The best Christmas present you'll get this year

“Your package was left near the front door or porch.”

Wait, what? 

I bought these Christmas presents about two weeks ago, and they were taking forever to be delivered. 

They’re for Brian, my business partner (and his kid); we just had an amazing first year working together and this is my way to say thanks. 

But now I check the Amazon website and that’s what the delivery notice says. Is that even a thing??

Here in Barcelona they bring packages to your door and ring the bell. If no one answers they come back later, so how come my presents were left “near the front door or porch”? 

It’s an apartment, there’s no porch!! And what front door - not the building’s, surely??

So I go online and start digging, and I realise I’m screwed: 

I find endless Reddit threads of US customers complaining about packages being left out in the rain, dumped on the sidewalk or even stolen. 

Then I find the threads from all the delivery people warning each other to just drop the packages and leave to avoid being attacked by dogs or shot at. What the hell, America??

I go through the help section on Amazon’s website and they tell me to “look near your house and ask the neighbours.” 

Brian has been travelling all week. I know how precious his time at home with his family is. Now I have to ask him to go bother the neighbours he probably doesn’t even like for a package that might already have been stolen?? 

But I’ve got no other choice. 

“So, this is a little embarrassing…” I text him and explain what happened. 

“I got it! Was going to thank you today. Yes, really appreciate it man. You definitely didn’t need to do that.”

I breathe out. 

Then I remember I still haven’t gotten my wife a present. Or my family. Or the rest of the people coming over on the 25th. 

Christmas - it’s a time for joy, right? 😅

The hardest part of telling stories

 I don’t know how I’ll use that story yet, but here’s the thing: 

I have it. If an opportunity arises, I can probably tell it from the top of my head. 

It’s in the “story bank” now. 

The hardest part of telling stories is not having stories to tell - we all have them. 

The hardest part is remembering them as stories. 

Stuff happens everyday, and much of it can become a story–if you do one of two things: 

• Tell it 

• Write it down 

Something weird happens and you tell your partner? Chances are you’ll tell someone at work the next day. And you’ll tell a friend over the weekend. Boom! It’s now a story in your head. 

That’s how most people “have” stories to tell. 

What few people do, though, is to write down things that happened even if they don’t tell anyone about them. 

So they lose dozens if not hundreds of potential stories, and then they cry to me that “I don’t have any stories.” 🤦‍♂️

Start a story bank 

Here’s how you fix this: 

• Open a Note on your phone

• Start a Word or Google doc

• Use an Evernote file

Whatever is easy to access from your phone can work (you can also use a notebook, of course, but those can be lost and are harder to reference back later). 

Call it “Stories”, or “Story Bank” or something like that. 

Write down anything that’s WTF: weird, thought-provoking or funny. 

Don’t bother writing the full story, just a rough reminder of what happened, like

“December 18, 2024 - Freaked out because Xmas presents to Brian were left on the ‘front door or porch’, but he had them all along”

It might be useful to think about what the point of the story might be: 

This one could be about miscommunication (from Amazon, from Brian - though I’d never do that, Brian 😉) or how I blew up a small misunderstanding well out of proportion, so I could tag it as #miscommunication, #misunderstanding or #beingemo. 

So later when I’m looking for a story about any of these things, I can find it easily. 

Create that file right now, and start putting things down. 

Try to add something every day (that’s what I do!). 

Before you know it, you’ll have more stories than opportunities to tell them. 

And when you need a story, you’ll find it. 

That's my present to you - beats getting socks, right? ;-)

Merry Christmas!! 🤘

-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 ;-)

Thanks for reading! Reply any time.