How to Tell Stories That Make People Pay Attention & Buy

You could have the perfect offer and still get ignored. In this episode, I’m sharing the (no longer) secret weapon that will grab more attention and make you more money in your business. Storytelling is one of the most valuable skills you can build as an entrepreneur. I break down what I’m learning from studying great storytellers, how the right story can make people care about something they would normally scroll right past, and why this skill can make your ideas, offers, and brand more memorable. Plus, I share the unexpected way practicing storytelling is changing how I experience my own life. Get ready to communicate your ideas in a way people actually remember, and make what you’re selling matter to the people you want to reach. Check out our Sponsors: Shopify - Launch your business before Black Friday, go to shopify.com/happy to start your free trial. Monarch Money - Get your first year of Monarch Core for half off at http://Monarch.com with code EYH. Northwest Registered Agent - Visit http://northwestregisteredagent.com/EarnFree and start using free resources to build something amazing. Fabric - Join the thousands of parents who trust Fabric to help protect their family. Apply today in just minutes at meetfabric.com/EARN. Meetfabric.com/EARN. Quince - Find the fall pieces you’ll reach for most at Quince. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns and when Quince asked how you heard about them, let them know it was here on Earn Your Happy. Gloss Genius - Run a business that takes appointments? Use code HAPPY at glossgenius.com/earnyourhappy for 50% off your first two months of a premium plan. HIGHLIGHTS How to make your ideas, offers, and expertise matter to the people you want to reach. The skill that can help you sell more, even as your business and offers evolve. How to turn ordinary experiences into memorable stories people actually want to hear. What separates people with incredible expertise who get overlooked from the ones people can’t stop watching. How to communicate your value in a way that makes people feel something instead of scrolling past. The overlooked habit that can give you an endless supply of stories to use in your content and business. How becoming a better storyteller can make your brand more memorable without needing a more exciting life. The unexpected way storytelling can help you become more present and interested in your own life. How to find meaningful stories in moments you normally wouldn’t think twice about. Why paying closer attention to your everyday life can change both the way you communicate and the way you experience it. RESOURCES Get on the waitlist for the next Million Dollar Guest at milliondollarguest.com to learn how to tell stories on podcasts that connect to your offer, move people, and help monetize your podcast. Get on the waitlist for Mentor Collective Mastermind HERE! Try glōci for 40% off your first order with code HAPPY at checkout - head to getgloci.com FOLLOW Follow me: @loriharder Follow glōci: @getgloci

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  Okay. Whenever I'm traveling, I love to skip like the main mall of the town. And I like to hunt down all of those little shops on the corner where the locals love to go, where all the good stuff is. So candles made by local people, a sweatshirt with the town's name on it, hot sauce made 20 minutes away, and the owner knows everybody's name. And I've also been on the other side of that shelf because I built a product from scratch. And I'll never forget the first independent store who believed in it enough to put it on their shelves. Big box stores sell stuff, but small shops tell a story about people. So if you own one of those shops, you need to know about FAIRE.

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  This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Ready to launch your business before Black Friday? Go to Shopify.com/happy to start your free trial. Monarch Money. Monarch breaks the debt cycle, turning that endless gloom into a plan with an end date. Use code EYH at monarch.com to get your first year of Monarch Core half off at just $50. Northwest Registered Agent. Northwest gives you access to thousands of free guides, tools, and attorney drafted documents to help you run your business with confidence. Visit northwestregisteredagent.com/earnfree and start using free resources to build something amazing. Indeed. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes.

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  They're giving Earn Your Happy a $75 sponsored job credit. Go to Indeed.com/podcast right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Life at the Speed of Play. Mark is offering our listeners two books for the price of one. Go to GetMark'sBook.com/earn. Sequencing. Sequencing.com is offering our listeners up to 10% off your full genome test plus free shipping. Go to sequencing.com and use promo code EARN for 10% off. Becoming a great storyteller requires you to pay attention to your life. You can't just keep sleepwalking through it. You can't just keep showing up to your to do list.

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  You can't just keep doing the same 11 things you do every single day from morning until night and falling asleep and calling it another day. You start noticing these little things like these side conversations of the baristas at the coffee shop. Maybe it's something that your kid said in the car. Maybe it's the argument that you had with your husband that you realized wasn't actually about what you thought you were arguing about, but it was something completely deeper and different that you know so many people can relate to. That is what makes things matter.

• 3:29Speaker 00

  Hey everyone. Welcome back to the Earn Your Happy Podcast. It's time for another quickie because there's always time to fit in inspiration. If you have not tried Glossy yet, it is our daily beauty supplement. If you are someone who is already buying electrolytes, but doesn't have the benefits of a probiotic, a clinically studied probiotic, magnesium, hyaluronic acid, vitamin C, and all the things that can make your skin look absolutely incredible on top of hydrating you. Go check it out. You can go to GetGlossy.com and use code HAPPY for 40% off your first subscription order. And I have been thinking so much recently about storytelling.

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  And I think that my podcast offer, Million Dollar Guest, has opened up so much for me in terms of listening to people with such a different type of ear. I am now no longer just listening to people for the story, the expertise, the thing that they're tangibly teaching me, but I am looking at the structure of how they tell a story. I'm looking at how they are evoking emotion. I'm looking at if they're sharing the stories that actually helps sell you on their idea and their offer.

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  Because I believe that storytelling is the skill that can make anything that you sell become in demand. And I have a lot of people who are really inspiring me right now on this. I'm reading the book Storyworthy, which is just an incredible book. If you guys have not read it and you want to become a better storyteller. It goes deep into the art of storytelling and it's from like Story Slam Champion. And I can tell you that I have laughed through it. I have cried through it. And I've been so entertained on just really learning the art of storytelling. And my other absolute inspiration on this is one of my incredible friends.

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  And I know that you've heard Chris and I talk about him before, and that is our friend Rob Murgatroyd. And the reason that he is just such a huge inspiration for me is because I've watched him absolutely change his life through going deep on a really beautiful skill that changes the lives of others. And that is storytelling. Rob recently turned 60, doesn't look a day over 45. And he is truly one of the most fun people to be around. And now that he's 60, he's a former chiropractor and he truly has used storytelling to reinvent himself. And this is the funny part is through him being just an incredible storyteller, all of his stuff goes viral because it's so moving and so good.

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  So he is now TikTok famous. He is constantly going viral on Instagram. And I kind of want to chat about that. I wrote about this on a Substack and an email recently because I believe that the skill of storytelling is going to be the thing that can completely change your business if you decide to go deep on it. And it's something that I am investing a lot of time into right now. And I can't wait to get better at it, get even better at it. I would say I'm not great at storytelling yet, but I'm very excited to put a ton of time into it. It's something that I'm dedicating about an hour to a day, if not more, in the mornings. Kind of putting some time aside to listen to books, to really think about it, to read some things from the perspective of storytelling.

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  So you know, weirdly enough, the skill that I believe is going to make you the most money in your lifetime is not necessarily going to be funnels or having the perfect offer. And I think it's the ability to make people care. I think it's the ability to make people care about your idea and your product and the problem that you're solving and the way that you see the world. And you do that through storytelling. You need to have people care enough to actually stop scrolling. And the hard part about this, and I don't even want you to get it in your head that it's hard. It's just anytime you learn a new skill set, you're going to have to be dedicated. And it's going to feel a little rough, right?

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  It's going to feel a little like you're hitting your edge frequently when you're not good at something yet. And you will literally face off with yourself, learning this new skill. But I really believe that it's going to be the thing that sets you apart. So I think it's going to be the thing that make people actually continue to buy, no matter how you pivot in the world. So there are people with incredible expertise who can't get anyone to pay any attention to them. And then there's someone like Rob who can actually tell a story about vinegar. And all of a sudden you find yourself pricing flights to Italy.

• 8:24Speaker 00

  Now that is storytelling. And I think entrepreneurs massively underestimate how valuable this skill becomes once you learn it. Because if you know how to tell stories, you know how to make ordinary things absolutely fascinating. You know how to make them memorable and you know how to make ordinary things matter. And you can change anything in your business and they'll be following you because they follow the way that you think and the way that you see the world. And this is going to help you sell a hell of a lot more. So I hope that that excites you. But my friend Rob Murgatroyd might be one of my favorite humans and examples of this of all time. My husband and I have known Rob and Kim for, oh my gosh, almost 20 years now.

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  We met while we were both in the fitness competition world. We have a mutual friend Kathy Savage that we both competed on her team. And that was a really fun time in life. And this is when Rob owned chiropractic centers. And they were also traveling the world quite a bit. And I can tell you that I have had some of the most interesting conversations of my entire life and experiences with Rob and Kim because of how they've curated it, who they know in the world and how they show up. People just love them because of how interesting they are. And I'll talk about that in a minute. What truly makes someone interesting?

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  But the cool thing is, is that Rob had a massive pivot in his career. And he decided one day that he no longer wanted to be in chiropractics anymore. Except there was just one small problem and that was that he had no idea what he wanted to do next. Now, have any of you had this where maybe in your 30s, your 40s, your 50s? I believe he was in his Late 40s, early 50s, when all of this was happening, when he was deciding what he wanted to do next. Have you had this happen? Where all of a sudden, you can feel in a really vulnerable position because you're admitting that the thing that you've spent decades being good at,

• 10:36Speaker 00

  being known for, you no longer want to do it. And you almost don't want to tell anybody because it's like, who am I going to be next? How am I going to get those hits of dopamine? How am I going to get attention? How are people going to notice me? And most people will not take the leap that Rob took. He didn't have some perfectly mapped out next act waiting for him. But what he did know is that he loved to travel. He loved experiences. He loved talking people and places. He loved sitting around the table and having deep conversations and really learning about people, learning about their stories.

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  And he started having conversations with people that were the type of conversations that people couldn't get out of their head three days later. They were impactful. You felt different. You felt like you wanted to live differently. And I know this because like I said, some of my favorite conversations have come out of talking to Rob. And again, I'm doing this podcast and I'm going deep into storytelling. And although this idea came to me through the podcast offer that I'm doing, or the desire, should I say that I want to do this, came through the podcast offer. The first person I thought of going and studying again was my friend Rob, because he tells such incredible stories. He can take the most random thing that happened to him, something that you and I might mention in, in a few sentences.

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  And 20 minutes later, you can feel like this is the best story that you've ever heard in your life. It can be something that makes you question your entire existence. And maybe it was him just walking to a random coffee shop in Italy and talking to the barista and having a profound moment. He knows how to extract these moments in life. And that is what I hope that you start taking from this. So my husband literally calls him the most interesting man in the world, and I think it's starting to catch on. But here's what I find really crazy about all of this with Rob. I don't think Rob necessarily has a more interesting life than anyone else. And while I'm telling you that Rob moved from the US to Florence, Italy,

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  and he has incredible content and he seems to have this incredible life every single day. There's been so many people I've known that have moved to other amazing countries and they don't tell stories like this. They don't have days that seem extraordinary frequently. They end up falling into a normal pattern like we all do. It doesn't matter if we live in Paris or Green Bay, Wisconsin. You can tend to fall into a similar pattern. Yes, we have beautiful things around us, but do we have the ability to notice them and then tell the story about them? What makes Rob so memorable is that he has learned how to notice what makes life interesting

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  and then work on telling the story about it. And that skill is what has helped him completely reinvent himself. So like I said today, he lives in Florence. He creates content about Italy and travel and he's built a huge audience around it and creates travel experiences around something that he genuinely loves doing. But I want you to listen to what happens when he tells a story. Because these are stories that Rob tells that I want to share with you. Rob can walk into a 400 year old vinegar company in Modena and start by basically admitting, I've never really thought about vinegar. Well, Rob, neither have I, right? It's vinegar. I buy it at the grocery store. I throw down some pieces of lettuce

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  and I continue living my life with pretty much not thinking about it at all. But then he starts telling you about this family that has been aging vinegar for more than 400 years. He takes you into the rooms where the barrels are sitting, tells you about the balsamic that has been aging for 50 years. And he starts describing notes of fig and chocolate, like we're discussing a bottle of wine that I literally could not afford. And this is how all of a sudden you realize that maybe in your life, you've never actually tasted balsamic the way that Rob is now going to make you experience it.

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  Then you find out that people are drizzling this stuff over gelato, putting it in their Negronis. And Rob tells you his favorite is their 50 year age balsamic over a fresh piece of Parmigiano that changed his life. And suddenly I care about fucking vinegar. I want to taste this vinegar. I want to see the barrels. I want someone to drizzle it over that piece of cheese for me while explaining why the barrel it came out of is older than most people that I know. I want to start thinking about the people and the family and the hands that have had all of their soul and all of their creation and all of their hard work that has gone into this one bottle

• 15:39Speaker 00

  of 50 year age balsamic that I am about to pour on my cheese, on my Parmigiano, on a piece of bread, put a drop in a Negroni. Now I actually care. And for the love of God, all I can think about is wanting to travel to Italy, order a Negroni with a dash of balsamic and listen to Rob tell us more stories. And that is what a great storyteller can do. They can make you care about something that you didn't give a shit about five seconds ago. And if you're an entrepreneur, I really want you to sit with that for a second. Because isn't that actually our job?

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  We have something that we believe matters and we believe that it matters enough for us to risk everything on it. Say, this is an idea that I believe people need to know about and we create it. We spend so much time getting it out in the world, but we forget to make it matter to other people through story, through transformational story. Somehow we have to make another human being understand why they care about it too. Now let's go back to Rob's storytelling because he can do the same thing with an old basement of a restaurant. He takes you into a beautiful restaurant in Florence that could rival some of the hottest places in Manhattan.

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  And then he tells you the real story isn't upstairs. He says, it's underneath it. So you go downstairs and now you're walking through rooms that have been there since the 1500s, imagining servants cooking by firelight and washing clothes with rainwater collected from the roof. These are all Rob's stories, by the way. There's an ancient fireplace where laundry was boiled with soap made from animal fat. There are rooms where insanely expensive handmade tapestries were stored. And then you get to the wine cellar. There are arches down there dating back to 30 B.C. There's a tiny cutout in the wall that was used as a wine window where servants could pass bottles directly onto the street without leaving the cellar. And suddenly you're not looking at an old basement anymore.

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  And he's making you imagine how people have walked across the ground, how many meals were made there, how many conversations happened upstairs? How many people fell in love there? How many completely ordinary days came and went? While century after century literally stacked itself underneath their feet. And then Rob lands the bigger thought. Maybe progress doesn't always mean replacing what came before us. Sometimes it means honoring it and building something beautiful on top of it. And that is how Rob tells a story. He starts with something totally ordinary, like vinegar, a basement. And then he finds the thing underneath it. He finds how to make it mean something.

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  And he spends a lot of time doing this. This isn't something that he just sits down for an hour. He can take days, maybe months. I don't know, maybe even more. I know he's working on stories that are a lot more. And suddenly these stories aren't about vinegar anymore. They're not about a basement. They are about life. And we relate to them. Because they're everyday stories that are happening all around us. This isn't some massive story where I'm telling you about what all changed about Rob because he moved to Italy, because most of us aren't going to move to Italy or we can't move to Italy. These are things that he is noticing in his everyday life that we could notice something here. You could notice something in your life.

• 19:16Speaker 00

  And stories are what make people care. You can have literally the best idea in the world, the best product in the world, but if you can't make people feel why it matters and relate to them, it's not going to matter at all. And I think I'm getting so excited about this because of what I'm doing in Million Dollar Guest and teaching storytelling and really helping people dial in their stories so that they can actually sell their offers because their offers and how they transform people matter to them. But how do we make those stories matter to other people? Through storytelling. And this is what Rob does. And this is why he went from being known as a chiropractor

• 19:58Speaker 00

  to becoming TikTok famous at 60 for telling stories about travel, Italy and life. And a life that he genuinely loves because of how he pays attention to his life. But weirdly enough, here's what's even more valuable. The better you get at making other people care about what you see, the more you start caring about what you see too. Because becoming a great storyteller requires you to pay attention to your life. You can't just keep sleepwalking through it. You can't just keep showing up to your to do list. You can't just keep doing the same 11 things you do every single day from morning until night and falling asleep and calling it another day.

• 20:45Speaker 00

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• 21:28Speaker 00

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• 23:27Speaker 00

  There was a stretch in my early twenties when I was chipping away at credit card debt and it honestly felt like it was never going to end. I'd make a payment, I would feel good for a day, and then I'd look at the balance and feel like I did nothing. And what changed everything was finally seeing a finish line. That's why I love Monarch's Debt Pay Down Simulator and Visualizer. It shows your exact debt-free date based on your real balance and payments. And you get to watch that timeline move. Every extra payment, the date gets closer. That kind of visible progress keeps you going. And my favorite part is playing out your options. You can run different payment scenarios side by side and instantly see which one gets

• 24:11Speaker 00

  you debt-free the fastest. You're in control of the plan. Monarch takes that heavy endless feeling and turns it into a plan with an actual end date. And a quick check-in on my phone means I always know where my money is. Going from this will never end to a date you can circle on the calendar, that feels like freedom. Write your own money story with Monarch. Use code EYH at monarch.com to get your first year of Monarch Core half off at just $50. That's 50% off your first year at monarch.com with code EYH. You start noticing these little things like these side conversations of the baristas at the coffee shop. Maybe it's something that your kid said in the car.

• 24:56Speaker 00

  Maybe it's the argument that you had with your husband that you realized wasn't actually about what you thought you were arguing about, but it was something completely deeper and different that you know so many people can relate to. Maybe you start to notice the old man sitting alone in the restaurant. You build a beautiful story around his life. Things you might have walked straight past before suddenly actually become interesting to you. And when things become interesting to you, this is when you start living an interesting life. You can start asking, how did that affect me? Why am I still thinking about it? Why did that give me that feeling? Why did that make me feel some kind of way? And I swear to you that your life starts getting richer because you're finally there

• 25:41Speaker 00

  for those moments. You finally realize it's your attention to being interested in the real story that makes things interesting. And that is what makes things matter. And you have to stop treating your life like the boring shit you have to get through on the way to the next big launch, or the next goal, or the next milestone, or the next version of yourself. And instead, start collecting these moments instead of rushing through them. And when you start looking at your life like this, it becomes really exciting. It becomes a lot more interesting. That's what's really great about the book, Storyworthy, is he has something called Life Homework, where every day you're going through your day to see where there was a story, where there's something that you want to remember. He actually has you write it down.

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  That's what I'm starting to do with my life, is where is there an actual story that I want to tell someone or that I want to remember myself? I just jot it down. Because what I'm doing right now is I just want to start looking at my life through that lens is, oh, that was a moment. That was actually a really beautiful, unique, cute moment, right? I have so many of them on my dog walks where I have these encounters with people I would never, ever have. And I'm like, that was a really cute moment. I'm thinking of one right now, literally off the top of my mind. There is a couple that just moved into a house down the block. They have two new puppies at once. And if that alone doesn't strike up a conversation, I don't know what does, especially as a

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  dog lover, because having one puppy on its own is insane. I don't know about you, but I have not been blessed with mellow puppies. They have been psychotic to the point where I feel like they're both possessed. So when I saw these two puppies, there was a sign on the gate with a little toy box sitting outside of their fence. And in this toy box, it's filled with dog toys, like insane squeaky balls, tennis balls, little stuffies, lots of those chew ropes. And on the outside of the toy box, it says, please take one from Rosie and Goose. Rosie and Goose is the name of the two puppies.

• 27:47Speaker 00

  And they come rushing to the gate, they jump up, they lick you, and my dogs go rummaging through this basket and grab a toy every single time. And it makes me really, just little moments like that, make me say, how could I do the same thing for people? How could I bring these unexpected moments of pure joy into people's life like this moment brought for me? Two puppies rushing up to me, free dog toys, the cutest little sign from Rosie and Goose. And I had a moment where someone else's generosity and creativity made me want to

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  live my life differently. It made me say, wow, this person's really thinking of other people and making a great experience for them in the neighborhood. Like, this is a valuable, beautiful community member. And that was a moment for me that I really want to become a valuable community member to give people like sporadic joy like that. And I think that that's something that we can look at our, look at our lives as, is how could we just do that every single day in a small way like that? And that was a story that maybe I would have never told if I wasn't looking at my life with this lens of where are these little seemingly insignificant stories that actually

• 29:15Speaker 00

  made me feel some kind of way and think differently? It's helping me become way more interested in my own life, which is actually something that's been bringing me to tears lately. I'm not even kidding you, because I am present for the moments. So I'm so excited about what I've been teaching, what we've been learning. You guys also go follow Rob, he's incredible. Rob Mercatroyd, TikTok or Instagram, I'll link it up in the show notes. And also, if you ever get over to Italy, do one of his trips for sure. They sell it really fast, but go check it out. Huge thank you to Rob as well, because I'm so grateful for him and how he lives his life, because it's inspired me to want to go much deeper on a skillset.

• 29:58Speaker 00

  And also, if you want to get on the waitlist for the next Million Dollar Guest to also learn the unique art of storytelling and really learning how to tell a story on a podcast that moves people, that is related to your offer so that it's all succinct with exactly what you do, and that is how you start monetizing your podcast. You can go to milliondollarguest.com and there is a waitlist there that you can get on, and I hope that I get to work with you. But you guys, until next time, earn your happy. I'm so grateful for you and I will talk to you next week.