An interactive tool.. or two, to try over the weekend.
Learn the basics of storytelling or find your stories to share.
Today I recorded a podcast interview with Rob Cairns about something Google just quietly admitted - and it sent me digging back through my own stuff, because I realized I’d already built two things that prove the exact point I was making on the mic.
One of them is a few weeks old. A wrestling match I built a while back to teach a storytelling framework - SPARC. The other I did earlier this year: a front porch interactive tool you can walk down to dig up five stories you didn’t know you had.
Interactive, free, and fun.
Here it is: generic gets replaced. Specific gets remembered.
In the wrestling game, the villain attacks with corporate fog (”this arena lacks scalable infrastructure”). You win the crowd back with something nobody else could say - the smell of old coffee, the feel of worn wood. Not because it’s clever. Because it’s yours.
In the Front Porch Vault, the five prompts aren’t there to make you sound smarter. They’re there to dig up the memory sitting under the polish - the setback, the belief, the flaw you used to apologize for.
The stuff that can’t be Googled.
And on the podcast today, I found myself pointing to something Google’s own people are now saying out loud: AI can synthesize your “7 Tips for First-Time Homebuyers” in about four seconds flat. What it can’t synthesize is why you personally waived the inspection and saved a client $15,000 - because that’s not information. That’s a memory. It’s specificity Google literally can’t replicate, which is exactly why it’s starting to reward it.
(Same fight. Different ring. One of these fights I’ve apparently been having for years without realizing it.)
I’ve been saying it a different way for a while now - you have a story that sells, you just can’t see it yet - turns out even the algorithm agrees with me.
So here’s your mission, should you choose to accept it, three ways:
1. Fight the vague.
The wrestling game walks you through the SPARC formula live - pick your counter-move, watch the crowd meter decide if you won the room. Interactive Match
2. Find what’s already yours.
The Front Porch Vault runs you through five prompts and hands you back stories you’re already sitting on - plug-and-play, ready to post. → https://www.copyflight.com/front-porch/
3. See why this matters more than ever.
The full breakdown on commodity vs. non-commodity content - why AI is starting to punish generic and reward lived experience, straight from what I unpacked on the podcast today. → Commodity vs Non-Commodity Content Cheat sheet
Same fight in every ring. Get specific, or get summarized.
What’s the one story from your work that couldn’t be Googled if someone tried?
— Todd
