Welcome to Issue 72 of A Good Reputation, a newsletter about telling better business stories. (Did someone send you? Subscribe here.) (Miss past issues? Read those here.)

Hello Reader,

There I was, blissfully swimming in the deep blue of the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of a sleepy little town in southern Greece this summer, when I realized I had made what would soon be a very painful mistake.

The water was colder than I expected in mid-June and, despite living in the Bay Area where I surf the frigid Pacific, I hate cold water.

So to initially get myself in there, I had to do what I always do in uncomfortable situations and just dive right in.

But to do that here was complicated. To get deep enough, I had to rock hop all the way to the end of a sharp limestone platform, which had been carved away for centuries by the sea.

"No big deal," I thought to myself, "I'm wearing my rubber flip flops."

So, without thinking twice, I scootched to the far edge of the rocks, slipped off my sandals, and plunged into the deep.

Tyler, my partner, waded in from the sandy beach—in part because he's somewhat, but much less, of a cold-water weeny than I am, and in part because he had no shoes to walk out with.

He eventually reached me in the water, and for the next half hour we enjoyed a lovely, albeit brisk, swim.

That is, until I was on my way back.

Only then did it finally dawn on me that in order to retrieve my sandals, I'd have to walk across the sharp, jagged rocks with my bare, tender footsies.

Feeling very sorry for myself, I moaned about my mistake out loud to Tyler, who was already well ahead of me on his swim back to the shore.

I, meanwhile, slowed way down in an effort to delay the inevitable pain I'd have to undergo at the end of my delightful swim as long as possible.

But my mood soon switched.

As I approached the platform, I saw Tyler carefully balancing his way down the rocks on the way to fetch my sandals for me. Like a true romantic, he was enduring the pain so that I didn't have to.

"Now that's love," I yelled out to him across the water, feeling grateful and lucky to have landed myself such a consistently thoughtful life partner.

It was such a small thing. Something other people who may not have ever been in previously abusive relationships would simply expect or easily overlook.

But not for me. Even in the moment I knew that—of all the adventures and new experiences I'd take away from this epic summer of travel—this little act of care was the one I'd hold on to the longest and cherish the most.

Because while big things usually make for entertaining stories, it's often the small things that make for memorable ones.

A Good Takeaway

Before I explain why that story might be relevant for you, I feel like I need to acknowledge that it has been over a month since I've written what's usually a weekly email.

Part of the reason is that I've been thoroughly enjoying an extended period of time away from my computer and phone screen. (I hope you enjoyed the break as much as I did!) But the other part is that I've struggled, through all this summer adventuring, to get back into the practice of storytelling for business and figure out what, if anything, is worth writing about.

How do I choose which story to tell?
What's actually relevant?
How do I turn what's an interesting or meaningful experience for me into something useful for you?

Those are the questions I always ask myself before I sit down to write anything—from a LinkedIn post to this newsletter.

But, as I sat down to jot out and structure all the potential ideas that might be valuable to an audience that wants to learn about storytelling for brand building, I kept coming back to that little, seemingly insignificant event I experience while on holiday.

And I then remembered that the answer to all of those questions rarely comes from looking outward at what your audience wants.

Yes, you need to know what the people you're trying to reach struggle with, what questions are on their mind, what they care about, what their hopes, dreams, goals and desires are, as well as what keeps them up at night.

But usually, the best, most resonant stories start from finding the moment that was most significant for you—the little (or big) thing that made you pause and recognize how you had something all wrong. Or, perhaps like me, made you pause and recognize everything that's going right.

We either think a story is too small or too insignificant or too unrelated to whatever it is we're working on to share. But if something is significant enough for you, chances are it's tapping into some piece of the universal human condition that's relevant to all of us.

And even I sometimes forget that is what the best stories are always made of.

A Good Structure

Alright, if small moments of meaning are step one, then structuring your story to keep your audience engaged is step two.

In order to turn that saccharine moment of relationship love that truly meant a lot to me into something that was (hopefully) somewhat entertaining for you, I still had to find a problem in need of a solution and a moment of change to tie it together.

While there are many ways to structure a story, one of the simplest, easiest and foolproof ones for quick reference is this:

1. Start with a character who, at a time and place, has a desire but faces a problem.
2. Next, you introduce a little (but not too much) context to explain the desire and problem and how the character got here.
3. Then, you find the moment when something happens that acts as the catalyst for the resolution.
4. Finally, you detail the resolution in which the character either gets what they want (or doesn't) but takes away some sort of meaning from it all.

And that is really all you need to do effective storytelling for brand building.

If you don't know where to start—or are figuring out how to get back in after a long summer hiatus—start with a simple story and simple structure.

And next time something little sticks with you longer than it should, don't wave it off. Run it through the structure and see where (and with whom) it lands.

Hope you have a good one,
Renee