What it takes to craft a signature story | Susan Boles, CFO, Business Strategist & Podcaster

How Stories Happen

What should you include or omit to ensure your stories carry your message, resonate with others, and deliver something that could only come from you? That’s the challenge we encounter today.

In this special episode, Jay is joined by a favorite client, Susan Boles, to work through a draft of a signature story, which emerged on the back of their months-long work together developing Susan’s premise of “calm is the new KPI.” They apply Jay’s Align-Agitate-Assert structure, and they find the two biggest opportunities to improve the story.

Susan is the founder of Beyond Margins and host of the podcast of the same name. She teaches entrepreneur clients how to optimize their business for quality of life, not just profit margin, by making calm their focus and their literal KPI.

In the episode, Jay and Susan dissect her emerging, signature story involving Rand Fishkin, founder and CEO of SparkToro and, previously, founder and CEO of Moz. When one piece of the story runs too long, Jay shares some pointers for how to shorten it without sacrificing the story’s power, and the duo figure out what insights can be extracted and delivered from the story to teach and inspire Susan’s audience.

Whether you’re crafting your next keynote or fine-tuning your leadership communication skills, this episode will have you immediately elevating your storytelling in ways that illuminate insights others remember, share, and apply to their work or lives.

Resources:

⚫ Follow Susan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thesusanboles

⚫ Listen to Beyond Margins: https://podcast.beyondmargins.com/

⚫ Subscribe to Beyond Margins Newsletter: https://beyondmargins.ck.page/21380f9bae

🔵 Work with Jay to develop and differentiate your IP and stories: https://jayacunzo.com/

🔵Join his Creator Kitchen membership: https://creatorkitchen.com/

🔵 Follow Jay on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayacunzo/

🔵 Follow Jay on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jacunzo/

🟢 Created in partnership with Share Your Genius: https://shareyourgenius.com/

🟢 Cover art designed by Blake Ink: https://www.blakeink.com/

🟢 Find and support our sponsors: https://jayacunzo.com/sponsors

***
PS: Enrollment into the Creator Kitchen membership has reopened! This is our education-and-coaching program, with plenty of live time working on your ideas with Jay and cofounder Melanie Deziel (author, speaker, ex-NY Times). We specialize in helping smart experts become trusted thought leaders, with an emphasis on premise development, differentiation, storytelling, and content creation.

Learn more and enroll at https://creatorkitchen.com

"They take something theoretical and actually help you do it."— Kitchen member (they're called chefs!) Susan Boles