YOU ARE THE AUTHOR OF YOUR STORY
EPISODE 93 of a Daily Dose of Greatness Quest with Trevor Crane
SUMMARY & INTRO TO THE SHOW
In today’s episode, I talk about storytelling. I believe that
You are the author of your own story.
You are the director of your movie.
You are lead.
You are the hero.
And it doesn’t matter where you are right now:
If you’re ON TOP? – The question is, “Where’s the next level?”
If you’re COMFORTABLE? – The question is the same.
(*WARNING, in this place it’s VERY easy to get bored, broken or broke.)
(I’m so bored, it makes me want to put a gun in my mouth and swallow the bullet.)
Of if you’re at the BOTTOM. – The question is often, “What the hell did I do to get here?!”
But a better question is, WHAT DO I WANT… which can be a pretty challenging question.
So whether you’re Broke, Bored, or a Baddass…
I think our goal is to find a way to Turn Tragedy Into Triumph
And to find THE NEXT LEVEL of our success.
If your life was a movie, and you were the director, how do you want it to end?
You have a story worth telling.
You have a message that matters.
Clarify your message
Create a message that matters.
So your customers will listen.
You don’t have to tell an amazing story, you just have to tell your story.
Embrace your story.
When you first think about storytelling, you think it has to be these “grand” ideas
But, it’s the simple ideas, that we all relate to, that have the most impact.
Stories of hardship, heartache and overcoming the odds.
SIMPLE 3-PART NARRATIVE:
Beginning > Middle > End
Setup > Struggle > Success
Title > Tragedy > Triumph
Construct > Conflict > Conclusion (celebration)
You are the author of your destiny.
DAILY QUOTE
“If your life were a book, and you were the author, how would you want your story to go?” – Amy Purdy
“Storytelling is not something we do. Storytelling is who we are.” – Carmine Gallo
DAILY QUESTION
Q1: What do you want?
Q2: What don’t you want?
Q3: Who do you need to become?
DAILY CHALLENGE
Ask the question, “If my life were a book, and I was the author, how would I want the story to go?
Now I think in the journey to discovering WHAT YOU WANT… there are some questions you need to answer:
What do you want?
I knew what I didn’t want.
Which helped me clarify what I knew I wanted.
The “secret” was asking the question: who I needed to become
1 – WHAT DO YOU WANT?
2 – WHAT DON’T YOU WANT?
3 – WHO DO YOU NEED TO BECOME?
Find your voice!
Amy Purdy said, “When I lost my legs, I found my voice.”
Amy Purdy was featured on Dancing with the Stars on prosthetic legs.
Here’s a link to Amy Purdy’s book on Amazon,
On My Own Two Feet: From Losing My Legs to Learning the Dance of Life
About Amy Purdy:
Amy Purdy is an actress, model, world-class snowboarder and 2014 Paralympic bronze medalist, co-founder of Adaptive Action Sports, professional motivational speaker, clothing designer and author. amypurdy.com/
She inspired a nation on Dancing with the Stars and has been called a hero by Oprah Winfrey, reveals the intimate details of her triumphant comeback from the brink of death to making history as a Paralympic snowboarder.
In this poignant and uplifting memoir, Dancing With the Stars sensation Amy Purdy reveals the story of how losing her legs led her to find a spiritual path. When the Las Vegas native was just nineteen, she contracted bacterial meningitis and was given less than a two percent chance of survival. In a near-death experience, she saw three figures who told her: “You can come with us, or you can stay. No matter what happens in your life, it’s all going to make sense in the end.” In that moment, Amy chose to live.
Her glimpse of the afterlife—coupled with a mysterious premonition she’d had a month before —became the defining experiences that put Amy’s life on a new trajectory after her legs had to be amputated. She wouldn’t just beat meningitis and walk again; she would go on to create a life filled with bold adventures, big dreams, and boundless vitality—and share that spirit with the world. In 2014, Amy—the only competitor, male or female, with two prosthetic legs—claimed a bronze medal for the U.S. Paralympic team in adaptive snowboarding. She then became a contestant on season eighteen of Dancing With the Stars, and viewers were captivated as the girl with bionic legs managed to out-dance her competitors all the way to the finale.
Amy’s journey is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the capacity we all have to dream bigger, defy expectations, and rewrite our stories. Amy was given a second chance for a reason—to use her life to inspire others. Her powerful memoir urges us to live life to the fullest, because we are all a lot more capable than we could ever imagine.
HERE’S WHAT YOU SHOULD DO NEXT:
Get a FREE COPY of my book, HIGH PAYING CLIENTS at: trevorcrane.com/freebook
ABOUT TREVOR CRANE
Trevor Crane is best known for 2 bestselling books, High Paying Clients and Big Money With Your Book… without selling a single copy.
If you want to become IRRESISTIBLE to your ideal target client, and massively grow your leads sales and revenue, Trevor can help you craft a book that becomes your most powerful marketing tool, in 90-days or less. For details visit: EpicAuthor.com
TRANSCRIPT
Today I’d like to talk to you about storytelling. And the good thing about this subject is that everybody is a storyteller and you are the author of your story. That is the subject for today. We’re going to talk about powerful storytelling and how you can start to change your story on today’s show. I know you’re gonna love it.
(INTRO – AUDIO)
TIMESTAMP 1:06
Alright, I have been doing significant amount of research about storytelling. And the truth is, is I love telling stories. I love reading books. I love watching movies. I love being part of a story. And I like stories with a happy ending. I don’t know about you. But I also find that there are some stories that are just boring.
Have you ever been to a networking event and somebody starts telling you their story about what they do and how they do it?. And some people just absolutely suck at storytelling, while other people are phenomenal at it. And I think the difference in businesses and brands and in you getting your message across to other people, all of it comes down to storytelling, which makes me very grateful that I’m in the business where I help people clarify their message so that their customers will listen, I help you craft your message, it matters so that you can build a profitable path to monetize your mission.
And what’s more important than you hearing my story. And I love telling you my story is and it tells us I’m today I’m gonna tell you some stories of some other people today. But I think it’s more important that you learn how to powerfully tell yours. Because I truly believe that you are the author of your own story. That you are the director of your movie, you are the lead and you are the hero.
And it doesn’t really matter right now where you are. If you’re on top of the world, then the question is, what, where’s the next level, and because if you’re an achiever, and you want more, and most of us want more of you on the show, then you want more, there’s always another level. And if you’re comfortable, which is a very dangerous place to be, by the way, the question is the same. Like, if you’re comfortable, you’re like, Hey, man, this is cool right here. But what is the next level and my warning to you, if you’re comfortable, and I have found this to be a challenge. If you’re comfortable, it’s an easy place to get bored. But that’s also a place that’s right on the cost of board is very close to broken and broke.
So if you’re bored, and you know what, I just met a guy recently, I was out of this event, and he said, he was so bored. He was, he’s successful, and he’s comfortable with his life professionally and personally. And check this out. He said, I’m so bored that it makes me want to put a in my mouth and swallow the bullet. And he stood up in front of this room full of people and said that like when it came to the category of are you broke board or a bad because those are kind of the three you know, you can be, you can be broken down in the bottom and you got your handed to you. That’s okay.
See, if you’re the author of your own story. If you’re the director of your movie, if you are the hero and you are the lead and you are broke, or you are broken, or you are bored, or your events there is always another level. I mean, every great story has three core parts. So let’s talk a little bit about what the elements of the powerful story are. And I’ve been doing some research about those speakers that speak the top world’s top minds that speak on Ted for the TED talks and have been doing research about storytelling story, brownie, story, branding, and powerful storytelling in business and and brands and an influence and it is everything.
I believe there’s a quote by with it by Carmine Gallo. He said “Storytelling is not something we do. Storytelling is who we are.” So it’s important for you to know the three parts of storytelling because every story, every great story has a beginning, a middle and an end.
Or as my daughter and I are now teaching a kids book writing course, we are teaching the kids book writing course to to, to teach these kids how to write books. My daughter has a mission to help 1000 Kids publish their story and books, we just taught a class to her fifth a course or fifth grade her fifth grade class about to do one another couple of days.
But anyway, well, we are going to teach you there is that the introduction like a beginning, middle and end CD, your your your story needs a title, it needs tension, and then it needs a turnaround, you know, or you could say title, tragedy or triumph. It’s the setup is the introduction. The struggle is the powerful part of the main body of the story. And, and everybody wants to know, the happy ending of the success.
And Steve Jobs use this in his storytelling. When he was even talking about the iPhone, it has a beginning, middle and end, a setup, a struggle and some success. So what’s really cool about this is that you get to tell your story. So you are also the author of your destiny and the stories that you tell yourself. You know, it’s just a question of, are you in the middle? Excuse me, the beginning, middle, or the end? Are you in the pre frame of your life story? Or are you going through series, some struggles right now, that’s totally cool. Because the goal here is to embrace your stories.
In the research I’ve been doing about storytelling, I was introduced to Amy Purdy, who has a best selling book about how she lost her legs and has succeeded and her book is called on my own two feet from losing my legs to learn the dance of life. And she was actually featured on Dancing with the Stars. What on prosthetic legs if you can believe it? And she is the one that gave me the quote today of the question that she asked herself that turned everything around.
Because while she was at the worst place in their life, and thought she she might die and literally lost her legs and was was potentially checking out and she was so depressed and upset about her life after that happened that she asked this one core question and it changed everything for her. “If your life were a book, and you were the author, how would you want your story to go?” Which is the question of the day, by the way, and I’ll repeat it for you. So you got it. If your life were a book, and you were the author? How would you want your story to go?
Now, for Amy, she didn’t want to just be this legless gal. And I don’t know everything about her story. I haven’t met her yet. But here’s the thing you have a story worth telling you have a movie? And if you’re a good director, how do you want it to end? What phase of the game are you in, and there’s three parts to a great story. There’s the beginning, the middle, in the end, there’s the setup, the struggle and the success. And so what she found is that she was struggling.
And I am sure that you have things that you are currently struggling struggling with in your life, or that there are some things in your past that you might be trying to ignore, and pretend never happened that you’re trying to hide from. And then it may be, it’s time for you to embrace your story.
See, because when people first start storytelling, and they start taking on the onus of telling the truth, and then people know what really is going on for them, either in the moment, or in the past, because sometimes we live with some that happened with us in the past that we don’t want to own. We carry it around with us every day, like it’s baggage, but we’re scared of it. We’re scared, someone’s going to find out about the skeletons in our closet.
And when we first start learning to tell our story, whatever that means in our lives to God and get that out, we think we often need to have these grand ideas that we need to have this amazing successes. But the truth is, it’s the simple ideas that everybody can relate to that have the most impact. It’s your stories of hardship and heartache and overcoming the odds that end up being that catalyst that catches people’s imagination.
Now, I’ve been doing a lot of research about marketing as well. And marketing, I’ve often said is about communication. And I try to get my new clients to just open their mouth and tell their story to open their mouth and declare to the world that they’re write a book declare to the world that they’re going to launch their podcasts that they’re going to do something and you’re using multi million dollar billion dollar marketing. When you do that, actually, you’re not using it. But you’re modeling it right?
When Star Wars is coming out with a new movie, they tell you it’s going to come out way before it comes out. It’s looking forward to the new Incredibles movie because my son looks a lot like the little baby in that in that movie. I’ve been looking forward to that movie for over six months. And it finally came out I thought it was really cute. But it was like this pre game, we want to tell the world what’s gonna what’s coming up.
Now, communication is one part of marketing, which is great. Like, hey, look at me, this is so cool. I can’t wait for this thing to come out. And if you’ve got a cool movie, like Star Wars, or a new iPhone coming out if you’re Steve Jobs. Or if you’re Elon Musk, and you know you’re going to take people to Mars, or you’re going to build an electric car, then you can go ahead and brag about your cool thing.
And that is potentially going to get people’s attention and you connect with them with that message. But for you and me, actually, for all of those, the brands that really tell a phenomenal story, they come into the three part narrative. And the best connection to the best marketing is marketing that connects with other people.
And oftentimes, that is not your story of success that anybody gives a about the story that connects with people is the conflict is the tragedy, the tragedy term triumph, if you look at the stories that Oprah likes to post and talk about, it’s the stories of the drama and the challenge. And most of us are scared to share our own story about what scared us and what we’re fearful of. But that is our power.
So my challenge for you today is to take some of this insight and just get some courage into trying to figure the answer to this question, like, ask the question and answer the question. If my life were a book, and I was the author, how would I want the story to go?
Now, here’s the thing is that I, there’s, I’m going to give you a little bit more help with this. Because I think ask people what they want all the time. And it’s really one would think this is an easy answer. And it’s not necessarily an easy answer. I don’t know why, as humans, we do this. I’ll share this on some other podcasts. But we’ll give it to you.
Again, I’m going to give you three questions that I think will help you frame the answer here. Because I’m sure you want to be the hero that wins in becomes the king, you don’t want to be the end of the story that he everything suck, that you are a warning and you end up in jail. I don’t think that’s the end, you die. And everything sucks all around you. That’s not the end that most of us want.
So since it’s your story, and when you get to change your story, when you change your story, you change your life. When you learn how to tell your story. You can learn how to sell the vision and mission of what you believe in to others. And so but what but just got to decide, like, what do you want. And I find that as humans, if you ask somebody what they want, like, let’s say in a relationship, one of the first things they will start to tell you is all the things they don’t want.
So answer those questions as well. And maybe you need to do what I did was answered the question of what don’t I want first? So you might want to go ahead and answer that. Yeah, if you know what, what you want, write it down, you know what you don’t want, write it down. Those are the two things and if you need to do it, in order of hierarchy of writing about the you don’t want first, then do it. But write that down in your success journal, then get clear about what you do want is quite frankly, oftentimes, like the polar opposite, what you’ll find is you write down what you want, you’re gonna go against what you hate, and vice versa. It’s it’s going to be like black and white. But then the core question that I think really is like a secret question that is a really important one to focus on is Who do you need to become? That’s my question number three for you.
So there’s three questions underneath your core challenge question today.
First question is: What do you want?
Second question is: What don’t you want?
And the third question is: Who do you need to become?
TIMESTAMP 12:57
And my challenge to you is to try to find your voice. I’m challenging you to start with your journal, or to start with some kind of live broadcast or something to start telling the story, your story to someone. And you can just maybe find the gift of what you’re looking for in life by looking at some of the most painful things that ever happened to you. The things that you hate the things that you don’t want. And maybe in by looking at the darkness, you can go ahead and discover the light.
But you are the author of your story. You are the author of your destiny. I believe in you. I want to help you tell your story. If you would like to reach out to me to get some help to learn how to tell your story, then reach out. You can find me on social media and a million ways. You can go to trevorcrane.com and you can find me on Instagram, you find me on Facebook, you find me on LinkedIn and just reach out and ask for help.
And if you would do me a favor and if you’re enjoying these podcasts, I highly it would be really valuable to me if you give them review on iTunes. And if you take a quick snapshot of that and your email that to me at support@trevorcrane.com. I’ll give you one of my books.
The first book I ever wrote, they want to find the got clarity around that I got it done in 24 hours. If you can believe in this, I wrote the whole thing. 24 hours spent a little bit more time editing and formatting diamond and all in. But that book was it’s called High Paying Clients. And it’s one of the ways that you can get out there and start to make some money by sharing your greatness with others. And I give you a framework of how to find high paying clients all kinds of cool stuff.
And if it’s not good for you, let me know. I’ve written 11 books. I’ll share one of them with you as my free gift. So just send me an email at support@trevorcrane.com.
And please make today magnificent. Do the daily challenge. Take it on right a little bit down in your journal and reach out to me and connect on social media because I’d love to say hello and help you learn how to tell your story. I have a publishing company. That’s what we do is we’re storytellers and marketers and can’t wait to connect with you.
All right. Talk to you tomorrow.
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