Want to Know if Your Story is Worth Sharing? Take this Test

It seems like only sad stories are worth sharing. This is an actual comment someone wrote during one of my live videos on social media. And it’s the kind of thinking that stops so many of us from sharing our story. If you want to know whether your story is worth sharing, take the following test. 

Why we share stories 

Clarity is the foundation of my online sessions with entrepreneurs. So it makes sense to apply it with you as well: before even sharing or thinking about your story, you have to know why you are doing it. 

When sharing stories as an entrepreneur you want to: 

1. Connect to people 
2. Start a conversation 
3. Create trustful relationships 
4. Explain a concept 
5. Show them you can relate
6. Tell them why you do what you do 

What you are NOT trying to do through storytelling is: 

1. Playing on sadness so that they’ll buy from you 
2. Be a primadonna instead of focussing on how you can help them
3. Deceiving or altering the facts 

Storytelling has the power of bringing us together and yes, of bringing entrepreneurs closer to their clients. At its core is about doing marketing but in an authentic, honest, and human way. 

This is why when using your story you have to be strategic and know in advance why you are doing it. Now that we have got that out of the way, let’s go back to our is-my-story-worth-sharing test. 

Why do you think your story is not worth sharing? 

And this is not a rhetorical question, I do really want to know the answer: you can email that to me or put in the comments. Oftentimes we believe our stories are not worth sharing because any of the following thoughts might cloud our minds: 

• What will people say if I share this 
• Mine is not a special story 
• My story is not sad enough 
• What would I even say about my story 
• I’m used to sharing other people’s story, how do I share mine? 
• It’s really hard to share my story 
• I have no idea where to start from 
• Do I even need to share my story? 
• Being myself is the hardest thing 

And the list could go on and on but I want to stop here because I want you to ask yourself some different questions. A.k.a. here comes the test to know if your story is worth sharing. 

Take this test to know if you should share your story 

The test is pretty simple and straightforward. What you have to do is simply answering the following questions. Here it goes: 

1. Do you ever feel like you’re not giving your clients the whole truth about yourself? 
2. Is there a memory, an event, an object that keeps coming back in your brain but you don’t necessarily know why? 
3. Has it ever happened to listen to one of your clients and think “I totally get it, I can relate to that!”? 
4. Have you ever looked at your website or social media and felt that something about you was missing? 
5. Did something ever go wrong in your business and you promised yourself you’d never make that mistake again?

If you have answered yes to any of these questions, you have a story to tell my friend. Because here is the thing about business storytelling: there isn’t a magic scale weighting which story is worth more or less. 

As long as your story can: 

1. Help 
2. Relate 
3. Connect
4. Explain 

Your story is worth sharing … strategically. And I add that because I don’t want you to run on your website or social media or next Zoom call and pour your story out with no structure or reason. You need to know when and with whom to share your story. And the best way to know that is by knowing why you want to share that story in the first place. 

So you see, you have a beautiful story to tell: it might be sad, it might harsh, it might be serious or hilarious or traumatic, but it’s yours. And you are going to surprise the heck out of people by sharing it on your own terms.