What is your story?
Why do you do what you do? If you can explain that and bring it to life you will have a business which has a soul and attracts customers and supporters. Here are five areas to think about as you create your story
1 Your personal history
If you saw my Facebook Live (see it here to catch up with it and please like the page at the same time) you will know that my entrepreneurial story started with selling apples over the garden wall but my drive to do something world changing came because my sister was killed when I was 30 and she was 33 and I realised you need to live now not wait.
Your story might be something like that or something more like James Dyson who got frustrated by how poorly vacuum cleaners worked and had the engineering skills to address it. Or maybe the powerful message lies in your personal skills or interests.
2 Your business history
If I had had more time on the Facebook Live I would have talked about tins of food and how when I decided to go it alone I thought I needed to buy lots of tins (they’re heavy to carry on a bike) because I might not be able to afford a car, particularly once I had lent a friend all my money so I had no fall back fund. I know that that I felt very alone and that is one of the reasons we set up Solopreneur Growth Club so you don’t have to feel alone. Also I made lots of mistakes which cost me time and money and I would have got further faster with coaching earlier in my business, though I am happy after 27 years that it’s worked – again Solopreneur Growth Club is designed to be the cost effective support I couldn’t afford in the early years on my own.
3 Your values
An important value for us is to be non-judgemental. For me this comes from when I was a toddler and my mother was worried I would be shy like her, so she let me go into the coffee shop she was running and talk to anyone. As a sweet young child everyone was nice to me, the perfect foundation for networking; and I talked to everyone, even the old lady everyone ignored who came in in the old raincoat, she was my friend. And she bought me ballet shoes because actually she was a rich old lady but others judged her and ignored her. Everyone can contribute and this value means we are always learning and meeting great new people. To get you started you can use our values tool and find out more about the importance of values on our inspire2aspire website.
4 Why you exist – your purpose and vision as a business
We want to change the world by helping others to grow their businesses and live better and happier lives and change the world for the people they live and work with. What’s yours? This should make sense based on the other parts of your story
5 How you do it – your strategy
We are doing it in Solopreneur Growth Club by using the experience and tools that we have built up over 27 years providing advice to all sorts of organisations. Because we’ve got this treasure trove of knowledge and techniques we can do it very cost effectively so that any business can afford it.
Once you have created your story you’ll be ready to attract more leads which we’ll be covering in detail in the business skills session .
