The Story You’re Sitting On Is the One Someone Else Needs to Hear

The fridge was empty. Not low on options, empty: no milk, no eggs, nothing but a single package of ramen noodles and a box of store-brand macaroni because the real kind was already out of reach. Michelle Shaeffer’s son came out of his room hungry that morning in a cockroach-infested apartment in rural Tennessee, about as uncomfortable a place as you can put a girl from Alaska who’s always been afraid of bugs, and when he saw what was for breakfast again, he started to cry. She sat down on the kitchen floor, wrapped her arms around him, and cried too, because the one job she had left, feeding the child she’d chosen to live for, felt impossible that morning. That’s the floor she was sitting on the day she decided nothing about her life was allowed to stay the same. Everything worth pulling from her Lake Las Vegas session starts on that floor.

What actually happened before that kitchen floor?

Two years earlier she was eighteen and pregnant, and life had gotten dark enough that she’d decided to end it. She’s told this part on webcasts before: in the middle of making that decision, her baby kicked, and something in her recognized a reason to keep going that she hadn’t been counting. She pulled herself together and started making better choices, one at a time, the way you do when there’s no shortcut available. Two years later came the empty fridge, and somehow that second low point cut deeper than the first, maybe because by then she’d thought she’d already turned the corner. Sitting on that floor, she made herself one promise: whatever it took, however hard she had to work, her son would never wake up to nothing again.

What did her own readers end up teaching her?

She started blogging in 2008, almost by accident, answering the same questions her prospects kept asking until it was easier to post the answers once and point people to them. She didn’t know what a keyword was. She’d never studied search engine optimization. People found the blog anyway. What she didn’t expect was how much the readers on the other side of it would end up teaching her.

• Everyone has potential, and it’s fine to say so out loud. She didn’t think anyone would want to read what she wrote. Most people who ever start a blog think exactly that on day one.
• Vulnerability is what actually gets read. The posts that pulled in comments and shares weren’t the polished ones. They were the ones where she named the real problem she’d had and how she’d worked her way through it.
• Almost nobody is as alone as they think. Every time she wrote about an actual struggle, the same reply showed up underneath it: you too? I thought I was the only one.

That third one is the one she keeps coming back to. A woman she barely knew watched someone else get up on stage, terrified, and thought: if she can do that, I can do that. It cost the speaker nothing to be honest about being scared. It gave the woman in the audience permission she didn’t know she needed.

Why does the reason you started rarely stay the reason you keep going?

When she first started her business, her why was simple and non-negotiable: her paycheck bought the groceries, so there was no version of the day where she didn’t show up and make it work. That why carried her through plenty of hard weeks on its own. But somewhere after the business started working, the why moved on her. She realized that the exact moment she’d been in, sitting on a kitchen floor with nothing in the fridge, was happening to somebody else right now, and that person didn’t yet know it was possible to get out of it. Her story won’t land with everyone who hears it. But it will land with someone, and that someone is the whole reason to keep telling it.

So what’s your story? And more importantly, who’s waiting to hear it?

That question is worth sitting with longer than it takes to read a blog post. It isn’t rhetorical. Somewhere there’s a person living the version of your worst morning who has never heard anyone say out loud that it gets different, and the only reason they’d believe it coming from you is that you actually lived it first.

What do you actually do with the story once you’ve found it?

She closed her session with a few plain commitments, and one reframe that mattered more than the rest combined. Commit to sticking with it even after you mess up, because getting back up is most of the game. Put real time into figuring out your own strengths instead of copying somebody else’s approach, since every person she’d watched succeed built the business a different way once they stopped imitating and started working from what they were actually good at. Keep growing, keep learning, and keep questioning, but change the question itself. Stop asking whether you can do this. Start asking how you can do this.

It sounds like a small edit. It isn’t. One version keeps you standing at the edge of the pool, running the same doubt in a loop. The other one gets you in the water and starts you looking for the next handhold instead of the next excuse.

As she put it plainly to a room full of people who’d all had their own version of that kitchen floor, “I promise you, you have potential.” The line only carries weight because she’d already spent twenty minutes proving she meant it about herself first. Nobody in that room needed a marketing degree to use what she’d just handed them. They needed a real moment, told honestly, aimed at the one person still sitting on their own kitchen floor wondering if it’s ever going to be different.

The full session goes further than what’s above, including how she turned that story into a simple content habit the whole room could copy that same week. Watch it in full, free, when you Create your free account.

The full session transcript follows below.

Transcript

She's absolutely brilliant. She's known as the girl blogger. You guys know her for all the webcasts, right? Michelle Schaefer.

Give it up for Michelle Schaefer. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

All right. Can we? Awesome. Thank you for getting rid of the giant me.

Who's excited to be here? Yeah! All right. We've been talking about revolution.

And I want to start. I'm going to talk about the 21-day blogging challenge, but I want to start by sharing with you how blogging changed my life. And if you saw me speak in Orlando, you may have seen some of these slides. But I just kind of want to share a few words that have been true about me at different points during my life.

You may identify with some of these. Go back one slide. One slide too many. When you look at blogging, what you see is a lot of different things.

You see a lot of different things. You see a lot of different things. What you really have to start with is what's your why for doing it? What's your why for being here today?

I've shared a few times on webcasts, you guys probably know me from the webcasts, what my story is and some of the things that I've been through in life. And I used to think that because of all these things, that I didn't really have any potential. That nothing would ever really come of me being here. I've shared before that at one point in my life, I was so depressed, so hopeless, that I was ready to commit suicide.

I thought there was no purpose for me to live, there was no reason to keep going. And as I was about to do that, I was pregnant at the time, I was 18 and my baby kicked. And I realized I couldn't make that choice, that I had a reason to live, and it was my child. And so I pulled myself together and started trying to move forward and trying to make better choices, trying to change where I was at in life.

And about two years later, I hit an even lower point. I was living in rural Tennessee in a cockroach-infested apartment, not a fun place to be when you're a girl from Alaska who is afraid of all bugs, because it's too cold, we don't have very many there. And my son woke up one morning and came out to me, and it was early in the morning, he was hungry, he wanted breakfast. And I went into my kitchen and opened the fridge.

There's nothing in my fridge, absolutely nothing. Looked in the cabinets, all I had was a package of ramen noodles, and a box of store-brand macaroni and cheese, because I couldn't even afford to buy Kraft. My son started crying because he didn't want to eat the same thing we'd been eating for weeks. And I remember collapsing on the floor with my arms around him, and I'm crying and I'm just, all I could think was, you know, this was my reason to live and I can't even take care of him.

I don't know what to do. And it was a moment for me that was that moment of realization. This time something really has to change. And I made myself the promise that I didn't care what it took, I didn't care how hard it was or how hard I had to work, that things were going to be different, that I would never ever be in that situation again.

And here's something that I learned. All of these words may have been true about me at some point in my life, and I know you have your own words that are true about you, things you've struggled through, places that you're struggling with right now even. But even as we're in that place, that's not all we are. And as we move forward into what, this is what was true yesterday, what's true today, this doesn't define us.

The things that we've been through may shape who we are, but they don't limit who we are right now and who we can become and step into in the future. It's our choice. It doesn't matter what we have in our past or where we started from. But you have to find your why and you have to figure out what is it that's going to make the difference for you.

This was my why. Those are my three kids. And… Okay, so…

Last my train of thought. Those are my kids, and they are really my why when I got started. But my why has changed. And I want to share with you what's changed about it and how that matters for you, how that relates to the 21 Day Blogging Challenge and what's coming next with that.

So here's the thing. I started blogging in 2008. I've been blogging for, what is that, seven years? Can't do math that fast in my head.

I started my blog in 2008, and when I first started it, it was kind of an accidental thing. I didn't have this intention that it was going to be this thing that very many people would read. But at the time, I had my own business, and I needed to find a way to get leads. So I started blogging, and I was answering the same questions so much, I thought, I'll just answer these questions on a blog, and I started getting traffic, and it was the strangest thing because I didn't know search engine optimization, I didn't know about keywords, I didn't know any of that.

All I knew was, here's a blog, I can put stuff on it. And somehow people found it. And there were three things really that readers have taught me over the last few years. One of them was to realize that we all have potential, and that it's okay to acknowledge that.

I didn't think anybody would want to read what I wrote. Has anybody ever wondered that? Is anybody going to read what I write? I promise you, you have potential.

People will want to read what you write. You just have to find the right people. And I'll tell you how to do that in a minute. The second thing I learned from my readers was the power of vulnerability.

I'm a very private person. It's difficult for me, like I would imagine many of you, to share some of those personal things just with the world. You put it on a blog, and it's out there. Anybody can come and read it, and that can be a little intimidating when you think about it.

But what I learned was that when I shared the struggles that I was going through, and the things that I was frustrated with, or the things that I had gone through and I'd figured out, how to get past, those were the posts that people connected with. When they saw me share, OK, this is the problem I had. Here's the solution I found. Here's how you can implement it.

That's when I started to really get people coming to my blog and leaving me comments and sharing it on social media. And I went, oh, it's OK for me to admit I didn't always know everything. It's OK for me to admit I still don't know everything. I still have a lot to learn.

Because when people see you being vulnerable and they realize you're not that different from them, they can learn from you. And they can identify with you. And the third thing that I learned from my readers was that I'm not alone. Sometimes we feel alone in whatever we're dealing with.

And I realized that when I started putting posts out there that really shared, here's where I came from. This is what I struggled with. I learned that I wasn't alone, not just for me. But I got this chorus of comments where people said, really?

You too? I thought I was the only one who struggled with that. And that's a powerful thing. Because when people realize someone else that they see out there understands where they're coming from, understands what they've been through or what they're struggling with right now, there's a spark of hope in them.

That they go, OK, this person started where I did, and yet here's where they are now. If they can do it, I can do it. You know, I get very nervous before I speak on stage. And several years ago, I remember I went to an event and I saw this woman get up on stage and speak.

And it was this huge moment of realization for me because I went, because I knew her personally. And we had talked before she went on stage about how nervous she was. And I thought, if she can do that, I know I can do that. It was a moment that I just had hope that things could be different if I made the decision to take the risk.

We've been talking a lot about decisions and taking risks this weekend. That's one of the biggest things that I've learned from blogging is that I'm not alone and that people need to hear my story to know they're not alone. That they can change things and they can make a difference. So, I want to ask you a question.

What's your story? What's your story? I want you to think back to some of the moments in your life and imagine what it felt like to be in that place. You know when you made a decision that things would be different?

For me, it was holding my child, crying, because I couldn't afford to buy food. What was your moment? We've heard people share on the webcast and from stage moments like being in bankruptcy, moments like being homeless or on welfare, moments where you realize that what you're doing, getting up and going to work every day, you're not passionate about. You hate your life, you're exhausted, you're drained because you're not doing something you love.

Or maybe the moment was when you realized there was more to you than what other people saw, that you had more potential. But what was that moment for you? Do you have it in your mind? Think back to that moment.

I want you to keep that in your mind for a moment. I told you before, my why has evolved. And my why has changed since I started my business. Originally, I started my business and I was determined to keep it going because my paycheck was what bought the groceries and that had to happen.

There was no ifs, ands, there was no maybe I'll work today. No, it was I'm going to make this happen. No matter how hard it is or what else is going on, I'm going to make it happen because that's my why. My kids need fed.

But as my business took off and things got a little easier and things started working, I came to another realization. And that was that moment that I had been in, that moment you're imagining that you remember you were in, there's other people out there right now in that moment. And they're waiting for you. They're waiting for you to show them that they can change their lives, that they can have hope, that things can be different in the future.

Those people may not resonate at all with my story. They might hear it and think, oh, that's nice. But they may resonate with your story. You may be the voice that they need to hear to take action and change their life.

So what's your story? And more importantly, who's waiting to hear it? Who's waiting for you to come and say, maybe you're just frustrated with life, maybe your enthusiasm has gone, you're not passionate anymore. I can show you how to get that back.

I can show you how to take your life to another level where you're doing what you love every day, where you have the freedom to not have to go into an office and work. Who loves working from home? Or in this case, working from Vegas. Yeah.

We have something that other people need, that they want. People don't want to be trapped in lives where they're not really living up to their potential. But they need to hear your story. They need to hear you say, here's where I was, here's where I'm at now, and you can do the same thing.

So my question again is, what's your story? And have you made a resolution, not just for yourself, but for the people who are waiting to hear that from you, that you're going to share it, that you're going to be aggressive about sharing it, that you're not going to let people stop you from sharing that, but you're going to get out there and tell people, because people are waiting. People are waiting. Let's talk about how this relates to the 21 Day Blogging Challenge.

All right. Here we go. Now the fun part, right? I wanted to start with that to just kind of frame why I'm so excited about this.

Because when I share my story, I know that some people it resonates with. And I know some people I'm able to inspire them and motivate them. But I know it doesn't work for everybody. It doesn't resonate with everybody.

But when I log into our Facebook group, and I see everybody posting about their project, and posting about their passions and the things that excite them, you know what goes through my mind? Look at how many lives we're touching. Look at how many people we're reaching through all these different voices sharing their stories and sharing their passions. Do you realize the potential of that?

To make a difference for people? The potential is huge. So, 21 Day Blogging Challenge. We are getting ready to move into Phase 2.

If you thought Phase 1 was awesome, wait until you see what we have in Phase 2. As you know, we've taken content, we've made that a little bit easier. No? Yeah?

Have we made that easier? Yes! Next, we're going to do the same thing for traffic. Yeah!

I know you guys have been asking in the Facebook group, and I haven't given away too many details, but this is what's coming next. We have been working behind the scenes like crazy. They're not kidding when they tell you, we've been working hard. We have been working behind the scenes like crazy to take the same type of templates that you have for your content, where you click a button, you answer the questions, you hit post.

We're going to do the same thing with promotion for you. And give you a video that says, here's how to share it on Facebook, here's how to share it on Twitter, here's how to get followers in these places. Yeah, right? And we're going to make it simple.

You guys seem excited about that. The next thing, once we've got traffic figured out for you, and all the training in place, and the buttons to push, we're going to circle back to leads. Because once you've got the traffic, you've got to get leads. Travis gave away some of that already.

He told you we're putting the pop-up in place, that you'll be able to hook up to your AWeb or your GetResponse to get leads. We're going to be developing more of these CTAs that go to the new funnel. Yeah. Which ultimately, these are the faces I want to see at the next event.

Right there. And then, key to all of this, is the way that we're setting it up for you is intentionally built where you can duplicate this. That's been our goal the whole time, is to make something so simple, that even if you're brand new, you can take this to your team, you can take this to the new people you enroll, and say, here, all you've got to do is follow the steps. And when you can do that, that's, as you know, grow when they can bring more people in and when you really get things rocking and rolling.

And that's how you get on the stage, like Toby and Leila had you run through the visualization. It's when you figure out how to duplicate what you're doing. And we're giving you all the tools so that you can do that and make that happen. The last point I want to talk about is community.

This is something that's been really important to us to build into the 21 Day Blogging Challenge. How many of you love the Facebook group? And I know some of you have gone and set up your own syndication groups on Facebook. Right?

There are some awesome groups happening out there. And the cool thing about connecting to a community like that is no matter what team you're on or who you enroll under or don't, you have support. You have a community of people who want to see you succeed that you can bring your people into and connect them with so that they know that other people support them and want them to succeed. The 21 Day Blogging Challenge is going to be running every single month.

You guys asked me when it starts again. We're going to start it again next month and then it's going to run every single month. The cool thing about this is when you bring people in through the new funnel and you get them started, they've got that seven day trial or that five day trial. If those first seven days we can get them blogging because it's so simple, we can get them traffic and get them sales, do you think they're going to keep going beyond their free trial?

This is how we get people to stick. We'll get them to stick around. So there's lots of really awesome things coming soon. Make sure, as Travis said, make sure you're on all the lists.

Just like Alex bugging John, make sure we have your text, make sure we have you on chat, make sure we have you on everything under the sun. Give us all of your information so we can keep you up to date with these. But the thing is you've just got to start if you haven't yet because I promise you if you just start you will figure it out. I know a lot of you have come up to me and said I've got the blogging thing figured out now but I don't know what to do with these other 15 things.

And I get that. There's a lot of pieces. But you will figure it out. You know why I know that?

Because when you know your why then you're determined to do whatever it takes to get to your goals. When you've had that moment of realization and you make a resolution that you're willing to take the risk that's when things start to change. That's when you get to the point where I don't care if I'm up till 3am I'm going to figure out how to make things work. Yeah.

You will figure it out. Especially when you realize your why is even bigger than you know. It's even bigger than you know because you have the potential to change thousands and tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands and millions of lives through what we're doing if you're willing to take the risk. We are all learning as we go.

Everybody who's been on this stage is all at different levels of where they're at with blogging, with lead generation with all of it. But every single one of us are also leaders. To somebody in kindergarten that third grader is pretty awesome. You don't have to be PhD level to be able to help people.

All you gotta do is be far enough ahead of them to show them the next step if you're willing to step up and lead. So who's waiting for you is my question. Who's waiting for you? You've had your realization you've made your resolution are you willing to take the risk?

Very very quickly I see my time counting down five rules. Number one, commit. Commit that no matter what happens you're gonna stick with it. If you mess up, big deal you get back up and you keep going.

You reach out for help if you need it like Travis said the whole team is here to help you. You call customer support I promise you they're not gonna hang up on you they're not gonna slam a door in your face like Zach had to deal with when he was in sales they're gonna be there to help you. Number two, succeed. Number two, invest.

Do I need an income disclaimer if I say the word invest? Income disclaimer none of us are typical that's probably the wrong one. Invest your time and energy I won't even say the M word invest your time and energy in yourself figure out what your strengths are you've seen everybody up here on stage has different ways that they run their business a different energy, a different way they approach it's because they figured out their strength and when you figure out your strength it's because they figured out their strength The third one is grow.

Make your decision that you're going to keep growing you're going to keep learning and always keep questioning but ask questions the right way never ever ever ask yourself can I do this? Ask yourself how can I do this? It's a completely different question it will change the way that you look at it and push your limits whatever your limits are those are just a limit right now the minute you decide it's not a limit anymore everything is gone and get out of the box so get blogging get others blogging get paid and change the world because it's about more than the money isn't it?

Also I won't read that one and when are we going to do this? Alright and with that my time is up I want to bring on the stage the perfect person the CEO forward now with the potential that we have moving into that I don't see Jay Krohn where is he hiding? My timer is flashing zero and he's hiding from us come on you guys got to cheer for him Thank you Let's keep it going for Michelle Alright You guys look pretty focused You guys look pretty ready Are you ready? One!

Two! Three! Alright Go ahead and take a quick seat for me I've just got about 30 seconds to share with you and then I'm going to get out of the way because the individual I'm going to be bringing to the stage I could not be more excited and I know you're going to want to hear from him more than you want to hear from me at this moment in time So many of you have heard me talk often about my good friend Neil Patel Now how many of you have ever heard of Neil Patel before? Alright Neil is one of the most prolific bloggers that I'm aware of I also know that Neil as a blogger cares more about conversions than almost any other blogger except for maybe ours that I've ever met Neil is someone that's worked with people like TechCrunch Microsoft, Google, Facebook companies that maybe you've heard of Neil also is a consummate marketer and has taken his application of marketing to levels of testing that few people have ever tread How many of you would love to know about a real life split test about the ROI value of either marketing using a home, a car or a watch Neil actually did that he went out and picked up a car for a day he has an unbelievable home and he has a collection of watches and he actually went through and split tested the process of readership click through and conversion based on how he was exhibiting the lifestyle marketing he was using I don't know any marketer that does that I don't know any marketer that cares enough about split testing and optimization to literally bring it into their personal life I also know that he's excited to be here today because Neil is passionate about blogging you really have to be to get to 700,000 unique visitors a month and he's passionate because I shared with him that we here at the Empower Network family have without question the largest most engaged blogging community on the planet so I couldn't think of a better intersection of somebody with incredible skills and talents incredible results in data and a community that when it is shared with it, if you take action on it it is going to take your business to the next level in ways you can't even imagine how many of you are excited about that?

Ladies and gentlemen this is Neil Patel's first time here with the Empower Network family so let's make sure we welcome him right let's get up on our feet and let's make sure that Neil feels like he is part of the Empower Network family as he shares with you what is working in his business today driving record setting results Ladies and gentlemen of Empower Network I give you Neil Patel