How to make people remember you
Nailing your intro story for a killer first impression
July 8th, 2023 — Long Island, New York 🇺🇸
Hey👋 Today you’re going to learn how to craft your personal backstory.
This will help you make a killer first impression in sales, dating, or presentations.
If every time you hear “Why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself” you freeze, and tense up, this post is for you. If you’re already pretty personable but want to level up your first impressions to world-class, it’s also for you.
After today, you’ll immediately make yourself more memorable, likable, and confident.
Use stories, not facts
How do most people introduce themselves?
Hey I’m Kevin Stanley from Jamaica Queens.
I’m 28 years old,
study nuclear biology
and like to ride my bike.
But this is super boring.
And people forget facts immediately. Instead, it’s super important you introduce yourself with a story and not some boring list of facts because people remember stories, not facts.
To show you this, it’s probably best to start with an example.
So I’ll share with you the story I share when someone asks me to introduce myself. Afterward, I’ll break it down into a framework that you can copy and plug into your own life experience.
How I introduce myself with stories:
If someone asks me to “tell me a little bit about yourself” here’s what I typically say:
After I graduated from college, I really wanted to make money online so I could move to Germany.
Seems random, but I was always curious to learn the language of my ancestors and see what life was like where we came from. So after graduating, I packed up my bags, got a part time job teaching Chinese kids English for $19/hr and booked a one way flight to Europe.
I eventually won a Fulbright Scholarship— which is kinda like the US State Department’s flagship exchange program— to live and teach in Germany for two years.
This was great because I made it to Germany and got to master the language.
But the only problem was, I didn’t really see a promising career as an ESL teacher and eventually, my German visa would expire. So I quickly started searching for ways to make real money online.
That’s when I discovered this entrepreneur named Naval Ravikant:
Naval’s three-and-a-half-hour podcast called How to Get Rich basically broke all of my beliefs around money and changed my entire career plans.
But there were two ideas that stood out to me the most:
Specific knowledge
Leverage
At first, I didn’t believe building wealth was something I could achieve, but after listening to the podcast for a fourth time, I finally started to accept what he was saying as true.
Basically, Naval suggested that if you seek out rare and valuable skill-based knowledge that’s not available at school like sales, product design, copywriting, technical know-how etc., and apply it to a scalable vehicle which can earn while you sleep— ideally something with content or code, you have a way better chance of achieving financial freedom than someone just trading their time for money.
So for the past two and a half years, I’ve been on a massive self-education bend reading his entire Goodreads book recommendations and starting my first solo business as a ghostwriter for CEO coaches, kinda like managing their social media and branding, before moving into coaching and high ticket sales.
That brings us to where we are today, where I’m still laying that critical infrastructure and developing my skill set, but I’ve been able to create a healthy online income so that I can freely visit my gf in Germany and my parents in America, while patiently waiting for the moment to deploy into my next venture.
But what’s really been the most fun hasn’t been making the money, but the learning skills, meeting the friends on a similar mission, and the natural personal development that’s followed as a result of striving in this direction.
The Framework
I kinda stole this way of telling stories from three sources
Storyworthy by Matthew Dicks
Expert Secrets by Russel Brunson
The Hero’s Journey from Joseph Campbell
Those guys can teach you 10x more about effective story telling but here’s the base framework:
Desire
Problem
Guide + Call to Adventure
Refusal of Call
New Opportunity
Achievement + Transformation
Here’s how it looks for me:
Desire
Make money online so I could live in Germany
Problem
Didn’t know how to make money without trading my time for money and had bad money beliefs
Guide + Call to Adventure
Naval Ravikant's How to Get Rich podcast
Refusal of Call
Didn’t think I could do it
New Opportunity
Specific Knowledge + Leverage
Achievement (external) + Transformation (internal)
Achieved geographic freedom
Became more than who I was
And of course, I gave you the long version, but it’s possible to tell this story framework in 5 minutes or 30 seconds.
The difference has been immediate.
If you begin to introduce yourself in this way, rather than with boring facts, you will build a much tighter rapport with your conversation partners.
I hope you give it a try.
Thanks for reading my post.
Your Turn
If you want help crafting your story, feel free to reply to this email with an outline of your story and I’ll give you feedback.
Have a nice one.