Where to Find Signature Stories to Support Your Message & Grow Your Audience

Among the many things I create in my work, speeches are maybe my favorite. They just get me geek-level excited.

Writing is my oldest friend. We're comfortable together.

Podcasting is my midlife bestie. We've gotten super close, super fast.

But speaking? Speaking is my Hell Yeah friend. (That's the kind of friend where, when you see them walk into a room unexpectedly, you go, "THEY’RE here?! Hell yeah.”)

That's public speaking to me. The chance to craft and deliver a speech online or off gives me a jolt of energy like no other. In fact, for three years, speaking was my main source of income. I gave talks in 25 states and 3 countries, raising my rates beyond 5-figures, delivering keynotes to audiences ranging from 4,000 marketers to 400 consultants to 40 CEOs. I still speak regularly today, though I'm much choosier about travel. I'm a public speaking addict.

By the way, if you're curious about public speaking as a form of marketing or as a source of your income, some suggestions:

Around 2015, when I moved from being an expert who gave talks occasionally to a professional paid speaker, I learned real quick about a few damaging behaviors—some my own, some in others, all of which make it harder for the ideas conveyed in a talk (or anything) to stick and serve others.

Some common examples:

  1. Starting a talk saying, "I'm excited to be here!" (Oof. I did this a lot. This is verbal detritus. They're filler words doing nothing more than wasting runtime and delaying the actual start of the actual talk. Really, just a warm "thank you!" is plenty, then start strong. Because what else would you be? Upset to be here?)

  2. Saying, "Good morning, how we doing? OH COME ON, we can do better than that!" (Thankfully, this is not something I've ever said, but unfortunately, it's something plenty of speakers try. It makes me cringe, because not only is it a cliche, it makes an enemy of the audience from the start. By the way, if you run an event, I'd highly suggest paying a linebacker to sit off-stage and flying-eagle-mega-tackle any speaker who does this. One-hundred percent of your attendees will appreciate it.)

  3. Telling stories about the most famous brands and people. (Thankfully, I was told to drop this quick, and I did. Among professional speakers, this is a bit of an inside joke. When you hear someone teaching an audience using examples like Apple, Amazon, Google, or Meta, or maybe Mr. Beast, GaryVee, Sarah Blakely, or Steve Jobs, as a pro, you know they're in for an uphill battle. The audience is immediately less receptive to the ideas being presented.)

This third one is arguably the hardest to change, but for a surprising reason. It also doesn't look that difficult to change either. Whereas something like "I'm excited to be here" is an unconscious habit, the stories you tell are your choice. But sharing famous examples feels like the default choice (because why would others care if they don't already know the company or person?) or the only choice (because where can you spot stories worth telling?).

Today, I want to suggest two better places to look for stories, but first, consider why sharing stories about uber-famous people or brands makes your job harder. (Oh hey! Uber's another to avoid...)

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Why Stories About Famous Names Makes Your Job Harder

My dad is a software engineer who became a software engineer before most people had ever heard the term software engineer. Throughout his career, he's either worked for startups and small businesses or served clients as an independent contractor, which he's done since 2002. As I've gotten older and thought more deeply about career and business, my dad and I have found new and surprising things to bond over, and I regularly turn to him for advice. I'm lucky to have a confidant and friend in my father capable of giving good advice about something so important to me as my work, and the answer is yes, he does read my writing, and no, that doesn't make this any less true.

Anyway, he and I both break out into hives when dealing with global brands and red tape-ridden organizations. As he likes to say, "Big companies succeed despite themselves." Companies with massive amounts of revenue, resources, and reach tend to benefit from their own inertia more than their innovation.

When these famous companies or names are the subject of your story, all your audience likely pictures is this:

This is immediately playing this game on Hard Mode. Your job was already to clear away some head trash and objections your audience brings to your speech, your writing, your content. But now? You've just voluntarily dumped MORE trash into their minds. That's because, even if the story really can teach them something, they're not just hearing your words and ideas. They're also filling their brains with whatever context they already have about the subject of your story, so now you have to clear THAT away just to ensure your message is what they really hear.

They hear "Apple" or "Steve Jobs," and you now face additional friction.

Objections flood in. ("Pfft! Easy for THEM! I'm not them. Nobody is.")

Eyes start to roll. ("Here we go, another Steve Jobs story. You get this off Wikipedia? Do you also tell designers to 'just make it look like Apple'?")

Preconceived notions bubble up. ("Wait, I thought THIS was what he said...")

Rationalizing begins. ("They started in 1976! The world has changed so much. The context is so different.")

Your power diminishes, your work gets harder, all because you decided to share a story which was, in a word, fraught. Now the story itself needs to be justified instead of using the story to justify your ideas. It got harder, not easier, for others to really hear what you're trying to say.

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I know I'll get some pushback to this. People adore their big brands and famous names. People get fiercely defensive about this stuff in a way that surprised me at first. That's okay. If you're telling me the story is doing its job and, by extension, so are you? I'm happy.

But I'm less certain we understand the job of a storyteller today, least of all in the business wold.

Storytellers are janitors.

Storytellers are in the sanitation business. You're a thought custodian. You sweep aside limiting beliefs. That's what stories do. They don't present the blueprint. They open people up to new possibilities.

As a communicator, if you want to convey an insight, relate to and connect deeply with someone (especially someone who isn’t exactly like you), sell something in support of a cause or business, change someone's perspective, shift where they're focusing attention, delight or frighten or bewitch or terrify—if you want to do anything like that, then you can't just demand it. You have to inspire it. You can't just tell them your ideas matter. You have to SHOW them why they'd care.

Fortunately we have a very short and wonderful word to summarize all that ranting.

Story.

As a storyteller, what you share is meant to clear away the trash and allow something better to come in. As an expert, maybe you hand them that thing overtly, or maybe you imply it, giving them space to sit and synthesize. Regardless, as a creator and a leader, you're there to suggest a change that would benefit them compared to clinging to the status quo. That's your ​premise​, the defensible assertion you're making, pulled from your perspective. The story clears away the bad, the premise is the handle they can hold to embrace the good, and then your IP helps it stick and stay—things like your various insights, turns of phrases, signature stories and signature bits, your visual frameworks and practical methodologies, with even more stories to support each point along the way.

As an expert, you're in the business of turning you thinking into your IP. As a storyteller, you're in the business of preparing your audience to receive it.

Stories are the ultimate way to resonate because they first create alignment, then they impart the urge to act. (This is how resonance functions. In the sciences, when two frequencies are aligned, they're considered resonant, and the second is amplified.)

Stories are communication vehicles creating connection first, the energy needed to change second.

“Stories are like one person saying to another, this is how it feels to me? Do you understand what I’m saying? Does it also feel this way to you?” — Ishiguro (Nobel Prize speech, 2017)

Storytellers are janitors. We clear out trash in the head and heart so something better can come in.

I can see no work more worthy in today's world.

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If this is our job, if our enemy is the trash currently taking up space that should be occupied by something better, than we should work hard to avoid sharing stories that create more trash. After all, what good is a story if all they do is shift their objections from the changes we're proposing to the stories we're telling?

So we arrive here: We need to look past the big brands and famous names to find our stories. This all gets easier when you've dug down to the core of your perspective and your thinking, developed the right language to articulate it as your premise, and then use that premise as a lens through which you see everything.

Me, my premise is resonance over reach. I believe you should prioritize resonance over reach to grow your business, your cause, your career. I believe you should make things that matter more, because then you need to beg for attention less. My content flows from this premise. My products and services too.

When you know what you're exploring and more importantly how you SEE it, you spot ideas for better stories everywhere. Here are two of my favorite places to look...

2 Places to Find Better Stories

The first is very useful and, unfortunately, a little painful. The second is very personal and, happily, an unfair advantage you posses.

1. Generic industry interviews.

I have good news and bad news. Which do you want first?

You don't get to pick, I'm the one writing this, WORDS ARE MIND CONTROL BWAHAHA.

Ahem. Bad news first. (And no, it wasn't that you have to tolerate whatever that^ was...)

The bad news is, you're surrounded by so much generic, forgettable industry content, you will want to occasionally drink gasoline through a straw in your eyeball. (Just me? Cool. Moving on...)

The good news is, you're surrounded by so much generic, forgettable industry content, others have mostly done the work to surface story leads for you ... then promptly stopped developing them into anything worth anyone's time. Enter, YOU!

Step one: Find those blogs, podcasts, YouTube series, newsletters, and industry trade publications with all that commodity content.

Step two: Mine it for gold which others failed to polish.

Step three: Shine.

I love doing this.

The most useful signature story from my first ​book​ and associated speech was that of Mike Brown, founder of Death Wish Coffee, the world's strongest coffee. (Note that in the book, I included plenty of references to famous brands and names. None of them were stories, all of them were quick-hit examples. I do think that matters if your audience, in part, works at big brands.)

In the case of Mike and Death Wish, I'd found a signature story that could relate to EVERYONE, regardless of the specifics of their work or industry. Coffee isn't so niche or technical that you get stuck just trying to understand the basics, and Death Wish isn't massively famous. Most people hear the story and bring zero preconceived notions to it, meaning they're able to hear what I'm saying and be with me and mindful. I have not dumped extra head trash on top of the pile, which merely saying the name Dunkin' or Starbucks would have done.

So how'd I find Mike? I listened to a big SaaS brand's rather generic business podcast, where they did the expected: hyped a show as groundbreaking, only to interview a parade of founders about their success in the most predictable, boring fashion. I needed a good story, as I often do, and so I scanned that feed, spot-listened to a few episodes featuring people or organizations that intrigued me, and found Mike. The interview was terrible, but Mike was great, and I knew there was so much meat left on that bone.

I invited Mike onto my podcast (this was years ago, before my current show). I didn't ask for his end-to-end story (that was already out there, and not as useful as something more focused), and I didn't ask for his generalized advice for others (which often falls flat but, worse, doesn't illuminate anything about my premise for use around my platform). Instead, I used the interview as a chance to hunt for moments where he tried the best practices and still struggled, or other times where he questioned conventional wisdom or trusted his intuition more than expert advice.

THOSE were themes relating to my premise at the time, and those lines of questioning led to a story I could sign my name to, because even though it wasn't MY story, I crafted it in my own unique way to illuminate something about my own unique premise. That's why it's a signature story: I found a way to sign my name to it. Then, that signature benefitted me everywhere, in speeches, blog posts, guest appearances, and my book.

Thankfully (and rather painfully too), you are surrounded by endless generic interviews and feature pieces. Spot the interestingness left unexplored, then interview those people your way, pressing the chat through the lens of your premise.

Then craft that material into a signature story.

2. Imports and integrations.

The other way to spot worthy stories is to embrace your LLM.

Sorry, I should explain:

A.I. and people both rely on LLMs as their foundation. A.I. has large language models. People have little life moments. The problem is, unlike A.I., most people don't draw from theirs to inform their input, which worsens their output.

Every day, you're surrounded by things that seem to have nothing to do with your work or the themes of your content in any direct fashion. Maybe that means more "indirect" learning, like talking to a friend in a similar job but very different industry, or maybe it's all the stuff you encounter merely moving around the world. But all those observations, memories, and moments are powerful material, if you take them seriously. The way to start?

Become a ​noticer​.

Being a noticer is one of those hidden skills few discuss, but all great storytellers master. You can journal, you can log ideas on your phone, you can trust that whatever ideas stick in your brain and keep coming back up must be the ones to pursue. But no matter how you do it, you have to notice things. Then, you pull those threads. You translate something seemingly irrelevant into something that connects. That's a great way to frame creativity. As Steve Jobs said, "Creativity is just connecting things." (Old Stevie-Boy was this scrappy entrepreneur who—)

Import things from outside your direct sphere of influence or domain of expertise, then integrate them into your platform. A metaphor is an easy way to get started:

  • This happened... (a moment or memory)

  • Which made me realize... (an idea sparked by the moment or memory)

  • And that's the thing about... (the topic you teach + the insight you're sharing)

Notice things. Import them. Integrate them by pressing them through your premise to arrive at a deeper insight. Maybe that's so well-received when you share it, it becomes a signature bit, a part of your IP.

Whether writing is your old friend, podcasting is your bestie, or speaking is what energizes you most, telling stories can open them up, clear away the trash, and allow your ideas to come in. But you have to ensure you select and develop the right stories for the job. It's then and only then you might get the response you're seeking:

THEY'RE here?!

Hell yeah.

Jay Acunzo