The Difference Between Sharing and Selling YOUR STORY

When telling stories to clients, you must 'second position'—empathize and project into them to imagine what it's like to be them hearing your story, rather than just telling it the way you want to tell it

Eben emphasizes the critical distinction between client-focused storytelling versus everyday storytelling to friends where you say 'oh my gosh let me tell you what happened to me yesterday'

The most compelling story framework follows: I tried and failed (multiple times), then I had an insight, then I had a breakthrough with results, then I created a system, showed it to others who got results, and now I want to teach it to you

Eben demonstrates this with his dating advice story of seeing an attractive woman, getting nervous, walking away, then later learning direct response marketing where instead of getting zero calls he got dozens of calls

Your stories must align with your listener's experience—there shouldn't be anything you're saying that your prospective client cannot relate to and identify with

Eben gives specific examples: 'I'm not going to tell the story of seeing an attractive woman and getting nervous if I'm teaching a course about productivity because that's not relevant' and vice versa with marketing stories for dating courses

When you have a really intense experience, it's very hard to empathize with others or think about what's happening for other people, but after processing the story multiple times, you can hop between your perspective and the other person's perspective

Eben explains that initially after the nervous woman experience, he would never have had presence of mind to say 'here's what it was probably like for her,' but after processing he can tell the story and stop to imagine her perspective—that she maybe glanced over and 'I'm not even a flicker in her memory'

The most compelling stories involve multiple failures because it shows you're serious, determined, disciplined, and willing to keep trying—which builds more credibility than single failures

Eben gives the diet example: 'I tried the keto diet and gained 10 pounds, tried South Beach Diet and couldn't get up in the morning, tried high fat paleo diet and my skin broke out'—this shows you're serious and determined

You look better when you're willing to look bad and share your failures, because most people won't get on social media and admit they tried something and failed or were embarrassed

Eben notes that being willing to say 'I tried something and it failed' requires power because 'most people are not getting on Instagram or social media saying hey everyone step one was I tried this and I failed and I was embarrassed'

The breakthrough and result portion of your story is what you really want to emphasize—the specific outcome you got when the insight started working

Eben emphasizes talking about concrete results like 'I lost 27 pounds in 90 days and here's the before picture and here's the after picture' or 'the phone started ringing off the hook, I got dozens of calls on this direct response ad whereas none of the other stuff worked'

After creating your system, show it to other people and share their results to build additional credibility beyond your personal breakthrough

Eben shares how he wrote down everything he learned about dating in 10-12 pages, sent it to a friend's newsletter list, 'it blew up,' people started getting great results, and his male friends said 'dude this stuff works this is really good'

The goal is to condense years or decades of experience into several minutes while making the listener feel like they're learning something at each step

Eben explains you're trying to say 'hey other person who is where I was, I know where you are right now and I'm gonna prove it by telling you where I was in my life' and then guide them through the complete journey

Processing your story versus sharing your story are two completely different activities—processing puts a burden on the listener and costs them energy, while sharing gives value to a processed lesson

Eben explains that when you're processing, 'you're taking from your listener and you're putting a burden on them' versus sharing a lesson you've already worked through and refined for maximum value