67. Crafting Engaging Narratives from Anecdotes: The Practical Guide to Podcast Storytelling with Juliet Hahn

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Gosh, there are so many mistakes I've made in my podcasting journey. I mean, I'm still making them, of course, but when I look back at things I used to do, so many things make me cringe. One of those things, for example, is looking back at some of the first few podcasts I used to guest on. When I look back at some of them, I simultaneously want to apologize to those hosts and sink into the floor. Because I realized now that we would spend the entire recording time plus more, as in we would go over the recording time, just delving deep into my journey, particularly my entrepreneurial journey, and you might hear that and think, what's the big deal?

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Isn't that what being a podcast guest is all about? But, well, it's kind of not. I didn't realize it at the time because I thought I was doing a great job. But the more that I got into my own podcast hosting journey and was interviewing people and knowing what it is I wanted to deliver for my audience, for you, the more I realized that those podcast guest spots, I did when I blew the time out. Just going into my story and really controlling the conversation and not providing as much tangible value as I know I can.

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Those episodes were not great. And those hosts, I'm getting a sense now that they were really just being polite when they did tell me how great it was. So this is what I wanted to spend this time in, this episode that we have together on. We know that we have to tell our stories, but what stories do we tell? For how long?

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How do we balance that with providing value to our host's audience so that we can really showcase who we are and what we do to promote our podcast or our offers really effectively so that other podcast hosts will listen to that episode and will want to be interviewing you. And, well, it wouldn't hurt to get invited back onto the podcast you were just on. Right? This is going to be the aim of this episode, and I'm really excited that Juliet Hahn, a fellow podcaster and storytelling consultant, will be joining me to help us go through how we do this. So if you're looking to really level up your podcast guesting and hosting storytelling game so that you can connect with your audience, provide a ton of value, and have people clamoring to get in on what it is you're promoting, then this episode is for you.

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My name is Deirdre Tshien and co-founder of Capsho, the fastest way to market and grow your podcast. And this is the Grow my podcast show. Yay.

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Hands up. If you've been guesting on other podcasts to promote your podcast, all your business, if I were there with you right now, I should be seeing your hand go up, right? Because if you're not, then that is your first assignment, you must be finding, pitching and getting onto other podcasts that you can share your message. And if you want a really, really awesome starting point on how to do that, listen to episode 32 of this podcast called how to Grow Your Podcast through Targeted Podcast Pitching. Because Kevin Schmidlen has one of the best approaches to doing this that I've seen.

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But we're going to assume that each and every one of us is currently guessing on other podcasts. Cool. How have you been doing with finding the balance of telling your stories and providing value? How have you been doing with ensuring that your host has everything they need to make you shine? And in doing so, you're ensuring that you're helping them shine to their audience?

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Because unfortunately, podcast guesting or even hosting isn't as simple as just hopping onto a zoom call, winging it with a loose conversation, and assuming you'll grow an audience from it. Nope, there is actually a lot more that goes into it. Things like knowing which stories to tell and when, knowing how long to tell a story for knowing even they actually need to tell stories in the first place. And that's where Juliet comes in. So who is Juliet Hahn?

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I am a storytelling consultant and a podcast host. I help people identify the parts of their stories that need to be shared so they can connect deeper with their target audience. There's usually a moment when we all realize how important storytelling is to connect with other people. For me, it was actually a lot later in life with my first business, the Capsho, I would be meeting and greeting instagram and blogging influencers that I had invited to try our desserts. And I was always surprised with how willing they were to linger and just talk to me, asking me questions about how the chalkpot came to be and how Ash and I met and a myriad of other things that I had never really thought to share before.

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And then I would read their blog or their post and I was really surprised to see how much of those stories came through. That was when I realized how important storytelling was to create those connections. For Juliet, that moment of realization came a lot earlier in her life as she struggled with her Dyslexia. So I remember it was probably in like 8th or 9th grade and we were reading a book and I remember I had done the Cliff Notes and I asked my friends before we had to run into class, I was like, Give me the summary of the book, because I didn't read it. And they were like, oh, blah, blah, blah.

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And the teacher was this amazing teacher and it was early on in class, so we hadn't done like a paper, and she's like, can someone give me kind of the summary of what they felt this book was? And I started connecting things, but I was really like telling a story to this teacher and she was this bigger than life teacher and she literally was like, yes, Juliet, you're so pithy. I can't wait for this year. You're going to be my star student. I love how you connected with that and how you connected with that character.

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Now, mind you, it was all stuff that I was like kind of intuitively doing, thinking this is how the book is going to played out. Just because my friends told me and I read the Cliff Notes, but I didn't read the whole thing. But it was the way I formulated those words to connect with her. And then I'll never forget I had to write the first paper and she called me after class and told me how disappointed she was in me because I didn't put enough effort in it. And if I put the effort in that, I did on the field hockey or lacrosse field instead of not doing that and it gutted me, but then we connected again.

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I think I had told her I really did put a lot of work in and I really tried, but having those things happen where you're just like but then I knew, okay, I like this feeling when I talk to people, when I share stories, when I connect and communicate, and I don't like this feeling. So that was also kind of my journey. It always seemed to me that some people are just natural storytellers, a skill that they were born with or just grew up with. And I've always wondered whether it was something that can be learned. I think you can learn.

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I mean, this is what I do with my clients because I'm really good at identifying. But because of the things that I compensated with as a kid and growing up, I became really good at reading people, reading their tones, reading their body language, reading how they say certain words. If they slow down, if they speed up, I can pull things out. So like, I know when someone speeds something up and they get a little excited, I'm like, okay, I'm going to dive into that because then they're just going to want to go more. Now on the other turn, sometimes when someone is slowing down, I realize it's something that maybe they're a little bit uncomfortable with speaking about or they don't know how to formulate those words.

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And I'm really able to help them kind of put those words together. So, yes, it is something you can 100% learn. So which one are you? Are you a natural born storyteller or is it something you have to learn or maybe keep learning? I am personally still on the journey.

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I've come a long way from even those initial podcast guest interviews when all I was doing was talking through a somewhat meandering story and realizing I was doing that hasn't stopped me from telling my stories either, because storytelling provides an immeasurable amount of value. Stories build trust. Stories sell. Stories connect us. Like, have you ever been sitting down on a couch and like a commercial comes up and you all of a sudden realize that you're listening to the whole thing and you're like, oh, I really love that.

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And you're like, what am I even listening to? What is this? And then it's like an insurance company or like something. And you're like, oh, I don't even need insurance. But wow, that really connected because there was a story in there.

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So building trust because you're vulnerable, you're talking, it doesn't have to be like a therapy session. I'm not talking about that, but I'm talking about little pieces of people's stories that make you listen and then you're going to want to know more. And it really just is that thing that connects us. Stories have been being told for decades and years because it is what makes people tick and it is what makes you be like, that's a real person. And I understand.

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And a lot of times with one sentence, you can kind of see a window into someone by just one sentence they're speaking. And so you can kind of be like, okay, I kind of kind of know what kind of person they are because of x, Y and Z and how they spoke about that. Want to hear a specific example from Juliet's perspective on how powerfully this works? I love Capsho. I mean, I've been using it now for months and months, but the thing that got me to really just be like, yeah, I'm going to buy was I met you guys at a convention and you told me your stories and then I've had both of you on the podcast and you told me your stories.

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So then when you told me about Capsho, I don't even think I asked any questions. I was like, just tell me where to put my credit card. And you, oh, okay. But it's because you built trust. You built trust with your story and it excited me.

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I was connected and I wanted to support you guys. And now, I mean, I use it all the time. I just said to you, I absolutely love it. I've changed the way I've been posting on social media because of it. My editor loves it.

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It is really a great product. And it was because you built trust because you were able to share your story with me. So thank you for what you guys are doing. Wow. What more tangible proof do you need about the power of storytelling to the point that you can get direct sales and audience building from it?

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And the great thing is that Juliet is going to break it down for us, really break it down into tangible steps for us to know what stories to tell and how to tell it so that you are providing value to your audience and to your host's. Audience. Are you ready to get into them? Let's do it. Let's get into how we can know what stories to tell and how to tell it so that you are providing value to your audience and to your hosts, audiences.

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Step number one, as Juliet calls it, feeling memories. Now, what in the world is that? I do want to say this is not therapy. So some people will be like, oh my God, I don't want to dive into that because I've been stuffing that for 50 years, right? This is not therapy.

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So there is what I typically do with my clients. And again, everyone's brain works a little different, so every client is a little bit different. And I'm very good at being able to work with different brains because I have a different brain and I know I work in different kind of streamlines. So the first thing I always ask my clients to do is kind of think back. Think back at a time where you either have a memory and it could be a good memory or it could be not a great memory, and then also think back to feelings.

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So there's feeling memories. We can visualize memories, but then we can also go back to third grade. And when I kind of came up with that story, I had to ask my mom some questions and be like, can you remember this? Because I go back to third grade and I kind of get this pit in my stomach and I do have a little bit of recollections of what happened. But that's the first kind of thing as I say to people.

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And again, I have one of my clients that's like, yeah, no, I've been stuffing, I don't want to go there. And I'm like, I understand. So I want you to tell me the top level of your story. So what I have my clients do is before, especially if someone's asking me questions, is really go into your notes. If you're a writer, write it.

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If you're a voice text or voice text, it. There's so many different things that you can get on your iPhone or your Samsung that you can practice and just kind of start talking about. And I break it up in chapters, kind of jot down some of those memories and some of those memory feelings. And again, there could be some trauma in there. So if you are someone that needs to work with a therapist, this is not therapy.

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This is just kind of coming up with some things that really are going to connect with an audience. So kind of deep diving into those, but not too much, where you're then like sitting in a corner and crying. I'll give you a couple of examples so you guys can kind of picture it in your mind. So one of my clients, as we were talking, she told me this story about a pink peony. She's like, it's really, really not that important.

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She's like, but it's come up. A couple of times in my life I had it actually funny with my grandmother. And then she started going down this path and I could see her excitement and then she's like, and then when I left my job to then start my own business, someone gave me pink Peonies and blah, blah, blah. So when she started telling me about this, I was like, no, I know you just said that was insignificant if you saw how you spoke about it. And that's the thing I want your listeners to think about.

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When you speak about something that you're excited about that's dear to your heart or you're really excited about, you give that off to the audience so they can hear it in your voice. That's where they're connecting. They're like, wait a second, it might have nothing to do with you. But they're like, wait, I love that Pink Peony story because I saw how excited and then they want to know a little bit more about you. And that's where you're building community and trust because someone's like, wow, she just told this story.

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And I saw that excitement. I kind of like that person. I want to hear about it. So she then started adding that to some of her social media posts, to some other podcast she was on. And she's like, now I'm kind of known as the Pink Peony woman, but I love that.

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I love that. Again, that's what's building her community. And someone might just have loved Pink Peonies, but then was like, well, maybe I do need a business coach. You know what, let me look into this woman because I like the Pink Peonies story. Perfect example.

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Another example is I had one of my clients who has a really amazing life. I mean, her chapters are pretty big things that she did. And her first chapter, she had some tragedy and some really big trauma that she never really brought in because she didn't know how to do it. And she's working with high level business people and she's like, I didn't want to seem weak because of this. And I said to her, no, we are going to work on the words that you're going to be comfortable because I can see that you're uncomfortable talking about it.

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But this is important because you're going to connect with so many different people that have had trauma, have had tragedy in their life. And to see where you are now and it all stemmed with her name. And she didn't realize her name is now part of her business and actually is the whole core of her business. So we were able to connect those dots just from her. And I having these sessions of talking about different things.

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So that's what's really important is taking those significant parts of your life or non significant parts of your life that you think are non significant and then tying them together and seeing where the dots connect. And that's what's really important because that's where the gold is. That's where I help you find that gold to then be like, oh, my gosh. Okay. This person just reached out to me.

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Not because of my business coaching, or not because of my podcast, because I liked Pink Peonies, or because I related to the name story. And I had this similar background, and I've overcome a lot of things. So that's kind of where the gold really lies. So cool. Have you ever thought about your stories in that way, feeling those memories to see what it is that makes you you?

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The crazy thing is that half the time, we don't even realize how important they are because we see them as just boring old memories, insignificant things that just happened in our lives. But those memories are so, so important for us to hone in on, for our storytelling journey to make us just people and connect with who we're looking to connect with. And once we have those feeling memories, we then get into step number two, which Juliet couldn't help herself because she started to talk about it already. But step number two are all about chapters. So the second step, again, is to kind of dive into all the different chapters and then pick out every chapter.

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There's going to be like one or two things that are very significant that should always be added to your story. Always be added. And sometimes now, speaking specifically to people that are going on podcast, you're going to have a host. Maybe the host doesn't ask you the question, but you're going to learn, because that, again, is what I teach you. And the practice is where it is, too, is to kind of weave those parts in, because there's parts of your story that should always be brought up.

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And most things that I talk about, I talk about my Dyslexia, because it really is what shaped me. And I know people can connect. Oh, she struggled there. I also played two college sports. They can be like, wow, she struggled, but she went to college and played two college sports.

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That gives someone a window of to who I am hard worker grit. Because she got through all this. She still went to college even though school sucked and she hated it. And then I even got on the honor roll a bunch of times in college because I learned how I learned. And so those kind of things I always include.

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I find a way, even if the host doesn't ask me. I don't bring it up randomly and weirdly, but that's something that you then have to practice. Okay, so each chapter has these things you practice so much, it's almost like a kind of a file that you're taking out of your brain. And it was like, okay, now I see I can bring this up and kind of interweave it into my story. The interweaving is also the beautiful part of where the gold comes out because that's where the dots connect.

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How exactly can we think about these chapters? So my chapters is what I say. It's always beginning life, right? So early, early years growing up, even before school, if you can kind of remember things like that, then early years of school. And then we go into the next chapter, which is really kind of like if you went to university early career where you did Pivots, because that part's a little interesting.

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Again, if it's a mother or a father or a man or a woman, the chapters are going to look a little different. Like, okay, did you have children? What did that Pivot look like? Did you go back to work? If you're a father, were you the one that stayed home?

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Where does that work? And then there's kind of another two chapters, right? So then there's the other one where you're now kind of in midlife. And then it depends on your age, your next chapter, kind of the last chapters. And a lot of times, again, people don't, they don't think about the significance of sometimes their younger chapters.

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Because if you think about when you were a kid, things that you dreamed about or things that you wanted to do, I love kind of being like, okay, let's think about that. Now look where you are. Can you make a correlation there? And so then that's why I break it up in chapters. The client that I spoke to about that has this amazing life and she's done all these really great accolades, but then she had this trauma in her early years when she's going on podcast or speaking on stages.

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I always tell, like, you need to think about the audience. So right. There's going to be some parts of your story that are very appropriate that you do always want to connect. There's going to be parts that maybe you want to shorten. And it's just a sentence so people can still see that.

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And if the host then wants to drag it out or to ask more questions, they can ask more questions on it. But it's just something very subtly you say. And it's just like one sentence. Just like how I just kind of gave you example of me. You could be like, wait, I want to know more about these two sports and then you drag it out.

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But I can do it in a very simple one sentence. And those one sentences are really important to make sure you have kind of in your ammunition belt, because those are, again, what are always going to connect with different audiences, which is then going to build the trust and grow. I wish I had known some of this stuff before. You can see how this becomes such an art to the point of practice and discipline. My problem previously was that I didn't have discipline around this.

00:19:26
I would just go on and on with my story without really working out what connected with my host and their audience. What Juliet is sharing with us is so powerful for storytelling to almost just seed and test what it is your host cares about and wants to dive deeper into. And this leads directly into step number three to accordion your stories according to the length of your podcast interview and. Provide value if you are. And we're talking about podcasting.

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So now you're going out on the podcasting circuit, right? You have all your stories. You know what you're doing. Someone says, hey, can you be on my podcast? It's 20 minutes.

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Then you have someone else that says, hey, can you be on my podcast? It's an hour. You have someone else to say, hey, can you be in my podcast? It's 45 minutes. And you're like, oh, okay.

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So then we really kind of again, it's where it's important to be able to interweave certain things from your story. Like, we didn't get into my whole story, but I was able to give you pieces of it because I know we have a short time if I'm on an hour podcast. What sometimes happens, sometimes people elongate things that they maybe really shouldn't and miss things that they should or they need to shorten certain things because they have something at the end. A lot of times people are going on podcasts they want to sell or a service or a business or promote something. So if you can get really good, especially if you're on a 20 minutes podcast where you're connecting because you have that story and you want to connect with the audience, so then you can sell your product or service.

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But if you kind of go right into the product and service, you're missing all of those people that maybe don't need your product and service because you missed them. What's your story? So you have to get really good at being able to say, okay, this is 20 minutes. These are the pieces of my chapter that I need to bring out, and now I have 15 minutes to talk about my product or service. Same with the hour.

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Especially if you have a big life or a small life. Like, how do you get that done where it's not just like you're selling to someone? So that's what's really important and I think is really the third kind of thing that we wrap around. This was definitely what I was missing every time I would do a podcast guest interview before, I wasn't mindful of this step and knowing when I needed to stop in my story so that there was plenty of room for me to also provide tangible value and as Juliet mentioned, to actually sell myself, my podcast, my service. Might you also be doing a little bit of this too?

00:21:46
Let me know by leaving me a message and let me know which of these steps you might need to do a little more work on as well. Now, we've spoken a lot about how to storytell effectively when we are a guest on someone else's podcast, but I couldn't help wondering how we do this for our own podcast. How do we weave our own stories in as a host when we interview? Does that even make sense? Does that mean we might be at risk of dominating the conversation or making it about ourselves rather than our guests?

00:22:14
How do we weave our own stories in so that we can create that connection with our own audiences? I've always found this a difficult balance to strike, which is why I'm quite a fan of this narrative style podcast. In fact, I dedicated episode 64 of this podcast to how to create a narrative style podcast, getting my good friend Dave Jackson to tell me about his experiences as well. Now, the part that I always struggle with the most is coming up with a story or positioning for each episode. So as the storytelling consultant, I decided to ask Juliet how we can think through this.

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How can we think through which stories we weave into a narrative style podcast so that it doesn't take away from your guest and allows your audience to personally connect with you? And that is a gift I'm going to leave as a bonus clip. If you've been thinking about trying this narrative style podcast, or you even just want to think about how you can, as seamlessly as possible, weave your own stories into an interview that you're conducting as a podcast host, then go ahead and grab this bonus clip. To do that, go to the description for this episode where there is a link. That link will take you to the website for this episode.

00:23:22
Scroll down a bit and you'll see where you can opt in for that bonus clip for free. So go and do that right now. And if you want to connect with. Juliet so you guys can find me really on every social media, it is I, M, Juliet Hahn, and that's Juliet Hahn, H-A-H-N. And the reason why I'm I am Juliet Hahn is because there's a professor that has my name that's older that took Juliet Hahn.

00:23:44
So that is why I am. And you can also go to my website, I am Juliet Hahn.com. It talks all about my storytelling, but it also shows partnerships that I'm in. It also gives you the podcast as well. And then you can find all my podcasts on your next stop.

00:23:59
And stay tuned because I have two new ones coming out that I'm really, really excited about. But we just started recording and we're kind of coming up with the whole form there. But yes, I am Juliet Hahn. LinkedIn Juliet Hahn and Facebook. Juliet Hahn, but all the others, I am Juliet Hahn.

00:24:15
Thank you for tuning into. The Grammar Podcast show. My name is Deirdre Tshien. Stay awesome.