You Don’t Need a Bigger Story—You Need to Notice the One You’re Already Living
We’ve been taught that stories have to be dramatic to matter. Something explosive. Life-altering. A before-and-after moment big enough to justify the telling.
So when leaders say, “I don’t have a story,” what they usually mean is:
Nothing catastrophic ever happened to me.
But leadership isn’t shaped by catastrophe alone. It’s shaped by accumulation—small moments, repeated decisions, quiet adaptations. The moments you learned to read the room. To protect yourself. To speak carefully. To push forward anyway.
Those moments count. Whether you name them or not, they’re already doing their work.
Prefer to listen? Press play below.
The Cost of Compartmentalizing Yourself
Many professionals learn early that personal experience belongs on one side of the line and professional identity on the other. Be competent here. Be human somewhere else.
The problem is that separation doesn’t make leadership clearer—it makes it thinner.
When personal experience is excluded, leadership loses context. Decisions lose depth. Communication becomes informational instead of relational. People sense the distance even if they can’t name it.
You are not a businessperson who happens to have a personal life. You are a person operating in business, informed by everything you’ve lived through.
Why “Ordinary” Stories Shape Extraordinary Leaders
Most people assume a story must involve trauma, triumph, or transformation to be worth sharing. But stories don’t earn their value through scale—they earn it through meaning.
A story can be:
The first time you realized your work mattered
A moment you surprised yourself with courage
A failure that taught you how to lead differently
A decision you made quietly that changed your direction
These moments don’t announce themselves as stories. They become stories over time—when you reflect on how they shaped you.
Show, Don’t Announce
There’s a difference between telling people who you are and showing them.
“I’m resilient” is a claim.
Describing the moment you wanted to quit—and why you didn’t—creates understanding.
Showing invites the listener into a scene. Telling keeps them at arm’s length.
In leadership communication, showing builds trust faster than credentials ever will. It allows others to see themselves in your experience, not just admire it from afar.
Creativity Isn’t a Luxury—It’s a Skill
Creativity often gets framed as optional or indulgent. Something reserved for artists, not leaders.
But creativity is what keeps the mind flexible. It’s what allows leaders to adapt when plans fail, markets shift, or people change.
When leaders engage creativity—through storytelling, making, building, or experimenting—they strengthen their ability to problem-solve. Creativity trains the brain to stay curious instead of rigid.
That’s not soft. That’s strategic.
Mining Your Story Inventory
If you feel like you “don’t have a story,” it’s rarely because one doesn’t exist. It’s because you haven’t gone looking.
Try starting with:
A story you always tell at the dinner table
A moment that still makes you emotional
A failure you learned something important from
A time you felt unexpectedly proud
You don’t need to perform these stories. You just need to recognize them. Over time, they become a quiet inventory you can draw from—when leading, writing, or connecting.
The Leadership Shift That Matters Most
The most impactful leaders aren’t the most impressive. They’re the most integrated.
They don’t separate ambition from humanity. They don’t wait for a perfect story before speaking. They trust that what shaped them might help someone else feel seen.
You don’t need a bigger story.
You need the courage to notice the one you’re already living.
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[00:00:00] The Myth of the “Big Enough” Story
Tricia Rose Burt: I had a workshop, I'm down in Washington with all these people, provided prompts. We're gonna get up on stage, we're gonna tell a story. And this woman, woman was like, I don't have a story. I don't have a story. I don't have a story. Well, she got up on stage and made everybody cry. And I think most people think a story is seismic shift event.
And it doesn't have to be that, but it can be something that shaped you and you carry into your work, whether you know it or not. And once you recognize that story. Then you understand why you, you're this kind of leader or the kind of stories you can share that inspire other people.
Dr. J.J. Peterson: Welcome to Badass Softie, a podcast for leaders who are unapologetically ambitious and want to lead with heart because you're allowed to chase big goals without losing what makes you human. I'm your host, Dr. JJ Peterson, and today on the show I talk to my friend Tricia Rose. Burt. Tricia is one of the most incredible storytellers I have ever met.
She started in the, uh, she working with Fidelity kind of in her career and then realized, uh, this isn't the space I wanna be in. So she was in the boardroom and then said, I wanna be a storyteller. And she talks about how that process happened and what came out of it. But now she works with, um, the Moth, uh, which is probably the largest, most famous storytelling organization in in the world, I would argue, and goes in and helps companies and leaders to tell their own stories in a way that are incredibly powerful and build credibility and are about the founder story all of those things that really matter in the business space and personal space.
And in this episode what we really talk about is how to craft stories that matter that get people's attention, and also really about why creativity matters. So if you've ever thought, I don't know if I have my a good story, or I don't know how to tell the story of our company in a really powerful way.
I think this episode is really going to help you lean into your stories in a whole new way. So with that, I am excited for you to listen to my conversation with Tricia Rose. Burt. Tricia, I am so excited to have you on the podcast because A, I adore you as a human being, but B, you truly are one of, and, and I don't mean this lightly, one of this era's greatest storytellers like and Oh, thank you. And I know we can include with a whole bunch of other people, but like you have been on the Moth multiple times. You worked for the Moth teaching businesses, how to tell stories, you worked for StoryBrand. Going out there helping them clarify their marketing message with stories.
I have watched you. Share your stories in a way that invites people to be more themselves, invites them to be more creative. Inspires, encourages, teaches. And you have taught me along the way how as, as I've listened to your podcast and I've. Uh, I'm on your email list and I've, I've uh, you have taught me how to be a better storyteller and to step oh, thank you, into creativity in a really powerful way, and you truly are a badass softie, and that is why I wanted to have you on the podcast.
So welcome so much. I'm so excited for you to be here.
Tricia Rose Burt: I know I'm so tickled and I love that term badass softie, man. I, that's a, that's a great term. That's a great, and also very fitting, uh, it's fitting
Dr. J.J. Peterson: well for you too, my friend. For you too.
Tricia Rose Burt: I mean,
[00:03:36] When Sensitivity Becomes a Strength
Tricia Rose Burt: my whole life I was told, I was just, you're too sensitive.
You're too dramatic. And, um, and yet yes to both of those things, but it was not an asset growing up. It was not, yes, it was a major liability. And then now it's what makes me really good at what I do. And I think what makes, we've, everybody talks about this and but the, the key to being a good leader is vulnerability.
The key to telling a good story is vulnerability. You know? Yeah. I mean it, and so it is that balance between being the badass and the softie.
Dr. J.J. Peterson: How did you get into storytelling and when did you start to realize, oh, this is a thing that I want to do, whether it was for yourself or for other people? I know it started kind of for yourself first, but go back to like what drew you into story and what was that moment where you're like, oh, story is powerful.
Tricia Rose Burt: Well, first of all, I have to say that
[00:04:27] The Long Way Back to Creativity
Tricia Rose Burt: one time I was at my mother's house. It had to be a decade now at this point, and I found all these old papers and there was a, there was a poster I had apparently had drawn, and maybe it was eight, you know, something like that. It was like, please come see me in a play Thursday at 1:00 PM Tricia Burt.
And I thought nothing has changed. Nothing. But I did take. I did take like a 40 year detour, right? Because. I, that's who I was. And then you get talked out of it, right? And, and society pushes you in different directions and your family says, that's not very smart, or that's not logical, that's not practical.
Be on the path that's safe, you know, conform with everybody else, blah, blah, blah. So I did all that conforming, I did all that safe stuff and all of it blew up. All of it blew up. And I ended up going to art school in my mid thirties and. I remember walking into art school knowing I was like leaving everything I knew, but feeling like I fit in for the first time because no one fit in in art school.
And I'm like, oh, this is the point. You're not supposed to fit in. This is great. You know? So finally it took me a while to found my tribe of people. I was an artist from getting to answering your question. I was an artist for like 10 years and then the market crashed. And no one was buying visual work anymore.
No one was hiring consultants anymore. And for some reason I thought, oh, I know I'll go into performance because that's so lucrative. Like I, you know, and in a stable sense. It's very stable, classically.
Dr. J.J. Peterson: Financially stable. Yeah,
Tricia Rose Burt: it's very stable. It makes a lot of sense. It's a real practical road to, you know, follow.
Um, but I'm like, I just had those marching orders. I'd had a one woman show in my head for like 13 years and then, everything went to hell and my husband just looked at me and said, would you just do the show? You know? I was like, okay. So I did it. What was interesting about taking that risk? The big ass risk.
I had no idea what I was doing. I had no idea what I was doing, and I became this artist. It was funny because while I was being an artist and doing visual work, my work kept getting bigger and bigger. And I then finally realized I wanted to be the art. Like I wanted to be the one on stage, not just hang a picture on the wall.
And you know, also I was fighting against as many people do in various capacities. Like I was raised never to draw attention to myself. So I was fighting, I had to unlearn all of this, you know, conditioning of how, particularly as a southern woman, you know, just do not draw attention to yourself. And I'm. I kind of went, well, somebody has to pay, draw attention to the self and it might as well be me.
But anyway, so I did this one woman show. And, um, it got the attention of them off
Dr. J.J. Peterson: live storytelling on NPR. You know, like its on NPR r it, like, it's, yeah, yeah. This is gigantic if you haven't heard about it.
Tricia Rose Burt: And so I had the very good fortune of working with them, um, I mean, I was on stage telling stories with them and then they figured out I had this business background and they're like, Hey, you wanna go, um, tell, you know, help teach our folks, you know, businesses around the country, uh, how to teach leaders there, they're first person narrative stories.
I'm like, sure. And so I started doing that with a mo and then I hooked up with you folks at StoryBrand and really, honed my craft with you guys in a whole nother way.
[00:07:46] What Happens When Leaders Compartmentalize Themselves
Dr. J.J. Peterson: Why do you think it is so important for leaders and people in business to be able to articulate their own, uh, you know, obviously articulate their business story, but their own personal story as well?
Why? What have you seen the power of what that happens when people do that?
Tricia Rose Burt: When we compartmentalize ourselves, we're just diluting things, right? And so I can remember talking to this one gentleman who I first started working with, and, and it just had never occurred to him that these personal experience he had, were really informing how he was operating as a leader.
Why he was interested in what he was doing. I mean, he just kept it so separate. And if we, if we keep things separate it just. It loses the richness of our experience. And so if you can, you're not just a business person, you're a person. You're in business and you've had all these other personal experiences that can be really useful either in conversation with clients, in conversations with your staff, with your team, and also just sort of knowing why are you doing this?
I've been working with a, a think tank down in Washington, bunch of economists with their PhDs. Lovely, lovely people, so smart, and I started asking them, so why are you doing this? Why are you doing this? And it was almost like n they hadn't thought about it in a long time. They hadn't remembered why they got into this in the first place.
And I literally said to this, I had a workshop. I'm down in Washington with all these people. I said, you know, I provided prompts. We're gonna get up on stage, we're gonna tell a story. And this woman, woman was like, I don't have a story. I don't have a story. I don't have a story. And so I sat and I visited with her a little bit and I asked her a couple questions and she was like, well, maybe this, well, she got up on stage and made everybody cry.
Her original thought was, I don't have a story. And I think most people think a story is, it's been life or death. It's been some just huge, life seismic shift event. And it doesn't have to be that, but it can be something that shaped you and you carry into your work, whether you know it or not.
And once you recognize that story, then you understand why you, you're this kind of leader or the kind of leader you can grow into or the kind of stories you can share that inspire other people.
Dr. J.J. Peterson: You know, it's one of the things I talk about on here a lot is the idea that as a badass softie leader, you have to have your own point of view.
You have to actually come to the table. And that comes from understanding of who you are, what created you, and where, what type of leader you want to be. Yes. And part of that why I, I think that's so important something you just mentioned is one, it reminds you of the passion of why you do things, which is so important when it comes to.
Sustaining oftentimes hard and laborious work. Yes. And so when you understand the story and how to tell pieces of your story in a way that connect with people that bring wisdom to the situation, you actually are now more valuable than ever in an age of AI and an age where all of these tools, quote unquote, and machines are going to replace us.
Nobody. AI will never have a point of view. So when you understand how to bring your point of view and your story to the table as a leader, it not only makes you more valuable, but it actually moves your company forward and your team forward in ways that you could never do by just plugging in information into an AI machine to help you make a presentation that might be.
Have a lot of great information, but doesn't have any connection or wisdom. So one of my questions would be, as you, when you're working with people in this capacity and helping them kind of discover some of these stories that maybe they do end up applying to their work environment or not. But they're learning from.
What are some of those, you said you do a workshop.
[00:11:29] Mining the Stories You Already Carry
Dr. J.J. Peterson: What, what are some of the prompts that you offer people that might say to themselves, people listening right now might go, well, I don't have a story. What are some of the prompts that you offer that help people bring out some of those stories?
Tricia Rose Burt: You can do easy prompts.
First, best, worst, last, first time you got rejected, you know, last time, you know, and you, you knew the easy prompts, right? The ones that just get you thinking about, uh, a vacation, an experience, whatever. Normally what I'll say to people is if, I mean, it depends if I have a workshop with a client who says, we wanna make sure they go in this direction.
I normally teach people how to do personal storytelling first before making it. Applying it in a business situation because it's easier, yes. To do a personal story, it's easier to do a personal story. They're not thinking so hard. They, you know, and I always try to say, what's the story that you, what's your go-to at the dining room table, at a cocktail party, at a here or there?
The story you always tell the story that, you know, makes you tear up or makes you cry or makes you a little bit sick to your stomach. Like, you know, you start with those, like, what was an important point in your life that you talk about? Or I can do prompts that are like when was the first time you realized that your work mattered?
When was the first time that that you surprised yourself with something that you didn't know you knew how to do when? I mean, it's all these kinds that'll get under the surface a little bit for people. And so it just gets them thinking. Now, they may not set answer the prompt, and I don't really care if they do.
I just want 'em to get up on stage and tell a story.
Dr. J.J. Peterson: Well, I think that's so key to understand is that. People have way more stories than they think, and especially when you're put on the spot, a lot of times, like in a work environment or something like that, you're like, how do I make this interesting in the moment?
But if you can actually take some time to go through some of these prompts for yourself and go like, what, when was my favorite vacation? What was my best gift that I got for Christmas as a child? When was the time I felt alone when, you know, just kind of like the last first best, or really thinking in those terms and then applying it to your work and going, why did I get into it?
What was the moment? That's even what I asked you. I was like, let's go back. Why was story important? How did you get there? That allowed you to share that, and when you ask those kind of prompts even of yourself and start thinking through those. When I first got into speaking on stages on a regular basis, I actually wrote down, I still have it in one of my journals.
15 stories that I knew that crushed at parties. Yes. Like my go-to stories that I went to. Yes. And I wrote them down. Now, most of those, to be very honest, have never appeared on stage before, but I have them at the ready. So when I'm preparing a talk, when I'm preparing a connection, I have these there that I can pull on and one.
Tip we can give everybody is if you feel like you don't have a story, to be able to actually give yourself some prompts and write them down, even if it feels cheesy to you to have these stories at the ready. They're not cheesy. The people who are hearing 'em, they are hearing 'em for the first time and it builds that connection.
Tricia Rose Burt: Well, and also I tell my clients all the time, first of all, you mine for stories. You mine for 'em. Where are they? What are the stories that I, I have the ready and then you, and you build on those. You, you need to have an in. Well, I would encourage people to have an inventory of stories that they can pull from, depending on where they are, because it just makes, it makes total sense.
[00:14:57] Showing the Story Instead of Telling It
Tricia Rose Burt: I mean, I literally just went through a workshop with folks telling the origin story of their company. I'm like, so what are the stories that you wanna work with that origin story of that show, you know, you know, show, show versus tell, we know that. Does your audience know the difference between show versus tell?
Should we talk about that a little bit?
Dr. J.J. Peterson: Yeah, talk about that for a second. Yeah. When you're telling a good story, the difference between show versus tell.
Tricia Rose Burt: So, um, there's a great story. A guy named Tim Maley and the Moth tells, and he's talking about it's his, he's a English teacher. It's first day as a teacher in New York, high school teacher in New York.
And he describes his he describes his high school principal, and he doesn't say he's scary looking. He says he's a former punk rock drummer with full length sleeve tattoos and a perpetual frown on his face. So by showing us. How he's scary. We all have a picture in our brain as opposed to saying he looks scary.
Okay, well what does that mean? Or I was scared of my principal. Well, what does that mean? You know? So get, paint that picture for us. Think about it. It it is the scene, like painting the scene of why instead of saying, again, you know, I was happy, I was laughing so hard. I wet my pants.
Whole different thing than saying I was happy. You know what? Mm-hmm. It was funny, whatever. So trying to give some detail around you know, not just telling it, but showing it is really important. We also, when you're telling a story, it's like, I. We wanna know about the hard moments. We, we used to say all the time, it's great that you climbed Mount Everest, but what we really wanna know is the moment you wanted to turn back.
That's what's interesting. It's interesting, particularly if you're a badass softie, particularly for business leaders out there. We wanna know When did, when did it not work? How did you get through the stuff that wasn't working? You know, that's interesting. Not that, and I won five awards, you know, I mean, like, who cares?
I wanna know about the part. You know, stories inspire people. They move people, they call them to action. They're very important. They're very important.
Dr. J.J. Peterson: And connection, especially in this day and age matters more than ever. And it is, oh, I believe the differentiator in leadership in business. And uh, and
[00:17:07] Creativity as a Leadership Practice
Dr. J.J. Peterson: I think why this matters, some of the things you know, that you and I both know is that everybody who's listening when you're in business in particular, or you're an artist, you, you and I have talked about this, you're creating something out of nothing.
Whether you're writing an email, you're writing for an email that's gonna go out to sell a product, or creating a website that talks about your company or you're leading a meeting, those things have never been created before, let alone, like when you're talking about music and art and books, and putting your story out there in a, in an artistic way, those things have never existed before.
You're creating them from scratch. And so often, I think, and this is, I I, I wanna put this back on you in a second. Here is often when we don't mind the creativity in these other spaces, like in storytelling and in poetry, and in creating, painting or drawings or just being silly and whimsical.
When we don't mind creativity over here, then when we all of a sudden sit down and go, well, how do I write this email? We think, well, we'll just be creative with it. And it's like we put a lot of this pressure on us to write this thing that's going to sell a $10,000 product that we have no idea how to do it and all these things.
And yet we haven't put in the work, in the creativity and, and mining the creativity that was in us. And so some of what you do obviously is I think, really powerful in this just purely storytelling aspect of things. But what is it about bringing people, the creativity out in people that allows them to do other things and bigger things down the line?
Tricia Rose Burt: I, I think, you know, I mean, listen, I think the world would be so much better if we had a lot more, you know, poets and a lot more violinists and a lot more, you know, straight up artists. But what we need are more creative problem solvers. And so when I talk to people about their creativity, it's a lot about getting your brain nimble so you can creatively problem solve.
If, I mean, when I first went to art school I, there was not a more rigid per uh, person on the planet. I mean, my thinking was just so, like they had, they. Our first exercise was like, they were like, write your name on a, you know, write your name on a piece of paper. And I'm like, oh, I've got this. And I like, wrote my name over and over again in like, just lines, like, there weren't even lines on the paper.
I, I just, I just imposed them in my head, wrote my name over and over again in straight lines. And I looked at other people and they've got like these big names and it's like graffiti and it's like all this stuff. And I'm like, Tricia Roseberg. I mean, I just like, bless her heart, you know, just so rigid.
Give me boxes and parameters now please. And so I think, you know, we have to learn how to be playful again. We have to learn how to be creative again. And that's scary stuff, man. That is scary stuff. And I, you know, if, even me, I have a podcast called No Time to Be Timid, where I am constantly telling people to put their creative work first.
I will have to go stop it. Do not go, fill out those emails and whatever. Go like, make something in the studio. Just go use your hands. Just go make a pie. Just go do something that is getting me out of my head, into my body, into that creative self because the benefits will be the work I do. We will be so much richer because I have filled this creative well.
Dr. J.J. Peterson: I love it. I love it. Well, that's what I mean. That's exactly what I wanted to do on, because I just think reminding people that first off, you have a story. You have a story to tell. And being creative with that story and making it interesting, and then even if it's not about the storytelling, just being creative in general.
All of that is going to make you even more of a badass softie. And yes, I am just, again, that we could talk for hours, but I'm so inspired by everything that you've done and are continuing to do. And if people are interested in working with you, learning to bring you, having you come in and work with their company to help their leaders tell stories or bring out that creativity and people, how can people get in touch with you?
Tricia Rose Burt: Trisha roseberg.com. If you put in Trisha Roseberg anywhere, I will show up. TRI. Yeah. T-R-I-C-I-A rose bur BURT.
Dr. J.J. Peterson: Well, I love it. Well, thank you for being here and um, thank you for being a badass softie and being my friend.
Tricia Rose Burt: Thank you for leading us, jj. It's so nice to see your handsome face. Thank you so much.
[00:21:37] A Return to Story, Meaning, and Humanity
Dr. J.J. Peterson: Wow. Tricia always inspires me. And if you're interested in hearing more from her, don't forget to go listen to her podcast. No time to be timid. She has incredible guests on there. She's incredible. It's so fun and so inspiring. You know, the thing that I'm gonna take away from today's conversation beyond just the storytelling, is the whole idea of leaning into creativity as as a tool that helps me become a problem solver in other areas.
Whether you are leaning into story. Crafting stories or painting or gardening or baking bread. I think it's so important to always kind of get out of our own heads and really use our hands to create something Every year I have committed to being creative and getting outside of my own head and using that space that doesn't have anything to do with my business.
But that creativeness over here on this other side, kind of outside of expanding areas of my brain that allowed me to be creative in my own business. And you know, one of the things that I do with my company is I actually go in and I help people be creative with their stories. I help them be creative with their marketing and with their own personal story so they can write a book or create a course with their own ip.
I have found it so valuable to help people be kind of experience some general creativity first, and that actually opens up a whole bunch of new areas in thought and thinking that allow us then to be creative with the stories that we're telling on paper. So I want to just encourage you to lean into something creative.
You don't have to do it. Well, you don't have to do it perfectly. Nobody may ever even see it. But be creative because when you're creative with art, it allows you then to be creative in problem solving and creating things in your own business. And so I'm gonna leave you with this. May you trust that you already carry stories worth telling, even the ones you've overlooked because they feel ordinary or unfinished.
May you have the patience to mind them gently and the courage to shape them with care. May your stories build connection first and let credibility follow naturally behind. May you make something with your hands, paint or plant or build or tend, so your mind remembers how to experiment, adapt, and solve problems with curiosity instead of fear.
And may you never doubt that your singular experiences matter because the stories only you can tell become the very thing that may help other people feel seen. 'cause we believe you can be both ambitious and kind, fun and driven, powerful and deeply human. May your leadership inspire your success. Have soul and your ambition.
Make space for everyone. That's why you are a badass softie. We'll see you next week. Thanks for listening. Follow and subscribe so you don't miss an episode. Badasssoftie.com is crafted by fruitful design and strategy.