What are your biggest successes in life and work, and what do they prove about you? If we met right now and I said, "Tell me in one sentence why I should hire you/work with you/or invest in you," what would you say?
In this episode, I talk about developing a "Success Bank" of stories you'll create from your own life. I'll walk you though the process of how to do this, and give you an example from my own life. I'll also recap an example shared in my recent interview with John Livesay.
Having these stories readily at hand will give you the confidence to take on any new challenge, and will also give you the ability to communicate your strengths clearly and effectively.
Resources
Course Change Podcast Interview with John Livesay: From Laid Off to TEDx and Sales Keynote Speaker; Selling by Storytelling, with John Livesay, EP 6
More On Thor
On Instagram: @thorchallgren
On Facebook: Facebook.com/coursechangepodcast
Win Your Week 7-Day Guide Free Download!
What are your biggest successes in life and work, and what do they prove about you? If we met right now and I said, "Tell me in one sentence why I should hire you/work with you/or invest in you," what would you say?
In this episode, I talk about developing a "Success Bank" of stories you'll create from your own life. I'll walk you though the process of how to do this, and give you an example from my own life. I'll also recap an example shared in my recent interview with John Livesay.
Having these stories readily at hand will give you the confidence to take on any new challenge, and will also give you the ability to communicate your strengths clearly and effectively.
Resources
Course Change Podcast Interview with John Livesay: From Laid Off to TEDx and Sales Keynote Speaker; Selling by Storytelling, with John Livesay, EP 6
More On Thor
On Instagram: @thorchallgren
On Facebook: Facebook.com/coursechangepodcast
Win Your Week 7-Day Guide Free Download!
Thor Challgren 00:04
Welcome to the Course Change podcast. My name is Thor Challgren. And every week I love sharing with you stories of people who have made a dramatic career change. We talk about the challenges they faced, the lessons they learned and the success they found on their own unique journey. Over the course of my own life, I've worked in multiple industries, from startups to corporations. A common factor in my work experience -- the ability to adapt to change. If you're looking for insights and inspiration to thrive during change, you'll be glad you listened.
Thor Challgren 00:43
Imagine for a moment you are walking into a bank. You're not going to stop at the ATM because you are going into the bank, because you are going to see a teller. You have a big project that you are working on. For this project, you are going to need money to make it happen a lot of money. So you are going in to get a cashier's check. You go to the window, and the teller looks up your account and says, You don't have any money in your account, your bank account is empty. That project that you want to advance forward is now not going to move anywhere because you didn't have money in your account.
Thor Challgren 01:25
Now this story isn't actually about money, physical money. I'm talking about an asset that you already have, but you just don't know that you have it, and that asset is your past successes, the things in your life that you've succeeded at. Let's call that your Success Bank. The Success Bank is where you store all the things that you've been successful at in your life, your past successes, the things you did well, your victories, your successes.
Thor Challgren 01:55
In today's episode, I want to share with you what you put into your Success Bank and when you make withdrawals. I appreciate you being here today on the podcast. This is something that matters to me, because I recently was thinking back to times in my life when I've been successful at something, and I'll share with you the reason why I went into that. And I'll tell you, I was surprised by the number of times I had done something that I was successful at, and I'd forgotten about them.
Thor Challgren 02:28
Honestly, most of us, it's way easier for us to think about the times in life where we haven't been successful, where we haven't done something, we have such an easy recall with our failures in life compared to our successes. So what I want to do today is talk about a process where you can go back and look at the times in your life where you have been successful and you'll have much easier access to them.
Thor Challgren 02:52
The reason this matters to you is that you don't want to show up at the bank and discover that you have no money or in this case, no success examples in your life. You want to be able to have a bank account that is full of those stories. You want to be able to make a withdrawal when you need to. Or if someone says, prove to me that you can do what you say you can do, you want to be able to point to those moments, those examples. So we're going to talk about the withdrawals later.
Thor Challgren 03:20
But first, let's talk about how you fill the account. How do you make deposits into your Success Bank? You make deposits by recalling and documenting times in your life that you did something successful. And ideally, this time or event should relate to the project or the goal that you are currently working on.
Thor Challgren 03:42
Let me give you an example. Let's say I am working to build an online business. It's something I've never done before. It's new, it's scary. And I don't know if I can do it. You know, I might say to myself, things like "I don't know." "I don't think I can do this." "This is beyond my ability to bring about because I've never done it." But what if I had a reference to something in my past where I did something similar, that I can now draw on that experience, and use that confidence to bolster my current endeavor?
Thor Challgren 04:19
So in my case, as I look at my life, I can find multiple examples where I succeeded as an entrepreneur and a business that I built from scratch. One example was when I was an undergrad at UCLA. I was in my second year, and I started a business with a friend. We were in the dorms on a floor with about maybe 50-60 other people on the floor. We all became friends during the year, and the end of the year, everyone wanted a way to remember each other. But this was way before digital pictures or cell phones. Way, way before. "Back to the Future" the movie was still five years in the future.
Thor Challgren 05:01
So my friend and I came up with an idea. What if we rented a professional camera, all the equipment, the lighting, everything that it would take to take a group picture of everyone on the floor, we took that picture then made prints, which we would then sell? This was how we created a business that we called Floor Pictures. We were very successful with this. We had all four of the major dormitories at UCLA signed up, they agreed to let us come in, take pictures and then sell those pictures to everyone on the floor. This business ended up being so successful that after we were done with it, we sold it to somebody else. And I did all of this when I was 20 years old. And again, I did this with my business partner.
Thor Challgren 05:47
This is an example of me successfully building a business from scratch. I identified a need, I built the business I ran it then sold it. If I had any doubts now about my ability to start a business that didn't exist before, all I need to do is recall this experience. So this is what I mean by making a deposit. I'm going to take that story and put it into my Success Bank.
Thor Challgren 06:13
Now, it's not enough to just recall this time. You want to document it. If you're making a bank deposit, you use a deposit slip. So what I would do here is spend 5-10 minutes recalling the details of this business, everything I can remember that I did. That's important. That's step one. Step two is asking yourself, what does this prove? What is it an example of? In this case, I could say this story proves that I can identify a market that isn't being served. I can build a business from scratch. It proves that I have vision. Also, I had to negotiate with all the dorms to allow us to come in, so I must be good at negotiating. Also, I'm good at sales. We had to go floor to floor and talk about the opportunity and get hundreds, probably thousands of people to buy a picture. And finally, we had to deliver, we had to be good at the logistics of taking the pictures, taking the orders, printing them and then delivering them. So that was a logistical thing that I was good at. So now I have examples of what this proves.
Thor Challgren 07:25
So now what I would do is create several versions of this story so that I can use those versions in the right context. If I need, for instance, a one sentence version, I've got that. So I would take this whole story and I would distill it down to one sentence. If the opportunity calls for more information, maybe I've got a 2 or 3 sentence version, and I'd take some time to write down both of those. This is what I'm putting into the bank. This is the deposit.
Thor Challgren 07:54
So when do I make withdrawals? Well, there are two occasions. The first I just mentioned. Someone asked me to show that I can do something, or I want to prove that I have a quality. I can make a withdrawal because I've got that memory of what I did. So, in the case of the Floor Pictures business, let's say someone asks me for an example of a time in my life that I started a business. I could say to them something like this:
Thor Challgren 08:20
"When I was 19 years old, I co-founded a photography business at UCLA, where my partner and I took group pictures of dorm residents, we sold thousands of 8x10s, and sold the business to a successor."
Thor Challgren 08:36
That's one sentence. If I ever need to show someone that I can do something, I've got that sentence ready to go. It's a nice, succinct story that I can use in any context. Now the reason you would want a longer version is if someone says, tell me more about that. You've intrigued them enough that they want to know more. So now you can share further details about the business. In fact, the last part about selling the business, I might leave that as a follow up.
Thor Challgren 09:06
The second way you'll use this withdrawal is more personal. Whenever you are challenged by something, or you're struggling, you can refer back to this experience. So if I doubt my ability to get a business off the ground, I can recall this story. I could say to myself, you know what, I'm the guy who at 19, built a business from scratch. I negotiated, I sold, I handled fulfillment, I did it all. And I was so successful that I sold it.
Thor Challgren 09:37
So my recommendation to you this week is to think back to your life and look for moments where you succeeded at something. We all have them, so don't say you don't because you certainly do. There's something that you did that you are good at. Maybe it was in school, maybe it was your first job. Maybe it was a relationship, something you did, where you look back on it and you were proud of what you were able to accomplish. So pick one story this week, take 5-10 minutes and just write down the details of what you remember. It doesn't have to be in any order. It doesn't have to be right. But just write down as much as you can remember. What you're doing is creating as much detail as you can, so that when you share the story with others, you're able to tell it convincingly. So write down everything that you remember.
Thor Challgren 10:26
And then also start to look at what does it prove? What qualities did you demonstrate in that moment, that event that show what you can do now? So like, in my case, it showed that I was capable at negotiating. It showed I was capable at sales, that I could start a business from scratch. So you want to write down everything that it proves. And the reason this is valuable is there are going to be moments when you need to prove that you can do something.
Thor Challgren 10:54
In a recent podcast episode with John Livesay, who is a top sales speaker, John talked about the work that he did with a client where the client had to go into some venture capitalists and wanted to convince them that he had perseverance, that he could stick with it. Well, he can say, "I persevere, I stick with things." But that doesn't have the same value as when you tell a story.
Thor Challgren 11:19
So John helped this client go back to his life and find a time in his life where he persevered at something. And in his case, it was a rite of passage he went through as a young man where his family put him in the Amazon where the family had grown up, and he had to survive on his own. He could tell that story in a convincing way and say at the end, this shows I can persevere I can go from the Amazon jungle to the concrete jungle. So you can see how that story for him was helpful. It would help him not only know his own capability, so that when he needed that confidence, he could look back at it. "I'm the guy who survived the Amazon." But it also helped him when he was in situations where he needed to convince a partner, or an investor or someone else to believe he had the ability to do what he was going to do.
Thor Challgren 12:13
So you're going to have your story, you're going to have what it proves, and then write down different versions of it. of varying lengths. Try one where it's a sentence or two, try one more, it's longer because you never know when you're going to have more of an opportunity to share with people. Another point from the interview with John Livesay is you want to leave people wanting more you want to create a sense of mystery, a question in the mind of the listener. So you might in the telling of your story, leave off something that entices them to want to know more to ask another question, well, how did you do that? They want to know more so that it creates the sense of conversation.
Thor Challgren 12:53
So this week, take one story from your life, do this write this down and see how you feel about that. If you you are in the middle of a challenge right now, and you want to remind yourself of who you are and what you're capable of, I think you'll find that this exercise is going to give you that confidence to get through those challenging moments. And honestly, if you do this one story a week, how many stories will you have in a year? Your bank is going to be filled with so many stories that a year from now, the person who has gone back in his life and thought about all the things that you did, you were going to have so much more confidence, not only for yourself, but when you go out and you work with other people. And now you have these moments that you can share with them, you're going to be unstoppable.
Thor Challgren 13:39
So I encourage you this week to think about starting to fill up your Success Bank. Hey, I appreciate you guys listening today. If you love this episode, please subscribe to the show. And also consider leaving a review on Apple podcast. Until next episode. Thanks again for listening and here's to your success.
Thor Challgren 14:04
All right. Thanks for listening to the Course Change podcast. If you liked this episode, I would be incredibly grateful to you if you jump over to the Apple Podcast app and leave a five star written review. This one simple act will help others find the show and build a community of people who support each other. You can always find me on Instagram @ThorChallgren. Send me a DM and let me know what you thought. Thanks again for listening and until next time, here's to your success.