Your Story, and Why it Matters with Marianne Powell
Many coaches are passionate about their work but struggle with how to describe what they do. How do you find authentic, creative and engaging ways to talk about yourself and what you offer?
In this week’s Marketing Masterclass we were joined by Marrianne Powell to talk about how your coaching customers can get to know and trust you from the way you tell your story.
We started by asking Marianne to tell us about her story. She shared how she brings together experiences from many worlds. That includes her work as a brand consultant: helping brands like Prudential, British Gas and Magnum ice cream develop their identity, story and tone of voice. She draws on her background as a playwright and poet. And she’s a qualified psychotherapist and purpose guide-in-training – interested in how people can discover their soul-level purpose.
This leads us straight into a conversation about the framing of your story and how this can impact not only your perception of the story but how others perceive it. Marianne shared a story from her journey that she can view in either a negative or positive way.
Frances explained how your story is the greatest asset you can bring to your marketing and your coaching practice. However you choose to tell it, the highs and the lows you’ve experienced along the way are the signposts that will help know you, trust you and follow you along a similar path. She shared how one of the things that your story brings to a client conversation is authority. It helps clients understand why you are best placed to help them get to where they want to get to.
Simon then shared how it can be useful to think of your story like a CV. When creating a CV you don’t add in everything you’ve ever done, but rather choose the highlights that are relevant to that audience. The same is true with telling your story, and it can be much more effective to create different versions of your story with different relevant bits in for each of the people you find yourself often telling your story to.
We concluded with Marianne sharing her thoughts on the use of Verbs (an action, state or occurrence) and Nouns (a thing or person) when answering the question “what do you do?”.
She explained that by using verbs rather than nouns you can detach yourself from the labels and constraints that are often associated with a noun label like “playwright”. By describing yourself using verbs you open yourself to a world of possibility, creativity and flexibility.
You can watch the whole of the conversation on our Crowdcast channel. If you want some inspiration and guidance in creating your story then take a look at the Coach’s Marketing Journey Course. This structured approach will help you create your story and tell it to your audience as part of your marketing practice.
