Art of Telling Your Professional Story: Captivate & Connect

Just like in folk or fairy tale, always start your professional story with a place and a time. Then develop the characters. The character is you because it’s your story. Then there is always an opposition. This could be the villain, hero, or obstacle that changes your life. Before that event,  you were going along in your daily life as usual and then one day something happened (the opposition) to cause you to take a different road, or go another direction. Whatever this opposition is, it changed your life. This is where the character development of you and potentially the villain takes place in the story.

Then, you share the various defining moments (changes in your life and career) that ultimately led you to the path you are on today. In those “one-days” (defining moments), there is the problem that presents itself. You keep moving forward as you share the story to solve the problem. Then you will wrap up with the positive result that includes where you are today.

Then, I teach students to put your core message at the end. Some people call that your elevator speech. It’s the perfect sentence to add in at the end of the story. It’s the sentence that tells people what you do. Plus, it brings people full circle from where you began all the way to today.

Remember, people love rags to riches stories. Think of the stories of how people made a million dollars, lost it and then made it again. Be sure to keep in alignment with what you do today. You don’t have to go way back in the past unless it’s relevant to what you do today.

Watch this video to hear about my professional story. I start out my story in the 1980’s in corporate America. I don’t say the city I was in because everyone has their own unique vision of what corporate America looks like. I do my character development about what life in corporate America was like for me. Then “one day” my boss told me to get out and speak. That was my first shift. I thought to myself, piece of cake, I took one speech class in College, I was good to go, or so I thought.

Then my next “one day” occurred right after the speech when a member of the audience came up and told me, “Honey, do you know that you say “Okay” after every sentence?” Though she was very kind, that one comment shifted my entire life. I realized that just because I could speak, it didn’t make me a public speaker. This experience and realization got me to respect speaking and get properly trained.

Then the third and final “one day” of this story occurred after 22 years working, I realized I was at the top in corporate America and was as far as I could go there. I decided to leave corporate America and start my public speaking training company.