Podcast Transcript:
If you’ve ever felt like there are some people who are just amazing storytellers and really, really good public speakers you can’t quite put your finger on why. I’m going to teach you a methodology that will help you with storytelling, job interviewing, speaking, writing and development in your business. Stay tuned.
Hey, there, I’m Jillian Kendrick and welcome to the Momentum Marketing Podcast. I’m a mama, a wife, an entrepreneur and a three time best selling co-author in each episode. You’ll get real world, practical advice and strategies and maybe a parenting tip or two along the way. If you’re ready to create a business that supports your family and your lifestyle, then you’re in the right place.
Hi there. Welcome back for another episode. I’m really glad that you’re joining me here today. What are you up to? What’s happening in your life? Drop me a comment or send me an email to hello@jilliankendrick.com. I actually personally reply to every single one of those. So anyone who has reached out to me before, you know that you’ve gotten a personal reply, and anybody in the future who does send me a message, I actually do check those and reply to all of them. I don’t just try to reply to all of them. I literally do reply to every single one personally. If you haven’t done so already, please head on over to wherever you get your podcast, whether it’s iTunes, Spotify. I think there’s a whole bunch of other places that we push this podcast out to. I wish I had that list in front of me, but please send me some kind of a rating whether you love the podcast and you give it five stars or if you’re like, oh, it’s OK. I would love to hear from you and see what you think of the podcast because that helps me create future content or if you have a question that you want answered ideas for future episodes, please let me know.
For anyone who’s been listening to the podcast for a while. You might know that my husband and I have been on a fertility journey to try and have baby number two and kind of mixed reviews with the fertility thing. It is incredibly frustrating as anybody who has been through this knows. And whether you’re doing the IVF route, or the IUI route, or the timed route, or the medical ovulation, which is what we’re trying to do. It’s a really wild, insane journey. And all I have to say is I’ve spent my entire life as the child of an immigrant and someone who grew up with a really strong work ethic. I grew up having this idea in my head that no matter what happened in life, no matter what situation I got into, I could just outwork and outperform. I could work my way out of anything. And that was always true up until this point of my life where we’re going through fertility stuff because it really is 1000 different things that have to play into creating a baby that literally is a stinking miracle that any of us are on this planet. And this journey has certainly made me appreciate life and appreciate the value of the life that we have so much more than I did before. But it’s so crazy and there’s thousands of things that play factors into it and every doctor might have a little bit of a different way of doing things. And so it’s just been really interesting. We finally had an opportunity this past month. Unfortunately, we got a negative test just the other day, but at least we got to try. Which has been more than we have for the last couple of months. So it’s going well, right? Like, it’s in the right direction and it’s exhausting and frustrating to think that this is the thing that I can’t work my way out of this is the thing that I can’t put hard work into it, and try or iterate or fix. Or can’t “hard work” my way into having a baby. You just can’t like, that’s what infertility does. So it’s been a really interesting journey and been very humbling to just accept that we kind of have to go with the flow. And at the end of the day, if we are successful, then that’s amazing. And if we’re not successful, then at the very least I can say that we gave it our all and we tried or we did everything that we could to have the opportunity to try and I can figure out a way to make peace with that. So that’s been really interesting. It’s been a very different way of looking at problems from a non entrepreneurial, hard work kind of perspective. So that’s our update on that.
What I want to talk to you about today is called the S.T.A.R. method or the S.T.A.R. methodology. This is a technique for job interviews, storytelling, copywriting. You can use this for multiple different things. I just discovered this. One of the people that I follow was talking of how she has developed this skill of being a really, really good storyteller. And whenever a situation arises or whenever she has to give an explanation of something, she uses the S.T.A.R. Method. And I was like, oh, this is really interesting. Please tell me more about this because I love anything to do with marketing and storytelling and methods and tactics and just gimme, gimme, gimme. I was really curious about what she was sharing and so the S.T.A.R. method. S.T.A.R. stands for an acronym of: Situation, Task, Action, and Results. So this is the way that you kind of formulate the thing that you’re going to say in order to be a good storyteller or in order to be a good copywriter.
If you’re listening to this, you’re probably an entrepreneur, but you could look at it from the perspective of job interviews, you could look at it from the perspective of when you are being interviewed for a podcast or a television show or something else. You want to think through the process in which we build the story and explain the situation that happened.
How many of us have ever been in a job interview where somebody asked something like: Tell me about a time that there was a conflict with a coworker and how you resolve that conflict. That’s a pretty classic job interview question. So the S.T.A.R. methodology: Situation, Task, Action, and Results, is the way that you can go about thinking of it.
The S stands for situation. You want to explain the situation and give context and examples leading up to what had to be done to resolve that conflict or leading up to what led to the conflict. So if you can explain the situation and give a bit of context without giving every single detail away, then that sets the stage explaining the situation for how you’re going to lay out explaining this conflict resolution.
Question number two is Task. Next, you want to talk about the task, or the challenge and what were the components of those challenges? How did you or other people take responsibility for completing them or maybe not take responsibility? And that was part of the conflict?
A is Action. Next, you want to describe the actions that you took personally or that you took as a team in order to resolve that conflict or reach an end goal. Highlight your skills, characteristics, traits, or anything like that, that the interviewer is trying to get from you.
R is Result. You wanna explain the outcome or the result that was achieved from the actions or the effort that you put in. And it’s important to highlight either skills or things or methods or tactics or people or the resolution to the conflict that you ended up having.
So let me give you an example of this as best as I can off the cuff in the moment talking about maybe my story of how I got into entrepreneurship because that tends to be the question that a lot of people ask me for one reason is why did you start your business? Why did you become an entrepreneur? How did you become an entrepreneur? What led up to you becoming an entrepreneur? The origin story is, I kid you not, everybody’s number one question. I have rarely been interviewed or done a speaking gig where they didn’t ask some sort of origin story question. So off the cuff using the S.T.A.R. method, let me give you my origin story.
The situation leading up to me becoming an entrepreneur was that I had taken an internship that I absolutely loved. I graduated college with a degree in music. I had an internship that I loved. But it was early 2009, the economy was bad. There was a hiring freeze at the company that I was doing an internship for and there were no jobs to be had. There was absolutely nothing. I had a degree in music. So it wasn’t even like I could fall back on a business degree or being an accountant or something with actual tangible skills. I went to college to be an opera singer and left college with like I said, zero tangible skills and really had to gain experience and figure out my way in a very bad economy and a world with zero jobs. Unfortunately, the job market for college students isn’t much better 14 years later. But hopefully, this will give some inspiration to somebody out there. So that was the situation.
The task, what needed to be done was I needed a job, right? I needed the ability to make money to keep a roof over my head. Provide for myself. So I went on, it was called Odesk at the time. It’s now called Upwork or ELance. It was basically the OG freelancing website. I’m sure lots of people have heard Fiver and others like that. This was the OG original freelancing website that lots and lots of people were on. And so just for the sake of gaining experience and starting to get some work under my belt because like I said, I had a degree in music, I had no skills. I suppose I was likable and could do well at job interviews and could talk to people. And I was a really, really hard worker and very willing to learn without being paid. That was a bit of a component of what I did in the early days was, hey, I’m applying for this job. I don’t know how to work in the software, but I will figure it out. I will make it work. And while I’m learning, you don’t have to pay me, I didn’t do that excessively.
But now and again, if there was something that I really wanted to learn or I really wanted the job or I was interested in working with a certain client, I would do that. So I needed to make money. I needed to keep a roof over my head. I needed to get tangible skills. And so I on Odesk and just started freelancing. And throughout my freelancing journey of a couple of years, let’s say. Eventually I landed on a client who at the time, again, this was 2010, maybe 11. It was early, early days of very serious heavy hitter internet marketers. We’re talking, still sent long form sales letters kind of stuff. And those things actually worked. They don’t really work today. So I ended finding one of those clients working for them. The guy was actually really mean and not a nice person and I don’t think he loved himself. It was really difficult work situation. But it introduced me to a lot of the automation Softwares and other things that are still a huge component in my business on both sides of my business, my agency and for my coursework and coaching work, still part of that today.
So once I realized that I was really, really good at automation, my brain thought very linearly. I was like, OK, this is what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna specialize in this automation stuff. Get into marketing. I had always kind of loved and had a passion for marketing and human nature and psychology and what makes us tick, what makes us make decisions. And so this really fit the bill between the ability to have, like, a creative outlet, my very linear brain and my forever love of all things marketing. This really was a great career path for me and totally fit the bill.
Then I got my LLC, I got certified in a couple different Softwares and things just took off from there. The R, the Result of that is I grew a multiple six figure business. I was able to take the continued investment in myself, whether it was getting a certification or saying, OK, I wanna take this freelancing job and I need to learn this thing, but you don’t really have to pay me while I’m learn it. All of those investments in myself really led to what ultimately turned into me being a business owner and turning into an entrepreneur. It originated from not only my work ethic but my desire to have that creative outlet and do things that were important to me to learn and grow and do something that I was passionate about, which is helping other people grow and succeed as well.
So there is an off the the cuff version of the S.T.A.R. method for you of my origin story. I hope that that was helpful. I think when you can think about stories in that Situation, Task, Action, and Results sort of way. It allows you to think ahead and plan for what you’re then gonna talk about and that will give you better flowing stories. It will give you explanations that sound more like a narrative and less like you’re blabbering on. So continue to look into the S.T.A.R. method and see how you can integrate this into your own work and into your own daily practice.
I will say that the coach that I follow, who introduced me to the S.T.A.R. method, she said that she was really good at it and had had six or seven years of practicing and working on it. So by no means, am I anywhere close to that and you shouldn’t expect that of yourself either. Start to practice, go slowly, begin to incorporate this into your own vocabulary, and I think you really will see a big, big difference. I hope that was helpful. And this brought you value, make sure that you subscribe and like for more episodes.
Thanks so much for joining me on this episode of the Momentum Marketing Podcast. If listening to this has brought you value, improved your life, or given you insight on how you can build your own momentum, then please share this with a friend. And if you’re ready to grow your business on autopilot, then I want to help you get there easier and faster with a free copy of my Entrepreneur’s Survival Kit. Just leave a review of this podcast wherever you’re listening right now. Hopefully it’s a five star review and you love it, then screenshot the review and email the screenshot to hello@jilliankendrick.com. Once we confirm the review, we’ll send you a copy of the survival kit. Totally free. Thank you so much for joining me and I’ll see you on the next episode. All content is written and recorded by Jillian Kendrick Copyright 2023. All rights reserved.
The Momentum Marketing Podcast
By Jillian Kendrick
Episode: # 38
Topic: Improve your story telling with this
Contact: hello@jilliankendrick.com
Follow IG: instagram.com/automatedmama
