The ONLY 5 Stories You Need To Grow Your Business

Storytelling is an incredibly effective way to grow your business because stories connect real people together, which is the point of business. It's people helping people. The problem is that so many people don't know how to tell good stories, or they think they suck at telling stories. So when it comes to creating content, they just spit facts and statistics that are helpful, but they don't really do the job of connecting the creator, you, with the audience, which is your most valuable asset in terms of growing your business and you making an income online. It's your audience. There's a reason there's a saying that says a fact will always tell, a story will always sell. If you're creating content online, you're working at growing this business, you need to be able to connect with your audience in an authentic way instead of just spitting out facts and content, because that's going to help you separate from the competition. And that is where stories come in. Stories help us connect with real people in a more genuine way. So what we're going to do today is I'm going to share with you a simple framework for creating great stories. Very simple. It's not complicated at all. We're going to keep things simple, but effective at the same time. I'm also going to share with you 5 proven story archetypes or story styles that will get your juices flowing and are going to help you spark some ideas for ways that you can connect with your audience using these 5 story templates, if you will. And along the way, I'm also going to share with you some practical ways to actually use these stories to grow your business. Let's dive in. Welcome to episode number 27 of the Profit Your Knowledge podcast. I'm your host, James Allen, here to help you turn your knowledge passions and skills into an online business so that you can be your own boss doing work that you love in this world, make a difference, and live a life of freedom. To help you get going in terms of living a life of freedom, one of the best ways to do it, one of the real beauties of having an online business is being able to create passive income. So if you have envisioned yourself or you do envision yourself being online, creating content like podcasts, YouTube, blog posts, things like that, and selling courses, digital products, or coaching as well, you want to teach things online and share the things that you know in the interwebs, then I created a great resource for you. It's a 5-step action guide that's going to walk you through how it works. It's going to really just clarify how online business works in terms of creating passive income so that you can create digital products. I'm going to show you what kind of digital products are the best, in my opinion, to build and to sell. And we're also going to just tie everything together to make it an automated process. It's one thing to be able to sell online courses or coaching by having conversations with people, which is great, but being able to automate the process to where it can bring in money overnight. When that first happened to me, it was the most amazing feeling and it honestly just never gets old. Passive income is an amazing thing to apply to your business, whether it's your entire business or even just a part of your business. You're going to be able to create multiple income streams and assets that run for you 24/7. And this 5-step action guide lays it all out so it's clear for you and it gives you action steps along the way. So you know what to do first, second, third, fourth, and fifth. And the best part is this will work for you even if you don't know what your business idea is or what you would sell or talk about. So if you're interested in creating that online content, being out there, being online, making an income, teaching things, sharing what you know with the world, then pick up the 5-step action guide. At least just look it over. I guarantee it will inspire you. And you can even use this guide to earn your first $100, $500, or even $1,000 or more online in passive income. It really just depends on where you are at currently in your entrepreneurial business building journey. So to get the guide, go to profityourknowledge.com/guide. There's also a link in the description. Let's dive into the content. Before we get into talking about stories, I do just have to give a quick shout out. I didn't come up with these 5 story archetypes. This actually comes from Ramit Sethi, who's one of my business mentors. I have a select few that I really follow and that I work with, and he is one of the best by far. Um, he, I learned these 5 from my copywriting course that I bought from him. It's his copywriting course, really, but I paid for it. It's the most expensive course that I have ever paid for. Ramit really focuses on creating the best products on the market. And because of that, because they're so good, they're also priced very high. It's a $2,000 copywriting course, which was crazy. I was like, do I really want this? But I'm like, yeah, absolutely, because I know that I can use the things inside of it to make that money back in tenfold, you know, just nonstop. So totally worth it. It's been amazing. It's really helped me in terms of copywriting. But inside that course, he talks about stories and how we connect with people and this kind of stuff. So this content is heavily influenced by Ramit inside of that course. I'd recommend Ramit to anybody. I'll put a link down to his website. It's called IWillTeachYouToBeRich.com. Check it out and look into his products because, I mean, if you follow me and all that, you buy courses from me, that's super cool. But I doubt I'm the only person you ever listen to in terms of helping you with an online business. So Ramit is another great person to check out. Check out his courses because I truly believe that they are some of the best on the market and he's a great mentor just to follow. So quick shout out to him. Now let's get into the real content, the real meat and potatoes of today. Before we start talking about the story archetypes, I thought that it would be necessary to just cover real quick what makes a great story. The stories I'm going to share with you today, the 5 different story types, are stories that you can share if you're speaking on a stage, if you're on a podcast, if you are like being a guest on a podcast or guesting on someone else's platform, writing blogs, you're writing copy for a sales page or in your emails in an email, an automated email funnel. Or you're creating content online, you can use these anywhere is basically what I want you to get. And what makes a great story is really 3 points that I have for you. The first is a really simple plot. We're not getting super crazy with building stories right now. We're going to keep it simple. So before you start telling your story and just spitting, this is what happened to me or to a client of mine, before you start telling the story, how can you sum up the gist of the story in one sentence? Now, when you get better at this, you'll be able to do this on the fly. but think about it. And a great example, like, how can you put it into one sentence? A great example is Lord of the Rings. Frodo has to destroy the One Ring in Mount Doom and defy all the different odds that are thrown at him. I mean, in a nutshell, that's pretty much the Lord of the Rings. He has to get to Mordor, drop the ring in the volcano, uh, Mount Doom. Okay, I'm kind of nerdy about Lord of the Rings. I actually just rewatched the, uh, the extended edition. Pretty awesome. Lots of cool different things. But anyway, you get it. Think of a simple, simple plot. Just keep it really simple before you start writing your story in copy or saying it, you know, if you're on the fly on a stage, you can kind of think about this, but just keep it simple. That's really what I want you to understand and be able to explain your stories in one sentence. And if you are going to go on a stage or speaking on a platform, have some stories set, like plan these, you know, speak them into existence ahead of time. Practice your storytelling to your mirror or to your wall. And just really be able to, to nail this. So if you were presented with an opportunity right off the cuff and you just had to spit this story, you know, it like that to keep it simple, because if it's too detail-oriented, unless it's like a movie or something well planned out by professionals, then you can kind of like lose people basically. So we want to keep people in it and keep it concise but also simple. Okay. Simple plot. The next piece is a simple structure. The real idea with the story, really simply, is there is a beginning, a middle, and an end. Stories can obviously become much more complex with plot twists, you know, and like different curiosity-inducing things. Stories get freaking crazy. Look at Avatar, for example. There's a lot of stuff that happens in that movie. Lord of the Rings, Star Wars. There's a lot of things that are happening, but when we're telling stories, we're keeping it simple. I was here, this is what happened to me, or this is where I was. In the middle, this is what happened. I achieved this, I started working on this, and then here's the end. This is where I ended up. That's it for a personal story. If it's a client example, you could say they were here, we started doing this. That's the middle. And then now they're here. Okay, so just keep it really simple. Beginning, middle, end. You can obviously get more complex, but for now, beginning, middle, end, simple plot. My last little tip before we get into the 5 story archetypes is that details matter. Great stories slow things down. It's not like making an offer or something like that where it's very punchy. It's very straightforward. Details, we're going to tone it back a little bit, get in, or stories. I mean, we're going to tone it back a little bit and get into the details of the story. To keep people engaged, to really paint the picture of what the story is telling and the experience of the story. Because we want to essentially just take them on a ride with our stories, but keep them compelling. And that just comes with practice. And one of the best ways to do that is to focus on specific words, especially when you're doing copywriting. Sensory words are what we really want to focus on. That's what I've learned about and that's what's really helped me. And I'm also going to put a link in the description to a great resource that I found about sensory words. It's just a huge list of different words like hearing, seeing, tasting, feeling. Using those specific words in your story are really going to help your story come to life. Okay, so just to sum up what makes a good story, it's a simple plot, simple structure, beginning, middle, end, and then details do matter. Make sure you can share the experience so someone can actually feel what is happening inside of the story. Okay. Rather than just glazing over it. Okay. Storytelling is an art form. I'm not the best at it, but this is just stuff that has helped me. So let's get into the 5 story archetypes or the story styles that you can use to help you grow your business. Story number 1 is the paint the dream story. The point of this story type is it's all about helping your readers imagine what life would be like if they had everything that they wanted. This is the, if I gave you a magic wand and you could do whatever you wanted with it for 3 years, and then in 3 years you gave it back to me, what would you have done with that magic wand? Okay, what— and this, this really comes down to having good customer research, but the key is to, to use evocative words and imagery so that your readers can practically feel the dream becoming a reality. And that's where the sensory words that I talked about come into play. Again, there's a link in the description, but it's really about painting this dream. If I'm going to talk about passive income, I'm painting a dream for that. I'm talking about you wake up at 9:00 AM and you hit your alarm clock, or you actually, you know, you wake up at 9:00 AM, even better. There is no alarm clock. You look at your phone, it's getting notified. You look at the notification. It's not your boss. It is an order coming through. And you realize that, wow, I just got a new order, but overnight I've made 10 different orders, totally automatic. Okay, that is the dream of passive income, making money while you sleep. So it's painting the picture of what that looks like. Okay, you can use this with literally anything. If it's fitness, waking up, just like looking at yourself and realizing the progress that you've made, looking yourself in the mirror saying, wow, I've actually dropped 20 pounds or 10 pounds or whatever. Seeing the definition in my abdominals or in my shoulders or my biceps or whatever. Okay. But what we're doing is just painting the dream that your customer avatar really has or your key customer. And this is one of the most versatile tools or story types that you can use and also one of the most powerful stories that you can tell as well. It's just being able to paint that dream. And it comes down to really understanding what your, your audience really wants. If you haven't done a ton of customer research, look back at where you were when you first started. What was the dream for you? Maybe it still is that dream. You know, it never got— never went away. You're just closer to the dream than you were when you first started. Okay, so how can you use the paint the dream story to help tell that story and communicate that idea of selling the dream, the idea of the end goal for your audience? What does that look like for your audience and how can you use that in your business. Story type number 2 is what Ramit calls Twist the Knife. And I really like, I really like that because it's very vivid to me. But the Twist the Knife archetype or story type is totally the opposite of Paint the Dream. Paint the Dream, we're talking about happy butterflies and rainbows kind of deal, realistically. But rather than painting the picture of this, this beautiful endgame, that the person wants to achieve, we're going to take a total turn for the worse. We're going to Mordor. Okay, we're going to, we're going to dig deep into what their pain is instead. This is a great tool to use in terms of taking this person on a ride, you know, especially if you're talking about the beginning of your story, beginning, middle, end. In the beginning, there is, I was going through so much pain. I was like, this is where you twist the knife. I was so frustrated and I had this vision of That's the paint the dream. Okay, I hope you can see. But really what you want to think about is using sensory words, really painting the picture, the details of what this pain feels like for your person, for your audience, by just really thinking what is the burning pain, the biggest burning pain and fear in your market or your, with your audience and how can you dig into that pain, twist the knife and really create a story that your readers can relate to. In terms of that. And this can be a personal story or it can be a story of a client of yours, a past client, or it could be a fictional story. Like you make up the story of just kind of the common experience that people have in terms of losing weight, not being able to find a great relationship in their life, or working in a job that they hate. You know, those are just a couple ideas. Okay, but that's the twist the knife. And in a little bit, I'm gonna share with you how you can use all of these together in different ways. Story number 3, story archetype number 3 is the great discovery. This is a fun one. This is all about telling the story of how you came up with the idea for your product or your business or your service or whatever it is that you offer. Okay? So whether that discovery was through trial and error or totally on accident, everybody loves a good origin story, and that's what we're doing here is we are just sharing the great discovery. Of how it all worked out. It could be like, like there was one example that I saw in, in the course, actually in Ramit's course, where this guy was sharing a story for a productivity course about him like struggling. And that's like the twist of the knife. And then it transitioned into a great discovery where he talked about reading this one book. I can't remember what the book was. And inside that book by this other author, someone else's idea or content, he found this like he found just a simple way to think about productivity in terms of just do one thing. It's just focus on one thing. It's not about doing many things. It's focusing on one thing that's going to take care of everything. That's like in the book, The One Thing. That's what it's all about. What's the one thing I can do that such by doing it will make everything else easier or unnecessary? It knocks down the big domino so all the other steps become irrelevant or totally unnecessary. Okay. Or just a whole lot easier. So that's a great discovery. Okay. But it can be like you just stumbled across this idea just randomly. It just hit me in meditation or something like that. Or someone told you, okay. Or yeah, through trial and error. But think about the history of your business or your product or products that you sell and see if you can come up with a compelling story that you can share about a great discovery that you had that just set you on a completely different path. A quick example for me is when I was just doing— I thought one-on-one coaching was it. And then I realized that, well, you can create digital products and you don't really need to do one-on-one coaching. Now, I love doing one-on-one coaching and group coaching and that kind of stuff in my business, but I'm also a huge fan of passive income, which is why I talk about it so much on this channel. I've really staked my, my flag in this part of my career. Okay. Passive income. It's so big. And just having it even as a part of your business or the entire business as a whole. Gives you freedom, it gives you all this amazing stuff. I stumbled across that from other mentors that taught me it. Then I started to implement it and then I made it work in my own business and now I help other people teach. Okay, that's in a nutshell. Okay, but what's a compelling story that you can share with your audience about a great discovery you had about how you discovered your product or service or business? Story number 4 is the unspoken truth. If you're running a business, chances are, and you're in a niche of any kind, chances are there are a lot of people in that niche. If assuming it's a good niche like fitness, relationships, and business or making money in general there. And because there are a lot of people trying to learn about these things, there's a lot of people coming in and teaching things and helping people with all of that. Therefore it's a quote unquote competition, which I'm not really a big fan of competition. I believe in collaboration. Um, but because there's so many people teaching the same thing, this is a topic for a different day. We can get way deep into like being in a saturated market and that kind of stuff. There's probably a lot of opinions and unconventional wisdom or ideas out there that you don't really resonate with, or there's a lot of like jargon that's kind of just— there's a lot of, uh, ideas that everybody seems to be saying, but it's not actually the the truth. It's not really the best option for people. So like for me, a truth of that is that nobody cares about your business. People make business and entrepreneurship and being a solopreneur seem like, oh, it's about you, like living your dream. And it is, it really is. But what's gonna allow you to do that is focusing on your audience. So nobody cares about your dream and your aspiration really. Except for you. Like, you really care about it. And I mean, I do because I want to see you do that. But I understand that you don't care about my business. You care about how my business and this content can help you grow your business. It can help you with your own life. If you're a fitness coach, people don't care about you per se or your business. They may like you and resonate with you, but what they really care about and what they come for is to learn from you because they enjoy learning from you so that they can get in the best shape of their life or in better shape so they can achieve their goals. That's an unspoken truth, is that nobody cares about our businesses. They care about how our businesses can really help them. And that's something that I use. That's a story that I have inside of my business that I'll use. So for you, what is an unspoken truth in your niche or in your industry? What's something that you think your audience needs to hear that no one else seems to be saying or talking about, or very few people are? What's an idea that you can share for that? And that, that is your unspoken truth. And the more you can pile that into or connect that with a personal example or story, the better. Story number 5, this is the last story archetype, is the incredible story. The incredible story is all about finding that one story that will make your readers stop in their tracks and say, what? How? How? Wait. Like, it just makes them stop and say, wait, how did that even happen? It's just so over the top. And I'm going to share with you an example. I have a story in my own life where I made my first $10,000 on a single phone call within an hour of actually being on the phone. And I was doing a lot of workshops and then I would invite people onto a phone call with me because that's what they taught me on my, my coaching institute when I first started. So I had this idea. I was making courses at the time and doing all this. I was kind of like in this transition phase between making passive income and doing this other or doing one of my one-on-one coaching stuff. But I was really focused on the one-on-one coaching. And I said, I'm going to, I'm going to give people a free course if they show up to the workshop and they stick around to the end and they liked it. I'm going to give them a free course that covers like more in-depth what I talked about inside the workshop. And I was like, that's really cool. That's like attractive. So that was my idea. And what I did was I reached out to a ton of people. I had about 50 people registered for this workshop, and I was a little nervous, honestly, because I'd never had that many people in one sitting actually listen to me present. So especially online. But anyway, I show up, I'm getting ready for the Zoom meeting and the camera starts and I'm getting ready. It's like 10:00 AM or something when it started. Nobody showed up. Not one soul was in there except for me. And I'm like, God dang, I just felt like so disheartened because I put so much effort into marketing this and getting it out there. And I had all these people and nobody showed up. And that's kind of a hard truth about like workshops and events is that getting people to actually show up live is pretty difficult. Okay. So that's why I figured giving a free course would be a good incentive. So I'm there and really I have two choices. Number one is I can just leave. I can call it a day and go get a— go get some lunch or something. Number two is I could just say I'm going to do it anyway. And that's what really came up to me in that moment was from my old coaches and mentors. They said, if you ever are in that situation where nobody's there or nobody shows up, just do it anyway. Deliver the presentation no matter what. So I'm like, okay, I'm going to do it. I'm just going to run through the whole thing. It's good practice anyway. I'll try it again because I know I got like 50 people to register. Maybe I can do better the second time. And I start delivering the presentation. I get about a third of the way through and I get notified that somebody joined the meeting. So I'm like, okay. So I literally stopped and I said, hey, man, I have like really not that far into this presentation. Nobody showed up except for you. So if you don't mind, I'll just restart unless you want me to just keep going. He's like, oh yeah, if you don't mind, like, go ahead, you can restart it. Cool. So I restart the presentation, I go through, it takes me about 30 minutes to do the presentation. And I said, here's your free course. Thank you for sticking around. He stuck around the whole thing. And I said, if you want to, you can book a call with me and I can help you dive into these, these principles a bit more. And help you implement them more into your own life. And he's like, yeah, let's do it. So I think the next day we got on a phone call and long story short, he ended up signing up for a year-long package that I had, which was $1,000 a month. So $12,000 for the entire year. But if you pay in full, you get $10,000. So you get $2,000 off, 2 months off. And he freaking signed up, which is pretty amazing. And I literally wanted to run around my house naked because I was so excited. Like, I— it was incredible just to feel that I've never made that much money in one sitting, which was just incredible. And it really, really set my business up for just a different level. And him and I worked together for quite a while. But I mean, that's an example of an incredible story in my own life and one that I like to use as my first $10,000 call. So what's an incredible story that you can share with your audience? That's really the idea that you want to share here. And the better you get or the more you practice storytelling, the better you're going to get at it. Okay. So let me sum up the different story types. Paint the dream. We're painting the perfect idea of what this person or these people, your audience, really wants in terms of what you have to offer. And then we have twist the knife as the second one, really digging into the pain, twisting the knife like Really digging in there. Story number 3 is the great discovery, how you came up with your business or your product or your idea. And then number 4 is the unspoken truth. What's the thing that other people aren't really saying or nobody's saying about your niche that you can share and be a guiding light for? And then story number 5 is the incredible story. What is an incredible story that you have had in your business or in your journey that you can share with other people? To really help them. It can even be a client that had an incredible story because of your help. These are great things that you can share. Okay, so those are the real 5 stories are going to help you grow your business. Now, real quick, I want to share with you that you can use this speaking on a stage, in a sales page, emails, whatever it is that you want. And if you're making like a sales page, for example, you can take 3 of these different stories and compile them before you get to the actual offer. You can like compile them in a specific order. There's no wrong or right order. For example, let's say that you started off your, your content or your sales page with Twist the Knife. You went deep into a story of the pain that you're experiencing, and then you went over the Great Discovery story. You just connected Twist the Knife, Great Discovery, and then lastly you went in to Paint the Dream. So it's like, here was my struggle. The Great Discovery is like the middle. This is where everything changed for me. And then the last story is the paint the dream. So it's like, I achieved this so you can too. You can even go into the incredible story of something crazy that happened and then an unspoken truth and then paint the dream. Okay, so you kind of get the idea of how you can use these in different areas and use them in different combinations to really connect with your audience, especially on a sales page. That's a really big part. If you ever notice sales pages that are really long, long-form copy, The first half of the sales page is typically just writing, and it's really— the point is to build trust and to connect with your audience so that you're not just selling to them. People can skip down if they want to. They can get to the offer and run around, but people want to learn how this works. What's your story? Who are you? And have everything on one page. And that's really the point of long-form sales copy. But we're not going to get into long-form sales copy today. Now, you know, the 5 story archetypes. Paint the dream, twist the knife, the great discovery, the unspoken truth, and the incredible story. How can you use those in your business? I'd love to know. Let me know down in the comment below. Um, and again, if you're, if you're interested in building your own online business, you want to turn the things that you know, that you love, that you're good at into an online business. Most importantly, create passive income. You see yourself coaching people, teaching online, creating digital products, online courses, that kind of stuff. And you want to automate the entire process, then check out and pick up the 5-step action guide that I created. Again, there is a link in the description. It's profityourknowledge.com/guide. Check it out. First link in the description. It's my gift to you. It's totally free. It's value-packed. There's even a couple of links to different videos inside of it to help you really wrap your, your head around the different ideas so that you have full clarity. And you can start using it to actually start building your online business, building passive income. Okay. I hope you got value from today's lesson. I know it was a long one, but I really just wanted to share this stuff with you because I truly believe that these are the only 5 stories, 5 story types that you need to grow your online business. You can share many different types of unspoken truths or great discoveries or painting the dream. You can get better at painting the dream for your audience or twisting the knife. You can, create many different stories that fall into each one of these story archetypes. Okay. But knowing them is going to be really helpful so you can actually start using them. All right. That's all I got for you today. Let me know in the description which one of these really stood out for you or in the comments. Sorry, let me know in the comments which one stood out for you. If you're on the podcast, please leave a review. If you did stick around, you got value from today's episode. Reviews help me not just in terms of the algorithm, but also in terms of me actually knowing that you're there and that you're listening and that you're enjoying this on the podcast. Okay, that's all I got for you today. Take what you learned here, get out there, start using stories to grow your online business, and I will see you in the next one.