We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Hillary Rea a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Hillary, thanks for joining us today. One of the things we most admire about small businesses is their ability to diverge from the corporate/industry standard. Is there something that you or your brand do that differs from the industry standard? We’d love to hear about it as well as any stories you might have that illustrate how or why this difference matters.
Back in 2018, I was nearly a decade into telling stories from my life on stage as a performer and speaker. I was in the second full-time year of running my narrative consulting and coaching business, Tell Me Story, and I was working on the second season of my first podcast, Rashomon. It was a lot. And I was having coffee with a friend/creative accountability partner and expressing my frustration with the lack of growth in my podcast listenership. She replied, “Maybe no one cares about the story that you want to tell.”
I let the sting of her words run all the way through me and while I made the choice to never speak to that person again, her words became a story I told myself. For years.
Well before that incident, I honed my craft as a storyteller, developed a unique storytelling methodology, and built a business designed to help people reclaim their voice and sense of self through narrative. For years, I couldn’t quite pinpoint my value proposition, but I knew I had a different approach.
In February 2020, I read an OpEd in the NYTimes by the actor/writer/director Brit Marling called “I Don’t Want to Be The Strong Female Lead.” I highly recommend reading the article for yourself to get the full picture (link: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/07/opinion/sunday/brit-marling-women-movies.html), but, in a nutshell, this was the first time that I heard someone else challenge the problematic narrative structure of a Hero’s Journey and invite new ways of telling stories. In Brit’s writing, I finally saw my own work and its worth. It gave me the confidence to own what made my business different from the norm. This article helped me to see that the way I loved to tell stories, and my process for helping other people tell theirs were assets.
All of a sudden I was standing solid on my path and enough trust in myself, my stories, and my audience to speak up for a non-Hero’s Journey way to story tell. People were going to care about the story I wanted to tell, because I cared. The same would happen for other people and their stories.
It’s hard to break free from the confines of the Hero’s Journey – it’s ingrained in every facet of Western Culture from reality television to small business success stories. It’s masculine. It’s restrictive. And it puts a whole lot of pressure on all of us to reach some sort of climatic end — which usually involves capitalism, racism, individualism (and plenty of other -isms).
The more I can speak up about what I stand for — exploring new narrative structures, choosing to focus on what’s vital to speak out loud in the present moment, and the power of what I like to call “telling stories wrong” — the more I can give other people permission to look at their life (and themselves) through a non-Hero’s Journey lens.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
To quote the great Valerie Cherish: “I’m a storyteller.” I’m the Founder of Tell Me A Story, the creator of the podcasts Five Word Life Story + Rashomon, and an advocate for everyone who has lost ownership of their voice and their story.
Through one-on-one narrative consulting and coaching work, I help people who have lost trust in their voice, reframe and own their narrative so they can find presence, take their power back, and deeply connect to other humans. My one-on-one work begins with a 90-minute session called the TRUST Audit and once a client has completed that session they have the option of continuing on in my full-year, deeply personal TRUST Transformation program. Both of these service offerings dive into the relationship between trust and its three pillars of visibility: self, story, and audience.
While I’ve lost my voice and sense of self multiple times (as I think we all do), the biggest loss occurred while I was studying Musical Theatre at New York University. As an 18 year-old in the year 2000, I had no idea what imposter syndrome was, but, looking back, I experienced it as soon as I heard other people in my class open their mouths to sing. Increasing self-doubt mixed with the inexcusable rigor of the program, the countless negative feedback and verbal abuse from professors morphed my imposter syndrome into debilitating stage fright and a complete loss of trust in myself and my voice. My inner monologue was one sentence on a loop: “I’m not good enough.”
It took years (like 10!) and many career changes (an English teacher in Japan, a theater company apprentice) before I started to feel comfortable in my own skin and felt ready to explore new ways of using my voice.
Fresh from my theater apprenticeship, I found an open mic storytelling show and prepared a story on the night’s theme. I cashed in my piggy bank to get admission money for the event, and on the way from the bank to the venue I was splashed head to toe by a bus. I arrived fully drenched, put my name into the hat for a chance of sharing myself with this audience of strangers, and my name was drawn out of the hat first.
That night I felt a freedom in my voice and my sense of self that had been missing for so long, and I knew that telling stories from my own life was going to change it. And it did.
A decade later, and several iterations of my business behind me, I’m most proud of the ways I break the status quo with my business and my own personal life choices. I run my business without social media and deleted all of my personal social media accounts at the end of 2020. I no longer use a smartphone. I continue to challenge the Hero’s Journey structure and the harm it is causing to people in the public eye — particularly reality television cast members and those wrapped up in a big media frenzy due to a big life-changing event.
I’m also really proud of the Five Word Life Story exercise that has been a core piece of Tell Me A Story since the beginning. It’s a beautiful example of telling a story in a completely new (and simple!) way. I’m currently producing and hosting a podcast built around the Five Word Life Story and it’s been a joy to create and put out into the world.
Have you ever had to pivot?
I have made several pivots in my business.
The first came out of necessity, at the beginning of the pandemic. I rebuilt my business from a local in-person workshop-based business to one that was fully online, with 1-on-1 service offerings. This structural pivot timed with the release of that Brit Marling op-ed enabled me to double down on my unique perspective on storytelling and the other ways I challenge the status quo when it comes to visibility and “personal brand”.
Right now, I’m in one both personally and professionally. Last year I became super passionate about helping people who exit an experience on a reality television show and, due to losing control over their narrative, need to reconnect with who they truly are. I knew I could help people let go of the stories other people (producers, media, audiences) were telling about them and help them find the story that they wanted to tell other people. Because ultimately, those listening audiences will care.
When I announced this shift in who I wanted to serve, I think it made some people uncomfortable. It forced people (including myself) to look at inhumane work environments and storytelling practices that take place in the world of reality television. For reality TV lovers, this was a hard pill to swallow. It also alienated some of my previous audience who were more interested in learning about how storytelling could help their small business or their corporate leadership strategy.
While I’ve since expanded my definition of who I work with to go beyond this particular niche of just reality television cast members to a broader vision of what can happen to someone’s story in the public eye, it’s been difficult to introduce myself to these more visible audiences because I am not on social media. Most of these people spend their lives on Instagram and TikTok. They also make a living with them. And I don’t have (nor want) a way to engage on those platforms.
In terms of personal pivots, I’m eager to relocate from the US to the UK. I’m a dual citizen and I have a dream of laying down roots in England and having the time and ability to still spend some of the year back home on the East Coast in the US. It feels like there are many moving parts and logistics getting in my way and right now it’s all about building trust in the vision and worrying less about how it will all happen.
Earlier this year I adopted a 5 year-old long haired miniature dachshund. Two months into having her, I found out that she had a terminal illness. This has been a huge pivot in terms of the life I envisioned us having together. I also want to make the best of every moment we have left and this has been a totally new way of thinking for me. Shifting my mindset to focus on each day ahead of me, versus worrying about the future, has been a huge gift in navigating change of all kinds.
Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?
I Don’t Want To Be The Strong Female Lead by Brit Marling for the New York Times. I mentioned this article earlier in this interview. It’s really worth the read!
All Quests Are Quests About Power – a roundtable discussion from Transmitter Media. This was another piece of writing that blew my mind open about alternative narrative structures (and the problematic nature of the traditional ones)
Telling Stories Wrong by Gianni Rodari – This is an Italian children’s book that came into my life at a critical moment in terms of how I trusted myself, my stories, and the people who were out there listening.
Tell Me A Story (Part B) – a poem by Robert Penn Warren. I encountered this poem for the first time on the day that I encountered Telling Stories Wrong. The key phrase me for in the poem is the final line – “tell me a story of deep delight”
Emergent Strategy by adrienne maree brown. I’ve read this book several times and there is a set of six phrases in a section around community organizer that I have used as my own guiding principles, the guiding principles of my narrative work, and a set of principles I always bring into a space for other people to use: less prep, more presence; low ego, high impact; building alignment, not selling ideas; relationship is the measure of our strength; this will be as amazing as you are; trust your own work and each other.
I know it might seem like none of these things are related directly to running a business and entrepreneurship, but they all shape how I offer my services to others, market myself and my company, AND shape me as a leader.
I talk more about all of these resources (and how they connect to my work and my vision for what’s possible) in my Creative Mornings talk from July 2024. A fun fact about this Creative Mornings talk – I was originally scheduled to give a talk on the theme “Identity” in-person at the Philadelphia chapter of Creative Mornings in March 2020 and then COVID happened. My talk was rescheduled to January 2024 and then a snow storm blew into Philadelphia and the event was canceled. The PHL CM chapter let me choose a future date/theme to give my talk and I chose July because the theme was Trust. Rewriting my talk on that theme propelled me into the newest season of my business where I am leaning into the crucial role trust plays when it comes to sharing your voice and your story with others.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://tellmeastory.info
- Other: (I’m not on social media)My newsletter, The Speak Up: https://thespeakup.ghost.io
My podcast Five Word Life Story: https://shows.acast.com/five-word-life-story
Image Credits
I included the photo credits in the file name of each photo. In case those don’t show up here they are.
1. Heather McBride Photography
2. TJ Hurley
3 Riverside FM
4-6 Steve Weinik Photography