You are the authority of your story. But you won’t achieve maximum clarity of your story until you put it in a book and practice storytelling. Penny Zenker presents Michelle Prince, the CEO of Performance Publishing Group. The Performance Publishing Group is a “partner” publishing company dedicated to making a difference, one story at a time. Michelle explains how writing your story helps you gain clarity of your priorities. Once you nail your priorities down, you’re better equipped to manage your time. Tune in and use the power of storytelling to take control of your time!

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Listen to the podcast here:

Storytelling: Your Story Builds Authority With Michelle Prince

I am excited to once again have a great guest that’s going to help you to work smarter in multiple ways. I always love that because strategies are cross contextual. We can always learn how to leverage multiple areas of our productivity. Michelle Prince is here now. She’s a bestselling author and a sought-after motivational speaker like myself. She’s a self-publishing expert and a life coach. She’s the CEO and Founder of Performance Publishing Group, a partner publishing company dedicated to making a difference. There’s a lot more here. She’s also worked with Zig Ziglar and got a lot of cool stuff in her bio, but you can go read about that. Let’s hear from Michelle directly, without further ado. Welcome, Michelle.

Thanks so much for having me.

It’s great to have you here. I know we said we’re going to cover multiple things here and that’s exciting, but before we do that, what’s your story? Since we’re going to be talking about story too, tell me about your story.

That’s what I love asking people about. My backstory is I started my career working for Zig Ziglar, which was an amazing experience. That’s a long and crazy story of how that happened but it laid the foundation for my love for personal development and everything I do now. I ended up leaving there to work in Corporate America. I spent thirteen years in software sales and I realized that it wasn’t what I was designed to do.

In 2008 and 2009, I wrote a book. The intention was to share my story and have it documented for my kids. That one step opened up a full-time business of speaking, coaching, doing seminars and many steps in between. My story is getting sick and tired of being sick and tired, putting my foot down and saying, “I need to do something that is right for me. It’s my time. What does it look like if I start my own business?”

We have more in common because I used to be in technology as well. Here’s my theory about this. Technology is a productivity enabler. Somebody asked me, “How does all this fit together, what have you been doing in your career, and then you come to this?” It could be that you are productivity-minded in that sense of looking to get to what makes the most sense, and where time is going to be of most value. We take stepping stones to get there. Does that resonate with you at all?

Yeah. I never put it together like that, but you’re right. In software, there’s a process and a means to an end, and you move fast. I love technology. I wasn’t loving being in sales, but I still love and leverage it. You then figure out how to juggle or manage more.

If you want to get something done, give it to a busy person.

That’s right. I used to always say, “I’m at my best when I’m busy,” but then I realized how wrong that is. I was just multitasking. I wasn’t being as productive as I could have been.

The theory behind that is not that we’re busy, but that we have to think about it differently. We have to be smarter about the way that we do things. Otherwise, we won’t be able to get the things done that we need to get done. It does make sense. You’ve written something about procrastinators. Is that because you have a tendency to procrastinate?

No, not at all. It’s been said that you teach, train and write about things that you most need to hear. For me, that was the case. I wrote my first book, which was a personal development book. My second book was written with a purpose. I was in the process of starting a business. I was still working my software job when I started. I was juggling two kids in elementary school. I was so busy. It was a life or death. I had to figure out how to manage my time better or I was going to lose it.

I started studying time management and productivity. I started learning all these tips and tricks like time-blocking and all of these other things. I started writing it down and sharing it with people here and there. Before I knew it, I ended up writing a book on it, but not because I had this all figured out. I wrote a book on it because I had to go through the process of focusing and managing my time in order to do all the things that I wanted to do.

I get it. I tell people all the time that I’m not perfect. I’m doing this and teaching this, but I have the same challenges. I might just be quicker to come to a way to verbalize how to work on it than someone else. We got that bug of self-development that we can’t help but teach others what we’re learning.

You just pass it on. If it’s good information, you don’t want to keep it to yourself.

In that context, I do ask each guest, and it’ll be interesting to hear yours. I like to ask people, what’s your definition of productivity and why?

For me, it is being very intentional with what I do and blocking my time for priorities. There’s freedom, and I’m not allowing too much freedom. I know that doesn’t make sense. For me, I am a huge time blocker. I put things in my calendar, and I know exactly what I need to be working on. I also set a lot of boundaries of when I’m available or when I’m not available. I’m a big believer in scheduling my more big blocks or important things first. My kids are now older. My youngest left for college, but when they were young, I scheduled every football game, basketball game, soccer game, tennis match, you name it. Nothing got in the way of that. I’m a big believer that nobody forces us to put things in our calendar and do things. We do have a lot more control than we think. With that comes a lot of freedom.

You said, “It creates freedom but at the same time, it seems like it doesn’t.” I think that’s the productivity paradox. It’s that less is more type of thing and by blocking, being specific, and filling up your calendar, it’s creating more freedom and space for those boundaries. That’s why we have the emotional challenge to accept it. When you talk about control, we know that to be true. We know that multitasking doesn’t work. There are tons of different articles and everything about it but we resist it.

I’ll be the first to say that we’re not perfect. There’s plenty of times that I find myself with twenty screens open and I’m thinking, “Why am I overwhelmed?” It’s because I am trying to multitask. Come back to the basics, time block, one activity, stay focused, and then you get more done, even though it feels like you’re getting less.

You’re doing it sequentially. I was at a workshop and we were talking about different a-has and whatnot. One of the gentlemen was like, “No wonder I start my day with so much stress.” He comes to his desk first thing in the morning, and he has 25 windows open from the previous day. Immediately, he’s overwhelmed. We do have to look at little things to step back and start with a clean slate, especially those big things first. You’re not going to get to those big things if you have 25 windows open that are reminding you that you’ve got all these other little things to do.

They’re not the important things. They’re not the things that someday you’ll be like, “I wish I would have done that.” Checking Facebook is definitely not on that list or even emails sometimes.

We’re talking a little bit in this segment about time management, and some of the tips and tricks that you like to share when you are time-blocking. Do you have a different twist to it? Some people who are reading are probably familiar with time blocking as scheduling the activities or the categories of work that they’re going to do. That’s the way I look at it is more categories of work. Do you have a special way that you do that works for you?

I don’t know if it’s that different or special for me. I do it in a couple of ways. One is I’m big on whatever I have to get done on that day, I block it. This is going to sound silly but even a small little phone call like I have a sick dog so I’m putting it on my calendar for ten minutes to call the vet. This is honest to God a true story. If I didn’t have it on my calendar, I would start to get busy. I use mine as a little bit of a to-do but also don’t do anything else at this time.

Your story is a combination of your passions and your experiences. Share on X

Another example is I’m leaving town in two days to go to back-to-back training events that I’m doing. I have a lot of preparation, slides and things like that. I have pretty much every hour of the day slated out to do one particular thing. When I do that, I put my phone away. I shut off everything so I can get that done. It’s basic time-blocking but I do like to color-code it as well, especially when my kids were younger. I had a color for my kids’ stuff, a color if I was out speaking, a color if I was doing office work, and a color for date nights with my husband.

The big rock is what people know, but Zig Ziglar had this great thing called The Wheel of Life. There are seven categories. I like to map mine around my categories in The Wheel of Life. It’s my career, personal life, spiritual life, physical health, and those kinds of things. The reason that’s cool is you can look at your calendar at a glance or at a high view of the week. Let’s say your career is red, and your kids and your husband are purple. If you look at your week and all you see is red and there’s no purple, you know you’re out of balance. The opposite is true. If you’re out playing and you’re doing everything but doing work, then that’s out of balance too.

I like that too. I like to work with colors as well. Are there any apps? If I were to wipe off your phone and you got a new phone, what are the first things other than email and your calendar? Those are obvious based on what you said with time blocking. What are some helpful apps that help people to be a little bit more productive or manage their time better?

There are so many. I always tell people, “You have to find the one that you feel most comfortable with.” There’s To Do, which is connected to your Office 365 account. If you have Microsoft Office, that works great. You can download the app to your phone. I personally liked something called Alarmed. It’s like alarm, the way it sounds. It’s the same concept but I like it better. It tells me anytime I have anything to do. I use this for all my follow-up calls. If I have a conversation with someone and they say, “Give me a call in three months,” I put it in Alarmed. It’ll pop up and alert me when it’s come time to do that.

It’ll alert me what’s not been done. I can also go back and track and see what I’ve got done all week if I wanted to. I personally liked that one but it’s very similar to To Do. It’s the simplicity of it that’s a little bit better. Believe it or not, I use the Notes app a lot. It’s a sticky notes app. Instead of having sticky notes everywhere all over your desk, which I still have sticky notes, but I can take them with me everywhere I go.

We were moving my son into college. I have a note of all of my tasks that I need to get done, getting him set up, packed up, and all of that stuff. What I do is I come in here and look at my running list of tasks. From there, I take what I need to do for that day. I schedule it into either Alarmed if it’s a couple of days out, or I put it straight away into my calendar as a block. Depending on if it takes me 15, 30, 45 minutes or 1 hour, I’ll do that.

Here’s one thing and this is a time management thing but it works well for me. I try hard not to do more than one-hour blocks because of the reality that somebody’s going to text, call or email me. You have to do something. Instead of feeling that guilt of like, “I didn’t do this and this,” I block and then I have open block time. That’s my time to respond to emails, texts and all that stuff.

I call it planning your flexibility so that you have time to be reactive. The other time is time to be proactive or whatever needs to get done. That’s important. We have this tendency to overdo it one way or the other. It’s like over-schedule the calendar, overbook, back-to-back everything, no transition time, or leave too much open and think that’s going to create flexibility. It’s that happy medium somewhere in the middle. It’s giving yourself some space.

It’s a work in progress. There are many things and there are many more. I use Evernote forever and a couple of others. It’s finding something that works for you.

There are a couple of things that I use religiously and they would be the first ones that I put on like TextExpander. It’s like a little thing but I do a lot of the same blurbs that I have to quickly find like my bio so I can write #bio, and then it’ll show up in my email or in a Zoom link or wherever I want it to be. That’s the first thing that I put on because it cuts out some of the wasted time of typing the same stuff. I like sharing with people because I know we can geek out about different things.

Platstack is one of my favorites on Chrome. It’s a Windows tab tool. You can save different URLs in categories so that if you’re working on a project, for instance, you can save all the URLs in one stack. You can open them all at the same time. You can close them at the end of the night, and know that they’re all there for you to open when you’re ready to work on the project, instead of leaving them all open.

 

I had not heard of that one. I wrote those two things down. I will geek over this stuff but I love it.

There are a couple of things that I use because people are over app-ed and always trying something new. They never implement something and stick with it. Our problem is we’ll squirrel all over the place, shiny penny syndrome. Pick something, use it, and make it a consistent practice.

This is so basic. I’m sure most if not all of your readers have heard this or know this but just in case. I didn’t for a while. We’re all remote mobile people these days. You have things that are on your laptop that may or may not be on your phone. For me, what has saved my life were two things. One is RoboForm, which there are a million different versions of that as well, which is your password manager and having it on your computer, phone, iPad and everything. You can get in and you’re not wasting time trying to get into an application.

I use LastPass.

It’s the same thing. I have a Mac but I don’t save my files onto my Mac because I have crashed many of them over many years. It’s the best because even as I’m waiting for something to boot up on my computer, I’m on my phone on Dropbox. I can work my documents just the same. I can update my slides from my phone if I need to. That auto-synchronization has helped so much because that’s one thing I’ve heard from people who have had issues with time management. It’s like, “I’m not always at my desk.” It’s like, “You don’t have to be at your desk to get your work done anymore.”

Those are totally key. I don’t even think about those anymore because they are standards. It’s good that you mentioned them because a lot of people don’t. Everybody has different practices. Sometimes we don’t think about it. I’ll share the latest cool thing that I use then I want to switch topics a little bit. I started to get this remarkable tablet. I like to take notes on everything. I like to write it down. It’s a way for me to remember things like a great podcast I’m listening to or a book that I’m reading.

You talk about sticky notes everywhere. It becomes a distraction. One or two sticky notes as reminders are good, but a hundred sticky notes is a distraction. I use Evernote so I can send it to Evernote and tag it. I have it there for searchability and it’ll convert my handwriting to texts and stuff. I can have diagrams. I’m loving this tablet. It’s super thin. It’s like a piece of paper but I don’t have to have paper all over my desk.

I know there was one a couple of years ago. I don’t know if it’s that same one. The technology is good as far as converting it over.

It’s gotten a lot better. It could be better in integrating. I would love to see that the checklist there goes into like a To-Do app or something. It’s not quite there yet. I’m using tools like Zapier or something like that where you could get certain elements and put them somewhere. It does allow you to save it as a PDF and then you can put it somewhere. You can put it into text if it’s handwriting.

If you’re on an airplane or something and you don’t have your notebook with you, you can still be reviewing your notes on your phone through the app. I love that. I’ll have to check it out.

We are geeking out over time management stuff. Time management for me is how we think, act and be more strategic. That should tie nicely into the second part of the discussion. I asked you what your story was. I know you integrate and talk to people about bringing out their stories and helping them to create their business from their stories. Why does that make sense? Why is that product in that sense and working smarter?

Nobody cares how successful you are until they know your why. Share on X

I tell people all the time that I never intended to write a book or set out to do what I’m doing now or certainly not helping people write books. Never in a million years. What happened to me was after I wrote my first book, that’s what opened up everything else. I look at a book for two reasons. One, you don’t know how your story is going to impact someone. The things that we take for granted or assume everybody knows how to do, they don’t. You’re helping someone when you share your story. I like to think of our story as a gift and gifts are meant to be shared. The good and the bad part of our story too. It inspires and gives hope. The other thing is leverage. Going back to time management, writing a book exponentially built my business faster than I could have ever done without it.

I always call my book my glorified business card. It gets attention. Because of the book, I get a lot more speaking engagement. You’re seen as the authority in your space so it does help you to set apart. I totally see that.

One of the books that I wrote is called Your Book Is Your Business Card. This little book is my business card. When I speak, this is what I give out for free in exchange for their business card. If you look at it that way, we all are the authority of our story. For you, it’s helping people to focus and get more done. Every single person has something personally or professionally that they could share with someone else. When you put it in a book, it amplifies everything that you want to do and it can happen a lot quicker.

Doesn’t it help you get greater clarity on your story as well?

Yes.

It’s easier to communicate your story because you’ve worked on it. It helps you to create that impact that you’re looking to create. There are many different reasons why writing a book is valuable for somebody as part of their business process.

It’s not about a book. It’s nice but it’s more your story. It’s also who you become in the process of writing a book. You get that clarity on how you serve people and what you can help them with it. It’s a cool experience if you haven’t been through it, but to see other people too. It’s very consistent. It did it for you as well.

I’m sure there are a lot of people out there and I felt this way also like I don’t have anything incredibly moving. My experiences every day might be common. I have some different things like I worked in Zurich, Switzerland for sixteen years. I’ve got some very special different things that people here don’t have, but I get that feeling of who’s going to want to listen to my story. Why do they want to hear from me? There are a lot of people who feel that way. Maybe it’s imposter syndrome or that bug in our ear that says, “You’re not important. You’re not worthy.” How do you help people overcome that in telling their stories?

Everybody goes through it. I went through it for a long time. Years before I made the decision and wrote my book secretly because I didn’t dare tell anyone that I wanted to write a book. I would say things to myself like, “Who do you think you are?” I worked for Zig Ziglar for a while and I would say, “You’re no Zig Ziglar. Who would care to read your story?” It held me back for a long time. One day, I had this epiphany and I’m like, “Why not me?” Somebody may pick up my story or resonate with my story more than they would ever listen to Zig Ziglar or something like that.

What I usually do is there’s an exercise that we have all of our authors go through or people that have come through our events in helping them to get that clarity. Your story is a combination of your passions and your experiences. When you put it out on paper and see them firsthand, and see all that you are because you are your story, then you start making intersections. You start to be like, “Maybe that is unique. Maybe I did overcome poverty or abuse or maybe I built a business and it wasn’t so difficult. Maybe somebody could benefit from that.”

All that to say, getting the clarity on your story there is still that chatter. That’s why I love surrounding myself with other people that get this. You have to be around other people like you who are in the same lane of trying to make things happen because not everybody will understand, but find a community to support you. Listen to podcasts. Now I’m in this world and I have been for a while now. Writing a book, podcasting, and all that stuff is what everybody does. I wasn’t in that world several years ago. I remember the thought of like, “Writing a book? Who? Me?” Once you do it, you’re like, “It wasn’t so bad.”

It’s mostly things that we undertake. We build this up to be much more difficult and put these roadblocks in front of us that don’t belong there and aren’t there.

 

The analogy I always think of is like a sliding glass door in somebody’s house. You can’t see necessarily that there’s glass right there. How many times have you walked into a sliding glass door and you bump into it? It’s those imaginary doors or windows right in front of you. You got to recognize them, open them and then walk through them.

It’s that simple. Slide it on over. I worked with Tony Robbins. We have a similar type of experience but I don’t need to be Tony Robbins. You don’t need to be Zig Ziglar. What are we comparing ourselves to? When you write your first book, they’ve been building up their authority and their brand for forty years or whatever their whole career. If you’re just getting into it and you’re writing your first book, “Are you comparing yourself to the person who’s top in the industry?” That’s crazy.

Yet we think these things, don’t we? We see other people on Facebook or Instagram who seemed to have it all together.

I like the question also compared to what. I don’t have a good story compared to who, compared to what and who says? Why not me? Once we ask ourselves those questions, we start putting positive questions in our minds to challenge it and be like, “I’m going to do this. Who cares?” You said you have an exercise. Is there something that you could share with people that are reading, that they could get a feel for what it’s like to think about their story and how to start thinking about it?

It’s simple. What I usually say is grab a sheet of paper and make a T-chart on the left-hand side of the T, write the word passions at the top. With passions, I want you to list as many things as you can possibly think of that you love, that you’re passionate about, you enjoy doing and that lights you up. It could be cooking, traveling and working with kids. For me, I’m passionate about personal development. I have been since I was eighteen. That’s part of who I am. That’s when I met Zig at eighteen. That’s one of my passions. I’m passionate about the beach, kids, my faith and all kinds of other things. As many things you can put on that list as possible is the key.

On the right-hand side of the T, you write the word experience. This is where you’re listing everything that you’ve experienced in your life. For example, if you’re a podcast host or an author, if you’re a parent, maybe you’ve traveled the world. Any experiences in sales or whatever, write it on that list. The tricky thing with experience is we don’t have to be passionate about it in order to experience something. Meaning, we experienced things all the time that we did not want to experience, yet it’s part of your story so you have to put it on the list.

It doesn’t mean that’s what your book is about. It could be bankruptcy or abuse or divorce or something, but putting it on your list is key. Once you have both sides of those columns or the T-chart filled in, and the more on the list the better, now the magic is trying to find that intersection. What do you have that’s on the passion side that is also on the experience side? For example, I’m passionate about personal development.

On my experience side, I worked for Zig Ziglar, which was a cool experience, but it ties together because a lot of the things I am passionate about like personal development, I learned from him. I share this with everybody, but I have on my experiences when I was young, I had low self-esteem like middle school, early high school years. It’s not like it was that big of a deal, but it did shape who I am. It shaped the decisions I made and relationships I had and all of those things. I put it on my list not because I’m proud of it but because it’s part of my story.

There’s a connection. I’m passionate about personal development. I had to use personal development and things I learned from Zig in order to get me out of that mindset or that negative chatter. There’s a connection there. That happened to be my first book, Winning in Life Now: How to Breakthrough to a Happier You! That’s where the key is. If you do this right, you’ll likely have multiple connections and then it’s just a matter of which one speaks to me the most, and which would be the easiest for me to get out the quickest.

You can leverage published author status regardless of the topic. It’s which one you can get out the quickest, but the key is having both the passion and the experience. If you only write about something where you have experience and no passion, those are the books that people start and never finish. The flip of it, if you only write about something that you’re passionate about, but you have absolutely no experience, there’s no depth there. You can be passionate about kids but if you’ve never had kids, don’t read a parenting book.

My example on the other side of that is I was in sales my whole career, software sales and all that. I have the experience. Every time I thought about when I was early on before I knew what I was going to write my book about, I thought, “Maybe I’ll write a sales book, something about cold calling or something.” Every time I thought about doing it, I had no passion for it. I could do it. I could write a great book about it. I tell people to be careful what they write about because they will be speaking about it for a long time. Make sure your passion is involved too.

Also, for those that are reading and maybe they don’t want to write a book and that’s not in their wheelhouse, I want to point out how valuable it is to do this exercise nonetheless. Let’s say you are in sales and you don’t love it, but could it be more interesting? Could it be better if you knew your story and you could bring your story in those conversations to create a greater connection with people? People love to hear other people’s stories.

Your story is part of your purpose, and that purpose will give you the clarity to get your priorities done. Share on X

If I were to do this list, I don’t know that I’m passionate about time management. I’m passionate about helping people to think more strategically, to be smarter. If I put that on my passion side and then I put on my experience side that I started an IT company, I built it up, and I used to work as a consultant as part of my story. I use this in my speaking and in my talking that I learned my initial relationship with time through consulting charging per hour. I can work an hour and I will get paid that amount per hour.

In my technology business, you hit a ceiling. There are only so many hours you can work, and only so many hours that your people can work. I thought, “I need to get involved in a different business model that’s going to help me work smarter.” I went into fixed-price contracts. As long as you know the nuances and how to do that, that could be more profitable and could maximize your time. There are a lot of business models out there that don’t work, that people are burning themselves out in those industries. It’s an example of how those two come together and how someone can use their story in different contexts. That’s how I might use it for instance. I hear it all the time. Do you also teach people how to use their story in their sales process and in other aspects of their leadership?

It’s funny because I never set out to help people with books. It’s not about a book. It’s more about your story. We do this a lot for people in corporate and business owners who may or may not ever want to write a book, but they do want to build a platform. What it boils down to is the power of authority or the power of leveraging your authority and what you can do with that.

That’s the title of one of my books, The Power of Authority. It is a little bit of a play on words where you can’t spell authority without author, but it’s not a book about help telling you that you should write a book. It’s like, “What is your core message? What is it that you love helping people with personally or professionally? How can you get that out there?” A book is one way. To build a platform, you have to do all of the different ways like podcasting, speaking, blogging or writing. Even if it’s sharing your story over a cup of coffee or when you’re doing a presentation, we connect more when we know the backstory.

This is my opinion. Nobody cares how successful you are. Maybe they’re being fascinated by it but they don’t care until they know your why. You’ve done this, you’ve written books, you’ve done that but what led you to that? What’s your story? You asked me that right when we started. Whether everybody is asking that subconsciously or outwardly, what’s your story? Why should I care?

What do I like about this person? What’s relatable, connectable and likable? Those are the things that we don’t think that we’re asking ourselves but we are, as we’re listening to someone. I would agree with that.

A book makes it easier for somebody to figure that story out about you but truly, we do it all the time.

Michelle, we can go on and on. I can tell that we’re enjoying our conversation. Thank you so much for covering these two different topics. They do interrelate because when you can be your authentic self and bring your story, there’s nothing more productive than that. Tell people where they can get more information about you and anything else that you wanted to share before we close out.

MichellePrince.com or PerformancePublishingGroup.com are probably the two best. We do free strategy sessions if you want to reach out. I’m mostly on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. Anywhere, you can find me there. I do believe they’re all interconnected even though they seemed different. Once you get clarity on your story, your story is part of your purpose. That purpose is what’s going to give you the clarity to your priorities.

Priorities are what we’re talking about with time management. That’s what it boils down to. Getting the things done that need to get done that are important to you and to other people. In doing so, when you have that time to focus on helping more people, that’s when you’re making a difference and making a bigger impact. They all combine together, but the first step is figuring out what do you want and what are you going to do about it? There’s no easy way. You’ve got to take action.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for having me.

Thank you all for being here and taking away some tips. We talked about a lot. We’ve got some apps for you. We’ve got some discussion around some other tips and understanding of how you can better think things through, relate and find your story. That was one of the big things. If you didn’t do that exercise, go ahead and do that and take a look at what you’re passionate about and what experiences you have? Where is the overlap? How can you use those stories? Whether it’s to build a platform or increase your influence with others as a leader by integrating that into how you present yourself, that in itself is going to make you way more productive in all of your relationships. Relationship is the key to the house and to the castle. Thank you all for being here. We’ll see you in the next episode.

Important Links:

• Performance Publishing Group
• To Do
• Alarmed
• Evernote
• TextExpander
• Platstack
• RoboForm
• LastPass
• Dropbox
• Zapier
• Your Book Is Your Business Card
• Winning in Life Now: How to Breakthrough to a Happier You!
• The Power of Authority
• MichellePrince.com
• Facebook – Michelle Prince
• Instagram – Michelle Prince
• LinkedIn – Michelle Prince

About Michelle Prince