Have you ever put your very best creative energy, value and visuals forward…launched it with excitement then felt your heart drop as far fewer people buy than you’d hoped? Here’s your solution for a booked-out, engaged client, enjoyable year ahead.

My Journey to Invent Story-Selling Solutions

I’m not ashamed to admit I know the feeling of a fizzled launch well! Back in 2018, when I first quit full time work for the United Nations and jumped into the world of self-employment I had a lot to learn about the digital, online marketing space. Sure, I was a master storytelling in one sphere – fundraising with big donors and governments.

In fact, by the time I left, my team and I had raised over $50 million USD in five years for humanitarian emergencies in Haiti and East Africa. I quickly learned I had a heck of a lot to learn about e-commerce, digital sales and copywriting for heart-conversions. There were no more helicopter rides or Ambassadors to convince. My confidence in public speaking and sense of adventure had a whole new target. For those of you who know my story outline, I launched an ethical fashion label Ellechemy in the early days of the pandemic 2020, I also began private coaching!

I needed to learn marketing fast. And yet having started my own spiritual awakening journey, for lack of more original terms, I felt I couldn’t perpetuate any manipulative, unclean energy tactics. I even refused to learn how to persuade people or harness the unequivocal power of Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) strategies that worked miracles for conversion.

All those forms of pain-point marketing felt gross to me, and served to reinforce “power over” domination dynamics that breed the karpman drama triangle cycle of victim, saviour, persecutor. That’s a post for another day!

The point is, all those pain point, classic sales tactics seemed to attract dis-empowered people with victim mentalities who wanted to be saved. You know the type! The ones searching for quick fixes, to be healed, buy templates, make a lot of money with no effort, or otherwise spoon-fed solutions. I’m not sure if you ever noticed it, but the same victim energy quickly flips into attacking judgment, discontent, demanding refunds and so on.

Not a great business strategy in the end, eh?

For the next two years from my base in Tulum, Mexico I dove into the art of storytelling. My angle was seeking clean-energy ways to connect for our new era of marketing, and I must say my initial disappointments were many. Launches that sold one to ten tickets rather than hundreds, left me curious, hungry and hunting for answers down a deep rabbit hole.

I studied marketing masters like Tony Robins, watched endless videos and broke down what I saw them doing psychologically sentence by sentence, scene by scene. I stayed up until dawn gleaning secrets from classical mythologists like Joseph Campbell’s the hero’s journey, and turned my Instagram into a test kitchen.

I practised different storytelling arcs on socials, and then studied the outcome. Which of my posts resonated most deeply? Which had life-changing feedback? Which got lots of attention but zero purchasing follow-through and why? What was the energetic undercurrent behind it all?

The truth I discovered was thrilling! That’s why I’m sitting on my tropical patio with flowers dancing in the garden, writing to you with so much excitement. Nothing seemed to really turn my online audience from cool observers to hot buyers until I started practising a very specific recipe of storytelling.

All the best marketing material running on clean, inspiring energy had common ingredients. Woohoo! It felt like I’d discovered a delicious recipe that anyone can cook up in their own business kitchen. Consider this video your taster course. It’s all in the video, which you can also listen to as a podcast episode.

The best part about story-selling? It is the opposite of gross, sales-y energy. It is gimmick free, human empowering and fosters heart-led connection. It’s my new wave alternative to pressurized manipulation, thinly-veiled seduction or pain-point strategies. Welcome!

Emily B.

My Key Ingredients to Your Story-Selling Success

• Swap generalities for specifics
• Use emotional, feeling, personal language
• Set the scene descriptively
• Who, what, when, where why is this happening?
• Set up a source of genuine tension
• Resolve your tension with an AHA! moment
• Shift to describe lessons learned, embodiment or mastery
• Invite people into a place, program or product to experience your results

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Story-selling inspires and empowers. That’s what my Uplight Marketing system is all about. So it’s natural that Story-selling is Pillar #1 of my Uplight Marketing system, right?

If you’re ready to get away from word of mouth referrals and expand to a broader audience outside your immediate established network, I’m convinced story-selling is the only marketing strategy you need to begin. While you may get tired of hearing your epiphany story over and over again, trust me, no one else will!

When to use your story

The applications and avenues of telling your story are unlimited. You can tell it to someone you meet on a cruise ship deck, at an ecstatic dance after the sweat dries, on an Instagram live once a week to warm up your audience and connect with new viewers. You can tell your specific epiphany story via email to your audience, on a Youtube video that gets embedded in an email, or in a podcast episode. Tell it on Tiktok. Share it during a wellness retreat.

My hope is that you harness the power of repetition.

My dream for you is that you tell your epiphany story so often it feels as easy as smiling-and has the same positive effect.