Welcome to Issue 38 of A Good Reputation, a newsletter about how to use storytelling to grow your brand. (Did someone send you? Subscribe here.)

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Hello Reader,

Yesterday morning, I broke down crying in the shower.

I’ve been on the verge of tears all week, and turning on the warm water finally triggered the release of all the pent-up exhaustion and overwhelm I’d been consciously ignoring to keep my nervous system from spinning out.

Of course, ignoring that stuff only ever leads to spinning out even harder, whether when the stress lets up or when you hit your breaking point.

At first, it was clear to me that the cause was work. I’ve been going like a maniac and putting a lot of pressure on myself.

Last year, I broke my fractional business model to explore a project-based approach. The idea was to keep the work fresh with new projects while finding other avenues for recurring revenue. I gave myself one year to prove this model could work.

That year started in January, and I’ve been hustling ever since.

The hustle has paid off in a number of ways, and I’ve made significant progress toward my goals.

But pivoting, marketing, launching, learning, executing, and systemizing all at once has been intense. And because the project-based income piece is inherently unpredictable, one slow month or one lost opportunity has the power to throw the whole thing (and my confidence) out of balance.

By noon, I caught myself scrolling job listings.

I fantasized about a steady paycheck, a straightforward job description, and the weight of responsibility that an in-house job would lift off my shoulders.

“Hang tight, Renee. Is that really the best use of your time right now?” asked my concerned partner, who called to check in on his lunch break.

He reminded me that I go through this cycle every few months and suggested I take a breath before wasting the day trying to action myself out of an uncomfortable feeling.

He helped me clarify something that’s been cropping up everywhere all week:

The work isn’t actually the problem. It’s that I keep hanging on to this unhelpful narrative that I have to figure it out all on my own.

A Good Lesson

Part of this narrative comes from the nature of the work. I'm a solo service provider who does the seemingly solitary work of writing to build my business.

But the trope of the lone writer is a myth.

Writing is the theme of a branding community I joined this month, and our organizer kicked it off with a pep talk reminding us that we can’t be good storytellers without being permeable to the world.

It’s easy, he said, to fall into the trap of thinking that the process of uncovering your story or shaping your ideas is supposed to happen in isolation. That you need to protect your ideas from outside influence, or that you shouldn’t share drafts because it’ll mess with your voice.

If we’re real writers, we tell ourselves, we should be able to figure it out on our own.

But in reality, every idea any of us has ever had is the product of our participation in a community. And when we allow that collective sense-making in, we position ourselves to be more open to receive.

My storytelling cohort, which wrapped up yesterday, served up this lesson again.

In our final office hours, I asked my attendees for feedback. I wanted to know what was most useful, what I could improve, and how they could use support going forward.

I expected them to mention the storytelling frameworks or the confidence to share their stories publicly. Instead, they all reiterated this:

The most valuable part wasn’t what they learned, but how they learned it.

It was the conversations, the questions, and the opportunities to say things out loud and have someone reflect back what they heard.

The questions I asked helped them dig deeper and see their stories more clearly so that they could create meaning out of their experiences for the rest of us.

That’s the thing about stories. They help us be seen by others, but also with others.

We don’t tell stories in a vacuum. We tell them together across kitchen tables, office hours, workshops, and generations.

So, just like operating our businesses, why do we keep trying to come up with the whole story alone?

A Good Takeaway

Storytelling, in and of itself, has always been a collective act necessary for our survival.

Throughout history, stories have served as a tool to weave individual experience into something greater and durable enough to pass on.

I think it’s easy to forget that storytelling isn’t just a creative exercise, but an evolutionary advantage. Without sharp fangs or blinding speed, the earliest humans only had each other for survival. And our ability to cooperate, problem-solve, and imagine together is what kept us alive.

Every major leap we’ve made as a species has come from this collective creativity. But to work together at scale, we’ve always needed more than logic. We’ve needed something to align us, and that’s exactly what stories do.

Here’s why this is still relevant now:

A story ties an idea to an ego. It asks us to put ourselves in the place of a protagonist, see ourselves inside a struggle, and imagine what could happen next.

Doing this expands our sense of self. Your neighbor’s welfare becomes tied to your own, and their story becomes part of yours.

But herein lies the paradox:

While stories leverage the ego, they also require us to look beyond it.

The deeper our self-awareness, meaning the more honestly we understand what drives us, scares us, or moves us, the more clearly we can articulate meaning for others.

Ultimately, storytelling is an act of generosity. Yes, we’re sharing our experience. But if we’re really doing our job as storytellers, we’re excavating the truth inside ourselves so we can offer it as meaning to someone else.

It’s tricky, though. Our sense of identity is framed by the stories we tell, or come to believe, about ourselves.

Self-awareness or self-reflection is inherently challenging because our blind spots and habitual narratives make it really hard to see ourselves objectively.

That’s why working in isolation keeps us stuck inside the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves.

Clarity happens in conversation.

When we try to figure it out alone (or think we have to), we miss the mirrors. We also miss the opportunities to sharpen our ideas by fielding other people’s questions, perspectives, and reactions.

The moral of the story is that if you want more impactful stories and ideas, it probably isn’t going to happen by going at it all alone.

Get yourself a thought partner, a support group, or a community. (Or join mine!)

Prompt your AI tool of choice to poke holes in your thinking, dig deeper for the story that highlights your point, or surface the universal human experience that’ll help others find meaning in your message.

And when you post your story online, recognize that you're in conversation here, too. Notice how people are reacting (or not). Take note of the questions they're asking and build on the ideas they're sharing.

It’s not just for storytelling or writing or brand building—it’s all of it.

We can tell better stories and build better businesses when we stop trying to do it alone.

This morning, I once again have the clarity and faith that I don’t need another job. (Yet.) I need to be in community and conversation.

How about you?

A Few Good Resources

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1. If you're in the business of making meaning (aren't we all?), I highly recommend this report from Concept Bureau.
2. If you need tactical advice on how to become a better storyteller alongside a supportive group of entrepreneurs and founders, my next cohort launches in June. Get on the waitlist.​
3. And if you’re realizing (like me) that clarity doesn’t come from pushing harder, but from learning to regulate and reconnect, you might want to check out this course from one of my brilliant cohort attendees. (Get $200 off with code AGOODREP)

Hope you have a good one,
Renee