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344- The Story Gold in Your Ordinary Tuesday · Stuck No More Voices

• 0:00
  Most women do not have a story problem.
• 0:02
  They have a seeing problem.
• 0:04
  They think they need some huge dramatic testimony before their story matters.
• 0:09
  The moment sitting at the kitchen table, that's what they overlook.
• 0:13
  Or how about this?
• 0:15
  The rejection that changed something in them, the decision nobody saw, the prayer they barely got out, the ordinary Tuesday when something shifted, and years later they look back and realize that was not a random moment.
• 0:29
  There was gold in there.
• 0:31
  Welcome back to the Stuck No More Voices podcast.
• 0:34
  I'm Theresa Croft.
• 0:36
  I'm a visibility strategist and the creator of the Gold Story Method.
• 0:41
  I help Christian women clarify the story they carry through my Story Gold Method, position their message, and build a visibility pathway so the right people can find them and work with them.
• 0:52
  Subscribe on YouTube or share on Apple podcast.
• 0:56
  That's how the right woman ends up in this room.
• 0:59
  So let's get into it Today we're talking about something that has become very personal to me.
• 1:07
  Story gold.
• 1:08
  The most powerful stories are not necessarily the biggest things that happen to you.
• 1:13
  Sometimes they are tiny moments you almost forgot.
• 1:16
  And when you go back and look at it, you see a thread.
• 1:21
  You realize God was doing something there.
• 1:24
  That is story gold.
• 1:27
  Five steps.
• 1:28
  See, sacred turn, golden thread, bridge, invitation.
• 1:34
  Let's walk through them.
• 1:35
  Step number one, see.
• 1:37
  Do not tell me your whole story.
• 1:39
  Show me the moment.
• 1:41
  If I asked you to tell about motherhood, that is enormous.
• 1:45
  If I tell you about one moment when you realize being a mother had changed you, now we have somewhere to go.
• 1:54
  I'll ask you about your business journey.
• 1:56
  Hmm?
• 1:56
  You could give me 15 years of drama, the drama.
• 1:59
  But what if I asked you tell me about the moment you almost quit.
• 2:04
  There it is.
• 2:06
  A story has a location, a conversation, a face, a sound, a sentence, something you can see.
• 2:15
  Pull up a chair.
• 2:16
  I'm gonna tell you a story The rice was almost done.
• 2:21
  I was standing at the stove making my son dinner, thinking really about nothing, and then I looked up.
• 2:28
  I saw that plaque beside the stove, the kind you buy without thinking about it.
• 2:34
  Family, memories are close at heart.
• 2:38
  I had that same plaque in a camper.
• 2:41
  Four years out on raw land in the middle of nowhere.
• 2:45
  My husband then wanted to build on land, so no neighbors, family far away, and most of them were angry at us.
• 2:53
  I used to look at those words and think, family, it's a myth.
• 2:59
  And standing there with my spoon in my hand, it hit me.
• 3:04
  I'm not remembering memories that almost killed me.
• 3:08
  I'm making them to heal me.
• 3:11
  Same plaque, same woman, a whole different time in my life Step number two, the sacred turn.
• 3:18
  Once you see the moment, look for the turn.
• 3:22
  The real story has a hinge.
• 3:24
  The sacred something has the outer shift.
• 3:28
  It, or it might be an inner one.
• 3:30
  The moment you knew you had to leave the room.
• 3:33
  The moment you decided to say yes even though your knees were shaking.
• 3:37
  The moment you stopped fighting and finally let God do the fighting for you.
• 3:42
  The moment the sentence somebody spoke over you cracked something loose you did not know was locked.
• 3:50
  The sacred turn is not always loud.
• 3:53
  Sometimes it's a whisper you almost missed.
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  So pull up a chair.
• 3:57
  My own sacred moment.
• 4:00
  It was a cold Valentine's Day.
• 4:03
  I sat in my car looking up at the hospital and I did not wanna go in They had called me back.
• 4:08
  Something showed up on my mammogram.
• 4:10
  I felt it deep down.
• 4:12
  This might be a real problem.
• 4:15
  The thought followed me into the changing room.
• 4:17
  I could not get the robe tied.
• 4:19
  You know, those things are loose and ugh.
• 4:20
  And I was freezing on top of it.
• 4:22
  I'm always cold.
• 4:24
  Or maybe that was nerves this time.
• 4:26
  I could not tell the difference.
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  They did the imaging.
• 4:30
  Then a slot opened because someone canceled, and they walked me straight into the biopsy room.
• 4:35
  Biopsy room, why?
• 4:37
  Not expecting that at all.
• 4:40
  I was lying on that cold table, cold, alone with it, and the Holy Spirit said to me, not gentle, like fire,"Tee, can you make this a story for my glory?" My first answer was not yes.
• 4:56
  My first answer was,"Lord, I already have a story.
• 4:59
  No." Then I said yes anyway, and that yes carried me.
• 5:05
  That yes carried me through two biopsies, through an MRI, through the incision and two surgeries.
• 5:11
  It carried me through the healing with my kids close and a friend who got on a Zoom with me just to drink coffee together.
• 5:19
  Those were the moments.
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  I was healing.
• 5:22
  I was loved, and the calling on my life did not stop.
• 5:25
  Hmm.
• 5:27
  Here's what I understand now.
• 5:29
  God was not asking permission to use my pain.
• 5:34
  He was asking whether I would still be willing when the story cost me something.
• 5:40
  Step three, the golden thread.
• 5:42
  Now step back.
• 5:44
  What theme has God been repeating in your life across different seasons?
• 5:49
  Voice, freedom, restoration, provision, belonging, healing, boldness, or something else.
• 5:56
  You're looking for a thread, not a highlight reel.
• 5:59
  The thread is what you see when you lay three or four sacred turns side by side and realize they all rhyme.
• 6:06
  Different rooms, same lesson.
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  Different people, same message.
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  Different seasons, same voice of God.
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  Pull up a chair.
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  My thread.
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  Here we go.
• 6:18
  Not a career in voice, but it has to do with voice.
• 6:22
  The thing underneath it.
• 6:23
  It was about a year after my husband passed.
• 6:27
  I was looking for my lane, not a paycheck.
• 6:31
  The place God actually meant to set me down.
• 6:35
  I was working a job I did not like, and in my lunch break one day, I was messing around with ChatGPT, asking it to help me name what I do.
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  It gave me two words back.
• 6:48
  Voice revivalist.
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  I wrote them down in my notes.
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  I didn't think much of it.
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  Then a position opened at a radio station.
• 6:58
  A radio station, the same one I worked at 18 years before.
• 7:04
  I applied, I got it, and I walked in the door, and the station had been rebranded while I was gone for those 18 years.
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  Now, Victory 91.5, the sound of revival.
• 7:18
  I stood there with that phrase on the wall in front of me, and the same words sitting in my notes app.
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  Revivalist.
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  Revival.
• 7:28
  I want to say this carefully.
• 7:30
  A machine did not prophesy over me.
• 7:32
  It handed me back language, and God used the language to show me something he had already been doing.
• 7:38
  Key point.
• 7:40
  You are the prophet.
• 7:41
  AI is the scribe.
• 7:44
  Now, look at the thread.
• 7:46
  Radio at 30 years old, a voice with a microphone in front of it.
• 7:52
  Then 26 years of marriage where the loudest room I ever spoke in was in my own house, and I could not speak up or say no for that matter.
• 8:02
  Then back to that same station under a name with revival in it.
• 8:07
  Then the microphone on the calling tables where I sit down with women and help them find one story they have been holding that can connect.
• 8:16
  Same thread, different rooms, and 40 years of it.
• 8:21
  Once you see the thread, your story stops feeling scattered.
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  It starts feeling woven.
• 8:27
  The next step is the bridge.
• 8:29
  Now, the bridge is where your story connects your calling to the people you're meant to serve.
• 8:34
  It points outward.
• 8:37
  Pull up a chair.
• 8:38
  The woman on the other side, she booked a Zoom with me, and she didn't know really why she did that.
• 8:45
  That happens a lot.
• 8:47
  And she signs up, okay?
• 8:50
  And then she shows up, and you can tell she's not sure why- what she came for this time.
• 8:55
  So she just started talking.
• 8:57
  Somewhere in it she said,"You know, I used to read your emails." I asked her what she meant.
• 9:04
  She said every Sunday night, years ago, she would sit down and read what I sent.
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  Then she told me what those emails did for her in that season.
• 9:17
  I sat there with my face on a screen trying to hold it together.
• 9:22
  Those were emails.
• 9:25
  And I remember exactly what my life looked like when I s- was sending them.
• 9:29
  Abuse from a husband.
• 9:30
  Nothing was working.
• 9:32
  The numbers were small.
• 9:33
  I didn't throw up on the emails.
• 9:34
  I just was trying to encourage out of the overflow.
• 9:38
  I was writing into the dark, and the whole time on the other side, there was a woman at her kitchen table on a Sunday night waiting for that email.
• 9:51
  I did not find that out for years, you see.
• 9:53
  Years.
• 9:55
  Here's what I want you to hear, though.
• 9:56
  If you are putting work together right now, okay, and hearing nothing back, silence is not the same as no reach.
• 10:06
  You're not measuring the thing you think you are measuring.
• 10:09
  You are measuring, you are counting opens, but God is counting kitchen tables.
• 10:16
  The woman on the other end of my quiet season found me years later and told me it mattered.
• 10:23
  My story had only become her way in.
• 10:27
  I just did not get to see it until now.
• 10:30
  Keep writing in the dark.
• 10:32
  Somebody is reading on the other side of it Finally, step five, the invitation.
• 10:39
  Story without invitation is a diary.
• 10:41
  Story with invitation is business with a strategy.
• 10:44
  Every time you tell a piece of your story gold and one thing she can do next, one, not three, just one thing she can do next, book the call, come to the room, read the devotional, reply with a word.
• 11:01
  The single next step is what turns a woman from a reader into a friend, from a friend into a client, from a client into a testimony, walking around telling other women what God did.
• 11:16
  You do not have to sell hard.
• 11:18
  You just have to offer clearly.
• 11:21
  So let's bring it together.
• 11:22
  Story Gold is not, uh, like a certain formula.
• 11:26
  It's a way of seeing.
• 11:27
  I do have a special prompt for it, though.
• 11:29
  It's where you find the sacred turn, you trace the golden thread, you build the bridge, you extend the invitation.
• 11:36
  Do that with one small moment from your week this, this week.
• 11:40
  Not the whole story, just one moment.
• 11:43
  And then watch what happens when you stop telling and start mining because your story is not too small.
• 11:50
  It's never been too small.
• 11:52
  You just have been looking at it the wrong way maybe.
• 11:56
  Somewhere in the ordinary Tuesday you almost forgot is the exact moment God wants to hand to a woman who's scrolling right now.
• 12:05
  So don't bury it.
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  Mine it.
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  So sit with this today.
• 12:10
  You do not need a bigger story.
• 12:12
  You need to learn how to see that one that you already have.
• 12:18
  If you want help walking through the five steps and really basically through the Story Gold Method, this is where we do the work together.
• 12:27
  One woman, one strategist, one whiteboard, real gold I'm Theresa Croft, and I'll talk to you in the next episode of the Stuck No More Voices podcast