It’s a conundrum: we know stories help make us better communicators, but we’ve also been told that too much personality “just isn’t appropriate” in a B2B context. Communication specialist Camille DePutter tells us exactly how to use storytelling to make an impact as a soloist.

We talk about:

Why storytelling is leaning into your thoughts, ideas, opinions, unique perspective and experiences.

The questions that will help you uncover your best stories (and the role shame may have played in keeping a challenging story untold).

Being both authentic and effective as a storyteller (hint: there is no one else exactly like you isn’t just a cheesy line).

How to not only excavate your best stories, but refine and polish them.

Why you might want to develop a story vault—and how to get started.

LINKS

Camille DePutter | Website | LinkedIn | Instagram 

Rochelle Moulton Email List | LinkedIn | Twitter | Instagram

GUEST BIO

Camille DePutter is a storytelling specialist who helps high-performing individuals communicate better. 

Through her work as a communications coach, consultant, and writer/editor, Camille helps her clients express themselves effectively and authentically, so they can level-up their leadership, build their reputation, and make the impact they were born to make. 

Her client portfolio includes internationally-recognized brands, Olympic Gold medalists, world champion athletes, and highly respected founders, industry disruptors, and thought leaders. 

Camille hosts the Storytelling with Heart podcast, is the author of two books, including Share Your Story: A Storytelling Workbook, and publishes regularly at camilledeputter.com

BOOK A STRATEGY CALL WITH ROCHELLE

RESOURCES FOR SOLOISTS

10 Ways To Grow Revenue As A Soloist (Without Working More Hours): most of us have been conditioned to work more when we want to grow revenue—but what if we just worked differently?

The Soloist Women community: a place to connect with like-minded women (and join a channel dedicated to your revenue level).

The Authority Code: How to Position, Monetize and Sell Your Expertise: equal parts bible, blueprint and bushido. How to think like, become—and remain—an authority.

TRANSCRIPT

00:00 - 00:31

Camille DePutter: It can be very easy to feel like, oh well, no, I need to speak professionally, or I need to follow this template that other people are saying, or I need to say it this way because that's what other people are saying, or they're telling me that's how I have to talk to my audience, or even I need to care so much about my audience that I forget about myself and I want you to be able to bring yourself into this whole process because a I care about you and it's more fun this way but b also

00:31 - 00:35

Camille DePutter: it's actually more effective. So it all works together.

00:40 - 00:59

Rochelle Moulton: Hello, hello. Welcome to Soloist Women, where we're all about turning your expertise into wealth and impact. I'm Rachelle Moulton, and today I'm here with Camille de Putter who helps high-performing individuals level up their storytelling so they can make the difference they want to make. Camille, welcome.

01:00 - 01:07

Camille DePutter: Hello Rochelle, thank you so much for being here. Or I guess that was my own podcast. See what

01:07 - 01:12

Rochelle Moulton: happens when we podcast is like, we forget which side of the mic we're on. It's so funny.

01:12 - 01:19

Camille DePutter: This is my podcaster positioning just autopilot. Sorry about that.

01:20 - 01:54

Rochelle Moulton: I love it. No worries. So when I first met you Camille, I was really taken by the way that you told your story on the about page of your website. It felt so authentic and real. And then my personal experience with you mirrored that perfectly. So I'm so excited to have you talk more about how to do that for soloists wanting to make an impact. But first, I'd just like to talk to you a little bit about how you got here doing what you do. So what made you decide to start your business?

01:55 - 02:36

Camille DePutter: So I'm going to kind of tell you 2 stories here as a way to answer that. And I'd say in a way it was sort of a convergence of similar themes. The first reason and more kind of pressing reason of why I decided to go out on my own, I have worked in communications in various aspects of the communications industry. So I did actually freelance a little bit when I was first starting my career. I've worked within agencies, marketing agencies, public relations. I've worked in-house in nonprofit. Public relations, I worked in house, in nonprofit. But eventually

02:36 - 03:21

Camille DePutter: I became just dissatisfied working for other people, in part because I felt like I was constantly trying or being sort of told to fit in a box, like to do, just do your job. And I would have other ideas or, you know, enthusiasm or passion for how we could do things better or more or differently. And I would look at the organization as a whole and feel strongly about how we could change it or make a bigger impact or do things better or what have you. And eventually I got to a place where I had a

03:21 - 03:23

Camille DePutter: bad boss. Many people

03:23 - 03:25

Rochelle Moulton: I think are out there. We can relate.

03:26 - 03:55

Camille DePutter: Yeah. We, you know, often that can be the kind of tipping point, right? And it certainly was for me where I'm like, I got to get out of here. I have to leave. And in fact, a friend of mine who I sat down with at 1 point and I was just expressing to her the kind of work that I wanted to have and the kind of environment I wanted to work in. And she said, you know, I don't know that you're going to just find that if you really want to make that kind of difference and

03:55 - 04:30

Camille DePutter: live that kind of life and do that kind of work, you might have to make it up yourself. And that really resonated with me. And I just thought, yeah, that's, that's right. That's what I'm gonna do. And so I quit that job and I started my own business, not with a ton of clarity, not knowing exactly what I was going to do. But as I looked at my resume and I looked at my past experiences and I thought back to myself as a kid and what I've always loved to do. I've always been writing and self

04:30 - 05:10

Camille DePutter: publishing and making things and I thought, oh, I'm a storyteller. That's what I've been doing my whole life and my whole career. And so I saw already this kind of sort of narrative thread of my life and my life's work. And I thought, okay, I don't know exactly what this is going to look like or how I'm going to do it, but there's something around this and I'm going to go and explore it. So that was the real sort of jumping off point. But there's also another kind of thing that was going on here in my

05:10 - 05:54

Camille DePutter: life at the same time. And that is the story that I told and that you kind of alluded to that's on my website that was about growing up with a heart condition and that in many ways in my life including with a physical difference that I was born with I have kept a lot to myself. I was not always really open and expressive about who I was and what I was feeling and in particular for years growing up until well into adulthood. I had kept the secret really about first having a heart condition and then my

05:54 - 06:23

Camille DePutter: experience having a pacemaker. And so I around the same time got on stage and told this story and claimed it and owned it for myself. And so I think that even more than really made me want to commit to sharing my own story, being myself, expressing myself, and helping others do the same.

06:24 - 06:46

Rochelle Moulton: I have to say, Camille, I know they're still coming back. I got goosebumps hearing you tell that story because it was a secret for you. And uncovering the secret changes dynamics, it changes the energy around it. It's the freedom to feel like, yeah, this is me, accept me as I am.

06:47 - 07:29

Camille DePutter: Yeah. And that's why I called my business Storytelling with Heart because that was you know it's sort of that dual message. It's like yes I want to bring my passion into what I do and help people express themselves effectively but also authentically. But it was also me saying, I'm not going to hide. My heart, my history, who I am is part of all of this. I'm going to bring that into my work and commit to really doing this kind of stuff truly from the heart, literally and metaphorically.

07:30 - 08:06

Rochelle Moulton: LB. Literally, Yeah. It's interesting because the last interview I did, we talked about money shame. And I feel like for a lot of us, there's a part of there may be, I don't want to assume there may be a part of our stories that somehow we've applied shame to and for no good reason. Right? Right. And so I'm really struck by that lifting of potential shame and I don't want to put words in your mouth or anybody else's But I think a lot of us have secrets like that. And I'm not talking about deep dark secrets.

08:06 - 08:16

Rochelle Moulton: I'm talking about things we just don't talk about about our experiences in a business environment. So, yeah, I really want to dig into this some more.

08:17 - 08:56

Camille DePutter: Yeah, I'm happy to for sure. I mean, I know in my case, absolutely, this was a story that involved shame. It involved something that really could be seen quite neutrally, you know, as like something about myself. But for various reasons, it doesn't really matter what the reason is, you know, I grew up feeling a sense of shame about it. And I had processed a lot of that by the time that I got on stage. It was still difficult to talk about. It's really not difficult to talk about now, although I suppose in any kind of personal

08:56 - 09:35

Camille DePutter: story, if you want to really get into it, you know, it can be. But I had done a lot of the sort of processing around that shame. So it wasn't super raw, fresh, traumatic, but it was something that was still, it was a place where I was still holding back, the place where I gave the speech was at a motivational speaking kind of event, maybe not quite motivational, but a place for people to come and tell personal stories and some of them, you know, maybe with a bit more of an inspiring bent and the person running

09:35 - 10:19

Camille DePutter: the Event I had known for years. He was my mentor a former employer we were quite close and he invited me to come and talk about something and I said, oh, I think I want to talk about growing up with a heart condition. And he's like, what? What? There were people in my life close to me who had no idea about this. And I think it's important when we talk about bringing personal stories into the professional, that these stories don't have to be, like you said, the biggest, you know, deep, dark, really heavy stuff. And nor

10:19 - 11:01

Camille DePutter: does it need to be you know really dramatic or traumatic but often these these things that have happened to you that have been challenging to you or that have shaped you or yes you may feel some discomfort or even a little bit of shame or a fear around are quite likely the things that are going to connect us that somebody else is going to want to hear about because they are actually going to relate to it and there's going to be some relief on their part because they see another human being grappling with the same kinds

11:01 - 11:04

Camille DePutter: of things that we all grapple with.

11:05 - 11:43

Rochelle Moulton: Yes, yes. And I think the other piece of that is that those big chunks of our story have helped make us who we are and formed our superpowers. And we don't always understand where our superpowers come from. Sometimes we're just born with them. But other times, the situations in our lives, the stories in our lives are what help to form them. And that's powerful for other people to understand. So it's it's witnessing, yes, but it's also, oh that makes sense. I see why they're so good at X.

11:44 - 12:15

Camille DePutter: Yeah, absolutely. I mean 1 of the 1 of the things that I often do are kinds of questions or prompts that I will ask clients is like, well, how did you get here? How did you learn that? That thing that you know now or that you care so much about or that you're so good at? Okay, how did you get there? And let's go back and retrace some of the steps. And sure, on the surface you might say, oh well, you know, I have experience in this, or you know, I have education in this. But if

12:15 - 13:04

Camille DePutter: we really go deeper, there's usually a moment or multiple moments, experiences that shaped that and allowed you to develop that. And those can be large or small. You know, I can talk about for myself as a communicator, as a storyteller, I can share the story of, you know, how sharing a personal story transformed my life and set the tone for my business. But I could also tell you about being a kid and reading Archie comics and writing in to the editor to correct their grammar or complain about the sexism in the Archie comic. And it's like,

13:04 - 13:27

Camille DePutter: that tells you also something about the fact that I have been, that I have cared about what we say and how we say things my entire life. And so we can kind of go, if we can go back and retrace our steps, then we can likely find lots of stories along the way that will help us show, not just tell who we are and what we're all about.

13:28 - 14:02

Rochelle Moulton: Yeah. 1 of the things you said when you first started describing how you got into your business was that you saw the narrative thread. And I think that's the thing that sometimes is a sticking point for us because it's, you know, we usually can only understand it looking backwards and we have to really think about it sometimes to see that thread. So I think that's, that's kind of the first challenge, but I'm really impressed that you did it so early in your business journey. Let me just ask you 1 more question about the business and then

14:02 - 14:21

Rochelle Moulton: let's go all in on storytelling. So do you remember how long it took you to hit your first hundred thousand in revenue? It seems like that tends to be the demarcation line where we start to feel like, yes, have a business, it's going to work, I don't need to worry about this, I just need to keep growing and adjusting.

14:22 - 15:06

Camille DePutter: Yeah, I think so I started my business halfway through the year. And if I remember correctly, I think I hit it. So the first half of the year, I made some money. And then if we start that next year, January to December, I'm pretty sure I hit it that year. That's awesome. That's awesome. I have to be honest, I have not struggled in the way that freelancers, especially people in writing and communications, I feel like there's sort of this idea that if you're a writer, then you're sort of squeaking by and there's kind of this idea

15:06 - 15:34

Camille DePutter: of, you know, it being kind of nickel and dime type work. And when I talk to people, especially people who are maybe younger and just thinking about going off on their own. I recognize that we're not all going to have the same experience, but I kind of want people to know, well, this is possible. And you don't have to just take these little teeny little writing jobs and be barely kind of squeaking high.

15:35 - 15:42

Rochelle Moulton: The dollar a word projects. Right. So did you ever have employees or contractors or have you always been a

15:43 - 16:24

Camille DePutter: solo? I've certainly used contractors and I do have like I have a virtual assistant for example and I've you know I've worked the odd time very rarely with another writer so on but I right out of the gate I knew I wanted to operate solo do my own thing and that I wasn't trying to be an entrepreneur and create a business that I could then sell or grow to have employees. And there's kind of been some, I have felt at different points, maybe sort of some pressure. Like there's not as many resources or even, I don't

16:24 - 16:43

Camille DePutter: know, celebration out there of this kind of company of 1. Not that freelancer stuck in, you know, hustle mode, barely getting by, but also not the, you know, person who's trying to grow a business and add employees and, you know, become an agency or something.

16:44 - 17:19

Rochelle Moulton: There's a lot of, I think of it as societal pressure, at least in the US. I don't know if you find the same in Canada, but there is this idea that, you know, it's not a real business until you have employees or until you have like a physical location. And it's so complex. And there's all sorts of reasons why someone might want to have employees. But there is such a wonderfully fulfilling life as a soloist when you're focused on creating transformations for people that you really care about and making the impact that you want in the

17:19 - 17:23

Rochelle Moulton: world. So yeah, this is about celebrating the soloist way.

17:23 - 17:40

Camille DePutter: Yeah, I love it so much. We need more of that. And yeah, like I said, wanting people to know that it's possible. I mean, it feels like this little, you know, like best-kept secret sometimes. Like, how am I getting away with this?

17:40 - 18:13

Rochelle Moulton: Exactly. It's like almost guilt because I think so many of us have been taught you have to work really, really hard. And if...