Content, wrapped in a story, becomes a powerful tool of human connection, education, and inspiration. Be the storyteller of your own narrative

This LiveTime with Alec, encourage…

• You to tell your story and embrace who you are
• What type of story you need to share
• How to weave helpful story telling into education
• the right narrative of your storytelling

Episode Transcribe

What’s up everybody, happy Friday.

 Good morning, good afternoon, good evening and good night.

 And I don’t know, it was there I had to say it. I hope everyone’s having a good Friday. I’m trying to have a live again on a Friday to see if it lands. It’s always interesting going live on Friday’s, I always wonder who was actually working in the mortgage industry because I know that you know what I’m talking about. We going to talk about storytelling today. Man, I am so infatuated with this quote, I put it up there right now. I’ve been rocked by how powerful stories are for our salespeople, for ourselves, for our community. Man, they shape everything, don’t they?And I come from a family of storytellers, which is really cool. So I’m like, “If you don’t know my dad, Dan,” hey guys, what’s going on? “he is an incredible storyteller.” In fact, if you ever watched the movie Big Fish, if you’ve ever seen that before, you know what I’m talking about. That is a really cool movie and it’s about storytellers. And, happy Friday Ben, and my dad’s a big storyteller, so there you go. I learned over the years that if we frame everything we’re doing in stories, we can really get our point across. But there’s a couple of things I want to break down on this story topic.First of all, the backend of the quote from Steve Jobs is right there. It’s that, “The vision, values and agenda of an entire generation that is to come.” It’s just unbelievable. So, let’s unpack a couple of things here and talk about storytelling. First, I have to share one of my favorite stories. I share this story all the time because it’s true. And here you go. Let’s just go right into it. So, when I started originating I was 23, had a Hannah Sivik glorious set of hair and a suit with shoulder pads in it. Like no joke, it was amazing. And I would go out on Thursday and Friday’s and Saturday’s and Sunday’s to visit real estate agents and their open houses, right? Build relationships out there just show them I’m working. They’re working, I’m working, right? Modern day hustle.Well, I really distinctly remember driving up to one of the best real estate agent’s open houses, looking in the door and seeing that the agent was actually in there. And then being so terrified to go in and then put myself in a position of vulnerability. I have huge insecurities, at fear of rejection, all these stuff, that I literally drove away. Straight up drove away, couldn’t handle it. Could not handle this. And I tell that story all the time, because number one, isn’t that all of us to a degree? I really believe that it’s all of us. We’ve all had that moment in our career where we just couldn’t handle some situation and we drove away.And I shared at New Hire Orientation. And I was a great producer by the way, that year my first year I did over $80 million in production. Most of it purchase. Literally going to open houses in Brooklyn previews and trying to build relationships to draw up my business. So it works, but even though I had these great years of production, I still drove away from that case house. Now there’s a couple of ways to frame that story and there’s helpful ways in harmful ways. And so, harmful way it would be to me to wrap that story up in my brain and go, “Hey, I was a coward I failed,” and let that be the driving narrative of that story. Instead, I have that frame story of it’s just the experience I went through to accomplish what I did. And I’m proud that I was able to overcome that insecurity to go into the houses later and build relationships with mortgage real estate professionals and grow my business.And here’s my point for you guys, besides just that you need to share your story. There’s a lot of people that are afraid of their story and afraid of sharing it. And so, if we can just get authentic for a second, there are a lot of people out there that you’re embarrassed about your background or the stories that have made up your life and you hide it. And one of my biggest encouragement for you today on this live is to let it out. Let the beast out because when you, Hey, Ashley from Gilbert, when you let out your story and you embrace who you are, it magnifies your power in human connection. And if you’re in sales, you have to recognize that human connections is just the foundation, without that you’re not going to be a good salesman or salesperson. So how are you? Or what part of your story are you hiding? And what should you unleash?The second part of storytelling that I think is so important to unpack is, storytelling in your video content as a strategy to build human connection. So, if you’ve guys have followed me for a while, or you’ve seen my a hundred videos in a hundred days or any of that stuff, you know that I’m big about encouraging you to produce content at scale to grow your influence. And you got to do it through storytelling. Let me give you an example, we talk a lot about educating and educating people. And so, there’s tons of information in the mortgage business that people should get educated on, right? Like what to prepare for for buying your first home? Well, you could very easily make content that says, “Hey guys, let me explain to you what minimum down payment requirements are for a loan.” And you can do a four minute video on down payment requirements for a loan.No one’s connecting to that, maybe someone’s connecting to that. Or you can tell a story about somebody who didn’t think they could buy a home that you helped, a real one please, don’t make it up, a real one. But a lot of your pros, so you can do this, and describe how you helped somebody who didn’t understand that they could buy a house with little down and how you showed them all these options. And all of a sudden, you’re educating everybody through a story. There is so much power in storytelling. Debt-to-income ratio. The most boring topic in the world, DTI, right? Industry jargon. But what about a time that you saved somebody’s transaction because of how you structured the loan, or maybe you leveraged a asset dissipation tool. And now debt-to-income becomes a person and a story and a solution. And you can explain the rules about it in an impactful way and how it changed someone’s life.Now, you’re reading storytelling and education and trust me, this is going to absolutely rocket boost your business when you wrap it in storytelling. Especially if it’s helpful storytelling, you with me? So, my message today is twofold. Number one, I really hope that you are empowered to leverage your story and to share it. And the path that you’ve been on in life and the hardships and the tribulations and the things that you might be embarrassed about and I hope that you share that. And that you let it become part of your authentic story, because it will absolutely megaphone your business. Trust me, it’s an empowering thing when you let it out. The second part that I hope to just press on you guys today is, as you’re building content, do it with stories, all right?Steve Jobs, “The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller.” Just tell your story and explain to your community online and locally, the amazing stuff you’re doing through stories. Does that make sense? Are you with me? Mary D. wrote a comment, “I’m learning everyone has stuff in their life, it’s just different stuff.” Man, that’s the truth, isn’t it? And so, sometimes we got to let that stuff out. We got to share it because otherwise we’re holding on to it and not serving us. And so on this Friday, today, and for a lot of you guys on the West Coast it’s 10:30 in the morning, I want you to put out one of your stories today. I do. I want you to put it out right now. I want you to finish watching this, I want you to shut it down. I want you to turn your camera on and I want you to share your story about, why you’re in this business or somebody you just helped or a situation that you were able to help somebody overcome because XYZ.And I want you to see the power of that in real life as a real example. Just say, “Alec made me do it.” I don’t care. But you need to do it and trust me you won’t be… Adam I’m with you. Hey Adam. He’s a great storyteller right there is Adam [inaudible 00:09:38] figuring out that I’ll start following that guy. And I’m telling you, this is going to empower your business. Today, right now, I want you to just shut this down, go do it, tag me and share your story. You with me on this guys? It’s powerful. It’s powerful stuff and it will absolutely transform your business and those around you. And if you’re in leadership, you got to tell your story more often. I mean, I was just talking to somebody that I would love to join our company this morning. And he asked me what is important? And what do I expect him to do here as a leader? And man, right in my head one of my things was like, “Just be a great storyteller.”It’s probably not what he was expecting to hear, maybe it was, but maybe he was expecting me to say, “Go grow the market and hire everybody and do a bunch of loans.” And I’m like, “Just be a great storyteller. The more that you communicate your story to others, the more empowers your business.” Hey Chaz, long time. Good to see you on Facebook. So, does this all make sense? Empower your business through your personal story and use stories to educate your general community about the boring stuff of mortgage, because they’ll understand. They can understand what happens because when you share a story about another human being, we all connect, we all know what’s going on. Do you get me?This is important stuff. You got to frame it or else you get left behind. All right, we’ll keep the live short today. I appreciate you guys hanging out with me for a little bit. I’m telling you right now, shut this down and go film a video. And share why you doing what you doing? And tell a story and watch the world become changed around you. I hope you guys have a great rest of your day and a great weekend. See you next week.