48 min
OM12: Christie Ruffino | Your Signature Story: Elevate Your Brand and Attract Clients with Your Message Mastery Unleashed
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- Entrepreneurship
Christie believes that mastering our stories is the key to everything we want in life. Our stories can either hold us back, or they can propel us to great heights. Once we master our story, we can identify our real purpose, step into our power, and help other people change their story by sharing our wisdom and guiding them to accomplish their goals.
In today’s episode, Christie shares 3-Key Principles to help you master your story so that you, too, can enjoy a business and life of true significance.
Let's get this party started...
When I interview our guests, the first thing I asked them is, what is your story? How did you become the expert at what you do right now? And what's funny is many of them look at me and say, Well, I'm not an expert, but they don't realize that they are I mean, we kind of don't necessarily give us enough ourselves enough credit. But what I see with so many of my guests and the clients I work with that the challenges that they face in their life in their journey, set them up perfectly to be where they are now.
I am like some of our guests where I went through something really traumatic. And I'm not going to go through the traumatic part of my journey in detail. But I will say that I went through a pretty difficult divorce. I came out on the other side broke, and not knowing how I was going to be able to feed my family. I didn't know I was going to be able to support my children. But I did, I was able to find a great job in the mortgage industry which set me on the path to start the Dynamic Professional Women's Network as the means or a tool or resource for me to get clients. Then 17 years later we have a thriving organization, and then on that journey, I was asked to share my story.
Now I was five or six years out of it, and I did not really see how my story was relevant. I hear that all the time with the women that I talk to or interview, that their story isn’t important. We don't really see how sharing our journey could help other people. Sometimes our stories are difficult stories and are pretty fresh. We don't want to necessarily go back there. We want to keep moving forward. I like to learn from my mistakes. I like to learn from the past, but then I like to find solutions to move forward. And I think that's very true of successful people as we learn from our mistakes. We realize that we can make a decision to stay stuck in our problem, and to wallow in our misery, and to just use that challenge as an excuse, instead of using it as the fuel to go to that next place.
I was in that situation where I had to make a decision to move forward. Once I decided to move forward, and it was very challenging to navigate through, I had many times on that journey where I didn't think I was going to get out. I didn't think I was going to ever get out of my financial situation or dealing with the divorce or managing my children. We have many obstacles on our journeys, and I had to figure it out on my own.
When I was asked to share my story, my first response was no. I had to take a step back. The person that invited me to share my story was our guest on day two, Michelle Prince. And that book, Dare to be a Difference Maker was my first step into this journey. So many great things came out of my messy divorce, and the Overcoming Mediocrity Project is one of those blessings. Michelle asked me a simple question, she asked me, if your story could just help one person, wouldn't it be worth it? I had to step out of my own shoes and think about it from that perspective. I was so wrapped up in my problem. I was in depression, very deep depression, where I wasn't getting out of bed for days. When my mom took my kids away that woke me up. I made a decision to do something about my situation. It was a slow journey. But I did. I was able to share my story. Not only was that experience transformational for my business, because I believe my business really blossomed after that, but it was because of the visibilit
Christie believes that mastering our stories is the key to everything we want in life. Our stories can either hold us back, or they can propel us to great heights. Once we master our story, we can identify our real purpose, step into our power, and help other people change their story by sharing our wisdom and guiding them to accomplish their goals.
In today’s episode, Christie shares 3-Key Principles to help you master your story so that you, too, can enjoy a business and life of true significance.
Let's get this party started...
When I interview our guests, the first thing I asked them is, what is your story? How did you become the expert at what you do right now? And what's funny is many of them look at me and say, Well, I'm not an expert, but they don't realize that they are I mean, we kind of don't necessarily give us enough ourselves enough credit. But what I see with so many of my guests and the clients I work with that the challenges that they face in their life in their journey, set them up perfectly to be where they are now.
I am like some of our guests where I went through something really traumatic. And I'm not going to go through the traumatic part of my journey in detail. But I will say that I went through a pretty difficult divorce. I came out on the other side broke, and not knowing how I was going to be able to feed my family. I didn't know I was going to be able to support my children. But I did, I was able to find a great job in the mortgage industry which set me on the path to start the Dynamic Professional Women's Network as the means or a tool or resource for me to get clients. Then 17 years later we have a thriving organization, and then on that journey, I was asked to share my story.
Now I was five or six years out of it, and I did not really see how my story was relevant. I hear that all the time with the women that I talk to or interview, that their story isn’t important. We don't really see how sharing our journey could help other people. Sometimes our stories are difficult stories and are pretty fresh. We don't want to necessarily go back there. We want to keep moving forward. I like to learn from my mistakes. I like to learn from the past, but then I like to find solutions to move forward. And I think that's very true of successful people as we learn from our mistakes. We realize that we can make a decision to stay stuck in our problem, and to wallow in our misery, and to just use that challenge as an excuse, instead of using it as the fuel to go to that next place.
I was in that situation where I had to make a decision to move forward. Once I decided to move forward, and it was very challenging to navigate through, I had many times on that journey where I didn't think I was going to get out. I didn't think I was going to ever get out of my financial situation or dealing with the divorce or managing my children. We have many obstacles on our journeys, and I had to figure it out on my own.
When I was asked to share my story, my first response was no. I had to take a step back. The person that invited me to share my story was our guest on day two, Michelle Prince. And that book, Dare to be a Difference Maker was my first step into this journey. So many great things came out of my messy divorce, and the Overcoming Mediocrity Project is one of those blessings. Michelle asked me a simple question, she asked me, if your story could just help one person, wouldn't it be worth it? I had to step out of my own shoes and think about it from that perspective. I was so wrapped up in my problem. I was in depression, very deep depression, where I wasn't getting out of bed for days. When my mom took my kids away that woke me up. I made a decision to do something about my situation. It was a slow journey. But I did. I was able to share my story. Not only was that experience transformational for my business, because I believe my business really blossomed after that, but it was because of the visibilit
48 min