Stop hiding behind the highlight reel
Your audience doesn’t want perfection, they want permission. The truth is what makes them lean in.
The real story is rarely the first one
I’ve spent thousands of hours helping women tell their stories.
The biggest thing I’ve learned?
The real story is rarely the first one they tell me.
It lives underneath the polished version. It shows up when they stop performing and start reclaiming.
The ‘performance’ vs the ‘truth’
Not long ago I worked with a leadership coach who arrived with the perfect credentials story. Impressive, yes but it read like a LinkedIn CV.
Then she admitted something, the reason she started coaching was because she’d been through toxic workplaces that broke her confidence. She wanted to make sure no one else had to go through what she did.
That was when her real story began, and it was the one that drew people to her, because it wasn’t about ticking boxes. It was about being human.
Why we hide behind the highlight reel
I’ve noticed a pattern in the 6+ years I’ve been working with female founders on their personal brand stories. We, as women, have all been conditioned to share the sanitised version. You know the one I’m talking about right? The one that makes us look like we have it all figured out, success without struggle or the ‘oh shit’ moments.
But here’s what I’ve learned. The people ready to buy from you aren’t looking for perfection, they’re looking for permission.
Permission to struggle, to doubt, to want to jack the whole thing in and hide under a rock. Permission to be gloriously, messily human while doing something meaningful to them, no matter how big or small.
Take another of my clients, a highly skilled plastic surgeon. Her polished story was all about training, precision and results, exactly what you’d expect in a professional bio. But her real story came when she admitted how deeply her feminist values shape her work. She’d spoken up about harassment in surgery, she’s relentless about improving patient consent and she’s committed to making the system better for women. That’s when her brand truly came alive, because it wasn’t just about skill, it was about courage and ethics.
The stories that actually connect
The real stories - and by that I mean the ones that create genuine connection - aren’t found in your business milestones. They’re in your everyday truths:
The things you do every morning that keep you grounded when everything feels chaotic (mine’s lighting a nice smelling candle at my desk)
The conversation with your daughter that shifted how you think about leadership
The moment you realised your definition of success was actually someone else’s (I feel this one DEEPLY!)
The small daily choice that completely changed the direction of your business.
When an interior designer client of mine, stopped talking about “luxury” and “comfort” and instead told the story of growing up in a house where entertaining was everything, her brand came alive. She wasn’t just designing rooms. She was creating spaces for pride, belonging and celebration.
A practical guide to reclaiming your real story
Start with what you’re not saying
Notice the stories you edit out. The struggles you minimise. The messy middles you skip over. Those omissions often point to your most powerful truths.Look for the turning points, not the highlights
Your audience doesn’t need another success story. They need the story of what happened right before the success, the moment you chose to keep going when giving up felt easier.Share the process, not just the outcome
Instead of “I built a super-duper successful six-figure business,” try “Here’s what Tuesday looked like when I was building my business from my dining room table whilst juggling getting my child through GCSEs.” Far more real, far more relatable.Embrace the contradiction
The most compelling stories hold paradox. You can be confident and scared. Successful and struggling. Grateful and grieving. Your wholeness is what makes you relatable.Practice in small doses
Start with one true thing. Share it, notice how it lands and how it makes you feel and then share another. Authentic storytelling is like a muscle, it gets stronger (and easier) with use.
The ripple effect of truth-telling
Inside She Roars Club, my storytelling accountability group programme, I’ve seen women go from resisting any personal storytelling to sharing the smallest, most ordinary truths. One member came to a call feeling overwhelmed knowing how to create content that really added value. But when she finally shared her truth about how she’d been telling herself for years that she didn’t know enough to be good at something, to finally realise that was nothing but an unhelpful story, something shifted.
The chat exploded with comments like “that’s me too!” and “thank you for the reminder
Here’s the irony: the story she thought was too mundane was the one that resonated most. Her business didn’t shrink when she stopped polishing her stories. It grew. Because people don’t buy into perfection, they buy into stories that make them feel less alone.
Your story matters (even when you think it doesn’t
Here’s what I know after thousands of hours of story work. Your real story, the one with the plot holes and the uncertain endings and the days you wore yesterday’s shirt to an important meeting without noticing the coffee stain down the front, that’s the story your audience needs.
Not because it’s dramatic or extraordinary, but because it’s true. And truth has a frequency people recognise, even when they can’t name it.
Your everyday struggles and little wins give others permission to own their way forward. Your willingness to share the process, not just the polished result, creates space for the authentic connections needed to grow a business that looks and feels like you.
Ready to uncover your real story?
If you’re tired of sharing the highlight reel and ready to discover the stories that will truly connect with your audience, I’d love to support you.
She Roars Club isn’t just about figuring out your story, it’s about creating a safe space to explore it, refine it and most importantly, find the courage to keep sharing it. Because your real story doesn’t just deserve to be heard, it needs to be heard.
The women in your audience are waiting for someone to give them permission to be real. Your truth-telling could be the thing that changes everything for them.
And maybe, just maybe, for you too.