Your Unique Story

Your unique story is a description of your business: what you do, who you help, and how you help them.

Your unique story matters because it lets you understand how you’re pitching your business.

What story does your business tell?

That’s something you should know the answer to.

What are you telling with our story?

When you share the story of your business, you’re describing what you do, who you work with, and what makes you unique.

Okay, what’s the real angle?

Beyond that, you want to understand the story of your clients. What they do, what they’re looking to achieve, and what they’re looking to avoid.

Just like you have a story of your business, your clients have a story of:

  • Encountering an obstacle in their business
  • Finding you, a consultant who could help them
  • A successful outcome from the engagement!

By understanding the story of your clients (who they are, what outcomes they’re looking for), you’re best able to pitch yourself as a guest on a podcast.

How do I build the unique story for my business?

When you understand both your unique story and your customers’ unique story, you’re able to do magical things.

Instead of just talking about yourself to a podcast, you can better frame your pitch to be about your customers and what they’re looking to achieve.

Why is this important? Because with this information, you’re making your stated goal in alignment with the podcast host’s goal.

What’s the goal of a podcast host? Provide engaging, entertaining, or educational content to their listeners.

Put another way, they’re looking to present their listeners with information that helps them achieve their goal.

When you frame your podcast pitches concerning the outcomes for the listener, you’re writing pitches about how having you on as a guest will present their listeners with information that helps them achieve their goal.

90% of podcast pitches don’t do this. They’re entirely “Me” or “I” focused. They talk about why they (the author) is so great:

  • They just released a new book
  • They have a new course
  • Their summit was very well received

And to reply back and let the host know if they’re interested in booking them as a guest.

As a podcast host myself I can honestly tell you that when I receive a pitch that’s entirely about the potential guest and their accomplishments, I delete it. Immediately.

It isn’t interesting to me to hear you talk to me about you.

What’s interesting to me as a podcast host?

I want to understand how you’re going to help me look good to my listeners.

And the best way to do that? Frame your unique story concerning how you’re going to inform, educate, or entertain my listeners about their goal.

You can see how it all matches up. Your target market is their listeners. The outcome that you help people in that target market achieve is their goal.

By having these elements in alignment and framed in terms of the benefit to the listener, you make it incredibly easy for the podcast host to decide if they want to have you on as a guest.

Your pitches get past the ‘Pitch Filter’ that every podcast host develops.

Why?

Because they’re framed in terms that appeal to the podcast host. You’re telling them how they’re going to achieve their goal.

People love hearing that.

Crafting Your Unique Story

Your business’s unique story is a combination of six different elements:

What you do

Your specialization as a consultant. The skill that you practice. Examples: SEO Consultant, PHP Developer, Designer, Bluetooth iOS Developer

Who you do it for

Your target market. The people that you’re marketing to. Examples: Lawyer, Dentists, Owners of Django Sites, Bootstrappers, Poker Players, Designers, Freelancers

Why you’re different

Why you’re different. What’s unique about you. Your differentiating factor.

What separates you from other people who do what you do for your target market?

Why that difference matters

Go above and beyond. Why is that difference important? Why does the customer care about that difference?

From the customer’s perspective, how does that difference help them make more money or save money?

If it doesn’t, figure out another differentiator.

What are your clients are looking to achieve

This is the outcome that your clients to looking to achieve. This is the better world they want to live in.

What are your customers looking to avoid

This is the risk or problem that you’re helping your clients avoid.

What service you’re providing

This is the service you provide. What you do.

Building your unique story

You want to answer each of these questions for your business:

  • What do you do?
  • Who do you do it for?
  • What makes you different?
  • Why does that difference matter?
  • What are your clients looking to achieve?
  • What are your clients looking to avoid?
  • What services do you provide?

When you put these together, you’re left with two combinations.

The story of your business

  • What do you do?
  • Who do you do it for?
  • What makes you different?
  • Why does that difference matter?
  • What services do you provide?

This is the story of your business. What you do, who you do it for, and what makes you different.

The story of your customers

  • Who are your clients?
  • What are your clients looking to achieve?
  • What are your clients looking to avoid?
  • What do you do?

This is the story of your clients. They are people in a target market searching for the answer to a question or the solution to a problem.

You are the key to helping them achieve that outcome.

By understanding this and the difference between the ‘me’ focused story of your business and the ‘customer’ focused story of your business, you’ll understand best how to answer the question:

So, tell me about yourself and your company?

In a way that appeals both to the host and the host’s listeners.

And beyond that, you’ll understand how to pitch yourself in a way that appeals to the podcast hosts.

You want to understand how you’re going to help the podcast host look good to their listeners.

And the best way to do that? Frame your unique story in terms of how you’re going to inform, educate, or entertain their listeners about their goal.

Who are their listeners? Your clients.

What’s their goal? What your clients are looking to achieve or what your clients are looking to avoid.