In this heartfelt solo episode, Jeff Ross dives deep into the power of your origin story—the raw, unfiltered moments that connect, inspire, and transform. As part two in the VOICE Framework series, Jeff unpacks how telling your authentic story is the bridge from where you were to where you're going—and how that journey can help others rise too. He shares his personal transformation from a place of despair to purpose, using a storytelling framework that anyone can follow and implement immediately.
“You don’t build a brand on perfection. You build it with progression.”
— Jeff Ross
“Your story isn’t for you to keep—it’s the bridge to someone else’s breakthrough.”
— Jeff Ross
“If you’re not sharing your story, you’re doing an injustice to those who need to hear it.”
— Jeff Ross
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Jeff Ross (00:00) Hey, good day legends, Jeff Ross here, your Cafe Data Kangaroo, Proud Data 3, and your go-to guide when it comes to turning your voice into value. You're not just tuning in, we're right in the middle of the Voice Framework series. Last week we unpacked the, the values and this week we're going to jump into O for your origin story. Because let's face it, mate, without a story, you're just another profile online.
But when you know how to share your origin story with honesty, with strategy, and with heart, you go from being forgettable to followed. Let's get straight to one thing. You're not here to impress people. You're here to connect with people. And nothing connects faster than the raw, real, authentic origin story.
Your audience doesn't want to hear your highlight reel. They want to know where you came from. They want the bloopers. They want the behind the scenes. They want the, I almost quit moments. You don't build a brand on perfection. You build it with progression. So let's document more than we promote. And here's why your origin story really matters. Simon Sinek said it best. People don't buy what you do. They buy.
why you do it. Another great author of mine that I love to follow is Donald Miller. And he taught us that you're not just a hero, you're the guide, you're the mentor, you're the over one Kenobi, not the Luke to the story. Joseph McLendon the third, he reminds us that people don't move with logic, they move with emotion. And your story is that emotional guide to allow people to connect with you, to follow you.
And if you want to talk storytelling, you can't go past the OG storyteller himself, Jesus Christ. So he didn't preach in bullet points. He taught in parables because stories stuck and they still work today and the truth sticks to story. Your origin story isn't about you. It's about the version of your listener who's stuck in there before. See our stories are not for us to keep.
I actually reckon our story are there for others to lead them out of their sucksville moment towards awesome town to get them out of their struggle towards hope. And I reckon if you've got a story to do just that and you're not sharing it, it's an injustice. Here's a little brain science for you to unpack this. So it's not just all story. There actually is some facts here. So your brain isn't changed by stats.
It is changed by story. And when you hear a feel good story, it activates our emotional brain, that part that actually makes us feel something. And when your people feel something, they will remember you. See, Zig Ziglar nailed it. People don't care about how much you know until they know how much you care. And Brene Brown preaches it all day long. Vulnerability builds trust.
And John Maxwell, he'd call this earning the right to lead. See people follow authenticity, not authority. So let's break this down. Let's give you some strategy here to help you to craft your own story format. So even a 10 year old could picture that school. Let's go down into this space. It's the before state. It's the struggle point.
It's the messy middle. It's the chaos. It's the confusion. It's the what the heck am I doing face? Don't say I was just stuck. Say I was juggling a nine to five with three screaming kids and a dream that I had buried under bills. See, be specific. Give people the connection to the story in that point. Then move to the trigger, the shift in the story, the transformational moment.
This is the light bulb moment. This is what snapped. This is what changed for you. This is where you get that back against the wall. The frustration moment even. Was it a book? Was it a breakdown? Was it a God moment? I'm going to share a story for me to help you to put all this together in that framework to be able to understand where I'm going here. But let's go back into the theory here for a second. So we start with the before, then we move into the trigger, and then you move into the journey, which is the climb.
And this is where you showed the grind, the tantrums, the trials, the tear it down moments at 2 a.m. in the morning. Let them feel the tension before you hand them the triumph. And this is where we move now into the breakthrough moment of our story, the aha moments. What belief did you have to let go? What belief did you have to let go? What truth did you finally have to accept?
What revelation did you have? What was the thing that flipped your story from going down into Sucksville, but now heading towards Awesome Town? And the fifth part of this story, the breakthrough is the now. It's the mission. It's who do you help now? Why do you care? This is where you go from survivor to guide. You're not just the hero of your brand. You're the hero maker.
So let me break this down even further and break a few myths. You don't need trauma to tell a story. What you need is the truth. Sometimes your origin story is just, was sleepwalking through life until I woke up. Stop hiding behind the credentials. The degrees are nice. The pieces of paper are great.
You know, they help you to back up your story, but they're not your story. What builds trust is transformation. And please, for the love of your brand, repeat your story. Your story is your foundation, not just a one-off post. It's the foundation that people get to connect with you because you're meeting new people every day. Every opportunity you get, repeat your story. Because what is personal branding?
It is the story people talk about us when we're not in the room. So if we don't have that story ready to the people to articulate, what do they do? Well, there's a vacuum, right? So they start making up stuff. So let's help them to, you know, have a memorable, repeatable, easy to follow story that they can repeat when we're not in the room. So here's your mission from today's podcast episode. I want you to go back through that five step framework.
And let me just quickly recap it for you. was the before the struggle. Step two is the trigger, the shift. Step three is the journey or known as the climb. Step four is the breakthrough moment, that aha moment. And step five is the now. It is the mission that you're moving towards. Right? So there's your mission. Go put your story format together. I'm going to wrap this up with a story that I'm to share you, excuse me, share with you.
to do just that. You know, share your origin story. Keep it short, keep it raw, keep it real. Not filtered, not fluffed up. And if you want help turning your story into a magnetic brand that attracts leads and opportunities, that helps you to build your influence, then make sure that you reach out to me. Put a comment below on this podcast, wherever you're watching, or you can reach out to me personally via a DM or send me an email to jeff at LLD.email.
Those details will be in the show notes below. You just put one word in there, put voice. And then I'll give you the next steps to come join our LaptopLives.dads Academy, where we take stories just like yours and we help them to make them sing. We leverage AI to help you to do just that. We teach you how to build your personal brand. We help you to set you up and help you to leverage your voice so people can find you. So you can rise up self above the rest of the crowd and actually create a brand.
that connects with people. So before I wrap up, here's a story that brings that framework together. See, there was once a time in my life where I actually got to a very dark point in my life. I felt hopeless. I felt lost. I was frustrated. I was angry. I was burnt out. I felt useless. I thought the world would be better off without me. I thought my beautiful wife, Sarah, and our two boys at the time,
They would be better off without me because I was the cause to all of their problems. There was a time in my life where I had played the victim card very, very well. And I actually always got to a point in my life where I tried to kill myself. See the transitional point in this story is where my son Harrison woke up at 2 a.m. in morning, never done that before in his life. At the time he was two years old and he come to the bathroom.
where I had the bottle of Jemisin's and a handful of pills and I was just about to do it. And he walked in and he said, Dada, what are you doing? With his big, beautiful brown eyes. And it stopped me in my tracks. I fell to my knees. I realized at that moment that I was very selfish. Now, if you're feeling that way now, I want to be respectful to that. I want you to go reach out to someone and talk to someone, please. Don't try to do life on your own. We are not created to do that. That's what I was doing.
And that was my biggest mistake. I got into my head and the demons in my head sort of built me up and built me, sorry, built me down, tore me down. It took a two year old boy at 2 a.m. in the morning to walk in and interrupt that pattern with love. I now know looking back over 10 years time now that that was God. He used my son Harrison because he used the tools that you that would interrupt that pattern and get to me.
I fell to my knees at that moment and I just embraced him and I apologized to him and I sobbed my eyes out from 2 a.m. till 6 a.m. in the morning. I was just crying. Harrison was asleep on my shoulder at the time because he was exhausted. I got blaming. Then I was at that very moment that I had to take ownership of my life. I had to take accountability for my mistakes and I had to take responsibility for my actions.
And it was that very moment that I vowed to be the best husband, to be the best father to my kids that I could ever be. And over the last 10 years, I've been on this journey where I've learnt how to just love myself first, to love others and to love God. And now I'm on a mission to do exactly the same thing, to help others to do the same thing. So much so my wife and I, Sarah, we started an online church called Today's Discipleship Community 12 months ago.
to be able to help people to love themselves, to love God and to love others. Doesn't get much simpler than that. And we have so much purpose. We have so much joy in our lives. And I am grateful that I found God. I found love. Because 10 years ago, I was an atheist. I was a persecutor of the church. And now I've gone from persecutor to preacher and someone who is so on fire to be able to help bring love into their lives. Because love.
truly transforms us. And we're on a mission now with our online church to transform the one through Jesus's love. And if that's spoken to you and you would like to know more about what we do in that space, you can join us with our online church. The links will be in the show notes below. But it's today's discipleship community. At the moment, we just have a Facebook group. We do have a website that's getting built as we speak, as this podcast is being recorded.
So there you go guys. There's a transformational origin story of how our online church became. See what I did there? I went to step one, right? Let's go back through those notes to see you got them here in front of you. So what was step one? Can anybody remember? It was the before state. It was the struggle state, right? It was the messy state. It was the confusion state. It was the what the heck am I even doing state.
Then I moved into that moment where my son walked in, right? It was that light bulb moment. It was the shift. Then I went into the climb journey when we went through the breakthrough journey. Then we moved into the mission part of that story. You see the framework start together. You can do exactly the same thing. If you need help, use AI. Give it the bullet points of those frameworks for you and it will help you to pull your story together. Guys, that's all we have for today's episode on O for Origin Story.
You can see why we start with values and vision. Now we moved into, you know, the origin story to help us to connect. Next week, we're going to unpack eye for influence. But before we wrap up, it wouldn't be a laptop lifestyle dad episode without our signature dad jokes. So why did the marketer get kicked off the trampoline? Because that bounce rate was too high. ⁓ Thank you, Jaddy. That was a brilliant one.
So that's it for today legends. Your story is the bridge to someone else's breakthrough. So stop hiding it, start leveraging it and let's help help the world hear your voice.