Nothing but the Words, episode number 141, 5 Must-Have Stories to Build Your Authority in Your Book.

If you're not telling compelling stories, your book is going to fall flat.

When you're writing personal development or professional development or a book that's meant to impart knowledge or wisdom, self-help, how to, your readers want more than your knowledge and your wisdom.

They want more than your theories and your processes, your facts and your figures.

Telling the right stories will not only help them to learn the information better and integrate it better, it will also keep them reading, and it will quickly position you as the expert in their minds.

Welcome to Nothing But the Words. I'm your book coach and peak performance coach to creatives, Candice L. Davis.

In this episode, I want to talk not just so much about why storytelling is important in your book, but where you can find the stories that will help you position yourself as an expert.

So if you're writing personal development, professional development, self-help, how to, which many people write because they want to grow their positioning as an expert in their industry, then you're gonna wanna really take notes and pay attention in this episode.

So I wanna dive right into five specific sources you can turn to when you want to add stories to your book.

Now, the very first source is the source that most people are somewhat afraid of and reluctant to tap for storytelling, and that is your personal life.

But don't let that freak you out.

Don't panic.

This does not mean that you need to tell all of your business, that you give up your right to privacy, that you put relationships at risk by telling other people's stories.

No, that's not what we're talking about.

We're talking about finding stories in your personal life that actually illustrate what you're teaching in the book.

So they don't have to be that deep, although they might be.

You just want them to resonate with the reader and really be relevant to what you're teaching.

So let me give you an example.

Currently, I'm reading The Way of Excellence, a book by a gentleman named Brad Stulberg.

I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly.

And in his book, which is all about how we can achieve true greatness and fulfillment by pursuing excellence in our lives, not perfection, excellence, he tells a story about how he was working out in his garage gym.

He had just moved to Asheville, North Carolina, and he had set up a gym in his garage and he was working out, and he looks up from his bent over rows, and he's face to face with a bear.

So you'll have to read the book for yourself to see how he makes that connection to the pursuit of excellence, but it's very well done, and it's a story from his personal life that isn't overly revealing, doesn't embarrass anyone, doesn't embarrass him, and that's the type of story you wanna find.

You don't have to have had an encounter with a bear.

You just wanna find stories that are relevant to what you're teaching and will connect on a human level.

Because reading that story, I was in his shoes for a moment, imagining what I would do if I were in my garage and looked up and there was a bear staring back at me.

Those are the kinds of stories that will connect with your readers.

Doesn't have to be that wild, though.

So your first source is your personal life.

So story source number two is your professional life.

Most people feel a little bit more comfortable sharing stories from their professional life depending on what they do for work.

And those stories could be about you and your own experiences in your professional life, not necessarily about other people that you work with.

These are the kind of stories that can really reinforce your competence, but also, once again, make you a human being who has built a career or built a business, whatever it is that you're trying to teach, a person who has experience in a professional realm in dealing with these topics that you're teaching in your book.

So it could also show readers what it potentially could be like to work with you. S

o if someone is thinking of hiring you, of partnering with you in some way, or bringing you on to speak at an event, they can get a sense of what you're like as a professional from the stories you tell in your book from your professional life.

You can show what it's like to work with you, and you can show that you're a very competent professional.

And this also gives insights into how you actually apply what you teach.

So one of my coaching clients, Dr. Carmitria Burton, published her book this year in 2026, Never Wear Red Lipstick.

It's her first book, and it's all about how Black women can achieve success in life and in business.

And she tells many stories from her work in corporate America working for Fortune 500 companies.

She shows how she handled a disrespectful colleague in a work situation, and she shows exactly how she handled it, but also the struggle she went through in figuring out the best way to handle it.

She also tells stories of how she coached people who were looking to work with her company and made them better so that at what they were doing, so that they could get contracts with her company.

So she shows both the personal side of her professional life, right?

What she was dealing with internally and herself as an expert. So you can tap into your professional life for those stories.

Now, if you want to know a little bit more about why reinforcing your expertise in ways like this really, really matters when you're writing a book now more than ever, check out my free private podcast from Best Kept Secret to Center Stage.

You can find that at the link in the show notes or at www.candiceldavis.com/secret.

So check that out and you'll learn. We'll go deeper in that podcast on expertise and how you can establish it with your book and why you really need to.

So, so far we've talked about your personal life and your professional life.

You can also find stories, source number three, from your clients or your mentees or your students, or just people who you have helped achieve something similar to what your book is teaching people.

So this will position you even more as an expert because it shows how you walk other people through your process.

It offers proof of what you're able to help people or businesses or organizations accomplish.

It also shows what type of person you would be to work with if you develop the story as well.

So in Redefine Wealth For Yourself, my coaching client, Patrice Washington, I was actually co-writer on that book.

She opens a chapter with a story of how she coached a particular client to reclaim and reorganize her physical space and set it up in a way that would support her in achieving her goals.

This leads right into the chapter and what Patrice is teaching in that chapter.

Why is this important?

Because it shows us that these strategies work for someone other than Patrice.

It's very easy to write a book about strategies that have worked for you, but can you teach them to other people and show us how they work?

That shows a different level of expertise, it's proof of you knowing how to not only accomplish the thing, but also how to teach someone else how to accomplish the thing.

So that's very important to pick those kinds of stories.

And if you haven't had clients in this particular area yet, that's okay because you can pull those stories from where you've helped other people.

They didn't necessarily have to be paying you to help them achieve that goal.

So don't overlook your clients, your mentees, your students, people you've helped when you're selecting stories from your book.

It may feel like all the stories need to be focused on you.

They don't.

You can pick stories from lots of other areas, and it will make your book somewhat more fun to read, right?

Because we'll get a greater variety of stories in there.

Let's move to story source number four, public and historical figures.

I really like this one.

I think it works very well, and not enough authors do it, especially authors in the self-publishing space.

I think authors who wanna become experts can sometimes get caught up on the need to show themselves in every story in some way, but you don't have to do that.

You can also turn to public and historical figures.

In Artpreneur, written by my coaching client, Miriam Schulman, she's a brilliant artist, but also a brilliant sales coach.

She teaches people how to sell more of their art.

And in her book, she goes back to the early, early 20th century to tell the story of two art collectors.

They were sisters, Claribel and Etta Cone.

I believe they were out of Baltimore, and they amassed this enormous, renowned private collection of art back in the early 20th century.

And her book is not an art history book, but she tells the story to illustrate how today's artists can build an audience of patrons and collectors.

So it's quite relevant, and it also gives her readers the sense that they're learning more about the art world.

If they weren't familiar with these sisters already, they are learning more about the art world, but they're also noticing that Miriam is an expert on something beyond sales and beyond her own visual art.

She's an expert on the world of art, which positions her in a different way.

So that's a great way that you too can show that you explore things outside of your own small bubble by including public and historic figures in the stories that you tell in your book.

That brings us to our final story source, which is story source number five, and this one is super fun, cultural touchstones.

Doesn't have to necessarily be, pop culture, but it could.

You can also look back and find references that most people who would be reading your book would have some level of familiarity with.

And let me give you a great example.

So if you have read The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan, then you are amongst the millions of people who have at least bought it, whether they've read it or not.

I get nothing but rave reviews about this book from people.

And in the book, the authors recount the story of A Christmas Carol.

Like, they retell the story of A Christmas Carol, the Charles Dickens classic.

So even if you already know the story, it's interesting to read the way that they frame it.

And if you don't know the story, if for whatever reason maybe you come from a culture where you weren't exposed to that story, you will know it by the time they're done.

And it's an illustration of his argument or their argument that purpose determines who we are, but they do it brilliantly.

Could they have found a story from their own lives?

Of course, they could have, and they do tell stories from their own lives within the book.

Could they have found stories from clients?

Of course.

But this is something that's going to connect with readers because the vast majority of us have some semblance of knowledge about A Christmas Carol, so it's something we can relate to and connect to on a very, very human level.

Personal and professional development books, they are more than just a collection of facts and figures and strategies, especially if you're writing that book to position yourself as an authority in people's minds.

Just giving them the facts won't do that.

You wanna connect on a deeper level.

You wanna create something of an emotional connection, and the way that you do that is by sharing these types of stories.

So let's go over the five sources that you can turn to for stories.

And there are others, but these are five main ones.

They are your personal life, your professional life, your clients or students, mentees, people you've helped, public and historical figures, and cultural touchstones, like A Christmas Carol.

I hope that this has been valuable for you.

If you've gotten value from this episode, please do me the huge favor of leaving a positive review and sharing this podcast with your friends.

The more people who listen to it, the more I'm able to invest in making it really great for you.

And if you're serious about writing a book that really shines a spotlight on your expertise, I wanna invite you to get free access to my private podcast, From Best Kept Secret to Center Stage.

It is just three episodes plus a fourth bonus episode.

All the episodes are fairly short, just like the episodes I do here, and it shows you how I coach my clients to write an impactful authority book that amplifies your brand and really makes it stand out, allows you to require premium fees, and moves you out of the background and into the spotlight.

In episode number one of that private podcast, you will learn exactly why author experts are securing the kinds of opportunities and clients that you desire, and how you can do the same when you write the right book.

In episode number two, I break down my proven framework, the Spark Writing Framework, that will help you write a book that actually gets results for your readers, but also for you.

Episode number three gives you the essential elements you need to go from just thinking about writing a book, considering it, to actually getting it done.

And finally, episode number four, the bonus episode, lifts the curtain and gives you an inside look at how you can get the kind of support so many of your favorite writers had as they wrote their books.

You can get immediate access to the private podcast at www.candiceldavis.com/secret or at the link in the show notes.

Thanks for listening to Nothing But The Words. I'm your book coach and peak performance coach to creatives, Candice L. Davis, and I'll see you next time.