People love stories. We read them, we listen to them, we watch them, and we all tell them.

You tell stories too.

Most of your stories will never make it outside of your mind, but you will carry on telling them. You are a story teller about your life and experiences, and your stories range from biographical epics spanning decades, to single throwaway sentences.

Your stories are unique to you, and they are seriously powerful.

Your Business Story isn’t just a Story.

The great thing about stories is that they are so much more than just the story. Your story shapes your identity, changing how you see yourself and the world around you. Your stories influence your responses to adversity, to big emotions, and to the struggles that come with growing your business.

But stories can get us into trouble.

Now, there’s no such thing as a bad story (unless you count Red Notice, that film did not do it for me 😂), but we can tell ourselves helpful or unhelpful stories.

Helpful stories help us feel better, act in line with our values, and create more positive outcomes in our lives.

Stories of all lengths contain plot holes, and these plot holes can be omissions, generalisations, or misinterpretations. We might then use those plot holes to put ourselves down and wind up telling a story that is really unhelpful. Unhelpful stories can set unrealistic expectations and limit what we think we are capable of achieving.

We can create plot holes in a story that is one sentence long.

For all of us, achieving our first £5k* month is a BIG deal. It can be a rocky road and that road has a BIG story to tell. Sometimes it tells such a big story in such a small package, we don’t even notice that it is a story!

Let me show you what I mean…

I can’t earn £5,000 a month, and I won’t ever be able to. I am a bad business owner.

*You can substitute this with another number or amount if you like - it’s your story!

I hope this doesn’t sound too familiar to you, but it’s a story I’ve seen all too often. It’s just two sentences, but this story has scene setting, a plot, and even character development… and it has three major plot holes…

#1 All or Nothing Thinking

“I can’t earn £5,000 a month” is the home of our first plot hole (or thinking error). All or nothing thinking is the world of pass-fail thinking, it’s perfect or it’s rubbish. I can or I can’t.

“I can’t earn £5,000 a month” in this context is emotionally charged. You can tell how this business owner is feeling as they tell their story. They haven’t left space for nuance or shades of grey as they tell their business story and it hurts.

But we can help them tell a different story…

Managing All or Nothing Thinking

To help our protagonist, we need to break out of yes-no-thinking and into yes-no-maybe-almost-mostly-thinking. In this case, we can add one word to change the entire scene...

I can’t earn £5,000 a month yet.

Now our business owner is moving forwards in their story, it’s a process. It’s a fluid state. It’s changeable, and they are capable of changing it.

#2 Fortune Telling

“….and I won’t ever be able to” should come with a spoiler alert. Our protagonist is on a one way road and there are no other options. If this was our whole story, we’d all be able to guess it pretty early on in the movie adaptation, it’s not the most diverse plot line.

But this isn’t a movie adaptation, and none of us can predict the future!

I’m sure you can think of a thousand different ways this story could go, and we can’t bet on any of them being more likely than any other… so how can we help our protagonist here?

Managing Fortune Telling

While we can’t offer a concrete conclusion for our protagonist, we can tell a story of hope and possibility:

… and I will keep working towards my goal.

Suddenly, the skies clear and the sun comes out. Our star is taking action, and they have options! We still don’t know when they will achieve their goal, but we know they are still moving towards it. They are still in the game, and there’s plenty of room for a captivating plot twist 😋

#3 Mislabelling

Think of your favourite hero in your favourite story. I’ll bet they are complex. They have their motivations, they are relatable, they are likeable… but sometimes they might do something that’s pretty bad.

That doesn’t make them bad. They are still the good guy, right?

Our Protagonist isn’t good or bad either, instead they are complex in their own way and stating that they are a bad business owner… well, it doesn’t give much room for the audience to make their own judgement.

“I am a bad business owner” is assigning a label to an entire person based on one action, circumstance or measurement of success - it doesn’t sound very fair, does it? So how can we tell a better story for our Protagonist?

Managing Mislabelling

When we assign a label we have to make a judgement. Let’s not make a judgement on our Protagonist, and instead focus on their behaviour - instead of what they are, let’s talk about what they do!

I am still learning and growing.

Our new story could be the first part of a trilogy, right!? Let’s put it all together into our helpful story…

I can’t earn £5,000 a month yet, and I will keep working towards my goal. I am still learning and growing.

That is a world away from the rather unhelpful “I can’t earn £5,000 a month, and I won’t ever be able to. I am a bad business owner.”. Our new story feels more hopeful, freeing, and kind to our protagonist. It has a soundtrack in major key, and a happy ending.

And the best bit? Our Protagonist’s situation hasn’t changed one bit, we are just telling a new story.

Please note - other stories are available!