Welcome to Issue 58 of A Good Reputation, a newsletter about how to tell a better story to build better brands. (Did someone send you? Subscribe here.) (Miss past issues? Read those here.)

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Hello Reader,

There’s this cozy little hole-in-the-wall karaoke bar in San Francisco’s Japantown Mall I love going to on wintery weeknights to watch people perform.

The stage has a makeshift cityscape background and is surrounded by no more than a dozen little round tables and a couple of booths. It's a place people go to celebrate birthdays and bachelorette parties, or have a post-ramen impromptu night out.

Occasionally, you’ll get that one person who missed their calling, but most of the time, the singing is pretty awful. People are either off-key, off-script, or painfully awkward.

But it doesn’t matter, because the community that magically seems to gather here makes it feel safe. Regardless of your skill level, the crowd cheers you on just because they know you’re trying.

So you get up there to belt it out and sing something that means something to you.

Inevitably, someone in the crowd appreciates your song choice. They have their own history with it—their own memories wrapped up in the words. They sing along with you. You lock eyes and smile. And for that brief moment, you’re connected.

Then, because of your bravery, they find the courage to get up on that little stage and take the mic.

A Good Reframe

One thing I recently realized about myself is that I’ve always been drawn to more intimate spaces.

While it made more financial sense to attend my local university with tens of thousands of students in Auburn, Alabama, I opted for the small liberal arts college in Boston, where my graduating class was just under 600 students.

I’ve always preferred to see live music and comedy shows in little venues with no standing room. And, when given the option, I’ll choose an intimate dinner over a big blowout bash any day.

It’s not that I have anything against crowds or anxiety in large groups of people—I’m an extrovert who thrives in those environments, too. It’s that I believe in large groups, it’s harder to truly be yourself and deeply connect with the people around you. There’s simply too much distraction. Too many people competing for attention. Too many loud, overconfident voices and born entertainers with a hold on the room.

It’s so much harder see others and feel seen when everyone’s vying to get heard. And with so much of our lives being lived alone in our homes and online—where the rooms are incomprehensively massive—we need those intentional spaces to connect more than ever.

While it’s easier to find or create an intimate community in our personal lives, it’s so much harder to do so in our professional ones. And the reason is that intimate communities are hard to sustain and scale—the business model just doesn’t make sense.

But it doesn’t mean that the need isn’t there.

This year, I knew that instead of going bigger with my businesses, I wanted to go deeper. Deeper with storytelling, deeper with my clients, and more connected with the real community forming around all of it.

So I tested and experimented with cohorts and sprints. I validated the content and the ideas. And then, slowly, the organic thing started to reveal itself: A membership community for founders, creators, and independent professionals who want to become better storytellers not just online, but everywhere.

This community is ultimately the online extension of New Narratives, the retreat I started three years ago for entrepreneurs interested in building intentional, aligned businesses alongside a group of other people who get it.

It’s a space where you can be seen and heard and aerate you ideas in a small room full of peers who already have some context. Peers who aren’t there to make snap judgements, but really listen to understand and help you clearly articulate what you’re trying to say.

It’s the online version of my little local karaoke bar, where the goal is to cheer you on even when you’re off-key.

A Good Storytelling Rule

Pixar’s first rule of storytelling is that we admire a character more for trying than for their successes. And the reason for that is simple:

It’s hard to feel hopeful or be inspired by stories that skip straight to the outcome. There’s nothing for us to learn from effortless perfection, and it’s hard to relate to someone's easy wins.

As spectators or readers, we feel more connected, and therefore more emotionally invested, when we witness the struggle and can see our vulnerabilities reflected in someone else’s experience.

In learning storytelling, the most important thing you have to understand is how to show the messy process—the failures, the losses, the false starts, the grit—in a way that earns you, the main character, trust and respect.

In my workshops and cohorts, I teach this and all of Pixar’s storytelling rules because no other framework so clearly explains why certain stories stick, and others don’t.

But here’s the part we often forget about Pixar and all its brilliant storytelling rules: While each film may start with a single writer, no story is shaped alone.

Every moving Pixar film ever made was developed through an intensely collaborative process led by a director and supported by dozens of story artists. Eventually, it takes hundreds of people to bring the story to the screen.

My point is that the stories we love most didn’t emerge fully formed. They were talked through, tested, pulled apart, and put back together over and over again.

So if every movie has a team and every book has an editor, then every brand builder should have at least one someone helping you workshop the script.

A Good Takeaway

So many of my best stories this year didn’t come from sitting alone at my desk trying to be insightful. They were shaped in rooms full of people I trust, in coffee chats with peers, and in strategy sessions with coaches who could see what I couldn’t.

I believe we all need places and people that give us room to talk through the mess before we make it public. Spaces where we can practice out loud, test ideas, get honest reactions, and understand what resonates.

In my groups, I found that sometimes the story isn’t that hard to shape at all. Sometimes it’s just hard to share. And that’s when having an intimate, safe space allows you to build up enough courage to tell it more publicly.

So, as you think about where to invest your time and resources next year to improve your storytelling and build your brand, I hope you look for a community or group of peers you can regularly practice with. Or a place like my little local karaoke bar, where you can show up honestly, be awkward, and share half-baked ideas without feeling the pressure to be impressive or polished.

We all need a place to feel seen and connect through imperfection. To see others clearly so we can better understand ourselves. Places to play and practice picking up the mic without the fear of judgment or attachment to the outcome.

These are the places where we can feel like we matter, because we do. These are the places I want to create and spend more time in next year.

A Few Good Resources

1. If my community sounds like the place you want to be, you can apply to join the next cohort here.
2. If LinkedIn is your focus, my friend Stay's Content Circle community is a wonderful space to learn.
3. If you want live events and a place to meet other creatives, CreativeMornings is a free community with tons of opportunities for intimate meetups.

Hope you have a good one,
Renee