Hello Friends and Fans of the New Narrative!
It’s been almost a year since the last event of the New Narrative and with the exception of the release of the videos from the Love, Sex, and Relationships event, there’s been a bit of radio silence from my end.
I wanted to write this blog post as a way of sending out an update on the current state of affairs and also to give a preview of some new things to come. I’m excited to reignite the New Narrative with a lot of interesting concepts in the pipeline. This is going to represent a pretty dramatic shift in my personal and professional life too so read on!
Many of you know that about a year and a half ago I quit my regular “day job” to begin working full time as an “entrepreneur.” The plan was to balance doing the New Narrative with building a business around offering storytelling communication trainings to organizations. There’s been a lot of ups and downs since making the leap, and frankly, I’m still figuring it out. Recently I’ve received a series of “signs” and revelations that have been pointing in the same direction, opening my eyes that it’s time for a change.
Going forward I’m refocusing my attention predominantly on the New Narrative. I’ve realized that the work I’ve been doing with the New Narrative is most in alignment with my own personal values of building community, creating a space of inclusion, and helping people express their true selves in the world. It’s the most important project to me personally, it gives me energy, and it’s also the place where I feel like I can bring the most value to the world. I get feedback all the time that those events have changed people’s lives and made people see the world in ways they’ve never looked at it before. When I get feedback like that it makes me question why I’m scrambling for work in one aspect of my life when there’s more valuable things I could be doing in another.
The irony is that it might make the most sense from a business perspective too. Looking back at the last couple years of storytelling communication training work that I’ve done, I can see that the most rewarding clients I’ve worked with—both from a financial and personal fulfillment point of view—have been organizations that have approached me based on the work I’ve done with the New Narrative. They were inspired by what they saw and wanted me to bring some part of that magic to them. This has worked better for me than all the other time and energy I’ve invested in building out websites, creating marketing funnels, going to networking groups, sending cold emails, and the dozens of other strategies I’ve tried. It was a little frustrating to realize this, but also inspiring to come to that conclusion. It might be possible that instead of doing the things I feel like I’m SUPPOSED to do to make a living, it might work to focus my energy on the things I actually want to do. Crazy, right?
This is all my long way of saying that I’m really excited to begin a relaunch of the New Narrative. The next major event—fittingly on the theme of Work/Money—will happen in the fall. I also have a series of smaller, more regular events in the works to help build out the community. The announcement for one of which will probably happen next week!
If this all sounds interesting to you and you want to know more, the best thing(s) to do is explore this website a bit, sign up for the email list below, and/or join the New Narrative Facebook Group. I’ll post all the updates here and spread the news via email and social media. I’m pretty shameless about self promotion, so if you’re looking for it you’ll probably see it.
Thanks to everybody who has been supporting me on this endeavor since I started it four years ago, especially the folks that have been our speakers at past events. I had no idea if this whole concept would even work but since then we’ve had 200+ people show up to each event and there’s been no shortage of positive feedback. These ideas have resonance and I see the need to create a “new narrative” for our society and culture more and more each day.
Lastly, an extra special thanks to those of you that have been telling me, “dude! Just do the New Narrative!” for the last two years. I think sometimes you have to learn the toughest lessons on your own timeline.
Thanks!
Nathan Young
May 2019
P.S. If you’re interested in learning more about the work I do around storytelling trainings, you can check out my website for that here.
P.P.S. This blog post is now up for posterity. Check back with me again in 6-12 months to see if I made the right decision. ;)