Tell the damn story.
The open secret to success.
I’m guilty of this one too but we have to do it: tell the damn story.
This topic has been percolating for a bit now and will bridge between personal and work stuff.
The concept here is very simple: when you tell stories that connect with people, you win. When you don’t tell those stories, the “why” behind whatever it is you do, you don’t.
I need to remember this too. While I still take pictures, document, and tell stories in my personal life, I don’t do it like I used to. I get lazy and leave the camera at home. Photography has always been a game of plateaus for me: I spend lots of time feeling like my work is in a rut before an inevitable “level up” if I push through. Over time, those plateaus get longer and it’s easy to get lazy.
Run club is a shining, if nonlinear, example.
I’m committed to the group photos for run club and have been consistently plugging away at those for years. Many hundreds of meetups later and very few where we don’t take a picture.
Those pictures tell the story, show people what the club looks like, and directly gets new people out with us because they can see themselves included. If we didn’t post with a level of weekly (and now almost daily) consistency, the club wouldn’t grow like it does and our community wouldn’t prosper as a result.
At work, it’s a lot easier to see the effect.
We’ve always been prolific with digital storytelling at Aspire: photography, videos, and websites that tell stories—sometimes complex ones—that resonate.
Lately, there’s been a great chasm of story-doers and story-don’ters.
The brands, counties, and non-profits telling stories? Big wins.
Others that have let stories slide away or never started? Sales dropping. Slowly, the public’s awareness eroded. A bad direction and a scary one.
If you’re selling something, simply showing your products, store hours, and sign-up links has never been enough. Nobody gets excited over a “call to action”.
Put that same product or service in the hands of a customer, show the problems you solve or feeling you evoke? Magic happens then.
It doesn’t really matter what it is, either: we’ve been pointing cameras at lab equipment, silt in local streams, and banking services an awful lot lately. Those stories work wonders. It’s even easier if what you sell is more exciting.
This is my personal kick-in-the-butt.
I’ll bring the camera like I always used to, remember to tell the stories, and not let complacency and a weighty world let me forget what wins.
At my core, I’ve always told stories. Somewhere along the way, I realized the value it had and started doing it for others too. I don’t want to see other losing when there’s stories to be told. If this motivates anyone else, that’d be a swell added perk.
