Your Story Doesn't Need to Be Dramatic to Share It

Jeffro (00:00.941)
Welcome back to digital dominance. As you’ve probably noticed, our world and our economy continue to become more and more digital. If you don’t consider yourself to be tech savvy, then you’re probably unhappy or even scared about this. But for many others, going digital is a welcome advancement. But like it or not, the problem that a lot of us now face is how to remain connected and relevant in a digital age. You know, there’s so much access to knowledge and entertainment at our fingertips. So how do we cut through the noise and capture attention?

Now, in my opinion, a huge part of this boils down to something that many of us have taken for granted, which is communication. We may be great at communicating in person, where we can utilize more than our words to convey a message. Tone, volume, body language are all shaping and enhancing our words. Plus, we get real-time feedback from the body language of the person we’re talking to, so we can adapt as we go. But if you’re putting up a blog post, all you have is the written word. And if you haven’t spent the time to understand how to communicate in a purely written medium, you simply won’t be very effective.

My guest today is Holly Crosshaw. She’s a best-selling ghostwriter and top LinkedIn creator. Holly understands how to communicate a story that captures your voice and engages your audience. Now, if you’re looking to communicate on digital platforms in a way that drives business, then you’re going to want to pay attention to this episode. So Holly, thanks so much for being on the show.

Holly Crawshaw (01:16.661)
Thank you for having me. I’m so excited.

Jeffro (01:19.372)
Me too. I followed your posts on LinkedIn for a while now and you’re very consistent with the value that you bring. Your posts are always helpful and engaging. So thank you for that. But you’re an experienced writer. Do the rest of us have any hope of learning to communicate like you do without having all that writing experience?

Holly Crawshaw (01:28.939)
Thank you.

Holly Crawshaw (01:36.683)
Listen, one question people ask me is, how did you become a writer? And the answer is always disappointing. It’s I sat my bottom down in a chair and I put my fingers on a laptop and I just started typing. And anyone who writes is a writer. I think a lot of people who post on LinkedIn or write blogs or maybe journal.

wouldn’t consider themselves communicators, but that’s exactly what they are. Just because you’re not getting a dollar for your words doesn’t make you less of a writer. That’s one common myth that I try to dispel often.

Jeffro (02:16.588)
Yeah. Well, my brother, it’s funny you mentioned that, a number of years back, he’s a writer and an author. When he was kind of getting started, he at one point sent me a bio to review that he was going to put on Amazon, his author description. He’s like, let me know what you think. And in there he wrote, you know, Wes Fullerton is an aspiring author. And I was like, Wes, you’re not aspiring. You’ve published three books. You’re an author. Take out that word. And he’s like, yeah. And so I think we all do that, right? Even authors. So it’s a great reminder.

Holly Crawshaw (02:45.623)
No, and I think one common misconception, another common misconception is that people who have been writing for a long, I’ve been professionally writing now for 18 years, people assume that it’s easy, number one, or that it’s still not scary to share. And neither of those are true. It’s still work. To me, it’s the best kind of work because it’s my passion. It’s what I think I was wired to do.

But it still requires effort. It requires 100 % of my brain. It’s not something mindless that I do. I really go against the grain when it comes to most writing cliches. I’m the worst cliche. I do not go to coffee shops. I do not smoke cigars and alleys. I am not cool about it at all. I actually have to sit down.

get in the right head space and just write.

Jeffro (03:47.02)
I think everybody’s going to have their own process, of course. I also think that a lot of us, myself included, we start out by writing posts and emails as if we were writing a mini book report about our business. We all learn to summarize and regurgitate information in school, so that’s kind what we fall back on. Do you have any advice on how to break that habit?

Holly Crawshaw (04:07.093)
So one of the best ways to get creative is to simply tell a story. And you might say, I don’t have any good stories or my story’s done, everybody’s heard my story. That’s not true. What’s true is that you are the only one who can share your story. And I’m not just talking about your life story, but we have professional stories, we have relationship stories, we have stories about…

Fears we have stories about dreams all of those are examples of stories and so to get sort of out of that regurgitation habit Which now AI will do for us So to step outside of that that sort of essay writing book report sort of style of writing I would start by sharing a story just one story. It can be simple. It can be your first day of school, you know, it can be anything but

Starting to tell stories is the way to stir creativity and it’s also the best way to connect to other people.

Jeffro (05:11.788)
Well, I imagine that’s why you called your business StorySpark, right? Because that’s the thing that sparks the communication, the message that you’re trying to find. I also think it’s natural for people to think that other people have more interesting stories than we do. Do you find that to be true also?

Holly Crawshaw (05:14.973)
Hahaha!

Holly Crawshaw (05:26.975)
everyone thinks that their story is, so you have two groups of people. You have the group of people who think that their story is absolutely incredible and that it can’t be topped. And then you have the group of people who absolutely do not want to write their own story because they think it’s boring and bland. But what I find in this niche of people, and these are my favorite people to work with as a ghostwriter, is that when you really start digging down,

and asking questions. These are some of the most interesting. These are typically introverts or mostly introverted people. When you start digging down and asking them their stories and asking them their ideas and their thoughts and their observations about the world around them, it’s incredibly fascinating. Stories don’t just have to be one time this thing happens. Stories can also be

I have this philosophy. I have this principle. I have these values or I have these theories. So when you tell yourself you don’t have a story that is legitimately a lie because I know you have thoughts in your head and if you would just sit down and write them and you don’t even have to share them publicly and that’s one thing that I would encourage people who are hesitant to start posting or start sharing digitally is to encourage them to sit down

and just write something that you don’t share with anybody and just sit with it. Because you don’t have to just rip the band-aid off and pour your guts out on LinkedIn. I definitely don’t recommend that. Start small. Start by writing one story down. Don’t share it with anyone. Then maybe write another story. Maybe share it with a friend. You you can take baby steps to sharing if you’re scared to share.

Jeffro (07:17.503)
Yeah, and I think it’s a good point to remember, your story doesn’t have to be dramatic to be worth sharing. There’s lots of different types of stories. But it is, know, when I was thinking about this for the episode, I was thinking back to how maybe a lot of us got to this point. I know for me, as an example, growing up in church, you’d occasionally hear someone share their testimony about what God has done for them. You know, the church brings in guest speakers. They talk about how they were in a gang. They killed people, got shot in the drive-by, and then they had an angel appear to them in a dream, and God turned their life around in an instant.

Holly Crawshaw (07:23.339)
No.

Jeffro (07:47.252)
So then as a person in the audience, know, when it’s my turn to share a testimony in small group, I’m like embarrassed because I’m like, well, I was raised a Christian since I was four, then I followed all the rules my whole life and here I am. And like that, the gang story might convert people, my story won’t. And I think a lot of us carry that same kind of feeling of embarrassment or comparison when we talk about our business or our job as well. So I don’t know what your thoughts are on that.

Holly Crawshaw (08:12.629)
Yeah, so I grew up in church as well. I actually started writing in the church space and that’s where I got, I worked at a church. I worked at a mega church for 10 years. I don’t know if you knew that, but I worked at a mega church for 10 years. And one thing I learned about every single person who walked in the door is that they brought with them past experiences and they brought with them their own, when you say the word testimony.

their own experience with God. And when you think about it, we all have our own experiences with work. We all have our own experiences with relationships. We all have our own experiences with all sorts of entities in our lives. It’s not just about sharing your testimony, which I loved it in prayer meeting when they would be like, I have an unspoken prayer request and you’re like,

Like, so curious. Yeah, for sure. But, you know, if you start comparing yourself to others, period, on any level, it’s just unhealthy. I always call that the comparison trap. Nobody wins. So comparing your story to someone else’s, you’re not gonna win, they’re not gonna win, and it’s not really a competition.

Jeffro (09:12.169)
drama.

Jeffro (09:33.734)
Yeah, it’s not. Well, and so here’s kind of the next question to that, right? It’s good to start telling your stories. How do you help people tell their story in a compelling way? Because there’s a difference.

Holly Crawshaw (09:46.561)
So there’s a couple of different things I share about telling your story. And one is that you don’t have to go all the way. One way I frame it is I say, OK, if you’re thinking of a news article, if you’re trying to be vulnerable for the first time and share your story online and publicly, if you think of your story as a news article, I would only share the headline and maybe the sub copy.

But you don’t have to go into that detailed text. You can simply share just the main ideas. You don’t have to go into detail. But one of the most effective and compelling ways to share your story is to do that and then immediately turn and pivot that story and put it in the reader’s lap and say, hey, have you had this experience? What do you think about this experience? How have you applied these principles? Or how have you gotten out of this situation?

You share the headline, maybe a little bit of that subtitle. You don’t have to go into the copy. You don’t need to bleed on LinkedIn. In fact, you shouldn’t. But immediately making it matter to the reader by asking them questions and inviting them in on your journey.

Jeffro (11:02.109)
So that kind of segues into the question that I’m sure a lot of listeners are waiting for is how do you then use your story to get leads for your business? How do you connect it without it feeling like a forced bait and switch type of thing like, and now buy my stuff, you know? How do you do that?

Holly Crawshaw (11:19.223)
So the very best way to do that is to simply share social proof. And by social proof, mean, just talk about how you’ve helped people in the past. And I know a lot of people are going to push back on that and say, I don’t want to brag. I don’t want to brag. I don’t want to brag. It’s not bragging because you can’t help more people unless you talk about how you’ve already helped people. And so I always say, start by sharing social proof.

Or just talk about a part of your industry that’s interesting to the masses. Maybe some statistics, some data, some interesting facts. Share some stories of some interactions with clients or interactions with your teammates. Sharing stories about your business, whether it’s social proof or whether it’s simply, hey, here’s what’s going on and here’s what’s new.

That attracts people because people become interested in what you’re telling and people become like you become a destination for interesting and entertaining information. I always say all stories should be either encouraging entertaining or educational and if you can mark one of those three boxes heck if you can mark all three it’s a home run but if you can just mark one of those boxes people are going to start coming and looking at what you’re doing and looking at what you’re saying because readers are selfish heck

I’m a selfish reader. I’m not gonna come to a page that’s just telling me basic information. I wanna hear stories. I wanna see examples. I wanna be entertained, encouraged, or educated.

Jeffro (12:51.56)
Can you give us an example of maybe a post that you’ve written for yourself that’s done that well or someone else on LinkedIn that you see doing that?

Holly Crawshaw (13:00.363)
telling stories well.

Jeffro (13:01.829)
Yeah, and connecting it to business especially.

Holly Crawshaw (13:05.185)
So this is interesting. So this is also going to be an example of how to share a vulnerable story well. So I grew up very poor. I grew up basically in poverty on food stamps, no money whatsoever. My parents had a horrible divorce and I ended up living with my dad for most of my life. And I watched my dad start a landscaping company.

Jeffro (13:12.924)
All right.

Holly Crawshaw (13:34.359)
And he would come home and he would say, Holly, if I can make $150 a day, I can pay all of the bills. And so I would watch he had this truck that you had to steer all the way to the left to make it go straight. And he would put a push mower on the back of that truck. And he would just go knock on people’s doors and say, hey, can I cut your grass? Hey, can I cut your grass? Hey, can I cut your grass? And that was back in 1992. And I’ve watched him scale that business.

And now in 2024, he is the premier landscaper for major businesses in our area. And he plays golf all day and has a team of 25 people. And it all started with a truck and a push mower. So I tell that story on LinkedIn and I talk about all the things I watched my dad do well that I want to do in my own business. And so the inference is if you work with this girl,

These are the values that you’re getting. This is the experience that you’re getting. She’s watched it go from zero to a hundred.

Jeffro (14:39.163)
Yeah, well, and I like that it also sets realistic expectations because people so often hear marketing hype, right? Of the promises of how much I’m going to get you, but you’re just showing like, look, this is where I come from. I back on the work ethic. And so if you connect with that, then I’m going to want to hire you, right? And work with you as opposed to somebody else.

Holly Crawshaw (14:47.87)
yeah.

Holly Crawshaw (15:01.791)
Absolutely that post I share that post about once every Three or four months and it always gets it’s my highest impression post my highest engagement post and I think it’s just because people are so used to the To the garbage To the sort of overnight success stories people have become immune to that because it’s just not relatable

And so when you hear a real life success story like that and you see the hard work and dedication that went into it, you’re like, no, that’s real. And people relate to authenticity and they connect and respond to authenticity.

Jeffro (15:43.802)
Let ask you a question about reposting the same story. Do you rewrite it each time or is it the same copy paste?

Holly Crawshaw (15:47.361)
Yeah.

That’s a great question. So I have a content system, and this is something I teach in my master class, but it’s an iteration concept. And it’s basically a way to rank your posts. You rank the top five by comments, top five by impressions, and top five by engagement. And you put those posts every six months. You put those in a box. You could probably, if you’re just starting, do that every 30 days.

But now that I’ve been writing on LinkedIn for literally ever I do it about every six months and I grab those posts and I say there was something about this post that was magic and I want to I’m always looking to recreate magic with content and so when I tell people how to Iterate content. I simply say look at those posts I Change I will always change the attachment and I will always change the hook

But the meat mostly stays the same or the body of the post mostly stays the same. But it’s very small tweaks. But if you don’t learn how to iterate on LinkedIn, if you don’t learn how to reuse content and recycle, how to identify which content to recycle and then learn how to recycle it in a way that makes it still feel fresh, like I don’t want to serve my audience leftovers. I really want it to feel like a brand new dinner.

I have to figure out a way to make it feel incredibly fresh with as little effort as possible. And if you don’t know how to do that and you don’t learn how to do that, you will burn out because it is just a grind.

Jeffro (17:26.182)
Well, and I like that too, because I think a lot of people are always worried about what if I run out of ideas? Well, you can reuse the best ones and that’s okay because of the way the feeds work. Not everybody saw it last time. And if you wait long enough, they may forget about it or they may be pleasantly reminded about it if they enjoyed it the first time.

Holly Crawshaw (17:44.599)
I’ll be honest with you, I have about 50 posts that I write over and over again at this point. I’ve been doing this for three years. I’ve identified like these 50 posts that do well. And when I talk about posts, like this sounds really overwhelming. These come from content buckets. So I write about three different things and I call those my content buckets. And so I pull an idea out of each bucket and everybody has to identify their content buckets for themselves.

There are some very general ones that work very well. But you don’t have to come up with a new idea every day. And especially if you can identify, okay, these are the three things I talk about. I talk about marketing, branding, and audience building. So if you can figure out what those three buckets are, that really guides and steers your content creation process and takes a lot of the pressure off of you.

And within those buckets, there are different stories that stick in each bucket. And there are different social proofs that stick in each bucket. And so that’s how I iterate content over time and how I come up with content ideas is I have now, but look, when I started on LinkedIn, I sucked. I was really bad. I was really, really bad at LinkedIn for at least two years. So the whole world should know that is that quite like, it was not an overnight success for me either.

Jeffro (19:04.752)
Takes a while.

Holly Crawshaw (19:09.675)
But I learned in time what my audience responded to. And I think a lot of people give up because they put a lot of stuff out on LinkedIn and they’re not getting any responses. But the truth is, is that you have to keep going. You have to try something different. You have to wait and see what your audience responds to. And then again, recreate that magic.

Jeffro (19:32.698)
like that. And do you ever use AI to help you come up with content ideas, or do you recommend that clients do that if they feel stuck?

Holly Crawshaw (19:40.713)
So the best way for me, so first of all, please do not use AI to write a post because it is glaringly obvious. If I see you talk about navigating a journey, I know you’ve been on AI. I know you’ve been on AI. I like to use it to say, so there’s one creator, Luke Matthews, who’s incredible. He would be the go-to source to figure out how best to use AI to create content.

Jeffro (19:48.241)
Yes.

Jeffro (20:00.934)
Mm-hmm.

Holly Crawshaw (20:08.855)
But the way I use it is I’ll say, give me 10 topics on audience growth that CEOs over 40 who make over six figures would find interesting. So I’ll use it just to get very specific. If I want to write a, if I’m really targeting a certain audience on a post, I’ll use it to help me come up with ideas. I’ll, I really use it as a thesaurus. It is the best thesaurus out there.

What’s a better way to say stupid? What’s a more intelligent word for beautiful? I use it a lot that way too for word choice.

Jeffro (20:40.878)
Yeah.

Jeffro (20:49.005)
Got it. So ideation and kind of as a helpful editor friend to run stuff by. I like it. So I have another question here because obviously this is important and helpful, but who does it really apply to? Who should focus on learning to tell their story? Is it only solopreneurs? Is it better for certain industries? I mean, should everybody do this?

Holly Crawshaw (20:53.685)
Yeah.

Holly Crawshaw (21:12.979)
I have had clients who owned landscaping companies. I have a client who’s an arborist. I have a client who owns several law firms. I believe it’s important for everybody to create a brand. The best brands are all online and they’re all creating their digital footprint because nowadays that’s the best marketing. It’s better than commercials.

It’s better than anything else you can do is to create an online presence and to create a brand so that people understand who you are and what you’re about and they associate you with certain ideas. But I have, I think everybody should tell their story and not just because it benefits me and not just because I’m a storyteller and I love stories, but because I’ve seen the power of how it fuels businesses and fuels leads when people feel like they know you. If people feel like they know you.

then they can begin to like you, then they begin to trust you, and then, and only then, will they buy from you.

Jeffro (22:15.843)
And I love that you just kind of implicitly connected writing stories to branding. And for the audience, I want you guys to catch this. Your brand is more than just the logo and colors. It’s the stories that go along with it, the beliefs that people have about you and your company. And so this is a great way to kind of cultivate that as you choose which stories to tell and how you tell them.

Holly Crawshaw (22:32.446)
Absolutely.

Holly Crawshaw (22:39.06)
Absolutely.

Jeffro (22:40.579)
Well, in addition, actually, last question before we wrap up here. Are there any common mistakes you see people making as they’re learning to tell their story?

Holly Crawshaw (22:52.203)
the only mistake you can make is to not do it. I truly believe that because you’re never going to get better unless you try and unless you actually put your story out there. And trust me, no one’s thinking about your story by the time lunchtime hits. You know, if you post at 9 a.m. in the golden hour, nobody’s thinking about it. But by the middle of the day, I think the biggest mistake you can make is to to let fear be bigger, let the fear of what might happen.

be bigger than the fear of what’s possible for you and your business and to not share your story at all.

Jeffro (23:28.823)
Yeah, well, that’s great. No excuses, guys. You got to start. Well, Holly, thanks so much for being here today. I keep coming back to this concept of storytelling and communication on the podcast because it underpins so much of the work that we do in order to successfully market our businesses. So for those of you listening, go check out Holly’s website, go follow her on LinkedIn, check out her masterclass. You’ll get lots of nuggets from her posts if you follow her. And Holly, can you leave us with, do you have a favorite book project that you worked on?

Holly Crawshaw (23:57.877)
My favorite book project of all time, you know, this is super random, but it was for a man named Jack Penrod and he built the Nikki Beach brand and he was the most fascinating individual I’ve ever met. His book is One Grand Adventure. I wrote it a long time ago. It was a legacy piece. He wanted to write it for his family. It wasn’t even a commercial book, but he was the most fascinating man I have ever met because he was born into.

He got a job when he was four years old, scraping tins at a bakery. And now he’s a multi-billionaire. So he’s an incredible man. That was a super fun project. I really loved his story and his wife and his family. And he was just an incredible person.

Jeffro (24:47.811)
sounds really intriguing. I’m really curious. But thanks again for being here, Holly. Thanks to all of you guys for listening. Remember, your story matters. You need to tell it well. So take care. We’ll see you in the next episode.

Holly Crawshaw (24:59.146)
Thank you.