How to explain your value without freezing or rambling

The identity you ran from is the identity that saves you.

Author

Stephen Stanberry
November 24th, 2025

In partnership with

Hey friend!

If I told you the part of my story I used to hide is the same part that turned everything around… would you believe me?

Probably not.
I didn’t believe it either.

See… for years I treated my Jamaican voice like the villain in my story.

The thing holding me back online.
The thing that made me “sound small.”
The thing that didn’t fit the polished world of content.

And every time I sat down to write, guess what happened?

I became a watered-down version of myself.

Clean English.
Corporate tone.
Nothing that sounded like the boy who grew up in a yard where stories were passed down like recipes.

But here’s the twist…

The villain wasn’t my Jamaican voice.
The villain was me trying to erase it.

The moment I realized that?
Everything shifted.

Because once you strip out your roots… you strip out your resonance.
And when people can’t feel you, they scroll right past you.

Want to know what brought me back?

A simple 3-sentence identity framework that forced me to stop pretending and start writing from where I actually come from. And don’t worry… it’s not some corny exercise you’ll forget in five minutes.

Here it is:

Sentence 1: Where You’re From
Name the soil, the culture, the truth that shaped your worldview.

Sentence 2: What You Understand Deeply
Call out the pain, the mistake, the lived experience you know better than most.

Sentence 3: The Path You Built
Share the method you forged from surviving the thing your audience is struggling with.

Here’s mine, so you can see it in action:

“I grew up in Jamaica where storytelling wasn’t content, it was the only way to be understood.”
“I know what it feels like to lose my voice because I’ve rebuilt mine more than once.”
“And now I use STORYSELL™ and TRACE™ to help creators turn their real life into trust, community, and income.”

Three sentences.
That’s it.
But those three sentences gave me back my identity.

And the wild part?
People finally started listening when I stopped trying to sound like them and started sounding like me.

Want to try it?

Weekly Prompt:
Finish this sentence:

“I stopped believing in my voice the day ____ happened… and here’s what it taught me about who I really am.”

Short, emotional, specific.
Creates story momentum instantly.

Copy, paste, and complete:

  1. The moment:
    “I remember the exact moment I stopped trusting my voice. It was the day ____.”

  2. The feeling:
    “I felt ____, because up until then I believed ____.”

  3. The shift:
    “But that moment forced me to realize ____.”

  4. The truth:
    “If you’re in that place right now, here’s the truth nobody told me: ____.”

  5. The connection:
    “And this is why I help people ____, because I know what it feels like to ____.”

This turns a raw experience into a structured, publishable story.

Copy–Paste Prompt for ChatGPT:
“Help me turn this moment into a short, emotionally grounded story I can use in my content:

  1. The moment I lost trust in my voice: ____

  2. What I believed before: ____

  3. What changed afterward: ____

  4. What I now help people do: ____
    Write it in a calm, human tone. Keep it real, not inspirational fluff.”

Till tomorrow,
Stephen “identity starts at home” Stanberry

PS: I’m stepping into my Jamaican voice by launching Roots & Routes Jamaica. If you are Jamaican or planning a trip to Jamaica, or you just want to hear stories about Jamaica and Jamaicans then this is the newsletter for you. My 50th and 100th subs will get a free merch.

Roots & Routes Jamaica“Stories of Jamaica’s people, culture, and places told through the roads that connect them and the roots that define them.”

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