77: Ep3: Nobody Told Me I'd Have To Share My Life Online With Strangers

🌟 "I Know I'm Supposed to Share My Life Online, But I Have No Idea What to Share"

If there's one thing I hear constantly from the female solopreneurs I work with, it's some version of that exact sentence. Or one of its cousins:

"I'm really private, and I don't want to share certain parts of my life."

"I don't want to cry on camera."

"I don't want to post something I'll regret."

"My teenage kids are watching, and they don't want me talking about them."

I get it. I get it so much. But I also think there's a massive misconception floating around about what sharing your life online actually means. Somewhere along the way, "be personal" got translated into "be an open book," and a whole lot of smart, capable women decided that if that's the price of a personal brand, they'd rather stay invisible.

It's not the price. It never was.

In this post, I'm walking you through a concept I call your core story bank: the 4 to 5 stories and handful of personal themes that let you show up as a real human being online without performing vulnerability you don't feel. If you've been stuck on "what do I even share," this is your answer.

😳 I Pulled My Kids Out of My Content (Even Though They Get the Most Views)

Quick confession before we get into the framework.

When I show my kids' faces online, my views spike. Like, a lot. Especially in my Stories. They are consistently my most viewed content, and every time I check those numbers I think, "Ugh, why?"

And yet I've pulled way back from showing them.

Part of it is that I listen to too many true crime podcasts. I know too much. But the bigger part is simple: protecting my children and their privacy matters more to me than any engagement boost I would ever get from their faces. So I will never be the person telling you that you need to show your children online. I don't even follow that advice myself.

Here's the wider context, because I think it's worth naming. There's a version of "be authentic online" happening on Instagram right now that has gotten completely out of hand. It looks like crying openly on camera. It looks like sharing things that are raw and fresh and honestly not fully processed yet by the person sharing them. Painful moments on display because, let's face it, vulnerability gets views.

When I started showing up online, it was the opposite problem. The culture was polished and curated, sometimes way too much so.

Somewhere in between those two extremes is where I live. And I'd bet it's where you live, too.

The wild thing? My personal content has been built on the same small set of stories for years. Not new drama every week. Not fresh wounds. The same 4 to 5 stories and the same little themes, returned to again and again. And that small bank has done more for connection with my community than any single "raw" moment ever could.

That's the core story bank. Let me show you how it works.

🎯 Meet the Core Story Bank

The concept is simple: you do not need an endless supply of new personal content.

You don't need to manufacture drama. You don't need to dig up difficult moments just to seem relatable. What you need is 4 to 5 core stories and a few personal themes that are true to you, that you can return to again and again, and that your audience sees themselves in every single time.

Most of the women I work with do what they do because they had some kind of transformation themselves, or because they found something they love so much they want to shout it from the rooftops. And there are almost always stories underneath that, the ones that got them from point A to point B.

Those stories are the bank. And most of you are sitting on yours without even realizing it.

📂 What's In My Story Bank (It Hasn't Changed in Years)

To make this concrete, mine has looked basically the same for many years:

My core stories:

• The CrossFit gym era, when my husband and I started a CrossFit gym together

• Wanting desperately out of my nine-to-five and to be the boss of my own time

• Living in New York City for 10 years and my divorce, including how I met Rob (there's a whole podcast episode on that one, and it's pretty dramatic)

• Being the main earner in our family and the pressure that comes with that

My personal life themes:

• Being a mom to two elementary-age, sports-obsessed kids who are somehow both completely exhausting and the whole point of everything I do

• My rescue pit bull, Blitzy, who is a menace, and I love him completely

• My daily walks and my backyard, where I'm always planting something

• True crime podcasts

• A full-on romantasy novel obsession that started during COVID and never left

Notice something? None of these are dramatic. None of them make me want to cry on camera. But those stories and themes show up in my content constantly, and the women who follow me connect with them because they're living some version of the same life, or they did at some point.

No one else has your exact combination of stories and themes. That combination is what makes people feel like they know you.

💡 Share Your Scars, Not Your Wounds

Before you start building your bank, one rule that matters more than all the others.

There's a phrase I love that I first heard from Jasmine Star: "Share your scars, not your wounds."

If you're in the middle of something hard and heavy right now, that's not content. That's for you and your therapist, your husband, your best friend, and your journal. When you've come out the other side, when time has passed and you have something to offer from it, that's when it becomes a story worth telling.

So if you've been holding back because Instagram feels like it's asking you to perform a level of vulnerability you're not comfortable with? Good. Don't do that. That was never the assignment.

The core story bank is built from scars and from everyday themes. Never from open wounds.

✅ How to Build Your Core Story Bank (3 Steps)

Step 1: Start with your ideal client's messy middle.

Think about the experiences in your life that your ideal client is either living right now or has lived at some point. Not the polished, resolved version. The messy middle. The part where they're lying awake at night thinking about it.

For a lot of you, that might be juggling a business with little kids at home. Feeling like an imposter in your industry. Wanting more flexibility and freedom but not knowing how to get there. Being really good at what you do but terrible at talking about it online.

Those are themes. And somewhere in your actual life, you have stories that sit inside them.

Step 2: Write down the stories you already tell.

You don't have to dig deep. These are probably already the things you talk about with your friends, your family, your spouse. The things that come up in your DMs. The things you reference when you explain why you started your business.

Write them down. Just a handful. Three is a great start. Five is more than enough. You might be surprised how easily a couple more come to you once you sit down with it.

Step 3: Practice returning to them.

Not in a scripted way. Not sprinkled into your content like seasoning. Just this: when you sit down to create content and want to add a personal layer, you now have a place to go. A bank to draw from. You're no longer staring at a blank screen trying to decide how much of your life to put on the internet.

💬 Your Stories Are Bridges, Not Random Details

The sweet spot is when what you love talking about naturally overlaps with what your audience is going through. That's when personal storytelling stops feeling like a chore and starts feeling like you talking. And talking is something all of us can do.

For me, talking about mom life connects directly to the women I serve, because most of them are juggling kids, a business, a partner, and a bajillion other things. They need to know the person teaching them gets that. I work school hours. I built this business for freedom of time so I can be at all my kids' stuff. That comes up in my content, not ad nauseam, just sprinkled in.

Talking about hating my nine-to-five connects because most of my audience is either still in one and dreaming of leaving, or they just left and they're scared, and they want to hear how I built my business.

So those aren't random personal details. They're bridges. Your job is to find yours.

Ask yourself about each story: does this connect back to what I do or the person I serve? Could they see themselves in it? If yes, it goes in the bank.

💪 For the Private Ones: You Don't Have to Be an Open Book

If you're private, introverted, shy, or deeply uncomfortable with the idea of sharing online, this whole framework is especially for you.

You do not have to share your kids. Your marriage. Your home. Your hard seasons. Or anything that doesn't feel right.

There are women building thriving businesses and personal brands with a story bank made of nothing more than their personal journey, their dog, their love of hiking, and their morning coffee routine.

It doesn't have to be big. It just has to be real, and it has to be yours.

Because the goal was never to share everything. The goal is to share enough that the right person feels like they've found their person. The best compliment I ever get is when a woman DMs me, "You don't know me, Em, but I swear if we had coffee we'd be fast friends." That doesn't happen because I weep on camera. It happens because I've shared enough of my real life, consistently, that she feels like she knows me.

That's it. That's the whole thing.

🛠️ Resources & Links

• The episode where I tell my NYC and meeting-Rob story: [link]

• The Content Coven, my membership for female solopreneurs building personal brands together

🌟 Final Thoughts: Enough, Not Everything

You don't need 10 stories. You don't need tears. You need 4 to 5 core stories, a few themes that make you you, and the willingness to return to them again and again.

Your audience isn't asking you to bleed for them. They're asking to recognize themselves in you. A story bank gives them a way to do that on your terms.

And if you're working on showing up more consistently as yourself, without the pressure of performing vulnerability you don't feel, come join us inside The Content Coven. It's a room full of women figuring out this exact thing together, and it's a very good room.

If this post helped you see your own stories differently, send it to a friend who's been stuck on "what do I even share."

Comment below with the first story going into your core story bank. I'd love to read it. 👇