Let’s talk some more about how opening up and showing your human side can make you more relatable (and get you more business).
The other day I gave the example of how KFC handled a recent chicken-shortage crisis, and I also saw it in action with leadership guru John Maxwell.
Maxwell has written something like 1,814 books about leadership (I’m exaggerating, but it feels like that). And while it’s obvious that he knows his stuff, he originally didn’t really grab me.
I only read a handful of those 1,814 books and he didn’t share much about himself in the ones that I sampled (I’m guessing he talks more about himself in his other books, but he didn’t in the ones that I read).
So I knew little about John Maxwell the person, and found it hard to relate to him.
But then I read an article that he wrote for Success Magazine that changed things for me …
In it, Maxwell told a story where he received a gun as a gift, and placed it in his luggage.
He then forgot about it as he was racing to catch a flight at the airport.
When he put his carry-on bag on the conveyor belt, airport security found the gun and immediately arrested him.
The story was crazy because if I remember correctly, Maxwell was on the cover of Success the same month that he was arrested at the airport.
By opening up and telling that personal story of him f-ing up, Maxwell was instantly more relatable (and interesting) to me.
Humans are hard-wired to like stories. We’ve been telling them since way back in the caveman days, and we’ll continue telling them for the rest of time.
If you can infuse stories into your content, you’ll form a tighter connection with your audience. They can be sad stories, scary stories, embarrassing stories … as long as they’re interesting.
I help coaches get more of their personality out into the marketplace, so they can stand out from the boring, ho-hum usual content that’s out there.
If you’d like to stand out from the crowd, this will help (next one starts up soon):
