I don’t know how to read because I’m poor

“I don’t know how to read because I’m poor.” 

I’m playing school with my kids when Olivia, my youngest, says that, and so much goes through my head. 

I’m surprised she is already thinking about stuff like that, she’s not even 5.

I’m sad because she has to. 

And I have no idea what to tell her. 

Then I look at my wife and she’s… laughing. 

“Olivia just said she doesn’t know how to read because she’s poor, why do you think that’s funny??”

“No! She said she’s four, not poor!”

“Oh. That makes a lot more sense...”

I’m a little embarrassed, but I’m mostly relieved my daughter is still a little kid. 

Even if that won’t last. 

Zoom in, not out 

The biggest mistake most people make when they tell a story is that they try to cover too much: too many events, too much time, too many characters. That makes it incredibly difficult to tell a good story–and impossible to tell a short one. 

But that’s easy to fix: 

• If you want to tell me about how crazy your family is, don’t tell me about your whole childhood; tell me about one Christmas dinner

• If you want me to understand how toxic your job was, don’t tell me about the six months you were there; tell me about one awful meeting with your boss 

Pick one example, one moment in time, and let that that stand for all the rest. If you want to make it even clearer, just add “…and it was always like that.” 

Size matters

Take the story above: it’s a tiny fragment of my life as a parent, and not a particularly meaningful one (it actually just happened yesterday). It doesn’t tell you everything about my relationship with my kids–it doesn’t even tell you much, if I’m honest. 

But it does tell you: 

• That I worry my kids are growing up too fast

• That I have a bit of a social conscience 

• That I don’t mind sharing my mistakes

• How much I live in my own head 😅

And, if I’ve done my job well, it also communicates the bittersweet joy of watching your children growing up. 

I only needed 11 short sentences to get all of that across, and that’s because I focused on a moment in time. 

Explaining things is hard, takes longer and it’s boring. That doesn’t help anyone. Instead, zoom all the way in, find a real-life example, and share that. 

Size matters: small moment, big impact 🤘

-Francisco 

Whenever you're ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

1. Getting clarity through your story to stand out from all the other coaches, speakers and entrepreneurs out there 

2. If you dream of speaking on the Red Dot, take this Scorecard and instantly discover how likely your idea is to be accepted by a TED-style organizing committee

3. If you (or your team) got any storytelling challenges, I’m sure there’s something we can do together ;-)

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