If you think your life is too boring to create great content, I have good news and bad news. The bad news is yeah, your life probably is pretty boring. The good news? Mine is too. And it doesn’t matter one bit.
I spend most of my days sitting in a hallway that I’m slowly trying to convert into an office because my beautiful upstairs office became my toddler’s bedroom. I wake up early, I read, I make breakfast, I work at my computer, I sometimes go for a walk, I lift weights. That’s it. That’s the whole show. And yet storytelling is the single most powerful tool I use to grow my business, nurture my email list, and create content that people actually respond to.
In this post, I’m going to walk you through exactly how I do it. I call it the Story Imprint Formula, and it’s going to change how you think about content creation forever. Whether you’re writing emails, recording podcast episodes, creating social posts, or publishing blog content, this formula gives you an endless well of ideas that are uniquely yours and impossible to replicate. Because nobody else has your stories.
Let’s get into it.
Why Educational Content Stopped Working (And What Replaced It)
Here’s something I talk about a lot, and if you follow me on social media, you might be sick of hearing it. But I’m going to say it again because it’s that important: information and educational based content is not it these days. It’s not working in your emails. It’s not working in your social posts. It’s not working on your blog or your podcast.
And the reason comes down to a massive shift in how people access information online.
When I started my business back in 2012 and 2013, the landscape was completely different. The big problem back then was a lack of information. There just weren’t that many people posting helpful content online. So a huge part of what I did in the early stages of my business was educate. I provided information because people genuinely needed it and couldn’t find it anywhere else.
Now fast forward to 2026. We live in the age of AI, where information is literally at people’s fingertips. Someone can hop into ChatGPT or Claude or Gemini and work out an entire weight loss plan in five minutes. They can get a full meal plan for the week. They can get step-by-step instructions for almost anything. The information is everywhere, which means posting “5 Ways to Balance Your Hormones” or “3 Steps to Hit Your Macros” just doesn’t make you stand out anymore. People have seen it a thousand times, and they can get that same information from an AI chatbot without even opening Instagram.
So if educational content isn’t the move anymore, what is?
Story-based content.
Stories are literally written into our DNA. When we hear a story, it helps humanize the person telling it. It helps us visualize ourselves in that person’s life. And that is an incredibly powerful thing when it comes to marketing, because people buy from people they feel connected to. People connect with people who they want to be like, who they see themselves in, and who feel relatable. Story does all of that in a way that a how-to post never will.
The Proof Is in How You’re Consuming This Right Now
Here’s something worth pointing out. If you listened to the podcast episode this post is based on, you stuck around because of the story I told in the first few minutes about hiking to a frozen lake. You weren’t bored. You weren’t checking out. You were probably thinking, “Oh my God, what’s going to happen?” And that story, objectively, is not that interesting. I hiked to a lake. It was frozen. I hiked back down. That’s it.
But you were still hooked. And that’s the power of story. It’s not about having wild, dramatic, once-in-a-lifetime stories. It’s about how you tell them and what you connect them to.
The Frozen Lake: A Story About Knowing When to Pivot
Let me give you the full picture so you can see this formula in action.
I’m standing on a ridge in the Rockies with my friend Jill. My legs are shaking. My lungs are burning. We’ve been hiking for hours over deadfall, carrying 50 pounds on our backs. Sweat is pooling in places I won’t describe on a public platform. It’s the kind of uphill where you stop talking because you literally don’t have the oxygen for words and friendship at the same time.
The whole time, I’m picturing this perfect, crystal clear alpine lake where we’re going to set up camp, lay out in the sun, and take a dramatic cold plunge. I’d been carrying that image in my brain for the entire climb. It was the reward. It was the whole point.
So we cross the ridge. We come around the final bend. And the lake is frozen. Not a few icy chunks around the edges. Frozen solid. A giant slab of ice sitting where my dream lake was supposed to be. In the middle of summer.
And here’s the part that makes me sound really stupid: the lake was literally called Frozen Lake. You’d think we would have taken the hint. But it was hot, it was summer, and we figured maybe the name was a winter thing. Nope.
Everything was frozen. Thick snow everywhere. There was no way we were camping on ice with sleeping bags that weren’t built for it. So we ate our snacks, we complained, we laughed a little, and we turned around and hiked all the way back down the mountain with a really good story and zero of the things we actually came for.
What the Frozen Lake Teaches Coaches About Business
I think about that hike a lot, actually. Probably more than I should. Because I see coaches do this all the time.
You spend weeks, sometimes months, building something. A program. A freebie. A launch plan. You map it all out. You have a crystal clear picture of exactly how it’s going to go. You carry that vision in your head the whole way up. And then you get there and it’s frozen.
The launch doesn’t sell the way you thought it would. The freebie doesn’t convert. The post gets crickets. The thing you were so sure about just sits there, cold and still, nothing like what you imagined.
This is where a lot of coaches get stuck. And what I hear all the time is, “Well, I spent all this time creating it, so I need to make it work.” But if something is clearly not going to work, if there’s no way to make it work, then why would you keep executing the same plan just because you spent time on it?
Here’s something every business owner who has been at it long enough knows: we all have a graveyard of things that didn’t work. Freebies that flopped. Courses that never saw the light of day. Ideas that sounded brilliant in our heads but fell completely flat. This is just what happens. Sometimes our creativity gets ahead of what’s actually going to work.
So what I want you to hear is this: it’s okay to abandon the plan. Even if you spent a lot of time on it. Even if you told people about it. Even if you made a whole Canva graphic for it. You are allowed to look at something that’s clearly not working and say, “Okay, not this,” and walk yourself back down the mountain.
That is not failure. That is the whole skill. The coaches who build successful businesses are not always the ones with the best plans. They’re the ones who know when to pivot fast without making it mean something terrible about themselves.
How the Story Imprint Formula Works
Now let me break down what just happened structurally, because that was the Story Imprint Formula in action.
I took a somewhat boring story from my life. I told it in an interesting way. And then I pivoted into a relevant teaching moment that connects to my audience. That’s the whole formula, and it works in emails, social posts, podcast episodes, blog posts, and pretty much any form of content.
There are three core pieces.
Step 1: Choose a Story From Your Everyday Life
This is where most people freeze up because they think they need some wild, dramatic story. You don’t. You just need something slightly out of the normal mundane. Think about the things you’d share if you were catching up with a close friend over coffee after not seeing them for a couple of months.
Maybe you fell down the stairs in front of a hot stranger. Maybe your toddler said something hilarious. Maybe you had a weird interaction at the grocery store. Maybe you went for a walk and got caught in a hailstorm. Maybe someone cut you off in traffic and gave you the middle finger. These are all stories that can be told.
The key is that they don’t need to be extraordinary. They just need to be slightly out of the ordinary. When you’re catching up with a friend, you’re not sharing these massive, life-altering stories most of the time. You’re saying things like, “Oh yeah, this funny thing happened,” or “My kid said the weirdest thing the other day.” Those little moments are exactly what you can share with your audience.
Here’s a practical tip that I use: I keep a running note in my notes app that I call “Story Dump” (with the poop emoji instead of the word dump, because I think I’m hilarious). Throughout the week, anytime something slightly funny or out of the ordinary happens, I jot it down. That way, when I sit down to write, I always have something to pull from instead of staring at a blank screen.
You can also pull from TV shows you’re watching, someone else’s story (with permission or if it’s public), or experiences that happened to people around you. The point is to always have a bank of stories ready to go.
Step 2: Find the Relevant Lesson
This is the part that used to be really hard for me, and honestly, it’s the part that trips most people up. Because not every story has an obvious connection to your business or your audience. And if you can’t find a relevant lesson, the story actually has no place in your content. Relevant is the key word here.
The good news is that AI has made this step dramatically easier. Here’s what I do now: I grab a story from my life, I use the mic function in Claude (which is my favorite AI tool right now), I just tell the story in my own words with zero structure or polish, and then I say, “Please find me 15 relevant lessons for my audience that connect to this story.”
AI will give you a list, and not all of them will be good. Some you’ll look at and think, “Nope, that’s a stretch.” But you’ll almost always find at least one that clicks. One where you go, “Yeah, this is it.” And then you’re off to the races.
If you’ve trained your AI tool properly so that it already knows who your target audience is, the suggestions will be even more dialed in. But even without that setup, just asking for relevant lesson ideas connected to a specific story will get you solid options to work with.
Step 3: Write It Using the Formula Structure
Now here’s where it all comes together. There’s a specific structure to follow, and the order matters.
Start in the tension. This is the most important part and the one AI gets wrong almost every time. You do not want to start with “I’m going to tell you a story.” You do not want to ease into it. You want to drop the reader into the most tense, weird, or funny moment of the story right away.
Think about the climax of the story (yes, I always laugh at that word too, I’m incredibly immature). What’s the moment where things got interesting? That’s your opening line.
With the frozen lake story, the moment of tension was when Jill said, “The lake is frozen solid.” That’s where the story gets interesting. That’s the hook. When I open an email with a quoted line like “The lake is frozen solid,” people are immediately thinking, “What? Where is this going?” And they keep reading.
If you let AI write the opening, it’ll usually give you something like, “There I was, 7:42 on a Saturday morning.” Or it’ll start with the setup instead of the tension. And the setup is boring. Nobody cares about the setup until they’re already invested. So you almost always need to reorder what AI gives you. The tense moment is usually in there somewhere, it’s just not at the beginning where it needs to be.
Think about fiction. Good fiction doesn’t start with “Once upon a time, let me set the scene for you.” It drops you into a specific moment that’s meant to instantly pull you in. Your content should do the same thing.
Tell the story simply. Once you’ve hooked them, tell the story without getting bogged down in the details. Less is more. This is something I see constantly when I review people’s story-based content inside my program. They go deep into every little detail, and I’m always telling them to cut sections. Get to the point. No extra fluff.
Your story can take up a few sentences, a quarter of your email, or even half of it, depending on the intention. But always err on the side of shorter and punchier.
Transition naturally into the lesson. The shift from story to teaching moment should feel seamless, not abrupt. You never want to write “And the lesson is…” or “Here’s the takeaway.” That kills the flow.
Instead, use a natural bridge sentence. Here are a few examples that work well:
“I think about that a lot, actually, because I see coaches do this all the time.”
“And in that moment, it hit me.”
“Weirdly, it’s the same thing I see with my clients every week.”
“That’s when I realized it sounds ridiculous, but it’s exactly what I coach my clients on.”
“It’s kind of the whole point of [insert teaching moment].”
“And that’s when it clicked for me, why this keeps happening for so many people.”
It’s really just one simple sentence that bridges the gap. And then you’re into the lesson, which could be a belief shift, a mindset shift, a perspective change, or something slightly more educational. The story earns you the right to teach because now the reader is engaged and they actually care.
End with a call to action. Every piece of content should end with some sort of CTA. Ask people to apply for your program. Invite them to book a discovery call. Promote a low ticket offer. Ask them to share the email with a friend. Direct them to register for an event or listen to a podcast episode. Or if nothing else, just ask them to reply with a specific word so you know the message landed. Sometimes the entire strategy behind an email is simply to improve deliverability and get replies, and that’s a perfectly valid goal.
Why This Formula Gives You Endless Content Ideas
Here’s what I love most about the Story Imprint Formula: it never runs dry. Because life keeps happening. Every single week, you’re going to have little moments that are slightly out of the ordinary. Funny things your kids say. Awkward interactions. Small adventures that didn’t go as planned. Weird observations. Things that made you laugh or think or shake your head.
And every one of those moments is a potential piece of content. You just need to capture it (hello, story dump note), find a relevant lesson to connect it to, and then write it using the structure I just outlined.
When you start sending out story-based emails and creating this kind of content, I almost guarantee you’re going to get more response. More replies. More engagement. More people telling you that your emails are funny and relatable. And that’s exactly what you’re going for.
Because at the end of the day, humans buy from humans. And when you tell stories, you become more memorable and more unforgettable. People start picturing themselves in your life. They feel like they know you. And that kind of connection is something no amount of educational content can replicate.
You end up with content that feels human, connection-based, and relatable, instead of stuffy, formulaic posts that sound like everybody else’s. And you don’t need to share everything or be an open book. You can be an incredibly private person and still show up online with stories that make people feel something.
Start Using the Story Imprint Formula Today
So here’s what I want you to do. Open your notes app right now and start a Story Dump note. Over the next week, jot down anything that happens to you that’s even a little bit out of the ordinary. At the end of the week, pick one story, plug it into your favorite AI tool, ask for 15 relevant lessons for your audience, choose the one that hits, and write your first story-based email or post using the structure I walked you through.
Start in the tension. Tell the story simply. Transition naturally. Teach the lesson. End with a CTA.
That’s the Story Imprint Formula. It’s fun, it’s endlessly creative, and it’s the kind of content that makes people actually want to hear from you.
If you want to go deeper on this, grab the free Story Imprint Formula guide.
