Rain Bennett
- Sep 10, 2020
- 3 min read

Ep. 61: Telling Your Authentic Story on Social Media with Troy Sandidge

Updated: Nov 28, 2020

This episode of The Storytelling Lab is chocked full of gold nuggets from the one and only, Troy Sandidge, or he's better known as on social media, #findtroy. Troy has been in the marketing space for over a decade and on this episode, he goes in -depth on how to navigate the marketing space within our current culture. Whether you're beginning your entrepreneurship or you're a seasoned marketing professional, this episode will have something to offer you.

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I talk a lot about big, fluffy “soft skills,” like speaking from and with your heart, being authentic and vulnerable, and establishing deeper connections with your communities.

And even though I hate that term (soft skills) and think these are the primary skills to human relationships -- and business is relationships -- they wouldn’t be anything without the tactics and techniques we use to implement them.

This is the balance I try to reach with the work that I do.

A perfect dance between head and heart.

I see a lot of people talk about one or the other in their content. So when I see another who is riding that wave of balance and the ebbs and flows of both, I feel seen. I feel like I’ve found my people.

This week on the show I talk with Troy Sandidge.

Troy is undoubtedly one of those people.

As a social media expert, consultant, and keynote speaker, Troy helps marketers and entrepreneurs understand how to use authentic storytelling in their social media to connect with potential customers and communicate their messages.

Troy uses his D.A.R.T. marketing program to implement that strategy.

DART stands for:

Being Direct

Being Authentic

Being Resourceful

and Tactics + Techniques

Even in this simple acronym, you see his balance of “why” and “how.”

According to Troy, the strategy all starts with being yourself.

“You gotta get comfortable with just sharing your ‘why.’”

"You make the business. So YOU need to talk about yourself.”

Being authentically you can be scary. Especially when you want to focus on growing your business. So if you’re struggling to find that balance of heart and head, this is the episode for you!

Some of the highlights of our conversation:

Building and managing a marketing agency
Marketing strategy
Tips on how to manage the mental and emotional burn-out that comes with being a social media manager, freelancer, etc.
How to pick your “niche”
Advice on how to establish an effective system for managing your time, skills, and resources in the entrepreneur space
Discovering his passion in college
How one twitter conversation changed his life and resulted in profitable business
The importance of treating everyone’s social media platform as their home
How to navigate sales and business during high stress Covid-19 times
Why he fell in love with his profession
Storytelling as the cornerstone of communication and marketing
Why transparency is on the rise
The importance of sharing your “why” as a starting point for beginning your marketing journey
The DART marketing strategy
The best kind of stories for people to tell on stage and on your platform
Being relatable as a key factor in your business success
Finding out where the culture and your audience is going
Tik Tok as the newest platform on the rise
The importance of being in touch with your audience and what they are wanting to consume as the culture changes and grows
How to price your resource options
Psychology as a major component of marketing
How NOW is the time to “level-up” your brand while things are slow