THE INSPIRATION PLACE PODCAST
Miriam Schulman:
Hey there, passion maker. This is Miriam Schulman, and you’re listening to episode number 151 of the Inspiration Place podcast. I am so grateful that you’re here. Today, we’re talking all about telling stories. In this episode, you’ll discover the four stories every artist must tell, how to create a story bank so that you never run out of ideas, and the three part easy story structure that anyone can use.
Today’s speaker is a professional storyteller who teaches leaders, executives, and entrepreneurs across countless industries to harness and leverage the power of their stories. Her book, Stories That Stick, debuted at number two on the Wall Street Journal bestseller list, and Forbes said it may be the most valuable business book you’ll read. In 2020, she became the chief story officer at Success magazine, where she interviews icons like Deepak Chopra, Misty Copeland, in an effort to hear and share their stories of success. She’s based in New York City with her hubby and two kids. Please welcome to the Inspiration Place, best-selling author and professional storyteller, Kindra Hall.
Kindra Hall:
Yay! I’m so happy to be here. Thank you so much, Miriam.
Miriam Schulman:
Well, thanks for coming, Kindra. Welcome to the show. Now we have a lot to talk about, but before we get there, I want you to know you’re the first guest that I didn’t have to rewrite the bio.
Kindra Hall:
Oh, because the bio was up to your standards?
Miriam Schulman:
Well, no, it’s not just that, but let me explain. This is something my listeners, this is definitely showing them how the sausage is made. They would have no idea. I always ask them to give me the bio in the third person. The way I would normally get a bio would be Kindra Hall is a professional storyteller and Kindra did this and Hall did that. And what you did is exactly what I actually do. I take everyone’s bios and I rewrite it what I call Steven Colbert style. Where I don’t say who it is until the very end. How did you know to do this? This is so brilliant.
Kindra Hall:
I can’t remember where I learned that. I think it was just from watching speakers and watching people being introduced to the stage. The moment is, welcome this person. But if they already know who the person was for all that time, that takes away the fun of it. So you’re supposed to save the name to the end. Oh, I love that, yeah.
Miriam Schulman:
Usually I go in there, I have to change all the names to she and her and I even add that last sentence, please welcome to the Inspiration Place. And the very last thing is mic drop, Oprah Winfrey or in this case, Kindra Hall. So, yay. Welcome.
Kindra Hall:
[inaudible 00:03:45].
Miriam Schulman:
Now, the other thing we have to talk about, you said you did spinning this morning.
Kindra Hall:
I did. Yeah, I did.
Miriam Schulman:
Is Soul Cycle still in business in Manhattan, because they’re gone out here in the burbs.
Kindra Hall:
No, they left. Or are they there and they’re just now opening?
Miriam Schulman:
I just confirmed this morning. They are gone.
Kindra Hall:
No, way. Really?
Miriam Schulman:
In Scarsdale, they’re gone completely.
Kindra Hall:
Oh, no. Well on the app today, they’re like, “We’re opening here, we’re opening there, we’re re-opening there, we’re re-opening there.” The one in my neighborhood just opened two months ago. They were closed since last March, obviously, and now they’re opening one that’s 20 blocks away. Because for a while I was having to go all the way down, I’m on the upper East side, all the way down to Hudson Yards, which is depending on how you’re getting there, it’s a ways or it’s expensive. Yeah, no, it’s opening, it’s getting more full. And every day we see little bits of progress. It’s like, “Oh, today you don’t have to ride your bike with your mask on. They took the plexi glass down.” So bit by bit, we’re making progress.
Miriam Schulman:
I’m sure that something will come in. It’s like a forest fire. Things are gone and now there will be things moving in. But what’s important about today’s topic, I know you were an instructor.
Kindra Hall:
Oh, man. You do, you know that. I haven’t shared that with many people.
Miriam Schulman:
It’s in the book.
Kindra Hall:
Is it?
Miriam Schulman:
It is.
Kindra Hall:
For a minute, it’s not a whole story.
Miriam Schulman:
No, it’s in the book, which-
Kindra Hall:
You really read it, yeah.
Miriam Schulman:
For the people who do not know what Soul Cycle is, it’s a very expensive spin class.
Kindra Hall:
Yes, it is.
Miriam Schulman:
They actually have crystals. Do you know this?
Kindra Hall:
They give you diamond shoes.
Miriam Schulman:
No, I don’t know if you know this. There’s an amethyst in every studio. Look and see if it’s in the studio. Behind the instructor’s podium, there is an amethyst because that type of crystal creates community. It’s the community crystal.
Kindra Hall:
Okay.
Miriam Schulman:
So take a look.
Kindra Hall:
I’ve seen it before in some studios and I just thought that the instructor was really into crystals and just carried it around with her and put it behind her bike. I’m going to have to look for it. Isn’t that funny? I never knew the story behind it and now I’m going to be like, “Oh, look. There’s the crystal,” yeah.
Miriam Schulman:
It’s a big one too.
Kindra Hall:
My fees are going to pay for those crystals [crosstalk 00:06:19].
Miriam Schulman:
That’s right. What’s really interesting is what brings us back to this topic, is that the most popular instructors tell the best stories.
Kindra Hall:
Yep. That’s why I hesitated for a moment because you said, “Well, I know you’re a spin instructor.” And I thought, “Wait.” I didn’t tell because I was a spin instructor and the hardest thing about teaching spin when you’re first getting started is not figuring out how to ride the bike. You know that. You have to adjust the lights and you’re teaching people to spin while also spinning yourself. The hardest part is putting together the playlist because if people don’t like your music, it’s over. And it’s really embarrassing for you to sit up there in your spandex and nobody’s there. So when I first started teaching spin, I was really nervous. The studio I taught at wasn’t a Soul Cycle, it was this little boutique studio and the audience was a little bit older.
Actually, everybody there was in their 30s up, 40s up. I was really worried that people weren’t going to like Brittany Spears or the Spice Girls have some great spin songs. I’m like, “How do I get them to like the song, even if they don’t, so that they’ll come to my spin class?” Before every song, not every song, because that gets long-winded, but I would tell a little story about the song and when I heard it. Just funny stories, love stories, breakup stories. Eventually what ended up happening is my classes sold out. There would be a wait list and it wasn’t because I was the most fit, it wasn’t because I was even the best at teaching exercise. I’d never exercised before in my life before I started doing spin.
But on my very last day when I retired, because I did have to retire, my class, in the lobby, one of the women came up to me and said, “I’m going to miss your workouts, but I’m really going to miss your stories.” Even now they’ll comment on Instagram if I post something about going to spin or something. They’ll be like, “We miss your stories.” It’s true in spin, it’s really true if you look at anything and you were to really look at it, most of the best things, like oh, the best artists, the best restaurant, it often can be traced back to the stories they choose to tell.
Miriam Schulman:
Oh, 100%. In my town, the most popular spin instructor, he never even got on the bike.
Kindra Hall:
I know, yes.
Miriam Schulman:
He would joke how he had no muscle tone, but he was a stand-up comic. So he would test his material out on us and that’s what we were there for.
Kindra Hall:
Totally.
Miriam Schulman:
And then he also caught on that my demographic who showed up for 9:30 classes or 8:30, the 50 and older crowd, we liked Whitney Houston. I would go to his class on a Tuesday night. Oops, he doesn’t play the same music for those girls. It was a whole different show on a Tuesday night.
Kindra Hall:
Yep, it’s true. And I remember going to one spin class and the instructor told this story. It was the spin class right before the New York City marathon. I didn’t realize they did this. Or it’s the Thursday before. It’s the last cross training workout that marathoners will do before the marathon on that Sunday. They hang your jersey number on the bike. I walked in and all these bikes had these things, these numbers hanging on it and I didn’t know what it was for. It was for the marathon. Then the instructor had run the marathon on several occasions and she put together this whole playlist that was like taking you on the emotional journey of what it is to run that marathon. Then she told us the story of coming over the bridge and coming around the park. I’m getting chills, just thinking about it. That I left that class and signed up for the lottery to run the marathon the next year, which I had never-
Miriam Schulman:
Do you even run?
Kindra Hall:
No, I never run and then of course that would have been November 2020 so that marathon got canceled.
Miriam Schulman:
You got off the hook.
Kindra Hall:
[inaudible 00:10:36] it, but I need to hear her story again in order to do it. Her story is a really important thing that I don’t even know if I explicitly say it or not in the book. But her telling me that story made me want that experience, made me want that thing so bad. Even though that is not my thing, running marathons are not my thing, but I wanted that story for myself. I wanted to be able to tell other people my story that was like her story. I feel like that’s one of the things that is that unsung power is when you tell the story. We don’t buy things, we don’t say yes to things just because of the logic of it. We say yes because the story makes us want it so bad.
Miriam Schulman:
One hundred percent and it couldn’t be more true for art because it’s not about filling the wall. It really isn’t. Because a mirror can fill the wall, a cheap print can fill the wall. When people buy art, they’re buying our story. And this is true of all kinds of art, not just visual art. Kindra, let’s dive in because we promised a lot to cover today. What are the four different kinds of stories that every creative needs to tell?
Kindra Hall:
Four kinds of stories are number one, the value story. That’s going to be your sales and marketing story. That’s the story that expresses, as we were just talking, the value of what it is that you’re offering. Now, this isn’t the monetary exchange. This is what it’s really all about story. This is the joy it brings into people’s lives story. Or this is the story of what was on my mind as I was creating this piece, this art, whatever kind of art it is. That’s the value story.
Number two is the founder story, which for any entrepreneur, for any creative is equally as important. People again, would say yes to anything you make if you tell your founder story, in many cases. The founder story is when did you discover this? Or what was one of the moments where you realized this was what you were meant to do? For example, for me, it’s not necessarily going to be one founder story. I have many stories on my journey to becoming who I am and what I do, and that all add up to what I offer and what me and my business are all about. Even that spin story could be one of them.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah, and let me just interject, just to make sure as you go everything becomes super relatable for the artists who are listening. What you were saying about different founder stories, I 100% do that all the time, because when I am offering an art class on portraits, my “founder story,” it’s going to be that hero’s journey of how I create a portrait. That’s a different story than I’m going to tell when I’m teaching something else or I’m offering my coaching services or anything. It’s all the stories are true, but they’re just different flavors and different aspects of ourselves.
Kindra Hall:
It’s an unrealistic expectation that we place on ourselves that we have to choose. Whether it’s one story, if you’ve thought about it in terms of story before, even just one brand, whatever. If you’ve been thinking about it as brand, instead of story, we’re complicated people. Why you discover or sell portraits is very different than the pricing workshop. I think people get overwhelmed and think that they have to condense it all down into one. And maybe yes, you’re this who does this, this and this. But that’s the beauty, is telling these other stories, have the ability to fill out the whole picture.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah, and we’ll talk about the story structure, I rely on the format. I had this aha moment and then I discovered this thing that I want to you teach you.
Kindra Hall:
Yep, exactly.
Miriam Schulman:
And here we are.
Kindra Hall:
Good job.
Miriam Schulman:
Then I also want to circle back to what you were talking about. The value story is that my art collectors will 100% not buy something if there is no story on my website. I’ll have somebody that collects and I really like that, but where’s the story? What is the story?
Kindra Hall:
Yes, I think that’s something that is so important to say. I’m not an artist myself. I buy art, I love art. I’m not buying just the piece of art. I am buying the story that I am going to tell about that art when someone comes over to my house. That is as important. And now for me as a storyteller, I have a painting of a heart in my bedroom. I have a story about that painting. I wasn’t given a story when I bought that piece of art. I saw it in the window, I bought it. But I have a story that now goes with that piece, which actually maybe could fall into one of the other story categories, the customer story.
Miriam Schulman:
Just to reiterate, we have four types. We have the value story, the founder story and the third type is the-
Kindra Hall:
Purpose story. That’s the most flexible of the stories. Those are the stories that are more considered for leadership, for uniting your team, for aligning, for teaching. Those are purpose stories.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah. Right now, an example of the purpose story is how I introduced Kindra and we talked about the spin class and about our experiences with different instructors because that helped everyone understand why we’re even talking about this today. That’s an example of a purpose story.
Kindra Hall:
Yeah. Purpose stories are any time that there’s a concept that you want to better articulate, but it’s not necessarily [inaudible 00:16:49] with the sales and marketing goal.
Miriam Schulman:
If I had stood up here in my podcast mic and said, “You need to tell stories because they sell art.” That’s boring and people don’t really remember that, but they may remember the marathon or the stand-up comic with no muscles who had a sold out spin class.
Kindra Hall:
I know. I want to know who that guy is.
Miriam Schulman:
I’ll tell you later.
Kindra Hall:
Awesome. Is he [inaudible 00:17:16] teaching?
Miriam Schulman:
I don’t know. We’ll talk about that in the stories you don’t need to tell, we’ll bring it up again, okay? That’s why I’m purposely not saying his name.
Kindra Hall:
The last one, which I mentioned, is the customer story. Primarily, those are the stories that you can collect from your collectors or from your customers, and tell them forward as a different type of value story, if you will. But it goes beyond just a four star or five star review. It’s where the customer can share their whole story. However, I think also in art, being aware that your customers will be telling stories about your art is really important. Let’s say they hang a piece, motioning all over my room because I have art all over my room. But let’s say that you have a piece in your room, your friends come over, they tell the story of the artist and of getting the piece. It’s a customer story that they’re telling to a friend. That becomes a tool. This is how business expands, because for every story that your customer has and tells forward, it’s growth for you.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah, and one thing I want to point out for the listeners that I use when I’m selling art, this works especially well in person. When you’re at an art show and you’re talking to a collector, the most valuable thing you can do is not just tell stories, but to actually ask questions. To get your collector to create their own stories and create their own reason of why they want to collect your art. For those who can’t see Kindra, she’s nodding her head vigorously.
Kindra Hall:
I’m nodding. I realize that you can’t see me nodding. Every story you tell is an opportunity for someone to tell a story back to you. Stories beget stories. If you are in person, if you are at an art show, like you said, what’s more important is not the stories that you have going out, but the stories you can get from them so that you can better tailor your message or help them create the stories as they stand there. But it’s really awkward to look at someone and say, “Well, what’s your story?” They’re not going to know what to say. So if you share a story first and it can be a really small one, it can be one of your own stories, it can be another collector’s story and you just share it very briefly. What you’re really doing is saying, “This is a storytelling environment here.” It’s an invitation for them then to, and they will, they’ll respond with a story. Now you’ve got something to work with. It’s a roundabout way to get those stories from them.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah, another way that I used this recently, I have this mini horse class. It’s this evergreen Facebook ad running and it started to not do so well. I was like, “Okay, I need a new graphic and a new copy.” I paid for a graphic designer to make me new images, got a copywriter to write me new copy and it wasn’t working. Nobody was buying it. I was like, “What do I need to do? Do I need to change the audience? Do I need to change the creative again?” I was reading your book that week and I was like, “No, I need a story.” I swear, I added three sentences.
The stories do not have to be complicated. All my story was, I mean, I had the first attention grabbing headline. Do you love horses and do you want to paint them? My story was, when I was in middle school, my best friend, Kathy was obsessed with horses. Whenever we went to her house, I knew we’d be playing with her plastic horse collection. But there was one thing we both could agree on, which was drawing and painting horses were fun. That was it. That was all I needed to add.
Kindra Hall:
Brilliant, so brilliant.
Miriam Schulman:
Then the rest of the copy was what me and the copywriter had decided, all the bullet points and stuff. But it created this framework for people who maybe they were obsessed with horses, or maybe they weren’t obsessed with horses, but they had a friend like my friend, Kathy, and they remember drawing or whatever it is.
Kindra Hall:
Yep. I [inaudible 00:21:43], obsessed with horses.
Miriam Schulman:
Oh, you were?
Kindra Hall:
Horses all the time. Yeah, that is brilliant. People, often they’re like, “Well, but I don’t have that much space.” They’re thinking about, oh, it’s just a Facebook ad. And they’re thinking they’re supposed to write the next huge novel in order for it to be a story. And it can literally be three sentences that connect in a real way to your audience.
Miriam Schulman:
And I told the truth. I didn’t have to say I was obsessed with horses. I didn’t have to do that. I really put myself exactly where I was and invited them. They could either relate more to me, they could relate more to Kathy, just to paint that picture for them so they could step into that space.
Kindra Hall:
That’s an important thing to note because people will be like, “Oh, well, can you fib? Can you expand?” No, because people will remember the story. So you can’t write that in the copy that you loved horses and then they are taking the class and they’re like, “Oh, you loved…” You’re like, “No, I didn’t like the horses.”
Miriam Schulman:
No, I was allergic, a horse bit me at Girl Scout camp. I didn’t get it.
Kindra Hall:
The power of stories is that people remember them. They will remember them. You said, “Oh, I remember that you were a spin instructor.” I was like, “Wait, where did she find that?” I had forgotten that I’d put that line, but you remembered that. So always be truthful and authentic because A: it’s more fun and B: otherwise it really will come back to get you, especially in stories.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah, and by the way, it’s not that I have some photographic memory of the book. Obviously, I stuck onto that piece of the story because I take spin class. It was something I could relate to.
Kindra Hall:
That’s exactly the point. If it’s something that people relate to, they will remember it. So whether they relate to it as I didn’t like horses either, or oh, I had that friend, Kathy. Or, oh, I am a Kathy, that’s how it works. It’s awesome.
Miriam Schulman:
I’m so sorry to interrupt this juicy conversation, but I just wanted to make sure you knew about my art pricing workshop. If you want to raise your prices, but are afraid it will hurt your sales, or maybe you’re just starting out, you’re not sure what to charge. Or your prices feel right, but you’re not seeing the sales you want, you probably have a pricing problem. In this workshop, you’ll discover the secret pricing psychology that attracts high end art collectors. What your prices actually say about you and your art, how to strategically price, and my three go-to marketing techniques that will create a buying frenzy for your art every single time. If you want to confidently sell more art using a proven formula, head on over to schulmanart.com/workshop. Now back to the show.
Okay, now let’s talk about one thing that I thought was really important in your book is you don’t just tell stories for story’s sake.
Kindra Hall:
We do with our friends. But in business, this isn’t just like, “Oh, tell a story.” It’s be very intentional about what you want this story to do, because it will do it if you know what it is you want it to do.
Miriam Schulman:
Let’s go circle back to spin instructor. Okay, this is the rest of that story. [crosstalk 00:25:00] entertaining standup comic. When he ran out of stories to talk about with romantic partners, which I thought was super fun, or we loved hearing about his love life and his family, he started telling stories about clients in other studios. Oh, my God, I wish they could see your face. We got to screenshot that.
Kindra Hall:
Oh, my gosh. I’m wide-eyed, I can’t believe that. Oh, no.
Miriam Schulman:
Right. When I was hearing about Alan in the upper East side, who he stopped giving shout outs to, just as we talked about, you can see yourself in the story. I said, “Well, maybe he sees me as the Alan and when he goes to the upper East side, he’s telling stories about Miriam, I don’t know.” But I was like, “I’m done with this class.” [crosstalk 00:25:46] back again.
Kindra Hall:
Yeah, I mean, you got to be careful with the stories you tell. I mean, it sounds like he was being very him and maybe there are people who liked that, but I don’t know.
Miriam Schulman:
No, no. There’s a very important lesson to share there.
Kindra Hall:
That’s why the studio closed?
Miriam Schulman:
Oh, no, it’s not actually, but it’s partly why. But the lesson for everyone is that there are stories you can tell and there are stories that is it kind, is it helpful? You may have to ask yourself those basic questions. Does it serve a purpose? Is it helpful? Is it kind? If it doesn’t check off those boxes, it’s not a story to tell.
Kindra Hall:
A rule that I haven’t articulated, I haven’t put it into an exact phrase, but if ever I’m telling a story and I can’t see my part in it, or there’s a villain, I realize that it’s not a story that’s ready to be told, for me. We all play our parts in everything and it is important to be very intentional about the characters that you’re sharing in those stories and to know that our stories are often more a reflection of us than they are of anyone else.
Miriam Schulman:
That’s a powerful way of looking at it. Kindra, why don’t we make this actionable for everyone, how to create a story bank? I know you have a really super helpful tip around this because I know that my artists, when they go to write an email, when they go to their website to write about their artwork, they get writer’s block.
Kindra Hall:
I think that is the number one thing that keeps people from using their stories. Is they think they don’t have any or when they need one, they can’t find one. It’s not a matter of having or not having a story, it’s having or not having tools to access those stories. To keep in mind that anything could be a story. Let’s go back to the horse painting. You’re not talking about art necessarily. The story is primarily about your childhood friend and then that you liked to draw horses together instead of play with a plastic one. Now, that probably isn’t the type of story that people are thinking is what counts as a story. They’re probably thinking it needs to be grand or it needs to be bigger. That’s the first piece of advice that I always give people, is to check themselves and see if what they’re thinking is that a story has to be a really big dramatic story. And if so, to be looking for smaller ones, because even a really small story… Well look, I mean, did that small story about Kathy transform the ad?
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah, then I started making money on it. Right, there we go. People are finally clicking. I was like, “Oh, okay!”
Kindra Hall:
Exactly. Really it all comes down to finding stories. One of the tips that I give is our stories often attach themselves to the nouns in our life. The people, the places, the things, the events. If you’re looking for a story about a piece of art or about something that you offer, see if you can look through your memory for other moments when that noun was present. For you, horses. What have your various experiences with horses been? You got bit at camp, you watch them on the Bachelorette, because they’re always on horse riding dates, and you have Kathy and playing plastic horses. Then from there you can be like, “Oh, perfect. I can use that little story.”
People are also obviously a noun, but some great stories can come from the people in your lives. You could have made a list of your family members. Well, maybe there’s a small story about one of them that ties into whatever the message is that you’re trying to convey. Another strategy that you can use is to think about firsts. When is the first time you… Firsts are really emotionally charged moments and firsts are often the best place to go to be looking for those various founder stories as well.
Miriam Schulman:
All right, that’s beautiful. Now I know you have a simple way to structure a story in three parts.
Kindra Hall:
Yeah. The storytelling framework, instead of beginning, middle end, breaks down into normal, explosion, new normal. Where most stories go wrong, is we start in the middle of the story with the thing that happened or with just simply the information. That’s another thing. Like “These are the materials I used. This is how many inches,” whatever it is. The new normal is I mean, if you’re talking about it in super basics, it’s like, “This is how much it costs,” go on your merry way. But where people really start to care about a story and therefore get drawn in, which then moves them to action, is in the normal.
In the normal we describe the characters, we share the emotion, we paint that picture of whatever moment it is that you’re trying to share so that the person who is reading that story, who’s hearing that story, who you’re telling that story to, starts to see it in their own mind. It really blurs the lines between your experience and my experience and suddenly it becomes the same thing. Once you have them in that place, you can take them through and then here’s what it is and then what is possible after they purchase it essentially.
Miriam Schulman:
One thing I found very helpful in the book when you’re sharing about the story structure, is creating the character and also sharing some specifics. That’s why in my horse story, I actually said, “Kathy,” I actually said her name. I didn’t just say, “Oh, when I went to my friend’s house,” and didn’t say who it was, which would have been more of a myth story.
Kindra Hall:
Exactly and in the book, I talk about the framework, normal explosion, new normal. I also talk about the four key components that a story needs to have. And that is an identifiable character; you chose Kathy, authentic emotion, the feeling of it. Even there, you didn’t spend a lot of time on it, you only have three sentences. You can remember that elementary school angst when the friend always wanted to play this thing, but you wanted to play that thing. We’ve all had that. I listen to my kids have that when they’re with their friends. So authentic emotion, a moment, which is a zoom in instead of, “Oh, I used to always play horses with my friend.” It’s more like you come into the moment. Like, “After school we go there,” and then specific details.
In the Kathy story, you talking about the plastic horses; perfect. Because what I immediately started thinking about, I could picture my friend, Christine, who also loved horses and her entire horse collection on her bedroom floor where we used to… I was right there with you and Kathy, but I was with Christine, in three sentences. You accomplished the entire co-creative process and I can’t paint anything and I would love to take that class.
Miriam Schulman:
Well, you can. Just kidding. We’ll set you up. This is beautiful, I love the book. I already told everyone in the mastermind that they needed to read your book and some of them are. I hear you have a new book coming out, so tell us about your new book.
Kindra Hall:
I have a new book and I think as a version of an artist, I suppose, a word artist myself, obviously stories in business, which is what Stories That Stick, is all about, is so important. If you ever struggle with getting your work sold or whatever it is, having yourself differentiated from everybody else, stories as a strategy is a winner all the way. However, you can work on your marketing copy, on your sales pitch all you want. But I think and as I’ve gotten older, I realize so many more of the barriers to any success or experiences that I’m seeking have much less to do with the stories that I am or am not telling out into the world, and everything to do with the stories I tell myself. Stories I tell myself about what I’m good at, what I’m capable of, what I deserve, what I don’t, what failure is, what it isn’t.
And these stories, they’re automatic. They run through your head, completely unattended, unedited. And in many cases, they rule our lives. I have had to systematically dismantle many stories in my life to get to where I want to be. And I have many more to dismantle because there’s an endless supply within each of us. But that’s what the next book is all about. It’s called Choose Your Story, Change Your Life. It’s about silencing that inner critic and really rewriting the way you see yourself from the inside out. It was so challenging and so thrilling to write. It comes out in January and I don’t know, I can’t wait. I can’t wait to share these stories.
Miriam Schulman:
That’s beautiful. All right, we’ll make sure, we’re going to link in the show notes, which you can find at schulmanart.com/151, both Stories That Stick, which you can get right now, or Choose Your Story, Change Your Life, which is available by pre-order. Maybe we’ll get you back on the podcast next year. We’ll talk about it because that’s something we talk about a lot, are not just the stories we make up about ourselves, but also the stories we make up about our customers that aren’t true.
Kindra Hall:
Yes.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah, maybe that’s book number three.
Kindra Hall:
I’m writing that down, actually. Yeah. Oh, my gosh!
Miriam Schulman:
Okay, just indulge me for a minute. I always talk about to sell stuff, it’s a belief triad, and for you, this would be the story triad. There’s belief in your art, belief in yourself, and belief in your customer. You have to have belief in all three to sell. What I’m hearing from you is there’s stories about your art, your product, there’s stories about yourself and there’s stories about your customer. And some of those stories we tell ourselves don’t serve us.
Kindra Hall:
Exactly. Yeah, they’re just not true.
Miriam Schulman:
Right.
Kindra Hall:
Yeah, and we make them up. I mean, ooh, that could be a whole new… I know exactly where that goes. Thank you.
Miriam Schulman:
Oh, you’re welcome. All right, Kindra, do you have any last words for our listeners before we call this podcast complete?
Kindra Hall:
Take a moment after you listen to this. Stop the car if you’re driving, or take five minutes tonight before you go to bed and just choose one communication touch point. Maybe you have an upcoming show, maybe you are working on copy for an online ad. One place where you typically communicate in this way and ask yourself, “Is there a story I could tell here? Is there a Kathy and the horse story?” Then just try it. Try it and see, because I think you will be shocked by the change you see almost immediately. Then story it forward.
If you can’t think of a place, I will suggest someplace that every artist likely has if you have a website, it’s the about me tab, or our story, or my story tab. Make sure it’s actually a story. You can start there and tell a story there, but just try it now. That’s the first step to using it. And then I’m sure you can tell, Miriam, you’ve been using stories a lot more because you see how effective they really are.
Miriam Schulman:
They’re really powerful. All right, we’re going to link to your books. I’ll also link to the horse workshop in the show notes for anyone who hasn’t seen that Facebook ad and are like, “Wait, a minute. I want to paint the horses.”
Next week we have on the one and only Kara Golden. She’s the CEO and founder of Hint Water and her latest book, which is an inspirational memoir, includes examples of all four types of the stories that we talked about today. It’s founder story, purpose story, value story, and customer story. This is a very unusual guest to have on this show, but you’re not going to want to miss it. So make sure you hit the subscribe or follow button in your podcast app. And if you’re feeling extra generous, why don’t you leave me a review. Tell us how much you like the show or not, but we’d love to hear from you either way. All right, thank you so much for being with me here today. See you the same time, same place next week. Stay inspired.
Thank you for listening to the Inspiration Place podcast. Connect with us on Facebook at facebook.com/schulmanart, on Instagram @schulmanart and of course, on schulmanart.com.
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