How To Leverage Pain To Create A Piercing Brand Story

Brand Story

Oct 28

The last thing I remember is flapping my arms backwards, seeing the snow whip past underneath me, skis waffling in the wind in front of me.

Then I hit. Hard.

My skis slapped down, the rest of my body slammed backward, head bouncing off the snow behind me as if I was doing a bridge in yoga. But this bridge happened with such force that it bowed my tibia and fibula, splintering the bones into hairline fractures and tearing the muscles clear off of the bone. And I hardly remember a thing (hi, concussion).

I was a downhill ski racer growing up, and this crash changed the trajectory of that career. I was gunning for the US Ski Team.

From this moment, until I hung up my race skis years later, I was forced to spend hours per day doing PT, training differently than my teammates, more carefully, more tender, more early mornings and endless Sunday nights. If I wanted to race again, to win again, I had to work harder and longer than everyone else. The hours paid off, I gained more podiums.

What my crash taught me was that to overcome hard things, you have to envision the outcome then architect your steps to get there. And, if you want big things, it takes exponentially more work than small things. But I would never have known this that early without this crash. And the rest of my dreams would have been a further reach without this lesson.

My pain, then, has become an asset as it is part of my story and of who I am, of why I’m here, and why I created this business—aka my brand story. And the pain of your past should be a key asset for your brand story too. Here’s why:

As Ray Dalio and Jay Shetty recently taught me in this podcast: “Pain plus reflection equals progress.”

That means that pain without reflection is still pain. Ah-ha! Reflection gives our pain a reason to exist because it makes pain necessary to make progress in virtually anything. It also cracks you open to a new world of learning, of understanding the cause and effect of your internal and external motivations, and your internal reward system. These systems have a major impact on how you work, how you teach, and how you lead. Too, the struggle of overcoming this pain has the ability to connect you to others facing similar hurdles both physically, intellectually and emotionally—so it can be the source of building a community which is a key element of building a sustainable brand.

These are the fundamental building blocks of how you came to be, and this is what your team and your customers care about. They want to know what got you here. They want to know what you’ve overcome, and why you’ve created your product or service. They want to know why you’re driven to help them avoid that pain.

The key, then, is to not only share that pain, but share the reflection of that pain. That’s your job as an entrepreneur, a marketer, and a leader. Here are 3 tips on how to do that well:

Tip #1. Bleed first.

Make a list of the top 5-10 things that have happened to you in your life. Then write out the experience and the real, deep and concrete emotions that came with each step. When sharing your story, start with the most fascinating and emotionally evocative part. In other words, start with the bleeding—your pain, your challenge, your tightrope, your conflict—and open with a strong and compelling piece of your story.

Tip #2. Give context.

Now it’s time to give context of the bleeding from above. You can do this by answering the 4 basic questions of any good story: Who? What? When? And why? So, after you hook people, you open up the story to give people an understanding of what happened, who was involved, and why it matters.

Top #3. Close with a lesson.

Ok, you’ve hooked your audience, you’ve given them context, now you have to close with a bang. The best way to do that is to share your reflection of the pain, of the challenge, and what you’ve done with that information. What was the lesson you learned from it? What did you do to overcome it? What was the thing that helped you break through to a new normal?

That’s it! Don’t overcomplicate it, but remember to always add value to every story you tell because remember: