The festival of WordPress
January 22, 2021

This is an archive of the January 2021 event

Win More Clients by Sharing Your Story

As digital agency owners it’s easy to hide behind fancy graphics and techie talk across our digital channels. But many of our ideal clients are not techy at all, this is why they hire a digital agency after all!

So how can you build the know/like/trust factor with your ideal audience (who can pay your worth) if you stay in your comfort zone and talk about techy things all the time?

Wouldn’t it be brilliant if you found an easy way to promote your agency by becoming more visible across your digital channels and content?

Still on the fence if this is a good talk? How do you show your ideal audience what it would be like to work with you? People buy from people and your ideal audience needs to get a glimpse of what it’s like to work with you. We all know there comes a moment in every website build when you have to motivate your clients to help you get the project over the finishing line.

One powerful way to build an emotional connection is by sharing your stories. Not all of them, but the ones you’re happy to share and that make you look good!

I’ll show you my popular Story Sharer framework for identifying what stories can work for you. Dave Foy and Mike Killen have seen some brilliant results using this approach to fuel their content marketing.

I’ll also share easy to implement tips for how to stand out and connect by being more visible on your agency About Page, social media channels, and content marketing using one often overlooked tool: behind the scenes content.

No one wakes up in the middle of the night wanting to share their story. But in a crowded market space you need to stand out (in a good way) to become top of mind with your ideal audience.

Speaker: Nicole Osborne

Time: 2:00pm UTC
Region: EMEA
Stage: Fused Stage

Hello, everyone,

I am so excited to be

part of Global WordFest.

First of all, just thank you Dan Maby

from Big Orange Heart for

giving me this opportunity.

Thank you so much von Michelle Frechette

the WordFest speaker lead.

I really, really appreciate

this opportunity.

And thank you to all of you as well

for tapping into my session.

Let me know in the comments, first of all

where are you based?

I’m hoping I can be there

in the comments as well.

I would love to know where you’re based.

I’m Nicole Osborne,

I’m a marketing coach for

Digital Agency Owners.

My company name is Wunderstars

and I’m actually based in sunny London.

Well kind of sunny today.

So let me know where you are based.

So what are we going to

be talking about today?

Let me jump straight into my presentation.

Just haring it here.

Here we go.

Oops, fantastic, I hope

you can see what I can see.

So my talk today is all

about winning more clients

by sharing your story.

Now I know many website designers,

people from the WordPress community

are so at ease talking all things tech

and you’re really passionate about it.

And sometimes you talk a

little bit too much tech.

[laughing]

It’s such a crowded

marketplace at the moment

and it’s an opportunity

for you to stand out

and connect with your dream clients.

The kind of dream clients

who get what you’re about,

who you love working with,

and who pay you you’re worth.

And you can achieve this

by standing up on social

and sharing your story.

So my talk today is all about

enabling you to do that,

to find your stories, to know

what to do on your pages,

how to stand out on social,

to really connect with your ideal clients

and get more of them.

I hope you’re gonna have lots of fun.

There’s gonna be time for questions

and I’m just really pleased to hear,

so let’s jump into it.

To start with, here is a

very brief introduction

’cause I want you to know who I am.

So I’m based in London, my name is Nicole.

I’m founder of Wunderstars.

I offer marketing coaching

to agency founders.

I started my marketing career,

would you believe it, nearly 20 years ago

and after having a

first-class marketing degree,

I actually worked at The Financial Times.

I was in charge looking

after selling advertising

in the Financial Times and on FT.com

to advertisers all across the globe.

I’ve also worked at the

Institute of Directors,

again being in-charge of International

markets and their Training Offer

and marketing and creating new markets.

I am a Chartered Marketeer,

so I really take my profession

on really, really seriously. :-]

I train for the Professional

Academy in digital marketing.

My most recent kind of

corporate stint at an agency

was actually at Mighty Social

where I was their marketing

director for nearly four years.

I helped to make sure that they

became one of Europe’s fastest

growing ad tech companies

and they specialise in

social media an paid media.

And it really gave me such a great flavor

for working with agile agencies.

Now throughout all all my marketing career

I’ve always commissioned

website projects and

digital marketing projects.

So I really know what kind of

things clients are looking for

when they are pursuing new projects,

how they’re making decisions.

Now I’m also an event speaker,

hence, I’m here today.

I’m absolutely excited to be here today.

You see a picture here from

the Cambridge Social Media Day

and also from one of my favorite events,

I’m sure you know it already,

Agency Transformation,

the popular community and event,

Lee Matthew Jackson built.

If you don’t know him yet, check him out.

Lee is such a lovely guy

and I credit him a lot for helping me

to really specialize in

working with digital agencies.

So I’ve been a guest on his podcast twice

and I’ve also been guest posting

for Atomic and Youpreneur

and many, many more.

So here’s my introduction.

Let’s get started.

Now I know, when I encourage

you to stand out on social

and to share your stories.

This is not the sort of thing you wake up

first thing in the morning, thinking,

I must market myself,

I must share my story.

You know, often I hear the

biggest objections are,

“Nicole, I don’t know what to post,

“what is okay to say on social?”

And “Nicole, I am simply

too busy with client work

“to look after my own marketing.”

I totally hear you guys,

let me know in the comments,

does that apply to you?

I would love to know.

And I’m going to reveal

some techniques today

and some further free resources

to help you just with that.

Now, today is all about helping

you to attract more clients.

It’s definitely worth making that time

to work on your business.

So it’s all about sharing stories.

Let me tell you a little story.

And it’s a story I’ve shared

since I became a speaker

because it really seemed

to resonate with people.

So I hope you will enjoy it as well.

So would you believe it, when I grew up,

I really admired this

guy, David Hasselhoff.

As you can see, even my hairdo

lookrd like his curly hairdo.

Now, why would I look

like David Hasselhoff?

Well, I was born in former Eastern Germany

and in former Eastern Germany,

he was such a huge star.

He really did his marketing well

because he tapped into

all the aspirations we had

all the wants and dreams we had.

And he presented us with

things we aspired to.

Let me tell you a little bit

more if you’re intrigued.

So I grew up in former Eastern Germany

and I could always watch

all of the TV ads from Western Germany.

So I really badly wanted Haribo.

I wanted some fancy trainers

because in my class in Eastern Germany,

everyone, all the teenagers would spot

exactly the same pair of shoes,

which isn’t cool, you know.

I wanted some bananas,

because we had to go out

and queue for bananas

and tell the shop assistants

how many people were in our families

to perhaps get bananas like twice a year.

I wanted Nutella, I really love Nutella,

that’s like a reoccurring theme here.

I wanted a Barbie doll.

I wanted to have proper

chewing gum and fancy cars

because these are all the

things we aspired to have

and we couldn’t have.

And David Hasselhoff,

you know, he was a lead

actor at “Baywatch”.

He represented all the

things we couldn’t have.

You know, he was walking along

on the fancy golden sand

beaches of California.

He had the Nightrider car

which was all singing and dancing.

So he did a great job as inspiring us

and making us see the things

we really really wanted,

a lifestyle we really, really dreamt of.

You know, if you look at these pictures

on my right hand side, you

will see my mum and I in Prague

because that was one of the destinations,

us people in Eastern

Germany could travel to.

And I actually traveled to

Prague about nine times.

And then on the left-hand side,

you know, you have a Trabant,

this is the car we had for years.

There’s a picture of myself

and my cousin. [laughs]

So you can see why we really aspire

to all the things David Hasselhoff had.

And in addition to that,

he really tapped into

our need for freedom,

that Germany was separated,

Eastern Germany, Western Germany.

This is a picture on the right-hand side

and the wall came down, you know.

We wanted freedom, we wanted to be unified

and because David did

done such a great job

when he was singing this

song, this rock ballad

which is all about ‘I’m

looking for freedom’.

We really adored him.

So I want to encourage you today

to be as inspirational as

the Hoff, to be the Hoff,

so when you hopefully share

anything on social today

use #WordFest and use #BeTheHoff,

I can’t wait to see

what you’re learning from today’s talk.

Now, we all know people

do business with people

and it’s actually with people

they know and they trust.

And then you start sharing your stories

as the agency founder

and you bring in your team

members if you have a team.

It really allows you to build up

that like know and trust factor,

which is so important to

help you to stand out.

So today in my talk, this

is what we’re gonna cover.

We’re gonna talk about why stories work,

just a little bit of

interesting details behind it.

You know, what kind of website worries

your ideal clients will be having.

Really kind of worries

you can’t afford to

ignore with your content.

How you can find your own story,

so I’m gonna make that

really easy with you.

How you can standout on digital world,

so really to win your dream clients.

And then I’ll also make

some time for questions

and share some additional free resources,

because I really wanted to

walk away from this talk today

inspired to be sharing your stories

and to give you all the tools

you need to get started.

So just to let you know

into a little secret,

you know, I haven’t always

found this very easy.

You know, you see me now

and I’m talking to you,

but when I had my first website,

you know, there wasn’t a

picture of myself on that.

I wasn’t sharing any of the stories

and I positioned myself,

about four years ago

as a marketing consultant

when I first built up

my then business that was

called Lollipop Social.

And you know, creative marketing solutions

to grow your business

is not really going to make

me stand out, would you agree?

Let me know in the comments.

So today my website, this

is what it looks like.

And you can see,

I share my stories in there

and I try to bring a fun element to it.

So I just wanted to show you this

because we can all make this

journey of standing out more,

of increasing our visibility.

So here’s one of my

favorite marketing quotes.

“Marketing is a contest

for people’s attention”

by Seth Godin and I think that’s so true.

Do you know there’s so much noise,

particularly in the website space

and the design space, WordPress community.

So we’ve got to cut through this noise.

Just a quick research here on Google.

In the UK, in the UK alone,

if you put in web design

agency into the search engine

over 530 million hits come up.

If you narrow it down to a

website designer in the UK

it’s still over 704 million.

So you can see there’s

lots of competition,

lots of noise going on.

So how can you actually stand out.

Now, the same on LinkedIn,

one of my favorite platforms.

I know not many web designers like it yet,

but I am working on that

to help you with that.

You know, again, web

design agency UK, 66,000,

web design, in the UK 95,000.

So you can see here that you

really got to do something

to stand out and to get noticed.

So you can stand out with your stories,

you know and get noticed by

more of your dream clients.

And I’m gonna talk you through now

of how you can do that.

Storytelling is brilliant,

because it really cuts through the noise.

I see many web designers

who have a lot of techy

things on their website,

lots of infographics

and how they do things.

But actually it’s stories

which will get you noticed,

because stories are kind of addictive.

You know, they bring us all together,

they show us what we have in common.

You know, some of you

might’ve been brought up

in an Eastern European place.

You know, I have some of my clients

who love David Hasselhoff,

so we connected over those stories.

You know, stories make us more memorable

and help us stand out.

And though you can really

tap into storytelling

to grow your audience and to

grow your agency’s income.

So I hope all of these reasons

will convince you to

start posting your stories

and to grow in confidence

in sharing the stories.

Now, don’t just take it from me.

Here’s George Lucas.

You know, he’s the man behind

“Star Wars”, wow. [laughs]

And even he realized very early

on when people get to know

the people behind your product and service

and how it’s made, they

talk about you more.

And this is what we want

to inspire people to do,

to talk about us, because word of mouth

is still a great way to win new clients.

Now I was reminded of this

actually in one of our last

events I managed to do,

to go before COVID hit us,

which was the Social Media Marketing World

in San Diego in 2020,

and Mike Stelzer was very much

talking about story sharing

and the power of it and it

really, really inspired me.

Tell me in the comments

who is a “Star Wars” fan.

Let me know.

So, why does storytelling work?

Good things happen when

our brains hears a story,

good things which make us memorable,

which help us to connect.

So there was a great story,

actually a great research study

by the Harvard Business

publishing journal.

And I encourage you to look it up.

Basically, our brain releases

so many different positive chemicals.

We’ve got cortisol.

So if you’re trying to make a point stick

cortisol assist with

formulating our memories,

how cool is that?

Dopamine regulates our emotional responses

that keeps us engaged

because we all know if we connect

our emotion with a memory,

it really, really sticks.

And then oxytocin, you know,

it helps us with empathy and connecting.

So those are some lovely things

to inspire by your

storytelling and your marketing

to really get noticed and

to win your dream clients.

So talking about your dream clients,

I am assuming that you know

your dream clients very well,

that you all have a user persona.

So what are their interests?

What challenges do they have?

What business opportunities

are they looking to take advantage of,

what transformation are they hoping

to get from their website?

Now, having commissioned so many website

through out my marketing career,

now working with my clients as well,

I would certainly identify

with all of these website worries

I’m going to share with you.

Because you can’t afford to ignore them,

they’re such an opportunity

for you to tap into them,

into your storytelling, how

you help clients overcome these

and to really meet your audience

where they are at.

I don’t know how to start

looking for an agency.

Let’s say you are working

as a marketing executive

in a small company, or a larger company,

where do you start looking?

So could you put something together

that shows people how

to find the best agency

for their project?

Do you know how will I know

if the agency is any good

once I chose them?

Are they just going to be brilliant

at pitching and presenting

it and winning me.

But what about for other project?

Do you know the best will in the world?

We all know sometimes the website projects

can go on longer than expected.

There could be some challenging points.

So as a client, I want to know

that you are going to look after me.

So I want to know what

it’s like to work with you.

Do you know, how will

I know if a new website

is going to be working?

I am not a digital marketeer,

so how will I know if it’s

doing really, really well?

Will the agency really

helped me to figure that out?

Do you know another thing really is,

will I have the time to see this through?

Because often priorities change.

Actually, what will happen

if my priorities change

and do I really need to invest

in a new online presence?

Is it really, really necessary

or can I ask my company just

get away with my old website?

What happens when

project priorities change

once perhaps the owner of a business

has got another pet project.

What will happen to this project?

How will the agency evolve

and help me to still deliver?

And finally, what do I do if I

can’t get buy-in from my team

that you often have at your client’s face

that’s one person that’s

signing off on behalf of a team,

perhaps not the most senior person

and then priorities changed.

So will be agency help me to get by him?

Our pictures and our brand is out of date.

So do we need to get a brand,

do we need to get new pictures

before we start this website project?

When are we ready to

start the website project?

And actually what makes us different?

What are our key messages?

Do you know as marketeers, I know you guys

so you will understand

how important that is,

but how difficult that

often is for many companies

to identify that.

So the more you can help them

with these kinds of questions upfront,

the more you can show them

that you are the right

agency for them to work with

on their website project.

So in summary, there are five mistakes

I see very, very often.

And I just wanted to share them with you

to make sure that you totally

are avoiding them from today,

that is my invitation to you.

So number one, that you don’t actually

work with these objections and worries,

because I think the more

you take them into account

you can actually turn them

into really great sales conversation.

So work on these objections,

they are there so don’t ignore them.

Hide away from your channels.

And you know, I see this a lot

and I’m actually gonna show you

some examples a little later

that many digital agencies

really are not showing themselves

as for agency founder

or their team members

on their digital channels.

And actually you are your

best marketing asset.

People want to see, remember

what George Lucas said

people want to see how

you’re working, who you are,

so that has such a great opportunity.

So I hope my talk today inspires you

to work on your own visibility.

Another challenge I see is

you guys are often too vanilla

’cause you don’t know what to say.

You go to other extreme

that you becomes so formal,

almost boringly vanilla that

your content doesn’t stand out.

This is not what people want to see.

They want to connect, they want

to see the person behind it.

So don’t be afraid of

sharing your personality

and injecting humor if that’s

relevant to your sector

and really being yourself.

And sorry, guys and

ladies too much technical.

Now let me know in the comments,

any of these applicable to you?

Tell me, I would love to know.

So final one really,

that you’re not tapping into

the power of storytelling

is, you know I’ve enabled

one of my clients to do this

and also shared some

LinkedIn tips for him,

which meant that actually within

three months of doing this

he got a project via LinkedIn,

which was 15 times the value

of his normal website projects.

And it was a really lovely client,

and really interesting project.

So I wanted to share that with you

’cause it does really, really work.

So this is what one of my

Wunderstars client has achieved.

And you can do the same.

Now, sharing your stories

enables you to connect

and it answers your dream

client’s website worries.

So if you do these couple of things

that is such good

opportunity for your agency

to get more clients.

Here’s just an example.

So one exercise I’ve come

up with about a year ago.

It’s the Wunderstars Cupcake Exercise.

Now, I was actually really lucky

that a lovely Lee Jackson

had invited me to his

community agency Trailblazer,

to run a five-day challenge.

So over five days I took web designers,

like you creative people

through a process of starting to identify

who their stories are.

And here I’m actually talking to Dave Foy

and Mike Killen, amazing

people in your community.

And we’re talking about the challenges

of sharing your stories

and actually what we found.

So if you wanna see what we said

go out and check out this Facebook group.

But both of them have really said

that it’s so worth breaking

through those barriers

of owning your stories

and start using them to

connect with your audience

and your sales stories, but

also how you present yourself.

So here is my cupcake exercise.

So imagine, imagine

you’re going to a party

and you’re making

cupcakes, I love cupcakes.

There are certain cupcakes

you’re really happy to share

and there’re certain flavors

you always keep to yourself

because they’re like your

favorite flavor stack,

for me, that is chocolate.

So bear with me with this

analogy on this exercise.

So the first step

to figure out which cupcakes

you’re going to share

is actually to know your audience,

what would resonate with them?

What would they find interesting?

Now, one thing to help you,

because often we worry

about how we perceive.

So why don’t we put up

a version of ourselves

with anti version of ourselves,

of how we don’t want to be perceived.

Now, I know for me, my anti

version, she is very formal,

she wears suits for everything she does.

She would never, ever talk

about German stereotypes

and she would just know it all.

And hopefully I’m really different.

So once you know what

your anti version is like

it will really give you

confidence for sharing content

which is exactly the opposite.

Step number two, in this easy process.

Reflect really on what makes you, you.

Do you know, why do you do what you do?

What was your purpose?

What do you enjoy doing?

What are some of your success stories

and some of your failures?

I worked out with one of

my Wunderstars clients,

actually, what made him different

was the fact that this

was his second business.

And because his target market,

his ideal audience are startup companies

how reassuring is it for them to hear

that, you know, you’re experienced,

this is not your first business,

you’ve overcome certain things.

You are a, I like to call it

a entrepreneur with battle scar.

So picking stories that

resonate with your audience

is really, really, really powerful.

And don’t be afraid of sharing details

and I’m gonna help you

actually trying to figure out

what’s best thing to share as well.

So step number three,

you look at all the things

you’ve come up with.

You figure out what resonates

with your dream clients.

You know, what are the kinds of stories

your friends always remember you for?

What are the kind of stories,

if you’re not a confident storyteller,

and I didn’t use to be.

I had to sort of tap into,

okay, so when I’m at networking events,

what do people remember?

And for me, it was always

with Eastern German stories.

So try and do the same for yourself.

So then you know which

stories are best to share.

So you have a bank of story ideas.

Then the fourth that’ll really help you

to unleash those, is to

check in with your family.

Do you know, are you happy for me

to talk about these things.

Because I’m not encouraging you

to air your dirty washing in public.

This is about picking the stories

which work with your audience,

which you are happy to share

and that will give you a

really solid foundation.

So that will then allow

you to select the cupcakes.

The ones you want to take to a party,

if I go back to my original analogy.

And then I would advise

you to really practice this

in support of communities, and

here are just some examples.

So you have a GoWP,

they do a fantastic happy hour on Friday.

So join that, talk about your wins,

talk about your struggles.

Obviously there’s Lee Jackson’s community.

Here at the bottom I’m with

my own Wunderstars community.

We have once a month, we have a Wunderbar

where we talk about our wins,

our challenges in a social setting.

So if you use your peers and your friends

to practice telling these stories,

it’s gonna be so much

easier in the future.

Now, standing out with our stories

across your digital channels

will help you to win more dream clients.

So in this section, I’m

going to talk to you

about how you can achieve that.

Now, a big place to get this

right is your About Page.

And I have seen so many About Pages

which are just simply way too vanilla.

And I really hope with these suggestions

you can change that.

You have some really practical hints here.

So first of all, you want to show

that you understand your dream clients.

You want to meet your

audience where they are at.

So what do they struggle with?

Because frankly your About

Page is a conversation opener.

It is not so much about you

but actually about opening that dialogue.

You want to talk about

your audience’s challenges.

So perhaps if you talk about,

if your niche is e-commerce sites,

do you know, what do e-commerce

sites face at the moment

where we transitioned from Brexit?

Can you bring up an

example on your About Page

how you’ve helped a

client to overcome this?

You want to show your personality

because there’s too

many boring About Pages.

You want to talk about

your story and your why

to offer your audience

something to remember.

And also you can show off some

of your favorite projects.

And you know, you can retake this,

so you always have something

to say, something new to say.

So tell me in the comments,

who is going to change what

they’ve got on their About Page?

Tell me, I want to know.

Whatever you do, whatever

you do, be visible,

you know, don’t hide

away, it is so important.

Human beings connect

with other human beings.

So we want to see you,

we want to see pictures of your office,

we want to meet your team if you have one.

And I’m going to give you

some more tips on that

but whatever you do, don’t end

up like this guy hiding away.

So, a great content idea

is actually behind the scenes content.

And the reason why I mentioned

these kinds of stories

because they are completely under utilized

and you are your best marketing asset,

it’s you people want to see.

So here’s an example you could

easily turn into a block,

into a reel on Instagram.

So let’s say you are

working on a new brand

for your clients.

And I’ve recently just

gone through this process

with Wunderstars.

So, you know, you could show

off your original branding

and people love to see

logos like before and after.

You could share shots of

your brand questionnaire.

Obviously you don’t want

to give anything away

to your competitor.

So just make it really short.

You could, you know, show

a different logo versions.

I mean, how much do we love

looking at different logo versions?

I totally love it.

Do you guys, tell me in the comments.

And then you could also

talk about the client reveal

and a testimonial.

Now this story will really show off

how would you’ve help the

clients solve a specific problem.

And it’s gonna be really,

really intriguing,

and it’s so easy to do.

You are sitting on this content,

so I hope next time you

work on a project like this,

you share it.

Agency growth stories.

Now it’s so important that

we talk about our agency

and how we’ve evolved.

You know, perhaps you’ve

entered for an award.

You don’t even have to win

it to make it a good story.

So definitely introduce your team.

You know, what makes them

interesting people to work with?

And it’s okay, you know,

someone who’s into SEO

might have different interests

when you’re a creative person

but that’s interesting.

What does your office space look like?

Okay, you might have to

tidy it up a little bit.

I know before I filmed this today,

I just tidied it around my little shelf.

But it’s so worth doing that,

people love seeing shots of

your office, your workspace.

Particularly now where so many more people

are working from home.

So it’s not expected that

you have this fancy setup.

You know, this is not

what people want to see.

They want to see real

and authentic settings.

Also talk about how you got started.

What made you set up your business,

really really interesting to

share different milestones.

Now the final idea here is

you, bear with me, it’s

just really worth it.

Yes, you are the star of the show

because you set the culture

and be agenda and the

mission for your agency.

So your audience wants to get to know you.

So could you talk about your journey?

What do you do when you’re not working?

You know, you are a real person after all.

Perhaps you can share like learning,

like learnings when you

go to events like this,

you know, you could talk

about you attended WordFest

and this is what you learned.

Talk about your why,

that is so interesting

and it will make you so unique,

because there’s only one of you.

So I hope this encourages you

to start sharing your stories

across social and across your About Page,

across your digital channels.

My clients have seen some

amazing results with it.

And you know, I know you might be saying,

“Oh gosh, like how do I do this?”

So I just wanted to give you some examples

of what I use over the years.

So, you know, I am lucky

I have a personal trainer.

She is a fellow business woman, Milner.

And once a week, we’d

do the Zoom sessions.

So every now and then I post about that,

because I am a real person. You

know, I’m also stuck at home

and I need to do things to keep fit.

Left hand side it’s my family,

we went to a Dino Park in

the UK, so talked about that.

Pictures of my mum.

Do you know, my parents

were entrepreneurs.

Okay, both their business’

failed, but that doesn’t matter.

But my first jobs was helping them.

So that really made me who I am today.

Here just a coffee I had

with one of my clients,

my Wunderstar, Kevin.

You know, talk to you about,

I share the story about David Hasselhoff.

Look here, so Tom and I, Tom Amos’s.

I think he’s at the event today as well,

one of my Wunderstars.

This is how we actually met.

You know, I talked about Hasselhoff.

We had to [indistinct]

it was a bit of fun.

So you can see, none of

these are fancy images.

You know, you all have a smartphone now,

it’s so easy to start sharing your story.

I hope this has encouraged you

to see that it doesn’t have to be fancy.

Now, I want to show you this example.

So this is Jamie,

if you can see on the right hand side

a really lovely gentleman by the way.

You can see on the right-hand

side his Facebook page,

and you know, he loves adventure sports.

He does all these fancy

mountain bike thingies.

And then you see his business website,

and I’m sure he wouldn’t mind me saying,

but you know, he’s

absolutely hiding from it.

Let’s work together now,

how is that going to help him stand out?

If he brought some of

his adventurous self,

what he represents to his business website

it would be a much

stronger first impression

because our website, you know,

is our shop window to our world

and we want to make it

look really, really strong.

So don’t be afraid of

bringing in your stories.

And one of my Wunderstars,

David Foy has really mastered

this super, super quickly.

So, on the left hand side,

you see, Dave’s amazing

first website design

build back amazing

course, highly recommended

but you can see it’s all very technical

on the course page, right?

Therefore on the right-hand

side, his latest website,

he’s got on my navigation, My Story.

And if you want to be inspired,

I’ll certainly encourage you to check out

you know, he’s made

storytelling part of his story

and he really increased his comfort zone.

We worked out what his anti version was,

how he didn’t want to come

across as Mr. Douche Dave

and it’s really empowered

him to now share his story

and to connect with more

of the right people.

So I would fully recommend

you checking that out

as something to inspire you.

Now I know sometimes these

things are a little bit scary

but all the things worth our

doing are a little bit scary.

So I’ve just wanted to

share this with you.

So, this is Emmanuel Acho, he’s amazing.

He does this amazing series about

Uncomfortable Conversations

with Black Man.

I would fully recommend you check it out.

And one of the things he

has said related to that

but it applies to us as well.

“Everything in life

that is worth something

“starts with some sort of discomfort

“but it’s only uncomfortable

until you try doing it.”

He is absolutely amazing.

I’ve checked out all his videos,

I’ve applied these techniques

to my own conversations

with my husband, with my friends.

And it’s really make me much more clued on

when it comes to racism and

how to be more inclusive

and to stand up for not having racism.

So I would recommend you check him out.

Now, I promised you some

additional resources,

so here we go.

I have got 30 days of Content Inspiration

for you as a digital agency founder.

You can find it on my website,

wunderstars.com/wordfest

As soon as you sign up for it,

you get the 30 days of

Content Inspiration,

which will make it easy for

you to stand up on social

for a whole month and longer.

Plus as part of a welcome series,

I will share with you a

cupcake Story Finder Exercise.

So all these questions, all

these useful story prompts

I gave you earlier,

you will find in a

concise Google document.

You can go through it at your own leisure

and to really nail your

storytelling in 2021.

So go on, get that.

Let me know your comments,

will you be taking it out?

Also, I’m very active on YouTube.

That’s actually my home,

I’m growing my channel,

Nicole Osborne Wunderstars.

I have a whole playlist

dedicated with marketing

and social media hacks for

digital agency farmers,

website designers, how

to win more clients,

how to stand out as a website designer,

how to nail it on Insta.

So do check it out,

I would love to welcome

you to my growing channel,

that would be so exciting.

There’s also one on

that getting more done,

because not only do I share marketing tips

but I love to help people

to get things done.

And I know you are so

busy with client work.

And one of the biggest

takeaways I hope from today

in addition to sharing your story

is that you need to treat your marketing

like a client project.

And that is really a mindset,

a mindset change you need to achieve.

Make time for your marketing work,

put time in your diary and

it will definitely happen.

So today we talked about why stories work,

how you can identify

which stories to find,

you can turbocharge your About

Page starting from today.

I gave you some easy

story ideas with examples

and some more resources.

So get yourself 30 days of inspiration

for digital agency owners.

Be like the Hoff.

Do you know, 30 years

after the wall came down

we still adore him in

Germany, we can’t help it.

You can achieve the same

by sharing your story.

I would be so grateful if

you could tell me today

what was your major learning point?

Share it on Instagram,

share it on Twitter,

whichever platform, don’t

forget to use #WordFest.

Any questions you have messaged

me now, I’m right here.

Also messaged me on social,

I’m so happy to hear from you

and I can’t wait to see you all

share your stories with confidence.

Guys, thank you so much.

It was lovely to see you today.

Any questions you have

tell me in the comments

I am right here.

Have an amazing WordFest event, thank you.

Share this session

Share on facebook
Share on twitter
Share on linkedin
Share on pinterest
Share on email