What my first-grade teacher told the class about me

A little over 40 years ago, I would race through my assignments in Mrs. Weller's class.

Not because I was some gifted student. It's because she had this system. Six squares drawn on the board, and each square was an activity you could pick if you finished early. One of them was to write a story. I picked that one every single time.

I'd write these little four- and six-page stories. Nothing epic. Then I'd illustrate them, color them in, and ask Mrs. Weller if I could read mine to the class. She always said yes.

One day, after I finished reading, she got the whole room's attention and said something I have never forgotten. She told a class full of six-year-olds, "Boys and girls, one day Ryan is going to grow up and be a real storyteller. A real author."

I was maybe seven. And it stuck.

That memory went quiet for a long time. Years. It didn't come back until I was almost ten years into running my business, and it hit me out of nowhere.

Mrs. Weller was right.

I hadn't written a book. But I was telling stories every single day. The couples. The families. The businesses and the nonprofits. Getting to the heart of who someone was and putting it on a screen. That was the work. That had always been the work. And I started to wonder how much of what she said all those years ago just sat inside me, marinating, quietly shaping what I'd become.

She gave a kid who wasn't too sure of himself a tiny stage and told him his voice was worth hearing. I'm not sure she knew what she was doing. I'm not even sure she believed it was literally true. I like to think she did. But she said it out loud, and it changed the direction of my life.

So I tried to thank her.

I wasn't friends with her on Facebook, and her account looked pretty dormant, but I sent a message anyway. I gushed. I told her how much those words had meant, how long they'd stayed with me.

About three years later, I got a reply. It had been buried in her messages this whole time, and she was thrilled to hear from me. I wrote back. Then I never heard anything again. I figured she was like my mom, where technology just isn't the thing, so I let it go.

Fast forward another ten years or so. I'm talking with my best friend Jay, and he mentions his boss. Scott Weller.

I stopped him cold. "Hey, was Scott's mom a teacher?" Yeah. "An elementary teacher?" Yeah. "In Oxford?" And Jay goes, "Yeah, dude. Was she your teacher?"

Was she my teacher. She was my favorite teacher of all time.

A little back and forth later, I had a way to reach her. She texted me first, actually, and we set a date.

Last weekend I drove over with a bouquet of flowers.

We had coffee and donuts. I met her husband. I met their over-excited dog. And we just sat and talked, trading stories from 40 years ago and catching up on everything since. Kids. Life. All of it. I must have heard her say "Oh, Ryan" a dozen times as I told her what she'd done for me without ever knowing it.

She was around 30 when she had me in her class. Roughly the age I was when that memory came roaring back. A regular person, doing a regular job, who said a handful of believing words to a little kid and never got to see what they grew into.

Until last weekend.

I keep thinking about that, because it's the exact thing I watch people talk themselves out of.

I work with founders who should be sharing their voice and don't. They look at their competition and feel behind. They feel like frauds. They wait for perfect. They hate how they look on camera, hate how they sound, so they stay quiet. And the whole time, they're sitting on words somebody out there needs to hear.

Here's what Mrs. Weller taught me without trying. You don't have to be an influencer with a hundred thousand followers to change a life. You just have to be willing to say the thing. To take the swing knowing you might miss. In baseball, if you're hitting .300, you're an all-star headed for the Hall of Fame. That's missing seven out of ten times. You don't need many hits per at-bat to leave a mark.

Video is the most powerful medium we've ever had for this. It's how you reach the most people, share your story, and speak life into someone you'll probably never meet. And it's sitting in your pocket or your purse right now. You already have the tool. You just have to use it.

So this is my encouragement to you, and honestly to me too. Keep sharing. Keep speaking life into people. Take the swing.

You never know which words are going to land in some seven-year-old and stay there for 40 years.

Grateful for you,
Ryan

P.S. If this one resonated, would you forward it to one person who needs to hear that their story is worth telling? I'm trying to grow this little list so I can speak life into as many people as possible, and a note from a friend goes a lot further than anything I could do on my own. They can hop on at ryankoral.com/newsletter.

P.P.S. Quick behind-the-scenes: I'm heads-down on two talks right now, a keynote and an in-person workshop for a group of 30+ business owners at my studio, then I'm finishing the final chapter of the book and prepping a couple more in-person events for owners. Yep, the final chapter. The book Mrs. Weller basically called 40 years ago is almost done, and it lands in January. She may have been early, but she wasn't wrong.