out, and just embrace that you starting out, you build that credibility along the journey.

So. Good. So when you're, you know, talking about story, like, I'd love for us to just kind of decompress or deconstruct is the word I'm looking for. You know, what are the components of a story that makes it a story?

So in terms of your conversion story, there are three core components. The first component is. Is a level of challenge. And so in other words, the first thing that people connect with, which is that question of, are you like me? Is that you expose in your story that you've been through difficulty, you've been through challenge, you've been through a challenging time in it. And you can articulate it externally of, like, what was happening in the world. But it's really powerful when you articulate it, what you felt like. Like what you were telling yourself, because that's the thing that they. That. That's universal, right? So externally, the things that are. The things that are specific to you, and that creates the visuals of the story. But internally, how you were feeling, what you were telling yourself, the challenges you had, that's the universal aspect of where the audience will go. This person's like me. I know they're a professor. I know they're credible in what they're doing. But you know what? This person's exactly like me. Like, that's kind of what they're saying unconsciously. So the first part is challenge. And then obviously, you go on a journey of. Of where you went from that challenge to. To your journey of that decision point of where you made that decision to, you know, you know, to. To take the big leap in your subject or you had a big revelation of the power of your subject, and then that journey led you to the credibility that you're experiencing in your life now. The results. The results in your life, the results in other people's lives, the accolades, all that sort of stuff. And so you have to first of all, share that journey from challenge to credibility, right? So they're the first kind of two elements of it. The third element Is that you have to align that challenge to credibility story with your core premise. And so most people tell the story, which is usually like their origin story, which is, like, from where they were in their first career and where they went to now, but they don't align it with the core premise. What's fascinating is one of our. I know one of my. One of my students, she is a productivity coach, and she used to tell a conversion story where she would talk about her career and how she was so busy. She was a busy mom. She had. She was, like, overwhelmed. And then she made. She created a system, and then that got her out of overwhelm and all that sort of stuff, which was cool. It was fine. But then she realized that the more powerful conversion story was a moment that. That she had with her daughter at the park, and she was pushing her daughter on a swing, and she wasn't present at all thinking about work. And another. Another person across her. Another adult who she didn't, like, know personally, but just asked her, hey, you know, they're getting to know each other. They said, oh, you know, what. What do you do for fun? What. What do you do outside of. And she was like, fun. She's like. And she's. She sat there and she said, I don't even know what I do. I don't do anything for fun.

I'm laughing because I was just so relatable as a business owner when you're, like, right at the beginning and in the thick of it, you're fine working.

Yeah. She's like, I don't. I don't know what I do for fun. And then. And then she had this moment of. She was like, I've lost who. I've lost who I am in my work, in my motherhood, in everything. Even though she had passion in those things, she was like, I've lost who I am. I've lost my identity. And then she went on this big journey of re. Prioritizing her life and creating the life that she wanted, and that led her to create her productivity planning system. Her name's. Her name's Megan Samwell, by the way. And that led her to create her productivity planning system. But it's like, that is such a more powerful story than the story of working in corporate. And so can you see how, like, a conversion story has actually got a lot of emotion in it? It's got. It doesn't have to be like the corporate story. In fact, a lot of the time, it's more powerful when you find, like, a moment of of really decision or challenge or an epiphany. And it was usually in a darker moment, a moment where you realized you weren't showing up as the version that you wanted to be.

I'm curious, have you ever used stories that, you know, almost have the reverse effect in the sense of, like, I made this decision, or I didn't make this decision and it caused more pain, and then I did a new decision, like, almost like the anti story.

I mean, I'm sure you could. I haven't really, like, gone deep into that stuff, but there's no reason why you couldn't, like, of, like. I mean, there are lots of stories, so there are lots of signature stories that help to articulate a point, and they. They aren't necessarily your conversion story because you're usually only going to have one to two conversion stories. And so then there's signature stories. And signature stories are actually just stories that are that. That are part of your life or part of, you know, what you do. And then. Yeah, the point.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's where that would live. Your conversion story is like, challenge. Here we go. This is what we.

Yes. And that's the. That's the story that when you're on a podcast, when you're on a presentation, when you're speaking at an event, and if you get asked or if you get the chance to share your story, you share the conversion story. You don't share your origin story of, like, how you got into what. What you do and why you study what you study. And like, like, that's kind of interesting, but the only person who would really be interested in that is probably your mum. And, like, your mum's probably not in the audience. Right. So you got to tell a story that's gonna convert them into the idea right at the start.

Yeah, No, I love that. I love that. I'm laughing because my mom, you know, she was my first, like, first share. My mom's are the best for that reason.

Yeah, first, like, first share, first comment. You're like, thanks, Mom.

Always your auntie.

Everyone's got that auntie that's always there.

Yeah. My gosh, it's so good. Sometimes when you're at the beginning, you just really need that. That for sure. Okay, so one to two conversion stories. Great. I love that. So now one of the things, too, that you were talking about in terms of this is that is. Is the compellingness essentially of the story. So what are some of the things that you can bake in to increase the compelling components of your conversion Story.

Yeah. Well, there's about five principles that, that I kind of go into. But let me teach you, let me teach you one of them. So one of them is you need to satiate the senses. And so satiating the senses is that a good story goes deep into the visual, auditory and kinesthetic experiences that you're in. And so articulating some of the things you saw externally. And there's actually internal and external aspects to this. There is what you saw physically. Like, you know, if you're sitting at the desk. Sometimes when I share my conversion story, I'll say I'm sitting at this brown desk. It's got half the legs are cut off because I got it at a 99 cent store up the road with phone books holding up the desk. I'm sitting there with my old laptop, looking at my calendar with no appointments on and I got my landline next to me and it rings. And so what I'm starting to do is I'm just articulating visually what I could see in the room. And, and then the ring is like some auditory, there's something going on. And so when you start to do some visual, auditory, kinesthetic, kinesthetics, like what you were feeling and you start to unpack that, then people lean into the story and they join the story with you. So they're sitting there with you and. Because one of the, one of the secrets to a story is that if you can articulate it visually, auditory, kinesthetic and what was going on inside of you, then the story, that your story becomes their story because they enter your story. And so that's, that's definitely a real. I think people kind of gloss over it. They'll say like, I was at university and I was studying this topic and then, you know, and then I got found this really interesting. No, no, I was, I was, I was sitting in the professor's office. It was really overwhelming. I could feel my. I was looking around at all of his accolades and I could feel myself getting really tense because we were about to have a conversation that I was scared of having. It's like, it's like talk about that moment. What was that moment? Right. Not just. I was at, I was at university. And so yeah, the vak, which is if anyone studied nlp. Neuro. Linguistic. Neuro linguistic programming. Basically it talks about how you make, you make sense of your world through your senses. Now olfactory and gustatory, like taste and smell isn't as useful, I find, like in terms of articulating your story. So I usually stay with visual, auditory or kinesthetic.

I love it. Okay. So I definitely want to be mindful of your time, too. So I'm curious, you know, what would you say to someone that. Well, you know, when we talk, when we're starting to craft conversion stories and thinking about our origin and signature stories, these types of, you know, stories, and they're thinking to themselves, I'm so boring. There's nothing that I could say that's like really compelling. Like, I didn't have the. Like, I lost £100 or I was injured. I just love it, you know, and they think that their stuff is boring. What would you say to them?

Well, first of all, if you tell yourself that, you're going to articulate it in a boring way so you actually, like, it's literally true, right? If you tell yourself you're boring, you're going to. You're going to tell it in a boring way because you're not going to go into the details. And so one of the things you need to do first of all is you don't. You shouldn't retell your story. You need to relive it when you tell it. So you've got to go back into it. When you go back into it, the enthusiasm comes back into it. And so that's like, that's a more an embodiment technique. But I would say that. I mean, to be honest, like, I've had a lot of people say that to me or they'll say, like, colin, I don't really have a story. Every single time we go through, like, the process of. We, in one of our processes, we go through, like, really finding all the stories. Like, to be honest, you probably got like 200 stories that you could tell everyone. Like, I would put down. I would put down everything I own to say that everyone has a story or has something interesting as a part of their story. And what's cool is as you start to learn this, you realize that it's actually how you tell the story. It's not even always just the story itself because I. I tell stories about a moment that I had with my daughter at daycare where, you know, she's. And it's really a story about me. Me essentially not being tuned in to the language of my kids and how we have to be tuned into the language of our audience and. But it's like a little moment that I had with my daughter at daycare where she was screaming at me. I was on my phone being a, you know, attentive dad. And. And she. And she's screaming at me. I'm not listening at all. And then she comes over and taps me on the leg and whispers in my ear and says, like, dad, I'm really scared. Can you. Can you take me across the playground to play with my friends? And then. And she wanted to hold my hand. And I'm like, oh, like, worst dad moment ever. Right? But it was like this. This little. I'm like, of course I will. Of course I will. And I realized that, you know, I wasn't listening. I wasn't. And when she articulated it in that way, in my. In the right way, I actually heard it. And you got to whisper the right words. You can't scream to your audience. And so, like, that experience. Such a little experience. Right? But the problem is that, like, people miss those moments all the time, and they. And they don't realize that you're having moments all the time that you can tell stories about. I have a story that I tell of where I accidentally locked myself out of the house after coming home from a long vacation. And it's one of my signature stories. It's a story I could tell literally, with any speech there is. I've got a story about being fired as a. I was a delivery. Pizza delivery driver. I just did that. Just. I released that on my podcast, literally today, the recording of when we're doing.

Oh, my God.

Me being fired as a delivery driver. Like, there's so many, like, random stories that you would have in your life. And I think what, like, a lot of the time people don't spend the time to. To do a story bank of really going through all the elements of their life and working out where was the challenging moments, where were the adventurous moments, where was the funny moments, where were the mistake moments? And you will find a ton in there.

I think two people also underestimate the power of their subconscious in terms of what's easy for them is not easy for their clients.

Yeah. So true.

And so to you, you think, oh, no one wants to hear this story because who care? But your client needs to hear that story.

Yeah. And I think this is the biggest thing, is that when you understand and when you really understand what storytelling is about and your. Especially your conversion story is you realize that your story, when it's designed right. Actually has nothing to do with you. The reason why you tell the story is for the client to have a transaction transformation. It's not about you telling your story. And so that is because that's a true conversion story, is when you tell your story in a way where the audience goes, wow, this person is like me, just like me. They really get me. And you know what? They can lead me. So if they can lead me, maybe I could go on that journey as well. And so it's actually telling their future story of what they want to become.

Of what is possible for them.

Correct.

Oh, that's so good. And people miss that. People miss that. And I think too, it comes from this sense of, you know, you said it earlier, which is wanting to demonstrate and show authority.

Yes.

But when you can, but you do that, it's like one of those ripple effects. You do show authority when you share this conversion story.

Yeah. And sure, you might share some credibility, like if you've, you've won some awards, if you've graduated from things or like, I do that in my, I didn't do it in this one. But, but I'll put up like the names of the people who I've coached around the world. And, you know, I've coached the biggest names and I'll go into all that sort of stuff, thousands of clients, and I'll do that in my story. But it's, it's a very small part of it. It's like a, it's like a hat tip at the end because really the story is about the journey I went on, so. Good.

Okay, so last question, because I want to be mindful of your time, is, you know, we talked a little bit about webinars and selling from stage. I'm just curious, like, where can we put these conversions? Where would you, or these conversion stories, what would you consider the best place for these to live?

I mean, your conversion story has so many platforms you could use it on. I mean, if you're presenting, if you're presenting a paper to an audience and you've done some research, like potentially you could share a story at the start because a lot of the times, like, if you're very, if you're very left brain, you're very like leaning on the science, you probably, you may not lean on story enough. And so, but the problem is that story is the thing that goes past the conscious mind and the story reinforces the facts. And so, so I, you know, you could, you may not, it may not be appropriate, but you could find a way to present it in like a paper or something like that. Another thing for me is like an email. Like if you're, if you've got a database that you're emailing people to tell your story on email, if you're running a webinar where you want to sell something, sell a program, sell an offer, you'll do it there. If you are speaking at an event, you'll do that. If you're on a podcast, you'll do it there. Like, for me, like almost every platform where you're communicating verbally, even written to an audience, like, you can do it.

So good. So, Colin, this has been incredible. Thank you so much for pouring into me and into my community. I really appreciate it. So where's the best place? Where are the best places that I can send them if someone wants to learn more about working with you and going down the storytelling world?

Yeah. So I have my own podcast, which is called the Expert Edge. So you can check me out there. We do a bit of stuff on Instagram is kind of my main platform, which is just at Colin Boyd. And if people have really resonated with this content and they're like, I really want to get my conversion story really clear, they can go to conversion story formula.com conversionstoryformula.com and, and that's a like, it's like a small little program that we do, but it will get your conversion story. Our promise is within 48 hours if you do it.

Oh, so good. And we'll make sure that we link all this up and you have to go. Thank you for listening to the PT Profit podcast. If you like this episode, chances are.

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