The Speak Up: F*ck the Hero's Journey 🤬

Pre-s: ​Here's today's email in audio form​.

I'm back in your email inbox today to share a bit more about my company, Tell Me A Story.

Let's start with what we're not about:

We are not about the Joseph Campbell hero's journey. (Read: Brit Marling's New York Times piece ​"I Don't Want to be the Strong Female Lead"​)

Instead, we challenge the status quo way of telling stories.

We know that the words storytelling and authenticity are buzzy, overused, and often said without much meaning underneath. We’re here to help you take those words back, tell incredible, powerful stories, and own your voice with authentic authenticity.

We believe public relations stand to be a bit more personal (with your boundaries and values intact, of course.)

It’s not media training, it’s narrative reframing.

Storytelling is confidence.

It’s empathy and authenticity; it’s human nature.

It’s learning how to communicate in a way that isn’t contrived, isn’t full of jargon or professional clichés.

It makes us ask better questions, and listen more closely.

It’s not based on rules or formulas.

Storytelling is about being vulnerable and sharing a piece of yourself.

It’s breaking free of boring chit-chat or bulleted PowerPoints.

It’s communicating with ease and tapping into your natural leadership abilities.

It’s your path to all that lies ahead.

Humans need stories. Yet for too long, our mainstream culture has focused more on the narratives that other people create, versus the stories we choose to tell ourselves.

Well-intentioned advice on authenticity and storytelling has effectively created more boundaries, more rules, and MadLib-style templates that keep so many of us from finding our true voice and using it powerfully.

By searching for social media clicks and likes or trying to develop the most memorable tagline, we’ve forgotten that the most interesting thing about us is US.

Your unique personal story is your starting place for creating a more authentic human connection with your audience -- whether it's one person or millions.

There are a lot of digital storytelling courses, media trainers, PR teams, and marketing gurus that ask you to become someone you are not.

And some are unintentionally helping you to blend in rather than stand out.

Tell Me A Story works with who you are and we build and illuminate from there.

I'm going to leave you with this quote from Toni Morrison's 2004 Wellesley Commencement Address.

“But then, I am a teller of stories and therefore an optimist, a believer in the ethical bend of the human heart, a believer in the mind’s disgust with fraud and its appetite for truth, a believer in the ferocity of beauty. So, from my point of view, which is that of a storyteller, I see your life as already artful, waiting, just waiting and ready for you to make it art."

You can listen to her full speech here.​

I'll be back next with some more resources to share with you.

Take care,

Hillary

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