150: Storytelling That Sells: How To Use Your Life To Attract Dream Clients with D’Arcy Benincosa

Sabrina: On this episode of the Shoot It Straight podcast, I have my friend Darcy Ben and Cosa back with us for the third time. And this time we are talking about storytelling and how important it is in your marketing. And listen, I have been working with Darcy for a couple of years now, and I can tell you from firsthand experience, she is an expert.

Storytelling, storytelling. And so getting to pick her brain on this episode about what it means and what it looks like, how family photographers can use it in their marketing, and also kind of cuing through the mindset junk that goes along with why we don’t wanna share our stories. I’m telling you this episode is super duper valuable, and I know you’re gonna love it.

So let’s dive in.

Welcome to the Shoot at Straight podcast, where honesty meets heart and real talk actually means something. I’m your host, Sabrina Gehart, and each week we get vulnerable, practical, and just a little bit bold so you can feel seen, supported, and ready to take the next step in your photography journey.

Let’s go. Welcome back to the Shoot at Stripe podcast, my friends. Today I am joined by my friend and my business coach, Darcy Osa. And it is her third time back on the podcast, which is really, really exciting, uh, that somebody loves to come back that much and that we’re honored to have her here because she is such a wealth of knowledge and such a great human.

But before we dive in, Darcy, in case we’ve got some new listeners that don’t know who you are, haven’t heard you on the podcast before, would you please introduce yourself?

D’Arcy: Absolutely. Um, hi everybody. I am Darcy Osa. I started off as a wedding photographer back in 2000. Well, I shot my first wedding in 2007.

I left my full-time job in 2013. I started hosting, sold out workshops across the globe in 2016, and I crossed the million dollar mark in my online education company in 2021. So it’s been a long journey. It’s been one full of ups and downs and incredible gifts. I like many of you, am just a deep creator and I have always wanted to.

Make my wealth and my business be about creativity, about seeing people, transformation, capturing those really in-depth moments of life. I am, I’m a very adventurous person. I’ve traveled to over 55 different countries now. I’ve photographed weddings in almost 30 of them, but I believe that. Life is meant to be lived very big.

And my podcast that I run is called Play It Brave. And I remember I was journaling one day in my journal. I’d much rather play it brave than play it safe. And I was like, that’s, that’s it. That’s my life motto. Do those things that scare you. Live life fully. Yeah. So that’s me in a quick nutshell.

Sabrina: I’m so glad you’re back again, such a wealth of knowledge on so many different topics.

If the listeners go back, um, to one of the, the very first time you were on the podcast, we were talking about money mindset, which is a totally different topic than where we’re going today, but something that you are very knowledgeable in and wise in. And it’s just been really cool to get to know you over the past couple years, but today we are talking about storytelling and how it can act as a really powerful messaging tool in our marketing efforts.

And I know from working with you for so long that storytelling is truly one of your special gifts. You are so good at it. And it always blows my mind when we talk through stories of yours and creating stories from my own life. It’s just, it’s so fascinating and so I’m thrilled that you’re gonna bring a little tiny bit of that wisdom to the podcast today.

So. Let’s start at the very, very beginning, if I’m honest with you, Darcy, when I think of storytelling, like, you know, if you came to me and said, Hey, we’re gonna talk about storytelling. I immediately think of books or speakers, like speakers on a stage, you know, like a TED Talk or a keynote speaker at something.

That’s where my mind goes. But I know that the best marketers are using storytelling in their business and in everyday ways that it doesn’t have to be on those big platforms. So I’m curious from you, like just at the basics, why do you think stories are so important?

D’Arcy: Stories are the universal language.

We will not be engaged in a conversation with somebody unless they. They can tell a story, they can pause for dramatic effect. They know how to build emotion. Stories are how we make meaning. It’s how we understand each other. They are the basis of every single religion, the basis of every single one of our lives.

You go to a an event and somebody wants to hear a story, you know the whole once upon a time, right? We got that when we were little because stories are where the biggest teachers are. They are where we are able to see ourselves and they are also very compelling and they make life really meaningful and interesting.

So they just bypass logic. And for me, stories really speak to the heart, to the soul of the person.

Sabrina: Yeah, I love that. I think. Stories, like you said, they make up our life and I don’t even think people realize that’s something that you and I have been working on really deeply is I have a hard time recognizing stories and I recognize them in other people.

But for some reason when you’re like, Sabrina, what are your stories? I’m like, I don’t know. I’ve lived a boring life. I have no stories. You know, and you’re like, uh, timeout. That’s wrong. You actually have a lot of stories. So I think recognizing them is hard, but they are how we connect with people. I. Right, like they are, we feel connected through stories When we hear somebody’s story and we can think, I’ve been there or I empathize, or, wow, that must’ve been an incredible situation to be in.

Like it’s how we connect with others, and I love that you bring it to such a daily part of your business and your life. To the listeners, if you don’t already follow Darcy on Instagram, you absolutely should because she tells stories every single day practically, maybe not every single day, but it really feels like it.

You always have such incredible stories and some of them are just little bits and pieces, but then a lot of times it’s this nuance where you’re tying it in so beautifully to something that we all need to hear, right? Um, something that you’re selling or something that we need to do and change, and it’s just, it is so fascinating.

But for whatever reason, when I stop and think about storytelling and marketing, I think about a big brand and a conference room and a bunch of guys talking about what stories can our brand tell, right? That for some reason, that’s where I go. Maybe that’s the business education in me, that’s the college degree, the master’s degree.

I’ve taken those types of courses before, so maybe that’s where my mind is going there. I’m literally thinking about, you know, the people at Gap sitting around saying like, what are the stories we’re gonna tell this season in our commercials and whatever. And it’s not actually that complicated, or it doesn’t have to be that complicated.

In our small business where we are a solopreneur and entrepreneur, we don’t have a marketing team. How, how do we come up with stories?

D’Arcy: Well, the first thing I would do is I would watch a lot of comedy specials because I love a comedy special because they can take the simplest. Event and turn it into something so powerful.

I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of Elise Meyers, but she, she was just a regular girl who got on TikTok and told a story about a date that she went on where he went to Taco Bell and bought 200 tacos and then took them back to his house and they all just sat and ate all these tacos. And the way she tells it is just.

Brilliant. And the, the thing I love about Elisa, she’s not really trying to tell you, sell you anything. She’s trying to entertain you. But for most people, I think, you know, for you it’s like. When you’re like, Darcy, I’m not sure if I have a story. And for me, when somebody says that they’re too close to their own lives, they’re too close to their own story, they’ve been living in it so much that they don’t understand that there is magic there, that there is something really personal there.

You know, when you’re the one living your story. You don’t recognize the transformations that you go through, Sabrina, and honestly, I think that your audience probably loves you so much because you don’t recognize it. You’re, you’re just actively living it. But you have a very powerful story of what led you to now be so structured around your white space, around your time.

There was a lot of things that snowballed for you that that made it where you had to have this big awakening and, and epiphany and you know, sometimes people say, oh, don’t learn things the hard way. And that’s exactly why stories are important because they can almost help us bypass hard things if we could learn the wisdom of the teacher in front of us.

That’s what you do for so many of your students. You’re like, Hey, I actually went through this. It was really, really hard. Let’s keep you from doing this hard thing. It’s, it’s like you think about the first stories that were told around campfires and tribal systems where they didn’t write them down.

They’re like, okay, so this is where the berries are at this time that we will pick, and this is where you’ll go, and they’ll put it into a story. I remember one of my favorite books as a kid talked about the story of how the stars were created in the heavens. It was all of this love story and he’s chasing after her and he cuts this hole through the black curtain of the sky and the light from the heaven shines in.

And I was like, but what? It was really teaching that story is teaching how to follow the North Star. I. It helps children identify, Hey, that right there, that spot that never moves, that is, here’s a story about it and that’s how you’ll know. That’s always the star you look at to find your way. And I look at stories a lot like that.

They are ways that we tell each other. To help each other find our way. And that’s what we’re all trying to do in this big crazy thing called life. And so to me, storytelling is the ultimate gift and the ultimate art of being human, connecting with other humans, serving other humans. I see a lot of people who don’t wanna tell their story ’cause they don’t think there’s anything special in it, or they think.

They sound cocky to talk about a lesson that they learned and it’s like, no, you’re actually serving. If you can talk about this very powerful story that you went through and what was the outcome and, and how can we take that and learn and listen to that.

Sabrina: So do our stories always have to be this big dramatic thing that we experienced or can they be smaller moments to?

D’Arcy: I think magic is in the mundane, and I think the more that we can bring. It’s one of those things that I think has happened with the internet where, you know, you’ll see these people jet setting off and they’re in Santorini and then they’re here and they’re making a million dollars on their launch by selling their $47 product.

I’ve gotten kind of over that story that story’s being told a lot on social media right now where I don’t really believe it. Or desire it instead. Right now I’m following one of my friends and she has six kids and she feeds her chickens every day and makes sourdough bread I, and she does a different design on her sourdough bread every day and she shows what it is.

And I am obsessed with just watching the magic of her slow living. To me, her slow living reminds me to slow down. It reminds me that I don’t need to go chase any kind of ego. So I think the slow, simple stories are really compelling as long as you. Believe in the life you are leading. If you’re wishy-washy and you’re not happy with your life and you are just constantly scrolling on Instagram to find some sort of fulfillment in you, then that might not make for the best story at the moment.

It will once you find that fulfillment, and then you can be like, okay, this is how I find that. But I find that people who. Aren’t sure what to tell a story about. Maybe just don’t understand simple story structure. You know, you can do like a before and after. What, where were you before? Where were you after, um, rags to riches?

Like what was the time in your, and, and if you, if, if your day to day life is like, okay, but I’m just raising some kids here. I mean, I personally think anybody with a toddler has a million stories all the time because I think kids say the funniest. Things. And I was going through my niece’s, uh, it was her birthday recently, so we always pull out her, um, the scrapbook that I made for her where I put these little funny phrases that she would say, you know, and they’re just so cute.

And we reread them and I’m like, oh my gosh, kids are hilarious. Like, kids are absolutely hilarious. So. Even just like how a 2-year-old, a 2-year-old having a tantrum can teach us so much about life and emotion and, and I know people don’t think that it can, but it can. There’s a mom I’ve got, I think she’s called, it’s called Full-Time adulting or something on Instagram.

Do you know her? She just gets on and tells stories about her kids. Her mother’s date post was hilarious. She was so funny. I don’t even have kids that I love following her because she’s real. I. She’s hilarious in how she looks at it. So I think when we can find the comedy or the humor in our own situations or where, where we can be observant or aware of what we find valuable in life, you know, where, where have you found a trigger in the past week and what is that reflecting to you about your own internal belief system and how could the change of that or your handling of that.

Bring about some awareness for those of the people who follow you. Like why are they following you? If they’re following you, they obviously like you. And so it’s about being that likable person or unlikable too. Sometimes people follow ’cause they’re like, that person’s just really, really bold and brave and they say things I don’t dare to say, even though I think they’re kind of mean.

It’s kind of refreshing just to hear the truth.

Sabrina: Okay. I love all of that and I can’t wait to dig. I took a couple notes ’cause there’s a couple things I wanna dig into. Even further that I know that you’ll have some really great wisdom on. But before I get to that, I don’t wanna skip over something that I, I know, gets in the way for me, and I know that it, it’s going to get in the way for some of the listeners, and that is a mindset thing.

We talk about mindset in a lot of facets of our business, both of us, because we realize that it, it gets in a way, in a lot of places. I, what I have found for myself and for a lot of the women I coach and have talks with is that they feel like they’re not interesting or their story isn’t anything worth sharing.

Right. And it’s because we automatically, again, go to that like, well, I don’t have a TED Talk. Like I don’t, I’m not, nobody wants to hear me on a big platform. So therefore, like I don’t have stories to tell. I’m just a regular everyday Jane that, you know, lives just a regular life. I think part of that is recognizing the stories like we just said, but I think part of it’s the mindset of maybe a worthiness or a fear or something.

Do you see any kind of mindset struggle getting in the way of people telling stories?

D’Arcy: Yeah. Well, I think what you just said, I just live an ordinary life. I’m sorry, but I do not know one human who has escaped life. With just being ordinary. I, I just, I really don’t like, even the people who we may think have the most ordinary, I, my little neighbors, they take their walk on a dog every day, their dog on a walk every day.

They don’t let their dog walk. They carry their dog ’cause she doesn’t like grass or, so I don’t know why they’re not letting their dog walk. So they walk her, they hold her and walk her. And I just thought they’re the sweetest things. And one day I started talking to them and it turns out he was a professional baseball playing player for the New York Yankees.

And like they had this crazy life and you know, and they just look like average little people in my neighborhood walking, having their dog walk them. Really. But I think we one have to really sit and think, okay, it doesn’t need to be epic. It needs to be emotional. Meaning where are the emotions in my life?

Your decision, how you decided to get married is a really powerful story the way how you chose a name for your child. I. How you decided to start a photography business. I’m sorry, but nobody who decides to capture people and photograph people has a boring life inside because they have this, this thirst for either beauty, for connection for.

Art for, you know, there’s just so many things there as a creative person. Creativity will always have a story, always, if you’re not sure what they are. Practice or read other people’s stories. I remember one of the greatest lessons I learned about storytelling. It was all about being emotional, not epic.

We all know, hopefully you know the story of Les miserable, but Right Jean Val, Jean arrested for stealing a loaf of bread. He finally gets out of prison and what is he, he gets, he gets taken in by this priest and he steals the candlesticks and the priest is like, no, he didn’t steal them so he doesn’t have to go back to jail.

And he’s like, ma, take these candlesticks and make a good life. Well, if you’ve seen the musical, it’s like, oh, that’s so sweet. If you’ve read the book. The book spends the full unabridged book, which is like 1300 pages. The book spends 75 pages talking about what the candlesticks meant in the life of the priest and his nun sisters.

How they got them, how much they meant to them, how they polished them every single night, how they were, the only thing that that family had that was worth anything. They build up the, and I was like, this is a lot of time on candlesticks when I was reading this, but when Jean Val, Jean steals those candlesticks and then gets caught and the priest says, no, he didn’t steal them, they, I gave them to him and his sisters are like, you’re giving him the candlesticks.

That moment was built, like I can’t tell you like how much I bawled when. He gave away those candlesticks because the writer had spent so much time painting the story of candlesticks, you guys candlesticks. But it showed the simplicity of the priest’s life and it showed the goodness within the priest that he would prize a person’s freedom over any monetary thing.

And I. Whenever I am like, oh, do I even have any stories to tell? I’ve just been walking the dogs and I’ve just been, you know, eating my protein and going to the gym and what do I have? It’s okay if in that moment in your life there’s not a whole lot going on, I. I think that’s where you can either share a story of your mom or your dad and really reflect.

I do a process with my clients a lot of the times called timeline therapy. It’s something that I’ve been certified in where we go back into a person’s timeline, take a moment from their life that caused them either anger, sadness, fear, guilt or conflict, and we rework that moment so that the emotion releases.

They no longer have the anger about it and they’re able to then clear the anger and then the story just becomes full of the gift and the lessons. Like my parents for dropped me off at school, didn’t pick me up. I waited for five hours by the flagpole. The other one thought the other one had picked him up.

The school couldn’t take me. They had to call the cops. They didn’t have my name and record on file ’cause it was my first day at a new school and the cop car had to drive me all over. I was crying in the back. I’m only four all over the neighborhood until I found the house that I recognize and he had to drop me off there.

It was a very traumatizing event when I was little. But what happens when you can look at those and really heal from them is, well, the benefit of that thing happening to me was I became so independent. I always have my address and my phone number in my pocket memorized, even at the age of four. Like I I, and you know, maybe that would be like, oh, that’s sad.

She had to be that independent when she was little. Yes. That has served me so well in my life as well. So there’s so many little stories of your life that your people who are listening to you and. It’s really how you’ll connect with them. I don’t wanna talk too long without, you know, you asking another question.

But when you’re a teacher, when you’re an educator, even if you’re teaching your kids, you have the things you wanna teach them. Like, Hey, look both ways when crossing the street. Don’t touch fire, don’t do this. You can take in that information, but a story is how people integrate the information. A story is how people are able to remember the information.

If you tell somebody a story about something that will help them land. The information, land the lesson, land the growth, land the learning. I think that’s why I majored in English, because I was like, there are no good stories in math. I’m gonna go over here where I can just read stories all day, tell stories all day, listen to stories all day, and analyze stories all day, which is just the best part of my life.

I

Sabrina: love that. And it’s so, everything you said is so true and so valuable, but I wanna bring it back. To the listeners of this podcast, we’ve got mostly female family photographers. We’ve got some branding, we’ve got some wedding. We’ve got some other genres, mostly female family photographers, a vast majority of which are moms who are balancing motherhood and business.

And when we think about using storytelling in our marketing messaging to connect with clients, to build our email list and to sell. Family photo sessions. How can we bring this huge idea of these big, beautiful life stories into ways that move the needle in, in that specific way for the family photographer?

D’Arcy: I have a lot of thoughts about this. So, and then I wanna give two marketing stories about stories after I say this. But for example, I photograph weddings. You can take this with weddings or families. You’ll post a picture of a bride and groom or a family and be like, Sarah and Tom getting married at the Bella Bay Club.

Uh, their day was so beautiful. That is not a story that is. Boring. Nobody cares. And we’ve all read it before. I remember posting a story, uh, a picture of one of my brides and she had the most gorgeous veil and she was in the field, and I said, and I told a story about the veil. Her mom wore that veil on her wedding day.

It was kind of an eighties veil. It was, it was a really kind of a trendy, like a different look for my current brides. And she had a very simple dress and then this big, like fluffy veil. And I told a story about the veil. How her mom gave her the veil, the moment her mom put the veil on her, the tears that they shared about that veil and how that veil was this like initiation into her own role of being a wife.

Her mother had worn it. She now wore it. Like it told this story where people were like, I remember getting people DMing me after, like, ah, I want, I want my wedding to have that. I want those moments because a wedding is supposed to have those moments. So when you photograph a family and you are like, just like, oh, you know, here’s a family, whatever.

It was interesting because I, I walked into Trader Joe’s the other day and somebody was kind of mean, like, they took a card or did something and I was like, huh. And I, and I was thinking, I, I am going through. Some personal things, like, I’m like, my mom’s dying of cancer. I’ve had these, you know, my niece has had this thing there.

There’s a lot of things going on in my individual life that makes me feel a little more fragile than usual. I. I’m like, how often do we for? And I’m like, and I am presenting completely normal. I am just walking into Trader Joe’s like a normal human, but this is everything that’s going on internally with me.

And it kind of like made me look at everybody and just think, I wonder what’s going on with them, and if it’s anywhere near what’s going on with me. I’m going to treat everybody with so much compassion and kindness, even if they are being a jerk, or they hit me with their cart, or they just acted like they couldn’t see me or they pushed me.

You know, instead of being like, oh, you idiot. What people these days, they can’t see anybody, they’re, they’re so self-obsessed, right? Like, that’s how I chose to operate. So when we can take, even when I photograph anybody, if we’re a photographer, we’re already a storyteller. You’re already a storyteller. You get to decide Now, are you gonna just tell the same story with every family that you go to, or are you going to get to know their story?

So one of the things that I started bringing into my family photo shoots when I did families is I would have the mom bring the child’s favorite toy at the time, or if I was photographing it at their house, which is usually what would happen. I do a very special mini session with each child with their favorite toy, and I’d ask them why that’s their favorite toy.

Like the mom would be there. I’m like, you should, you should write this down. Let’s put it next to this. Because when she’s. Seven. She’s not gonna remember that at two. It was this little, but I remember still this one little girl, it was this cutest little bunny, and she had the cutest name for it and told a story about it.

I mean, little kids are telling stories about their imaginary friends and like, just think of how big the world was when you, I would spend hours. I never wanted to play Barbie, but I spent hours designing her house, moving the furniture. I was always into design. And then when it came to talk, I was like, this is kind of boring.

Let’s remodel the kitchen. You know? So I think. That’s how you can start to become a better storyteller is instead of giving basic facts, you know, this is where the wedding was. Choose one moment. So as an English teacher, there’s a method called show don’t tell. Don’t tell us that it’s here and on this day and this thing.

Show us something from the day. Show us through saying it. You know, when I wrote out the description of the veil and even did a quote of like her mother, what her mother said to her. That made it a story. So even if you, this story might not be about you, though. It could be, and it’s about your client, that will draw your clients into you so much more because they’re going to see, oh wow, she’s really seeing their story.

She’s really understanding that, you know, this is what’s going on here, instead of just showing up and doing a job, right? If you’re showing up and doing a job. It’s gonna be harder to build a business and to charge more storytellers. Just get charge more than regular photographers.

Sabrina: Hey, friend, real talk.

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And I can’t wait to hear what your results are. Now, back to the episode. I love all that, and it seems like at least what I’m picking up on is that part of this process is. Being aware, right? Being aware of what’s happening around you, being aware of what’s happening with the people you’re working with, the people that you’re engaging with, which means kind of in this Trader Joe’s story you told, it’s.

Stepping outside of ourselves. It’s not being so self-absorbed, it’s get off your phone. It’s stop going through the motions, right? And it’s being more truly present so that you can have those deeper conversations with the clients you’re working with or really hear someone’s story when they’re DMing you questions about something and connecting with people and having that awareness.

And then. The stories start to unveil themselves or re or reveal themselves a little bit? Is that, is that kind of what I’m hearing?

D’Arcy: Well, yeah, and it’s just super easy. So you can do some really easy practices if you’ve never done Julie Cameron’s morning story. She’s has a book called The Artist’s Way.

It’s a really powerful thing that I think anybody who’s a creative artist should do because it helps you on the path of self-discovery. If you don’t have a million stories to tell, there’s probably some more self-discovery to look into. The other thing is I was doing this writing conference in Florence, Italy with Laura Belgrade, who is um, a lady who runs this very amazing copywriting business called Talking Shrimp, and she has a new book out called Tough Titties.

She’s hilarious. And every morning we would start off, so we were walk, I would walk through from my little apartment in Florence down to where the, the center was the beautiful place where we were doing it. She would have us come in and the first five, 10 minutes we would do is we would write about something we witnessed on our walk there.

I. What that did was made us not just walk there. And I’ll never forget, I wish I could find the exact writing, but one morning I was, I was walking there and there was a man and he, it was this old couple and they were like 70 and he was just beaten down and, and she was, they, she was mad at him about something and she’s just like, Harold, I’m so tired of this.

Every single time we go out, won’t you just ask. Or directions or something like that. I’m making it like more simple than it was, but it was something so funny. And, and he was like, I, I know where we are. And like you knew they had had that fight like 27,000 times before. But when I did that, it made me stop and just look.

At the world and just start taking things in and seeing how hilarious people are. Seeing little moments where you just see like a moment with a father and a daughter or you just, you’re able to take things in. So she would have us come in every day and say, okay, write down you something you either overheard or you saw from a distance.

Or you smelled like something that you smelled, something that you saw or something that you heard. And there’s a great website called Overheard in New York. I don’t know if any of you have ever read it, but it’s where people can go and they submit a. Conversations that they hear on the subway and they are the craziest conversations and you read them and you’re like, okay, people are super interesting and weird and this is awesome.

So it’s called Overheard in New York. Just Google it. We can read, you can read a few things and you just start to fall in love with like everything is a story. Everything can have a story. Every person has a story. You know, that little old couple, you imagine them being young and in the forties and, and what must their lives have been like?

And so I think when we can take those stories now when we take it into marketing, here’s the, here’s something really funny. I will never forget. I was in a marketing class and they were giving this product, it was a leather bag. It was, and they were trying to sell it for $300. It was a really big, nice.

Rustic looking leather bag that you would take on an airplane. Uh, no wheels, nothing handles it. It looked like it was from, you know, the 1960s. It was heavy leather. They were trying to sell ’em for $300 and none of them were selling. So they brought in a marketing, marketing department and they decided to create a story about the bag and the story, and then they decide to make a commercial about the story, which I’ve been trying to find the commercial ever since.

I can’t find it ’cause I can’t remember the name of the bag, but they told the story of a young man going off to war. All of his belongings were in the bag. And he dies in the war leaving his young son and his widowed wife at home. They ship the bag back and the young son, that’s all that’s left of him.

And it shows the son growing up over the years and he was reading this letter from his dad. I hope one day you take a trip to Mexico and, and drive along the coast and I hope one day you can see the Eiffel Tower in Paris and I hope one day. And so it shows. As he’s reading this letter from his father, it shows him traveling to those places with the bag.

The bag has become the legacy. They released that commercial. I. The bags sold out. They raised the price of the bag to $900 instead of three, and the bags continued to sell out because the bags have a story. Now, is the story true? No, I thought it was, and when I watched the commercial, I cried my eyes out.

You get so attached to this father and you’re like, legacy. I must leave all my children this leather bag. While I was there, the A friend said, you know what? I bought that leather bag ’cause of this story. He goes, it is the most useless thing. It has no wheels. I have to carry it all over the airport. I don’t know why I got the leather bag.

You know, it’s just kind of like he got into the story of the leather bag. But when we take moments to reflect on the day to day of life, which is what everybody else is reading, but we can put a spin on it to make it not seem ordinary. To make it seem very special, to have a moment where we are in the present moment and there is emotion there, and we are connecting to that emotion, to the poignancy of being a human being.

That is where great marketing comes from, and you don’t have to make up any stories, and it’s what’s really powerful. If I’m ever out of a story one day, I’m like, let me tell a story of one of my clients then, because they just went through this most amazing transformation. Let’s, let’s think of where, you know, where were you three years ago in your business?

Where are you now? Like those transformational stories are so, so powerful, especially if you can do it with a little humor. Or a little, A lot of truth people these days just want truth. They want somebody to get up and be like, you know what, okay, here’s what I really think and I am, if this goes against, you know, being totally politically correct, I’m okay with that because this is the stuff that we’re not saying right now.

I think that also that takes a lot of courage and bravery to go against the status quo, but we need more people out there like that who will be doing that, because otherwise we’re all being sold stories all the time. We get to decide which ones we are buying into, and we have to be really wary of which ones we allow into our lives, because a lot of times they’re just stories and a lot of them are made up.

Sabrina: And when you think about family photographers and just the genre of family photos that innately has stories, we all have family photos from our own childhood. Maybe you’re lucky enough to have them passed down from generations, you know, do you have photos of your great grandparents and and their grandparents?

Right? I have a gallery wall in my, um, in my home that goes up two flights of stairs and it was my COVID project to get it up. And it’s filled with professional photos and phone photos. And the day I was born is on there, my parents’ wedding, my husband’s family, his grandparents, and it’s also mixed with, you know, artwork from my kids and artwork from my own childhood and beautiful professional artwork.

It’s just a hodgepodge. Gallery wall, but I’m so proud of it and it sparks so many conversations and I could literally look at anything, any single thing on the wall and tell a story about it. And that’s what we do as family photographers. It’s, it’s all about the legacy and the story and the what story will this image from this moment in time tell 10 years from now, 20 years from now when these kids are grown and having their own kids.

Right? And what does it mean to the parents and how do they relate to photos and their own childhood memories and. There’s so many stories there to be told, and I’m, I’m saying this just to reiterate the point to the listeners that even if quote unquote, all you do is take family photos, there are still tons of stories at your disposal to be told.

In your emails and on your website and in your communication process and on Instagram and all throughout your marketing, right?

D’Arcy: Oh, yeah. And I would really get rid of that phrase. I just take family photos. That’s like when someone says to me, I’m like, oh, what do you do? Oh, I’m just a mom. I’m like, you’re just, I’m like, I’m sorry, but that is the most divine, holy calling on the planet ever.

And the fact that you get to do that. Without having to work a day job because you’re in this space. Like how amazingly magnificent and nobody is ever just a mom. Nobody is ever just a family photographer. And so that’s the thing is when you can see you. I think a lot of women think it’s arrogant or they don’t want to.

There’s like you and I were talking about, maybe sharing a story framework, but one of the first things that you have to do when you’re a business owner, when you’re telling a story is build credibility. You saw that with me in my introduction. I’m like, yeah, I’ve built two six figure businesses, my photography business, my workshop business, and one seven figure business, which is my coaching and online.

Course creation business. Now, is that cocky of me to say, or is that building credibility that, oh, well she must kind of know what she’s talking about. She must be a really good storyteller who understands business, who does products, who her clients come back to again and again and again. Like that’s the credibility.

But then what I could say after you build the credibility is then you go, what’s called the valley? And I can say, but before I did that. I was making $50,000 a year being a school teacher and feeling really underappreciated. And once reality TV came on, the children really changed and teachers started getting blamed for everything instead of parents and students taking accountability.

And I became not just a teacher, but a babysitter. And when I started doing my money mindset. I was like, there is no way in this government job where they pay you a salary that I can ever make more than 55, 50 $6,000 a year. I’m gonna have to leave it. And I did and quitting that job and going on the journey to building multi-six figure and a seven figure business.

And then I would go into some of the things I learned upon that path. And there I’ve told the story, you have to go from credibility. So you have to own how great you are now. And you can’t discount that. And there’s an art of doing it where you don’t sound cocky, but I’m gonna tell you, for women it’s very rare.

For you to sound cocky ’cause you’re so worried about sounding cocky. Anyway, however, we do need women who are confident and who do own their gifts because they are. Positive anchors for us to be like, oh, if she can do that, so can I. Right. So if every woman just kept playing small and like, oh, I’m just a mom.

Oh, I just run this little coaching business. Oh, I just take these little family photos. Oh, you know, I just discovered the cure for, I just discovered the polio vaccine. It’s no big deal. Like, it’s like, no, we need to take ownership and we need to believe that our stories matter. When you believe that you matter and your story matters, I’m gonna tell you, everything will become a story that you can tell.

You will be able to have the gift of taking a very simple moment and turning it into gold. When we can really understand how to own that credibility, whatever credibility is. If I were a school teacher and I was still in the school teacher route, I’d be like, yeah, I’m a school teacher who teaches this and this and this.

Most of my students get this grade because I am so dead. You know, I would still build it, even though that wasn’t the highest space that I reached. In fact, in the story I just told, it was my low point was being the school teacher, the poor school teacher. But every place has a spot where you can have the credibility, where you are now, what the transformation, you know, what the low point was and how you turn that into gold.

There’s also one where if you are never sure a story to tell you use the hero’s journey. It’s the Luke Skywalker to the Yoda. What was it? Who was a teacher in your life? Jennifer Garner just posted one of her favorite people on the planet, was her third or fourth grade teacher, and she interviewed her and it was the sweetest thing and why she loved this teacher.

I personally had an incredible teacher named Mrs. Harris. I believed I was stupid and could not read because I came from a family who never taught me how. So I was really behind and in the reading group, I was put with all the boys with like a, D, d and behavioral issues. It was like five of them and me.

And I felt stupid. I hated reading. I was like, I’m not good at this. I’m never gonna touch a book. And I was failing reading ’cause you had to read so many pages until I had this teacher who came up to me and she was like, Darcey. I have a feeling you don’t like reading, but I wanna make a deal with you. I chose this book out specifically for you.

If you read it and you just give it a chance to read it all, it was like 250 pages. If you read this book from start to finish, I’m gonna give you credit for 700 pages, which is how many we had to read. I’m gonna give you credit for all those pages if you commit to just read this one book, because I had never even read a book the whole way through.

’cause I’m like, I’m not a good reader. And I was like, wow, nobody’s really ever taken an interest in me like this, or actually acknowledged my reading issues or anything like that. So I was like, okay. And I started reading that book and that book changed me. It’s still like one of my favorite books to this day.

Mrs. Mike and I read it, and then I read it again, and then I read it again, and then I, I went up to her and I was like. I want another book and that, you know, we were only supposed to get 700 pages. I ended up getting something like 2000 pages she unlocked in me this ability to read. And then that is when my life opened up because from there I read and read and read and read.

And I became an English major and I studied storytelling and I, and I still read Voraciously today and I really feel like that teacher. Brought, like she was the first person. My parents weren’t seeing me, nobody was seeing me. She saw me, she got me. She brought me into this positive commitment. So even if you don’t have a story to tell of yourself, find the people who taught you and tell a story about them.

Like there’s so many stories that you have. That was a very, that’s a very simple story, Sabrina. It’s very simple, but it moves me to tears every time I think of Mrs. Harris and the effect, the profound effect on my life. Me reading that one book, and I read that book every single year. Every single year since the, since I was in elementary school.

I read that book. I love that book. It’s a true story memoir of this young girl who marries a Canadian mounty in Canada. And it’s from a really time gone era where life just doesn’t exist like that anymore, but it’s, it’s such a beautiful book. So, yeah, I don’t even remember what our question was. I got moved.

But I love that, and

Sabrina: this, this is a perfect segue because. Obviously the listeners can pick up on this. Now. What I’ve been saying is you’re so good at the art of storytelling and not just recognizing a story or the potential a story has, but delivering a story. And it’s not just that you use these stories in your marketing, it’s how you use them and how you tie them into, whether it’s, you know, selling calls or your weddings or a preset that you have or something.

You take a a story and you tell it in such a way that just. Naturally goes right into the next thing. And so I would love if you could give us a couple of tips for more compelling stories or making that tie in from story to selling a little bit better.

D’Arcy: Yeah. So a really quick like thing that I wanna give you a challenge today is to just pull out your phone, go to your camera roll, pick one photo that means something to you, and write two to four sentences of why it means something, not what happened.

Photo, why it matters, why this photo matters, and then just post it. That’s a story. That’s the start, right? And so how we do that selling people buy emotionally. I just had a call with someone and I was thinking of joining her $30,000 mastermind and I was waiting for her to see me and like. I, I told her so much about my business.

I was waiting for her to like give me a plan or a path. I was waiting for her to coach me like I coach my clients because I’m always looking for somebody who’s as good of coach or as invested as I am. And she didn’t, she, there was no story. There was no connection. She was just like, I knew she saw that I made a million dollar business and I had a feeling my gut was telling me that I was probably one of the.

Highest paid people who would come to try to seek out to work with her, and I could see dollar signs in her eyeballs. That’s all I saw. I was like, she is just trying to get my money. She’s not actually trying to understand my product or me, or tell me how she can get to me. So one of the best things that we can do is ask someone their story.

If we’re converting somebody to a photo shoot or a coaching client or maybe a mastermind. We ask them their story and then we listen and we become invested and we understand the parts of their story that make them them, and we mirror that back to them to show that we really understand them and we can get them.

That’s, that’s, to me, that’s a powerful part of selling, is knowing the person’s story in terms of marketing and showing up online. It’s all before and afters. So whenever you’re trying to sell anything, it’s like, here’s, here’s what they did before their family photos. Like, you know, you can talk a lot about, I remember when I was selling family sessions and I would tell a story of like.

Don’t just let your child’s childhood be solely taken on an iPhone and then you lose the phone. It was a story of a mom who lost her phone and it was pre-cloud and she hadn’t bought, she hadn’t backed anything up and she’d only taken iPhone photos of her kids and she’d never gotten a professional photo shoot.

She never like backed up anything and she lost it all, like right there. That’s kind of a harrowing tell of what not to do. And you know, we’re kind of scaring moms a little bit, but also we’re reminding them, Hey, you deserve to be in that more. Or you could tell a story of a mom who is so worried about her appearance that she then, you know, stays out of photos with her kids ’cause she thinks she’s fat.

Right. And I relate, I have one of my most opens newsletters is a newsletter where in the title it says You’re a fatty. Everybody opened that. ’cause they’re like, what is she talking about? What’s happening? Who called Darcy Fat? Like I can’t believe Darcy’s saying herself that she’s fat. Like this is weird.

Like what’s happening? So it was my most open newsletter and it was a story about I had just lost 60 pounds. I had a lot of inflammation and trauma from chronic overworking you. And I know how that goes And. I had just taken my health into my hands. I was getting therapy. I had lost 60 pounds, still a plus size lady.

I was walking out of a Starbucks and this very fit, very attractive man. Rides his bike by me and just fills the need to call out. You’re a fatty. I. Right to my face, like, this is a human man. Like, I’m like, whoa, we’re just, we’re, we’re in like 2021. What’s happening? You know? And how I decided to handle that, like immediately going into shame and then how I dug myself out with like, okay, the outside world will always try and put a label on you.

That, and really what he was saying is what he says to himself in the mirror, I’m sure. You know, he may be fit, but I know he speaks to himself like that in the mirror. He must go there and be like, you’re fatty and you’re this and you’re that. Because he can’t say that to other people if he doesn’t have that within him.

And then it really was a reflection on me with like, oh, it doesn’t even need to land because I don’t even talk to myself that way, and his projection doesn’t need to come on me. And it was a really valuable lesson of like the external world will always put their labels and their judgements on you. I. If you know you and you internally have you down, nobody else matters, right?

So bringing this back, you could tell a story of a mom who doesn’t wanna get in front of a camera because she’s worried that she’s too fat, and how you can weave it into this like. Place of empowerment and joy and love for herself. Like I remember I’ve had a few very hard clients who really didn’t like themselves, and I would actually take them through a self-love process before I would let them see their photos, because I knew as soon as they saw their photos, especially one of them, because she had an eating disorder, and I worked with people with eating disorders, so I knew what her mindset would do as soon as she saw a photo of herself.

It was an engagement session. I had her come on a call with me. I did some therapy with her on her own beauty, her own worth, her own value, and then I revealed the photos to her because I didn’t want her to see the photos alone and immediately have her critical negative voice tell her she was fat even though she weighed like 118 pounds or whatever.

There’s so many different stories that we can tell to sell, and I think what we’re really doing is we are showing that our product works. That is very important. Stories of success show that we have something that works. I have a course called The Profitable Portfolio. I have 800 positive testimonials. I have never gotten a bad review of that course, and that makes me know I have hit like my unicorn gold mine and that course has.

Been that, and so their transformations, you know, I had a client who went from never shooting in a chateau. She lived in England. She wanted to book all these chateau weddings. She took the profitable portfolio, and after she did everything I said, within two months she booked three chateau weddings without ever having.

Shot at a chateau before, like she broke all the boundaries and barriers that people think you have to do to get into this space. So her story’s very compelling because then people can see, oh, that helped her do that. What could it help me? You have to, every time somebody’s looking at something you’re offering, they wanna see, will that work for me?

Yes, she takes these beautiful photos of this family, but could I look that beautiful? Could my family look that good? What is her expertise? So. I think we’re constantly just showing people through our stories and through the stories of our clients, and then that makes selling really, really easy because they have so much proof that it will work.

That was really long-winded, and I feel like I keep going into all these stories, but I’m trying to illustrate storytelling, so

Sabrina: No, I love it. I love it. It’s perfect. I always. Love to leave an episode with a guest, with something really, really tangible because oftentimes we get into these great conversations like we’ve had today.

And while they are inspiring, they can also feel a little bit overwhelming, right? Like it’s tipped over from inspiring to overwhelming and maybe a little paralyzing, like, how do I begin? So can you leave our listeners with like, what is the very first step they can take to start adding storytelling into their marketing?

D’Arcy: Yeah. The first thing that I would do is you need to get to know yourself better. So sit down and write a list of all the. Best moments of your life? All the best. Like, oh my gosh, that time I made out with that, my boyfriend under the Eiffel Tower. Ah, and then you want to like write a list of all the worst times of your life.

The worst times, like, oh my gosh, that time that my high school boyfriend was killed in a car accident when we were 16. Both of those are real moments for me that were very highs and very lows. So you wanna write a list of all of that? And then you want to start thinking about why you’re doing what you’re doing and why that, why that matters.

Now there is a, there is a tricky line between being a victim and just telling all the bad things that happened to you with no redemption. I have been in storytelling conferences and they’ll be up. My dad abused me and my mom was a drunk. I have this now and this, and then they just leave it at that and then you are left just feeling sorry and uncomfortable for them and there’s no redemption of like, but because of that, this is why I am the woman I am today.

I just wrote a story, an email newsletter for my mother’s day. I had a very neglectful mother and I spun it to be like because of her, though I am the woman who I am, I am not neglectful of people in my life. I do this and this and this. And that newsletter got a ton of responses. I posted it to social media a ton, and it just helped people like it would be a powerful one.

Anybody who’s photographing moms needs to have, like her own mother journey as a story that she can write out and talk about and, and relate to and help them or tell the stories of her mother. So first thing, highs and lows, and start picking some of those out that have a thread of transformation with photography.

The other one is just exactly what I told you about pulling out your phone, going to your camera roll. Pick one photo that means something to you. Write two sentence caption about it and why it matters. Not what happened, but what you felt and post it, because that’s a story and that’s the start. And the other thing is you can just really think about beginnings and endings, right?

And, and what you’re selling. And then. From what you’re selling track back to what would compel people, what can I share with them that they would know that this thing they buy from me would be transformational?

Sabrina: I love that. That’s such great tips, and those really are simple places to start. Like really simple.

Anybody can do that this afternoon, tomorrow morning, anything at all. So I love that. I love to ask our guests on the podcast a few fun questions, uh, not related to our topic, just so they can get to know you a little bit better. And so the first one I’m curious is, do you have a hobby or something really fun that you are doing in 2025 that you’re pursuing just purely for joy?

D’Arcy: I do, and I am the least coordinated person ever, but. My sister and I started taking sexy dance classes. They’re private. I will not do it in front of anybody else. It’s she and I, uh, every other Wednesday, and we’re learning just how to. Sexy dance, sensual, whatever. We’re not on a pole or anything ’cause I could not do that.

But just like getting into our bodies and, ’cause she and I both have the story that we’re not very coordinated or good dancers, which has been true in the past, but we’re actually getting a lot better. We’ve got the hair toss really down, so that’s one thing I’m doing. Yeah.

Sabrina: Okay. I love that. That is super, super fun.

I’m also curious if there is something that you have up your sleeve for later this year.

D’Arcy: Yeah. I mean, there’s a big brand. I’m working with my friend Chelsea, who has two PhDs in branding, and we are putting together this ultimate like how to brand in a really different way than I’ve seen out there. I just gotta figure out how I.

To operate it, but I, I just came up that I’m gonna take six women to England in October and we’re gonna go through the whole process together. And one full day is about storytelling because if you don’t know your stories and why you’re doing what you’re doing and why it matters, it’s like sirens. The next start with why your brand is gonna feel very generic and boring.

And now that everybody’s chat, GP Ting, their stories. Chat, GPT cannot create your story. It really can’t. It’s taking from all the information out there and it can’t give you your, the emails where I write use chat GP and when I write them on my own, which I don’t use chat very often, but every so often to sell like a podcast or something, it’s so different.

So yeah, that’s up my sleeve. I just came up with that and thought about it yesterday, so I’m really excited for it.

Sabrina: Yeah, that’s gonna be an absolutely incredible experience, I’m sure. Last question. Is there a business tool or a hack that you are loving and couldn’t live without?

D’Arcy: Is my business tool or a hack right now that I, I think for me it’s just how easy Riverside FM is for my podcast.

So I stopped using Zoom, I went to Riverside. It does the whole thing for you. It edits in like one click. It will create little Instagram reels for you. Like with one click, it creates captions like it used to take me or whoever was doing my podcast hours to edit a podcast, I can now edit a podcast in like five minutes.

So Riverside FM has been incredible. I love it.

Sabrina: I love that I. I feel like I’m one of the last people standing that has not gone over to Riverside. I have been interviewed on Riverside many times by many people, and everybody raves about it, and I think I will probably make the switch at some point. I’m just.

Oh, it’s another platform to learn. You know? I know.

D’Arcy: I will say it was the quickest platform for me to learn. I thought it was gonna be hard. It was super quick. The only thing they don’t have is Zoom has the filter on your face that can just soften a little bit. Riverside doesn’t have that, so I’m like, oh, there’s all my wrinkles.

Okay. That’s good. Keeping it real. Keeping it real. I love

Sabrina: it. I love it. Darcey, thank you so much for being here today and for sharing so many incredible stories and so much wisdom about storytelling. I can’t wait to get the feedback and hear from the audience listeners, send either of us a DM and let us know what you thought about today.

Uh, pick our brain. We love to hear from you when a podcast resonates. And that’s it for today, my friend. Thanks for being here. Thanks so much for listening to the shoot at Straight podcast. You can find all the full show notes and details from today’s episode at. Sabrina gebhart.com/podcast. Come find me and connect over on the gram at Sabrina Gebhart Photography.

If you’re loving the podcast, I’d be honored if you hit that subscribe button and leave me a review. Until next time, my friends shoot it straight.