You listen to Just Between Coaches because you want to become the best coach you can be. You want to bravely dive into those tough conversations that others might shy away from. 

     We love supporting you in that deep dive and exploration. So that’s why we thought you might be interested in a brand new show that just joined the Mirasee FM Podcast Network. It’s called Once Upon a Business and it's hosted by our good friend and colleague Lisa Bloom, the story coach.

     In Once Upon a Business Lisa does some deep diving as well. She reaches into a fairy, folk or traditional tale and pulls out the business and growth lessons that you can apply to your own coaching and coaching business. 

     To give you a taste of the show, we’re running an episode from that podcast right here in your feed. Melinda chose this particular episode because Lisa talks about a common mistake that coaches make when trying to sell their services and what they should do instead. So just keep listening and you'll hear exactly what the new show is all about.

Lisa Bloom is a storyteller, author and coach who’s passionate about the art and business of storytelling.  She runs a business called ‘Story Coach’ and helps entrepreneurs, business owners & leaders attract & impact ideal clients and grow their business.

 

     After traveling the world and working a variety of jobs, Lisa settled down and created her business: story coaching, developing transformational story leaders & delivering global conference keynotes and workshops. She is also the Director of Mirasee’s ACES Business Acceleration Program. 

 

     There’s nothing Lisa loves more than to spend time with her partner & their four sons, walk her dog, travel, read and share stories!

Credits:

If you don't want to miss future episodes of Once Upon a Business, please subscribe to Apple podcasts or Spotify or wherever you're listening right now. And if you liked the show, please leave us a starred review. It's the best way to help us get these ideas to more people.

• Track Title: Firestone

Artist Name(s): Pete Stewart

Publisher Name: Chad Michael Snavely

• Track Title: Emeralds

Artist Name(s): Hale

Writer Name: Cory Hale Williams

Publisher Name: A SOUNDSTRIPE PRODUCTION

 

• Track Title: Places in Dreams

Artist Name(s): Alsever Lake

Writer Name: Adrian Dominic Walther

Publisher Name: A SOUNDSTRIPE PRODUCTION

 
Episode transcript: Presenting: Once Upon a Business. Coming soon.

[00:00:00] : recently, Mira Asi Hello, I'm Melinda Cohen your host for Just between coaches and I'm here with a special episode. You listen to just between coaches because you want to become the best coach you can be, you want to bravely dive into those tough conversations that others might shy away from. We love supporting you in that deep dive and exploration. So that's why I thought you might be interested in a brand new show that just joined the Mirror CFM podcast network. It's called Once Upon a Business and it's hosted by my good friend and colleague, lisa bloom the story coach and Once Upon a business lisa does some deep diving as well. She reaches into a fairy folk or traditional tail and pulls out the business and growth lessons that you can apply to your own coaching and coaching business to give you a taste of the show. I'm running an episode from that podcast right here in your feed and I chose this particular episode because lisa talks about a common mistake that coaches make when trying to sell their services and what coaches should do instead. So just keep listening and you'll hear exactly what the new show is all about. There was once a woman who traveled the world, she traveled far and wide and after some time she became old and tired, she longed to rest at the next town. She knocked on the very first door of the very first house. Someone hidden barely opened the door a tiny crack, but then slammed it shut in her face. The woman moved on to the next house when she knocked a window on the floor above opened a crack, but then it too was shut on and on she went from house to house until she was so exhausted that she sat down at the dried up old fountain in the middle of the town square to rest and gather her energy before she would travel on again. Okay. Mhm. Hi. I'm lisa bloom the story coach and you're listening to Once Upon a Business. Each episode we're going to explore a story, a fairy tale folk tale or traditional story so that we can discover the amazing lessons relevant for business and for entrepreneurs. Mm. Yeah, yeah. As she was sitting there, she heard a sound resonating through the air, the sound of a galloping horse and then the sound of every window on every house being flung open. And she looked up to see all the women and men of the house is staring out their windows with great smiles and eyes full of expectation. They were staring up the one road that led to the town towards the sound of the galloping horse. So the old woman looked to she saw a young handsome man with a long flowing cape and his hair flowing behind it, riding a large black horse. He rode into the town square and before his horse had even stopped the women were running from their houses with platters of their best food and goblets of their best wine and they were fighting with each other to be the first to offer him some of their fine hospitality. The old woman watched all this with great interest. She wondered who the young man was. She waited until the excitement had died down before approaching him. Can I ask you something? Said the old woman. I am a traveler like you, and when I arrived at this town I knocked on doors, but no one let me in. No one offered me food or drink. They drove me from their doorsteps. But you, they run from their houses to be the first to offer you all the food and drink you could ever want. So I'm just wondering who are you? What is your name? The young man said, I am story. Who are you? The old woman said, I am truth. The old woman thought for a moment, Why don't you take me under your cape? And then together we can enter every place. The young man agreed. And so it is from that day until now, whenever you hear a story, you can be sure that somewhere hidden, well or maybe not hidden at all, there will be at least a little bit of truth. Okay, the most common question I hear is a storyteller is is that true? And over the years, I've always responded. Of course it's true. Every story I tell is true. And I do believe that there's always some truth in every story and this episode will explore the connection between truth and story so we can discover more of the hidden wisdom in these tales. And I hope leave you to consider what this story may mean to you when people hear this story truth and the story, the reaction is usually a smile and knowing nod. You see, we all recognize that storytelling usually contains a lot of truth. I remember when I first wanted to have a business card printed and I went to the graphic designer and said that I wanted to have my title as storyteller. And she said to me, are you sure you want to call yourself storyteller? Don't you worry. It will have a bad connotation and try to explain to me how, you know, when you hear a story telling you think people are imagining stuff that they're not telling the truth. You know, in this story, we acknowledge the deep connection between story and truth, but there's also so much more here too. The story is really about assumptions, perhaps prejudice, certainly about expectations. The desire to keep things light to be entertained. You know, the people loved the young handsome man with a long cape and the flowing hair. But there's still that deep yearning for truth are true. Desire to create meaning and storytelling is all about meaning making. So truth has to be embedded when we think about the business context. I'm always reminded of marketing and storytelling oftentimes is so incredibly powerful and marketing. But my own personal history with marketing was when I asked my father, I said to him, what is marketing? Because, you know, I was just finishing school and I was looking at all the different possibilities for a career. So I said, dad, what's marketing? And he said without missing a beat. He said, marketing is convincing people to buy things they don't want with money, they don't have, and it's really not something you want to get involved in. And so for years I carried that around with me that there was something basically dishonest about marketing. And yet I learned, of course, that this isn't true, that when we bring integrity and when we show up authentically that we managed to market and sell with truth, not just some imagined possibility that sweeps us away with the desire and longing and yet can actually be manifested. When we tell a story where the truth is embedded, we create connection with a potential client, we gain trust, and this is the most valuable commodity in business. And then I think about the role of the truth teller, the archetype of the old woman, it's the wise woman who has lived and experienced and seen the world who's full of wisdom, who speaks the truth and often she's old she spent over she's ugly and that's, you know, the irony, that the unexpected source of truth, the unexpected source of something that goes beyond that perhaps superficial beauty and here in the story, the young handsome man somehow gets away with the charisma, this more shallow connection, but really what we want is youth and beauty. We want the magical world of desire and possibility. But the perfect solution is that they come together. So in our entrepreneurial journey, we can imagine our greatest desires. We can dream of creating the perfect solution, the perfect program or service and yet embedded with the reality of what's actually possible. It's the perfect combination that allows for creativity and innovation and yet does not take us on a wild goose chase. But in fact allows us begin to build a new world. We imagine break my break step by step. So in reality we invite story into our lives more readily than truth. Oftentimes we think we want entertainment more than we want meaning. But I don't believe that's at our deeper level, at our deeper level we crave meaning and entertainment while it may amuse us in the moment, it's not going to fulfill that deeper need. And so when we're looking to talk about our business to tell the story of our business, we need to be able to combine that. If we use that metaphor, performance versus meaning, we need to be able to offer what people feel will entertain them and yet at the same time provide them with their deeper need of meaning. And so if we take an example of a coach who's trying to sell their business, oftentimes they'll do so by talking about their process, by talking about how wonderful coaching is because that's what they've experienced, because that's what they love and that's what's drawn them to the profession. But in reality people don't want coaching, they want the outcome that coaching gives them, they want the transformation that coaching promises. And so to tell a great story for your business, you need to be able to tell the story of the transformation and that's what people that's combining the need with the wand. People want the transformation and at a deeper level they need so much more than they think they want. And so when we combine truth and story, we combine the ability to give people their desire in the moment and yet they're deeper need in the longer term. And I think this story is a beautiful example of that many traditional tales on the surface level seem quite rife with things like ageism and sexism in this story, truth and the story, we have the kind of beaten down ugly old woman and you have this young handsome man riding the stallion as the two extremes, one being the desired and the other being pushed out the rejected and I think it plays interestingly with both archetypes and with stereotypes and it's important to be able to understand that the archetype is something so much deeper that goes through our understanding of society and of story and our history and then we can get caught in rather than just looking at archetypes, which is understanding that the old woman is actually the wisdom and the truth. We can get caught in the polarization of stereotypes, which is never never a good thing. I think what's interesting here, a different perspective to look at this is to think of it around how it's the integration or the combination of the two that presents something that's truly valuable. And so we can't just take the external young handsome man, the external beauty alone, it's not enough. And similarly, the raw truth, the old haggard woman who is the truth teller, that's almost not enough either. But instead the integration of the two speaks to how do we take perhaps a diverse perspective and included in the mainstream? I think it speaks to collaboration. It speaks to taking different views and different flavors and pulling them together and in business. That's what is often most successful is when you can have all these different perspectives where you're not isolated in your singular view of the world. But in fact, you can bring in collaborations, you can bring in people with different perspectives who will pulling together offer something that's so much more valuable in the long term. So, it's interesting that in this actual story, the young man brings with him a certain measure of self awareness and that he's open to the idea of teaming up with truth. He does agree to take her under his cape and bring her to every place so that they can be everywhere together. It speaks to the recognition perhaps that story knows that there is a limitation and doing things alone. There's a limitation only providing one perspective or one way of doing something. There's a limit to just being on that surface level. Being the entertainer versus bringing meaning. And I love that this speaks to an awareness that we need to have as business owners and entrepreneurs, that we do need to bring other things into what we do. We cannot be isolated. We cannot be isolated neither from our audience nor from the people who are around us offering things that are similar or perhaps quite different, but can still come together and offer a more complete solution to whatever it is that we're working on. I love the idea that we need to continue to deepen our work continue to iterate in the way we do. Things continue to get better at what we do in the same way that truth was willing to take story with him. We need to take along with us new ideas, new knowledge. Oftentimes other people. I've experienced this myself and my own business where for many years I worked alone and then suddenly realized, no, I need to bring other people into the picture. I need to have other perspectives. I need to get more more feedback and that will allow me to grow and me too actually improve what I offer to the people I work with. So that's been a personal journey which I love to see in this story, personified by this handsome young man who seemingly on a surface level has everything he needs, he's got the love of the audience, he's got all this nurturing all this wonderful opportunity wherever he goes. And yet even with all that success, he recognizes that he needs to bring meaning in with him. He needs to bring story with him so that he can grow so that he can keep getting better at what he does and so that he can offer a more complete solution that serves others at a higher level. I'm lisa bloom and you've been listening to Once Upon a Business, you can find out more about me at story dash coach dot com. That story dash coach dot com. Once Upon A Business is part of the Mirror Cfm podcast network which also includes making it just between coaches and course lab. This episode of Once Upon A Business was produced by Cynthia Lam Danny Iny is our executive producer. So you don't miss the episodes that are coming up on Once Upon a Business, please follow us on Apple podcasts. Spotify or wherever you're listening right now and if you like the show, please leave us a starred review. It really does help us out. Thank you. We'll see you next time, Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Mhm. Mhm.