A couple of ezines ago I gave you advice from my father, the famous ventriloquist Eddie Garson, about not rewriting your talk every time you speak. Keep tweaking and improving it, but don’t reinvent the wheel. Or as Eddie says, “Don’t change your act, change your audience!”

Today, I’m writing about the opposite problem — which is what to do when your “act” starts feeling old.

When you are speaking to sell on stages or teleseminars, you need to create a connection with your audience quickly. An important element to your introduction is to craft a story that both builds your credibility and shows your vulnerability, so that people can relate to you and connect to you. Your story can be the exciting thing that’s going on in your business right now, or it may be a lesson that you learned along the way that got you to where you are.

It’s common to have a great story that can serve you for years. But what happens when even you start getting bored with your own story? That means it’s probably reached its expiration date — and it’s time for a change.

I’m not saying you have to throw out that story — just move it to somewhere else in your talk. Use it to make a point somewhere in the body.

Where Does Your Story Belong?

As many of you know, last year in a 10-month period, my business catapulted from $130,000 to over $2 million. And trust me…I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of telling that story!

Now, my business has moved on to new areas of growth, and it feels like time to reposition that story, so while it’s still a credibility point in my introduction, it’s become “part of” my story rather than the whole thing. These days I’m having much more fun talking about how my Speak-to-Sell formula helped me create a talk that has taken me from small 20-person venues a few years ago to multi-thousand-person stages this coming year!

If your story highlighted your credibility, like mine did, it can become a smaller credibility point in your introduction. If your story was a big life lesson, then it could remain a vulnerability point, but become only part of the story. Or the story could move into the body, as I wrote above, or into your bio.

A Caveat...

There is one caveat to this advice. If that story is making up your whole platform, you may want to keep it where it is. For example, the sports figure Joe Theismann has been telling the same main story for 25 years and he’s still making big bucks with it. My Diamond Mastermind client Joyce O’Brien survived stage 4 cancer and is teaching people how to “Chose to Live” in her new book. Those stories need to stay put!

How Do You Know When It’s Time for a Change?

Are you sick of telling the same story? Do people make comments about how often they’ve heard it? If so, or if it feels like old news to you, it probably is.

But what if you don’t have a new exciting story to tell? That may tell you that it’s time to take action and grow in a new direction. Take your business where you most want it to go. Get uncomfortable. Look for your next growth edge.

Get out there and create your new exciting story — and then tell it with enthusiasm and pride!

What’s your story? Let us know below.