“My life? It’s just wake up, work, eat, sleep. Nothing special.”

This is the usual theme during my initial consultations with clients for personal branding.

And you’ll be surprised by how many people think of their life this way.

I often encounter clients who believe their lives are ‘too mundane’ to be story-worthy.

For them, it is only a good story when they do something remarkable, attend events, achieve milestones, etc.

Look, all these things definitely make a good story.

But you don’t necessarily need to do extraordinary things to find that good story.

So in such cases, I use the “Zoom Out, Zoom In” Method. (Yeah, I made up the name, but the idea is gold!)

Consider this example of a client who is a logistics manager and wants to spread logistics education through authentic stories.

He says: “I just wake up, go to the office, come back home, have dinner and sleep.”

This is when he is viewing his day in the: ‘Zoom Out’ Mode. To find a story, we need to ‘Zoom in.’

I’ll usually ask him to give me more details between his waking up and going to the office.

His reply:

“Uhm, okay. I woke up, brushed my teeth, had my breakfast, quickly ordered groceries from Zepto, then tried to book a cab (but I couldn’t book one on any app, so I just decided to call my friend to pick me up.”

That’s it. I can already see two stories relevant to his brand.

Story 1: Ordering groceries from Zepto. He has a story where he can share his experience with ordering daily groceries from Zepto, and then talk about how the logistics of Zepto work to deliver in 10 minutes. How do they do it? Can it get better?

Story 2: Struggling to book a cab provided another topic of interest. It opens up questions about the logistics behind cab services. Why are cabs sometimes unavailable?

Now, if you think in first principles, what am I doing here?

I am just priming the client’s brain to see his/her life as a series of “stories”, not “events.”

Simple. I can’t tell you how effective this simple idea is.

After 5-6 consultations, my clients are already ready with tons of stories from their professional and personal lives.

The key is to apply this method across various timelines. In this case, we zoomed in on a single day in my client’s routine.

However, you can extend this approach to cover their entire life, a specific year, or even just a week.

It’s an incredibly effective way to build rapport and come up with authentic stories.

Now all that pressure to live an eventful life seems unnecessary.

As artists, entrepreneurs and creators, all we have to do is “Live.”