Imperfect Marketing
Imperfect Marketing
295: Can Storytelling Transform Your Marketing Results? | With Renee Frojo
In this episode of Imperfect Marketing, I sit down with Renee, a journalist-turned-storytelling strategist, to dive deep into the art and impact of storytelling for brands, solopreneurs, and content creators. Together, we explore how personal narratives not only humanize a business but can also be the most powerful marketing strategy available.
Renee shares her journey from Capitol Hill reporting to consulting business owners on how to shape and share stories that stick. We discuss:
Why Storytelling is a Marketing Superpower
Balancing Vulnerability and Credibility
Finding Stories in the Everyday
Turning Life Into Email Content
Key Takeaways for Marketers
- Storytelling is both a practice and a mindset—start noticing, not just narrating
- Personal connection beats polished perfection when it comes to content
- Sharing your point of view and experience builds the know, like, and trust factor faster than any trend
Whether you’re a reluctant sharer or a natural open book, Renee’s practical storytelling tips will help you build authentic connections with your audience—and grow your business in the process.
Connect with Renee Frojo:
WEBSITE: https://www.reneelynnfrojo.com/
INSTAGRAM - https://www.instagram.com/reneelynnfrojo/
LINKEDIN - https://www.linkedin.com/in/renee-lynn-frojo/
X - https://x.com/frojofeed
Are you ready to start seeing stories everywhere? Tune in for a fresh, real, and encouraging take on how to use storytelling as your marketing strategy.
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Hi, I'm Kendra Korman. If you're a coach, consultant or marketer, you know marketing is far from a perfect science and that's why this show is called Imperfect Marketing. Join me and my guests as we explore how to grow your business with marketing tips and, of course, lessons learned along the way. Hello, and welcome back to another episode of Imperfect Marketing. I'm your host, Kendra Korman, and today I am excited because we're going to be talking about storytelling and how your story is your strategy, and I'm joined today with Renee and I'm dying to know more about how did you get into storytelling and why is this important to you. Thanks for having me Kendra.
Speaker 2:I have always been a storyteller. I started my career in journalism so I was telling stories from the very start. They weren't very interesting stories at least to me they were interesting to somebody. But my first job out of college was at FDA News. I was reporting on drug devices and pharmaceuticals and FDA regulatory news Exciting stuff, really exciting stuff that I had no idea what I was talking about.
Speaker 2:But the part I loved about it was really the reporting piece getting to talk to people, getting to talk to experts, getting insights and digging up news where I could. And I also got to be on Capitol Hill. So I got to see the inner workings of how our government operates. And I became jaded very quickly but also felt very self-important as a 21-year-old with my little press badge. So it wasn't all bad.
Speaker 2:But I got into more interesting journalism later in my career. I ended up working for the San Francisco Business Times. I freelanced for the San Francisco Chronicle San Francisco Business Times. I freelanced for the San Francisco Chronicle and I got to tell stories about small businesses and startups and philanthropists because that was one of my beats and nonprofits. So I really I was telling stories and then I got into journalism when the whole landscape was shifting because of social media and I quickly realized that it wasn't just media organizations anymore that held the power. Anyone had the ability to then tell their own story, build their own mini media empire if they wanted to, and build a platform, whether it was an individual or a brand, and the most iconic and best brands were doing that. So that's when I decided to shift out of journalism and then into essentially the world of content, marketing and brand building to help businesses and now increasingly small business owners and solopreneurs tell their own stories.
Speaker 1:I love that. I love storytelling because storytelling connects you with your audience, right, you want that know like and trust factor and I feel like stories do that. How do you see audiences connecting?
Speaker 2:with stories. I think audiences pretty much only connect with stories. You said it earlier when we were talking. You know, one of your best performing newsletters this year was a personal story, right, about your mother helping your mother and how that changed things for you. And I see that all the time, once clients I work with, or once I really started shifting into really taking a storytelling-led approach to my marketing, how it just opened up the world.
Speaker 2:What I like to tell people is that we're constantly making quick judgments about someone's credibility, right, and the biggest thing that people are afraid about is that if they open up, if we're talking about solopreneurs and service-based business owners, right, telling their story it's a little bit different with brands, but follow similar rules. The biggest concern or biggest fear, one of them, is that if I tell personal stories and it's not related to my business, it's going to damage my credibility. Right, but credibility is really measured by two things, which is warmth and competence. So competence is where you're sharing your expertise, you're sharing what you know, you know you're developing rapport based on your ideas.
Speaker 2:But competence without warmth, without relatability, you know, without connection, falls flat. Right, then you're just like an expert experting all day and it's hard to connect, it's hard to understand, it's hard to see yourself right and what they're talking about, and then too much warmth without expertise, right, or without competency, then also it's just like. Then you're just, you know, building a friendship, probably online, and doing more of the parasocial relationship thing which can lead to business, but really ideally it's a combination of the two, and storytelling stories are just the most effective tool we have at our disposal to do that, to accomplish those things. Yeah, it is the core of my own marketing strategy and what I teach people to do, because, like anything, it's something that you have to learn how to do, especially for different mediums, depending on where you're showing up, and it's a matter of practicing it, like learning the tools and then putting it into practice.
Speaker 1:So I come across people all the time that do not want to share the personal side of their lives and I tell them that's okay. It doesn't have to be, you know, super deeply personal, right? You don't have to be like, you know, opening the closet doors and letting all the skeletons out or anything like that, right? I think that there's ways to do that without posting pictures of the kids or your husband or spouse or significant other, or they don't have to be involved in every piece of that. What are your thoughts about that? Can you be personal without being without oversharing? For those who are concerned that it's oversharing yeah, absolutely yeah.
Speaker 2:I. That's the biggest thing I run into as well. People are worried about oversharing. I have a couple of thoughts on that. I would encourage you to just start small right and sharing things that you notice that relate back to what you do, that also keep your audience in mind. It can start with sharing things that you just notice about what's going on in your industry and giving it your own personal take right. So it's like I noticed this. This is how I see it. This is what my experience tells me. Yeah, you can also share personal work experiences, things that you're hearing understanding with your clients Right Every day.
Speaker 2:So those are all the little micro stories that you could tell that don't necessarily need to reveal, you know, make you tick what kind of a person you're like to work with and just testing it and seeing how it feels, you'll see that it unlocks an entirely new level of engagement and relatability and trust and connection and all these things that just explode your business. So I was really exploring this earlier this year, like what is the line right? What is the line between too vulnerable or too raw? You know where it could potentially damage your credibility and everyone always shares the same advice. It's like share from the scar, not from the wound. Right, make sure there's some distance and you have some perspective so that you can wrap it up in a nice little takeaway or insight that you've learned and that is a gift to your audience, right, your potential client or customer. But then I was like is it always that way? Does it always need to be that way? Because I've seen some incredibly courageous displays of vulnerability that have blown my mind, that have like gone beyond even my comfort level of what I'm willing to share. And it was like the owner of this marketing agency who works with, you know really big funded startups you know very successful, and she did a YouTube video about how she got diagnosed with borderline personality disorder and how it was impacting her work and how she was making a push and an open call to publicly talk about mental health and publicly talk about mental health struggles and how it comes into her business. And then there was another woman whose parents both passed away and so she was kind of like openly exploring grief and how it was impacting her work on LinkedIn.
Speaker 2:And then I started collecting these examples of and I reached out to all these people and I said you were not sharing necessarily from this car there. How's business? How has this impacted your work and the people that you're working with, and have you seen a drop off in clients? Business has never been better. It's opened up relationships and conversations. It's made me allow to connect on a human level with the people who I wanted to work with anyway.
Speaker 2:If someone was not comfortable talking about mental health or saw that as unprofessional, I don't want to work with that person anyway. And I tell the story all the time. One of my clients you know I always ask like why, why did you end up working with me? You know, either in an onboarding or when we're doing a review session and one of them said I just felt like I could get a glass of wine with you. I knew you knew your stuff, but out of everyone that I could have worked with, I felt like I could. Just I knew that you would be easy to talk to. It's all about fit right.
Speaker 1:I mean it comes down to finding people that fit with you, because if they don't fit with you and who you are and your beliefs and how you operate, it's going to be painful for both of you, like throughout the entire process.
Speaker 2:There's so many people competing out there with your, you know, level of knowledge, using similar tools, using a similar approach, and so what differentiates us? It's you, it's you, it's your story, it's your experiences, it's how you think, it's how you ask questions. You know, and no one can know that or decipher that about you or pick you over anybody else without you opening up about that stuff. Like I love Jay Akunzo, who is a he's a keynote storytelling coach and speaker, and he says you know, don't be the best, be their favorite. Storytelling allows you to be their favorite.
Speaker 1:It's funny because my poor husband and I say poor husband because he's married to me and I'm like I'm an open book right If you've ever taken StrengthsFinders, I have woo, which is basically like I have no filter right.
Speaker 1:I just start conversations with random people about anything if there's three seconds of silence and they'll know my life story by the time we get off the elevator or out of the checkout line at the grocery store and he is locked up tight because he believes that information is power and he doesn't want to give anybody power when there is information over him. So, yeah, it's a very interesting dynamic and it's very cool because it's all written in the StrengthsFinder thing. But, yeah, my poor husband Because, yeah, I definitely share way too much about him.
Speaker 2:Well, it's probably part of the reason why he was attracted to you too, you would hope, right?
Speaker 1:We've been married 25 years almost the same.
Speaker 2:Wow, congratulations.
Speaker 1:I do feel bad for him every now and again. But my question for you on this is let's talk about moving from stories into email, so you're connecting on a regular basis, right? It's not going to always be super profound and deep, and because I mean profound and deep and because I mean deep, things don't happen daily all the time, right. I mean, I would say it depends on your perspective and you could probably find some unique things, but how are you finding these things so that you can create them in email and then translate them to your business.
Speaker 2:It's a daily practice and I will say I think it is easier to be a little bit more open and a little bit more personable and a little bit more personal on email because someone has given you their email, they've given you the key right to go deeper with them. They've actually they're actually indicating that they want more Right no-transcript go a little bit deeper than you could on other channels. So I would take that opportunity. One, two how do you do it? It's a practice of noticing. I literally I do it every day. I do Matthew Dick's homework for life is the method that I have adopted.
Speaker 2:Matthew Dipp, he's a renowned speaker. He's won, like every single moth, grand slam, so he and he's written several books too, on storytelling and how to become a better storyteller. He developed this system, this practice, called Homework for Life, and it's every day. You take five minutes. It looks like journaling, it feels like journaling, but it's not like journaling, because journaling can be a chore for some people, myself included. It's just taking five minutes and saying, if I had to tell a story about today, what would it be? What would the story be?
Speaker 2:The five-minute story, and how do you find that story? You find that five-second moment of meaning, of transformation, something that made you think differently, or something that made you notice, or something that you saw for the first time, or you know the world is now this way, right. And usually it's those like teeny, tiny micro mindset shifts that unlock something new, that have meaning, that give you meaning, that give your life meaning, that make a story. So if you start looking for those every day, if you force yourself to do that every day, you will have an overabundance of stories. So like, for instance, the other day, one of my best performing social media posts that ended up becoming an email that also performed really well was my daughter came to me in tears. She came to me in Like I'm she's in fourth grade, you know, she's like I don't.
Speaker 2:I just I don't feel like I have any friends right now and Eliana always gets picked and Christine always gets picked and I never get picked. And I wrote a little story about this, about that feeling that we've all felt right. It's tapping into like a universal human experience. And then you know what I told her to try to just to help her think about it in a different way in the moment, and then sharing it with my audience. And I got a huge response because everyone at some point in their life has felt unwanted, right?
Speaker 1:Or it's felt like or wasn't picked for the dodgeball team.
Speaker 2:Whatever it was, or even like right now applying it to business and work like we weren't picked. You know, you had a client interview and they didn't pick you. They picked somebody else, right, and we're all online trying to get picked all the time. So I related it back to that, but it started with that tiny little moment that also, had I not written it down or thought about it or taken a moment to reflect on my day, that moment could have just been a moment that was forgotten, like so many other moments in our day. You know, we're all like life's moving so fast. It's already the end of the year, it's already summer. How is that? It really helps slow down time and help you make meaning out of it all.
Speaker 1:One of the things that I tell people if you don't have ideas for content, start with questions. What are the questions that you get asked on a regular basis? And it's like I don't get asked questions. It's like, okay, yeah, you do, I know you do, and I did a big presentation earlier this year on AI at a big conference and I think I got asked like 15, 20 questions. I couldn't tell you one of them because the adrenaline was still flowing.
Speaker 1:We forget and we forget if we don't write it down for sure. So I love that taking that five minutes. Set a timer. I use like my little time timer here and all the time for my Pomodoros and stuff like that. Five minutes goes by pretty fast when you really start to think about it. I love picking that piece. So let me ask this what kind of questions do you ask yourself if you've had a mundane, regular day that you feel is mundane and regular, right, nothing good happened or nothing special happened or nothing's jumping out at you? What questions do you ask yourself to try and find that little piece?
Speaker 2:The biggest question is what did I feel today? What made me feel something, whether it was boredom or confusion, or anger or joy, or so that's the first one. And then, okay, notice, why did I feel that way? What made me feel that way? What happened around that that led to that feeling? Is that a feeling you've had before? Oh, is this a feeling I have often because of this thing? Right, and then you start to unpack it a little bit and start to find those moments, because, really, the moments that I think, the moments that move people, are the really small ones. They're like, the really seemingly insignificant ones, but you make them significant by going deeper and giving them meaning right and attaching them to something.
Speaker 2:And this is just that is what storytelling is. It's every day. We all go through the day with a series of events that happened to us. I try to practice this in so many other ways too, like when my partner asked me at the end of the day, how was your day? Instead of giving him that laundry list of like events this happened, this happened, this happened Before I answer, I think what's the most interesting thing that happened? Why was that interesting to me? Why would he find it interesting and I try to start there right and it just makes our conversation so much richer too, maybe. Why is the question? What did I feel and what did I notice?
Speaker 1:So if you're out walking your dog or listening to this podcast episode as you're doing exercise or running on the treadmill or don't have a piece of paper to write that down, you definitely want to take notes. I don't know if your mind wandered to what you're feeling today or what, but I'll tell you right now that as soon as you said what do you feel today and what drove you to feel that way this morning, I totally forgotten about it. I woke up and I was mad at my sister because of some texts that were going back and forth last night, and I was still mad this morning because of some texts that were going back and forth last night and I was still mad this morning. You know, but again, I have told I had totally forgotten that I woke up mad at my sister. No-transcript.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I like I moved on and I was doing other things, and I think that there's a lot to be said there, for something that usually happens Is the same thing that you've talked about forever. What can you learn from this? You know, like it just for me, it just triggers so many more questions, and I'm sure anyone listening to it too is now curious.
Speaker 1:If you want to know, send me an email and I'll let you know, but it helps.
Speaker 2:You take a minute, too, to maybe think about, like, what is actually happening there. Why are we in this cycle, you know, and whatever questions you want to ask yourself, like what's my part in it, or you know, how can I move this forward if you want to, or how can we resolve this thing. What actually is it? What actually are we talking about? Right, because when you're in conflict with someone, it's usually about something else. And is it really my problem?
Speaker 1:No, it's really my problem. No, is it your?
Speaker 2:problem. Right, yeah, right, do what it could be. So there's a post idea of like what do we really need to pay attention to? What are we giving our energy to and when can we just like? Where do we need boundaries? Like there you go. The world is your content oyster, you know.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, I love this so much and I'm definitely going to start practicing it because I feel that there's so much that you can get out of it and I think, well, I don't even think I know that there are a ton of stories that I'm missing out on because I'm not thinking that way. This year I did try to do more storytelling in my out-of-office auto replies, so I've told stories about there was a water main break at my office and it was like single degree weather with like negative wind chills, and we had to walk to one of the other buildings if you wanted like to use the bathroom. And I also had. My furnace broke that week too, and my husband had backup supplies in the basement because they downed like things that might break. So that was a funny story.
Speaker 1:And then the refrigerator broke and so I've had like. And then, of course, the saga of going to Florida to while my mom was recovering in the hospital. There's so many things that happened to us on a daily and there's so many ways to incorporate that into what you do. People actually look on my email signature to see when I'm going to be out of the office, and then they send me an email when I'm out just to see what I have to say that's amazing, that's a real relationship tool you've built there.
Speaker 1:I started it this year, and then my assistant grabs them and I'm going to make a book out of them later this year, so I can't wait. It's going to remind me about all the crazy stuff that happened.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's funny that just happened too. As you were lifting off some of these stories that you were thinking about, it started sparking ideas for me about similar situations that I've been in and what I could make of those, and so there's just another. We've just entered another realm of like, connectedness and intimacy, you know, and starting to relate to each other on a new level that's beyond marketing right, which is limited.
Speaker 1:It is, and then, and there's just so much out there I love the people that I feel have the talent to see these stories on a regular basis. I love that you have that and I love that you shared how we can get into better practice for it, because it is about being observant, and I think we can learn that skill if it doesn't come to us naturally or as naturally as it does to others. So I really appreciate that and I am going to start I'm like saying it right now I'm going to start that homework for life and doing five minutes and telling the story of the day, because I think that there's just so much to get out of that that I wouldn't otherwise see or know or pay attention to, and that's just so powerful.
Speaker 2:So thank you, yeah, and not just for your work, for your life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you so much for sharing so much great information with us and really actionable things that we can do to increase more storytelling. Of course, if you want more information about Renee or how to work with her, you'll find that information in the show notes. But before I let you go, I do need to ask you the question that I ask all of my guests. That is, this show is called Imperfect Marketing because marketing is anything but a perfect science. It's best with stories.
Speaker 2:What has been your biggest marketing lesson learned having to market myself and approach my own marketing for my business. I didn't do it. I was following the loud voices, the gurus, the trends, and I was trying to position myself as an expert just experting and it was completely falling flat. I started my consulting business all on referrals. I had no need to do my own marketing. And then when I finally came around to it, I was like I'm going to do LinkedIn, that's going to be my marketing platform. I lost my first container or retainer client. I was like, okay, so I need to start doing this so that you know, once this turnover starts happening, I have a pipeline. Yeah, and I was just expert, expert and falling flat.
Speaker 2:I did that for about two months and I was like I quit, this sucks, I don't want to do social media again, I'm going to find another way. And then I can't remember what it was that gave me the kick in the butt to start trying again. But I was like I'm going to do it, but I'm going to do it the way that I know how to do it. Well, I'm just going to start talking about my experience. I'm going to start telling stories. I'm going to start talking about my experiences with my clients.
Speaker 2:My experience is building this business. My experience is trying to market this business and I kid you, not overnight it just like took off and I started on LinkedIn, gaining a thousand new followers a month, which then started populating my newsletter subscription rate, which I started a few months after that, and it was all through just starting to tell more personal stories, opening up about observations, sharing my point of view, and that's why I doubled down on it. And then I was like this is the way. Now I need to help others figure out how to take this approach too, and I haven't done any outbound marketing. It's been all inbound.
Speaker 1:Fantastic Because I think you know a lot of us started our business. I don't think I started marketing my business for six years after I started it it was all referral based right, and I've been in business for 11 years. It's like I was like doing marketing for other people and I had no idea what to do for myself, and I think that that's very common right. We're just a little bit too close to our own businesses sometimes to really realize that we know what to do, we know how to do it and that's what we should be doing. So I love the fact that you found that and you found a way to connect with people. That has just revolutionized your business Truly, and so we'll have again ways to connect with Renee in the show notes. If you learned something today and I know I did it would be really helpful if you would rate and subscribe wherever you're listening or watching, until next time. Thanks so much for tuning in to another episode of Imperfect Marketing. Have a great rest of your
