Building Trust in Trying Times

My mission has pivoted amid the COVID-19 crisis. While I’m still using storytelling as what I consider to be one of the most effective tools for social change, I’m focusing my efforts in one domain: helping small businesses.

A couple of weeks ago, I co-hosted a webinar with the Better Business Bureau called Storytelling: A Tool for Survival.

The primary audience was small businesses struggling to stay afloat amid the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. And while I don’t think that storytelling is a singular solution to everything, I do believe it can be an important part.

In times of crisis, the right story has the power to persuade, to inspire, and to drive action—whether you are a small business struggling to survive or a governor pleading for ventilators. But how do we tap into the most effective storytelling tools to accomplish what we need most as small businesses—and as a society?

It turns out that what will work for small businesses will work for medium ones too. And large ones. And non-profits. And individuals who simply want to make a bigger impact. The lessons of storytelling are applicable nearly everywhere.

Here you’ll find a five-minute excerpt of the most salient parts of the webinar.

For the full 40-minute recording with all the details, click here.

Just this morning, I got an email from a small fishing tackle shop who’d attended the webinar and decided to post a personal story on his social media channels, using the very approaches we discussed in the excerpt above. Hundreds of dollars in donations and gift card purchases started pouring in from his audience.

This stuff works, people. Let’s use it. Let’s make great storytelling a big part of the new normal.

Stay strong,
Amina