Unlock the secrets to crafting a message that resonates and reverberates through the hearts of your audience with marketing maestro Wes Gay. Our enlightening chat peels back the layers of the Storybrand framework, revealing how to elevate your customer to hero status while your business takes on the pivotal role of the mentor guiding them to success. With Wes's insights, gleaned from the sprawling narratives of "The Lion King" to the high-flying action of "Top Gun: Maverick," we explore the art of storytelling in marketing, ensuring your message not only lands but sticks.
Navigating the intricate world of clear communication, this episode is a treasure trove of stories showcasing the transformation businesses undergo when they shift their focus from self-promotion to customer impact. From real estate to fourth-generation family companies, learn how precision in your call to action can steer customers through their journey with confidence. Whether it's selling homes or setting strategies, the lesson is crystal clear: clarity is not just king; it's the ace, the joker, and the game-changer in the deck of business engagement.
As we wrap up, the conversation takes a sharp turn into the realm of effective messaging, where simplicity reigns supreme. Reflect on how a clear slogan can change the course of a political campaign, and apply that lesson to scale the heights of business growth. We dissect the anatomy of success through the lens of client stories, learning how to replicate triumphs by zeroing in on what resonates with your ideal audience. Tune in for a masterclass in marketing, sales, and leadership that promises to reshape the way you connect with clients and cultivate your company's narrative.
If you enjoyed this episode, please share it on social media and tag Ken Joslin.
Unlock the secrets to crafting a message that resonates and reverberates through the hearts of your audience with marketing maestro Wes Gay. Our enlightening chat peels back the layers of the Storybrand framework, revealing how to elevate your customer to hero status while your business takes on the pivotal role of the mentor guiding them to success. With Wes's insights, gleaned from the sprawling narratives of "The Lion King" to the high-flying action of "Top Gun: Maverick," we explore the art of storytelling in marketing, ensuring your message not only lands but sticks.
Navigating the intricate world of clear communication, this episode is a treasure trove of stories showcasing the transformation businesses undergo when they shift their focus from self-promotion to customer impact. From real estate to fourth-generation family companies, learn how precision in your call to action can steer customers through their journey with confidence. Whether it's selling homes or setting strategies, the lesson is crystal clear: clarity is not just king; it's the ace, the joker, and the game-changer in the deck of business engagement.
As we wrap up, the conversation takes a sharp turn into the realm of effective messaging, where simplicity reigns supreme. Reflect on how a clear slogan can change the course of a political campaign, and apply that lesson to scale the heights of business growth. We dissect the anatomy of success through the lens of client stories, learning how to replicate triumphs by zeroing in on what resonates with your ideal audience. Tune in for a masterclass in marketing, sales, and leadership that promises to reshape the way you connect with clients and cultivate your company's narrative.
If you enjoyed this episode, please share it on social media and tag Ken Joslin.
Hey guys, welcome to another episode of as the leader grows. I am your host, Ken Johnson. I've got a good friend of mine with us today. You guys are going to have an absolute blast. The one and only story brand guide marketing, extraordinaire Jedi. Master of all things, advertising, my guy, Wes Gay. What's up, Wes Gay?
Speaker 2:Ken, how are?
Speaker 1:you doing Good to be here, or should it be Gay Wes Gay comma Wes His first? Name last name anyway.
Speaker 2:Anyways whatever you want to tell me?
Speaker 1:We just had it. We just had an off air conversation about how he gets email marketing and they get his names wrong First name, last name, swiss. Yada, yada, yada. But, dude, take a minute and tell our audience real quick, a little bit Literally, you are the Jedi master when it comes to content and helping people market their business. Tell our audience real quickly about what you've got going on, bro.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so most companies. It doesn't matter the size, it doesn't matter the industry. They're going to waste a ton of money on marketing and sales because they're confusing. Their audience doesn't understand what they do, they take too long to explain it. They're talking to the wrong people the wrong ways, the wrong times.
Speaker 2:What I do is I help eliminate confusion and create clarity in marketing and sales. That looks like not only overall messaging but also sales talking points and emails and websites and all the different channels that you can use to grow your business. I help people through that. Specifically, I am certified, as you mentioned, in this thing called Storybrand. There's a book called Building a Storybrand by Donald Miller Sold more than a million copies so far. They crossed the million mark in December of last year. They've got a new version of the book coming out later in 2024 to celebrate the million kind of the million milestone. They're selling more than they've ever sold in the past, but that book walks through a storytelling framework that will, one, help you communicate more clearly and, two, ruin every movie you ever watch for the rest of your life, because it explains the formula that Hollywood uses to keep our attention.
Speaker 2:And if Hollywood can do it to generate billions at the box office every year, every single business owner and every single leader can use it to create clarity and, frankly, make more money.
Speaker 1:So you know, obviously I threw that Jedi reference in there because you are a Jedi. You're really really good because we've used you in the past a lot. You'll be speaking at our upcoming Create Conference in March in Atlanta. Walk through that framework about the guide and the hero, all of those things. Our audience understands a little bit more about exactly what you're talking about when it comes to marketing.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So before we do that, I want to say and all one of the reasons brands struggle is because they're just confusing and they're in a noisy world. So people think, oh, sales are not working, marketing is not working, we need to turn up the volume. The problem is we turn up the volume on noise. If we turn up the volume on clarity, then we can be more successful. And in today's world we've got to think more than ever about how are we standing out and being understood by our audience? And we want to use a storytelling lens to do that, because the way our brains work is story kind of captures our attention and it kind of captivates our brains. I mean, you've got a new grandbaby now. I imagine, as you know, over time, as you start reading books, they're going to be, you're going to go back to the world of Daniel Tiger and you're going to go back to all that stuff, so many of those things that that, especially at the young ages, use stories to teach principles, to teach ideas, to teach moral lessons and things like that.
Speaker 2:We are used to telling stories. So this framework and I'm going to walk through in a second, it is really just a storytelling framework and I can. We can show you. I can show everything from Lion King to Top Gun, maverick to Mary Poppins to all those ridiculous Hallmark Christmas movies. They all follow this film formula. That's not new and it's not original, but when we filter it it really becomes a filter.
Speaker 2:So the first thing in the story is a character. Right, this is the main character in the story, this is the hero, this is the protagonist. This is what the this is who the movie is going to follow, about the story. And they're going to want something, and we're usually going to know in a movie what's that thing they want. And we're going to figure it out in the first five, 10, 15 minutes. If we don't, we're going to be confused. Most companies make the mistake out of the gate of thinking they're the hero. The story is about their company and their business. It's not. It's about the people you're trying to sell to. It's about the customer that you're the right fit to sell to and we're going to figure out the one thing they want.
Speaker 2:Now, in a story, though, if the customer or if the hero, the protagonist, can get what they want on their own, it's a boring story, it's not that interesting, it's not compelling. We don't care about that as much. So that's where the problem start to show up again. 15, 10, 15, 20 minutes into a movie, the main problem that our heroes trying to solve is going to show up. Liam Neeson and taken and his daughter's going to get kidnapped. Tom Cruise has got to go back at Top Gun Maverick to to the Top Gun school to teach these pilots, cause his unnamed nation is building a uranium enrichment plan or whatever it was Like.
Speaker 2:There's this thing that happens. You know, scar kills Mufasa in the Lion King, whatever it is, there's this problem that shows up, and so much of the movie is about the problem. One of the big paradigm shift I've seen over and over and over again with people, with companies, is that they don't think about customer problems and then they wonder why nobody's paying attention. The reality is, people pay attention when there's tension. It's why we binge watch shows, cause guess what? They're going to end the episode with a cliffhanger. You got to watch, you're going to roll out into the next one, or you're going to watch, pick up and watch next week when the new episode drops, whatever it is Like 24, every week.
Speaker 1:when 24 was on, I was mad. I'm like are you kidding me? I have to wait another week.
Speaker 2:The clock shows up and it's about to tick to the top of the hour and you realize, oh, I got away another week. I can't catch up. This is it. But all of them are that way, right, and you watch. There's Reacher on Amazon Prime, we're watching Masters of the Air right now, the new look on Apple TV Plus, and there's so many great shows out right now that they all do this because they know if there is a problem present, you will pay attention, right, everything I'm talking about because it opens up this loop in our brains.
Speaker 2:So we want to talk about customer problems, right. So we talk about what do they want? What are they looking for? If I'm, you know a lot of your audience and a lot of folks here in your world because you're in real estate or in real estate and they, a lot of real estate agents, are going to struggle because they think, oh, my audience wants to sell a house. Nobody woke up to the end thought man, the only thing I want to do today is sell my house. What they want is to sell our house so they can upgrade or have a better space for their family, or they want to move somewhere that's better suited for them. They have to, you know, they have to move for their job, whatever it is.
Speaker 1:They've got the dream house. The pool, they've got a dream house. They've got a dream house. Yeah, they've got a dream house like with the kids and all their friends and they're hosting in the backyard and all the stuff that they see all that created in their, in their mind and in their heart.
Speaker 2:They want that. They don't want somebody to come and say, hey, I know you want to sell your house. I don't want to sell my house, I want to sell it so that I can do another thing. That's what I want, and my problem is I don't know how to sell it. I'm confused, I'm overwhelmed. I don't have time to become a real estate agent, you know whatever it is. So the more we talk about these problems, the more it builds up in a story, though if the main character can figure it out on their own, it's still not that interesting of a story. That's why we have this.
Speaker 2:You mentioned the guide character, the classic example. This is Yoda in Star Wars. It's Hamish in the Hunger Games. I would argue it's Iceman and Top Gun Maverick. It's that person who comes alongside, shoulder to shoulder of the main character, of the hero and says I understand what you're dealing with, I have empathy for you, but I have the authority. This is the role of the company, this is the role of your business.
Speaker 2:People see, if they're in real estate, they're looking to sell their house because they they envision the pool, they envision the great backyard, they envision being the place for all the friends, all the kids friends come over or their friends come over and they're having the big Super World parties and they're the place to be and they have this community and they have all these things. All they want is somebody to just help them get there. Wear the vehicle to help customers get what it is. They want to accomplish what they're trying to do, to live their own stories. And this is the paradigm shift. When companies understand this, it's like a light bulb goes off. I've seen it hundreds of times at this point because they realize wait a second, we are entering into the story of our customer. The story is not about it, it's about what it cares.
Speaker 2:I had a client one time. It was a guy who was a fourth generation owner of his family business. It started in 1914. So it started predated World War one, right, and I was talking to him this is in the, this is over. They've been around over a hundred years at this point and on their website, the first thing that you saw was Founded in 1914 and like that was it. That was the first thing you saw. And I said, yeah, you've been in this business 20 plus years, right, your dad, your granddad, your great-granddad have all been in it. How many people have become customers because they said hey, you know what. You've been around for a hundred. You've been around since World War one. Do you have the right person? He says nobody. I was like great. Nobody cares what they care about. Is you saying for more? They were in the. They did high-end family portraits. Average sale was like thirty five hundred bucks a person or thirty five hundred bucks of family all in. And he said what they care about is the fact that for more than a hundred years our family has been capturing timeless memories for your family. That's what they care about. So even in his own story it's. It's incredible. They go now fourth generations into this.
Speaker 2:You still reframe it for your audience and say here's why this matters to you, here's why you're we can help you, here's what. We're the authority to help you. And then we move into a plan. This is like what do we need to do so many movies? I don't care if it's rocky, I don't care if it's top gun, I don't care if it's every sports movie ever. There's gonna be this giant training sequence that's gonna say here's what, here's the plan, here's what we need to do to get going, here's the things that need to happen In order to get there. So, step one, step two, step three.
Speaker 2:A great brand example is car max. Car max If you go to the website right now I saw it last week because I looked it's like you go to sell a car, which is a miserable experience. Normally, car max says step one, step two, step three. Here's how it works. It is that simple. That's the kind of simplicity people want. The next thing is we got to have a call to action. Right, what is that's that climactic scene? You got to tell people what to do. One of the misses For those who were under a certain age. You're not gonna understand the rest of our friends, ken. You and I will understand it. A Lot of times, companies act like they're they. They may as well hands their customer an Atlas and say here you go, you figure it out. When Was the last time you used an Atlas on a road trip?
Speaker 1:Ways, baby a long time when I was a kid and mom, you'd hold the giant thing Uh-huh the car seat, and your mom would say where do we, how do we get here, what's my next turn? And you're mapping it out on the in the house.
Speaker 2:Oh, it's the worst, and then you're custom at it, trying to fold it back up. I mean it's the worst, but we always use you. We want to be told where to go on what to do. Not because we're idiots, because we're busy, yeah, and we, we are entering unknown territory when you think about, when you start to shift your company, shift your marketing, shift yourselves to enter into the story of your audience. One of the mental shifts it takes like, wait a second, they don't work in our company, they don't understand our lingo, they don't know our process inside and out. They're not here 40 plus hours a week. They have no idea.
Speaker 1:You know one of the things one of the things West I used to tell my agents all the time now and I've done over 300 million in real estate transactions I I said this a million times. Your client, they don't sell houses once a week, no, they sell house, and so for some of them, this is their largest, biggest transaction They've ever made in their life. Yeah, we are so accustomed to doing it we miss how to be able to serve them and lead them through the process. So they're comfortable in the process because we don't do it a lot.
Speaker 1:They don't do it at the level that we do it, or the order or the times that we do it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly You're. You're walking beside people in the biggest financial transaction their lives to that point and then the next time they buy or sell a house, be the new. One same thing. Yeah, and it's a great thing. It room. One of things I tell people all the time when it relates to this, we're talking about communication. It's not just marketing and sales. I think a leader's job for this audience, I think a leader's number one job is to eliminate confusion, because confusion is the number one enemy in business. What do we sell? Who do we sell to? How are we selling? What are we doing? Where are we going, what's happening, etc. Selling a house is a freaking, confusing and frustrating thing because it's complicated, it's just so many steps and when we're not professionals in this, your job to weigh you different to yourselves with real estate agents, come along and say let me show you this.
Speaker 2:I worked for the real estate agent in Maryland a couple of years ago. He's the top agent in his area for a long time, just outside of Baltimore. Great guys got a great team. I think he's gonna be on a Malcolm Gladwell podcast soon. I mean, it's crazy. I talked about it a few weeks ago. Anyways, we're going through this thing. I mean he's got this really beautifully designed stuff for his listening presentations. They go to get in the listings.
Speaker 2:And he was walking me through this great print piece they have that was explaining how they price houses before they go to market. And he's walking through it and I was like, okay, david, I know you have a Harvard MBA. I said but this sounds like everything I've ever heard a real estate agent do. And he laughed and he said yeah, it is. He said the difference is we put a name to it, so it sounds like we're the only ones who do it and then we talk about it. He said no other agent in our area will talk about the pricing process.
Speaker 2:He said but I guarantee you this is the same process that every agent who does any kind of business does. Every time they list a house, nobody talks about it and we've named it. That's it. We've eliminated the confusion in the process because we've eliminated the assumptions. We're telling people what the plan is and we're saying here's what you need to do next. I've literally clicked on ads on Facebook and Instagram as a consumer, gone to a landing page and thought what am I supposed to do here? Like for our, for those of us in the crowd who go to church, like how many times have you gotten to the end of it? You've heard the end of a sermon and you're like what do we do?
Speaker 2:If I open my eyes, am I like volunteering for nursery duty for the next three years, or like what.
Speaker 1:Am I committing to-. I ask you, can we raise my hand?
Speaker 2:at the wrong time.
Speaker 1:Are they gonna drag?
Speaker 2:me.
Speaker 1:Throw me in the zero to 18 month year old class for the rest of my life.
Speaker 2:Bro, am I gonna get baptized again? Like what am I volunteering? Cause I don't know. They didn't tell me what to do. I just explained to me what I was supposed to do, right? I mean, how many times have you been in an airport and you're like I don't know where to go? I have no idea.
Speaker 1:A million times, yeah, a million, cause they just don't explain. I listen. I actually flew home last night from Indy, got to the airport in Birmingham. I usually valet, but I was gone for eight days so I've just I parked in the show, the longterm parking. I could barely find my way out of the four or five level parking day in Birmingham Cause there's like no exit signs. Yeah, it's annoying. I'm like just somebody tell me where to go, what to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, imagine a retail store where you go to check out and the cash register is like in the second stall of the bathroom. You can be like wait, where do I pay? How do I give you money? Right, these things sound crazy simple, but you'd be amazed. I've been in start small. You know bootstrap companies and people are starting themselves Side hustles, all the way to the billion dollar multinational organizations. Everybody has these, has the same problems, right? So we get to a to go out of store. We get to a call to action. We say, okay, this is the thing.
Speaker 2:In a scene in a movie. This is the climactic scene, this is the. You've got to go hit the game winning shot in the sports movie. This is the. You've got to go the. The hero is confronting the bad guy. Now you got to go do it. Luke will blow up the death star, whatever it is.
Speaker 2:Then we get to what we call. We look at success or failure. You mentioned it earlier. People in like in real estate. They're imagining life. They already see what life looks like on the other side. They had this vision of what life looks like, but they also have this subtle understanding of this, of what's at stake if they don't? What happens if they stay in this house? What happens if they don't sell? What happens if they get it for less than they hope for? What if it takes longer? What if they miss something because they just didn't know, because their agent didn't explain it to them very well? What if they miss an opportunity because somebody didn't guide them through it 20-ish years ago?
Speaker 2:I forget when it actually was, but the remember when P9A X-Force came out, they sold it only through an infomercial. There's no Facebook ads, youtube didn't exist yet. None of that. It's sort of this great infomercial. And the funny thing about the infomercial with that is so much of it was about like everything else in health and fitness, but the before and after pictures, it was the case studies, it was the testimonials, it was people and it was you and I watching it. Going, man, I don't need another DVD set, I don't need a wall chart, I don't want a meal planning guy. I would've looked like him. Man, he did it and it's only like 45 minutes or an hour a day. They already have a pre-plan. I just kind of show up and do it and have to think about it Like that's what I want, that's the transformation, that's what my life looks like on the other side. People want us to cast a vision.
Speaker 1:You know, you say that I just had a conversation with this morning with Morgan Anderson. She's gonna be on the webinar that we're doing tomorrow. We're actually filming this. This doesn't drop the webinar, it'll be done. But one of the things I told her in relationships, in business, people just want to know what to do. I literally just said that this morning because if you're in a relationship or you're trying to sell something you just said this this minute, I wrote it down Confusion is the number one enemy of business. People literally just want to know what to do. Like, tell me what to do and I'm good. That's all I want.
Speaker 2:I was with a company a few weeks ago over in Huntsville, alabama. They the owner of this business. He has an insurance agent. He's been an insurance agent, done it independent for the last 15 years, been very successful. He bought a company from his father-in-law and he grew it from $500,000 to $2.5 million in one year. And then we were working together, doing story brand, doing this messaging, looking at marketing strategy, et cetera. And his question was literally like what should we do? That's it. All he wants to know is what do we do? And when we figured that out he was like great, now we know what to do.
Speaker 1:I can't.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's remarkable People, especially when you get in marketing and sales. There's an ocean of noise and an ocean of options and I talked to people and you get into the tactics of it and it's like do we do SEO? Do we do paydots? Do we do referrals? Do we do affiliate marketing? Do we do those little inflatable things they have outside of car dealerships? Whatever, it is Right, people just wanna. What do I do?
Speaker 2:But that also translates to every asset of the business. How many times have people left a meeting and thought what are we doing? You have to have the meeting after the meeting to explain what happened in the first meeting. But that's that's it. People just want to know what to do. They want to know where they're going. If people know what to do, the problem You're trying to solve when you're going, you're gonna eliminate the vast majority of confusion, not only in your organization but in your marketing and sales. You're gonna be a much better communicator and ultimately you're gonna be able to drive people. You're gonna move the business forward. You're gonna move your brand, for you're gonna move your leadership forward you know, I remember, I remember a Clubhouse.
Speaker 1:We're going, we're going back in the clubhouse. Yeah, I'm in a room, I'm clubhouse room. My good friend Bradley hops in, grant Cardone hops in and it's like two or three other guys. I mean it's some big. I mean we've got almost a thousand, almost a thousand people on in this room and Brad is Bradley who does dropping balance podcast. He won the largest podcast in the country.
Speaker 1:Brad says, okay, ken, gsd, like what does that mean? Grow, stack, drive. What happens if somebody joins GSD? And I gave him this answer. He goes this way, said he goes what the hell does that mean? And I'm like, and I had never thought about it, like you know, and then so from that we kind of came up with we help leaders Build confidence, gain clarity and create community, love it. Like, if you come in I think you actually probably helped me pan that yeah, like we really didn't even know like, okay, you come join our community or you come to our create conference, the number one faith-based conference in America. So if I do that, what's gonna be the end result in my life? And we're like okay, I don't know what is that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you, yeah, just go to go to LinkedIn and start reading people's bios or company descriptions and you're like I don't, I don't know what this means, right? I mean, how many times have you read stuff? It's like we exist at the intersection of innovation and excellence to deliver world-class solutions and and Global, global leading value to our shareholders like what does that? Mean Are you selling toilet paper? Is this like a chip manufacturer? Like what is this I have?
Speaker 2:no idea what this might, I guess at the end of the day. You mean, we always talk about how, you know, the average person sees three to five thousand marketing messages a day and I don't know, I think we're all made that setup. I don't think you know. Abraham Lincoln may as well have said it at this point, or Mark Twain, but what we forget is, more than ever in the last decade, decade and a half, those marketing messages are coming through the same channels that we engage with non-marketing stuff.
Speaker 2:I'm trying to do work and I'm trying to do work. I might work. I check my in. I have to take my email. I'm getting a ton of marketing stuff in my email. I'm also distracted about doing work. I'm getting on social media when I'm trying to engage there. I'm on LinkedIn or whatever. I'm on you man. Youtube ads are the worst, but I'm like I'm getting hit with marketing every left-right, sideways, and so is your audience. And so if we're gonna stand out and be noticed, we've got to stop and say Are people actually understanding what we're doing? They do, they care about it? We're in 2024. It's a. It's a big election cycle again. I mean, we never it feels like we never really end the election cycle as the problem.
Speaker 1:It's like every two years and it seems like we get about a three-month break.
Speaker 2:I don't even know if we get a break because they're back to fundraising it. Anyways, I'll get off. I'll stay off of that box, but it'll be interesting to watch the last few election, presidential election particularly. You can usually predict who's gonna win Simply by who's the clearest. Let's go.
Speaker 2:Let's go back eight years of 2016, political affiliations aside, for a second, if we just look at it objectively, hillary Clinton has had a 30-plus year career in Public service State Department. You know, before long, obviously with Bill Clinton is your argument. She's done a lot of stuff and I think she's. She, to me, has always felt like this old-school public servant. I just want to show up and do good. She might have done it anyway. She's not very bill, right, that's that. She's that kind of vibe.
Speaker 2:But the problem with Clint Hillary Clinton was I think she made too many some just and she just wasn't clear in her campaign. Like I was doing an event in 2017 had a big corporate marketing team in the room and there's their ad agency. Was there their executives in this big ad agency? One of the ladies in Chicago and this lady had volunteered in Hillary's campaign. This is six months after the 2020, 2016 election and we're talking about this and I said you know what I said? What was Bernie Sanders's plan for America? What was he gonna do? And one guy in the back, he would weed. I was like I don't think that's Bernie's plan was. We didn't may have been?
Speaker 1:I don't know.
Speaker 2:It's burning. And then I said and I looked this lady I said Kristen, you worked on Hillary's campaign, right? She said yeah. I said what was Hillary Clinton's plan? What was she gonna do? And she looked at lady beside her, was like I don't know. I said what do you mean? Are you worked in Chicago, the third largest marketing United States? You worked in the campaign there. And she was like I don't, I don't actually know what she's. I think it was either better together or I'm with her. I don't remember.
Speaker 2:And there was a guy in the back who was from Canada, dave. Dave from Toronto. I said Dave, what about Trump? What was Trump's plan? He's gonna make America great again. And I said why do you think Trump won a Hillary loss? Because Trump was able to clearly articulate what he was doing and where he was going. Had Hillary changed her campaign to slogan to be all about she's with us, she might have won, but she didn't. She made it all out. Hillary, you fast forward to 2020 is gonna get awkward for some folks. Trump goes from we're gonna make America great again to I, it's all about me and they're coming after me. So they're gonna come after you. And he goes from guide to victim and we don't elect victims.
Speaker 2:We don't even elect heroes. Look at our long history of military people with exemplary military records. You do not get elected, president, Right, they don't. We elect people we think are going to be guides for the future. Yeah, we want, and so if we do that personally, that means your audience is looking for somebody to say who can help me solve this, and it doesn't have. You know, I do messaging. We help people figure out the problems they solve and talk about it. Sometimes it's a simple shift.
Speaker 2:I had a software company one time that was 85 million in revenue annually. I get in a room with their executive team. We're going through StoryBrain and I said, okay, what does your audience want? What are they looking for? We were an hour into that question and nobody knew. I thought we're going to need a Dr Phil to show up. He was getting ugly. We managed to get through this whole StoryBrain thing. One of the things that came out of this was I said this what does your audience really want? I said, well, they don't want to buy software, they just want to talk to somebody to help them solve this problem. I said, well, what if the call to action is talk to an expert instead of schedule a demo. Nobody wakes up because man.
Speaker 2:I can't wait to schedule me some demos. That sounds fun because it's a sales pitch and we all know it. Your audience is not idiots. And so the only like that that was on Saturday. We did our offsite weekend offsite. The following week we changed that button on the website. We didn't change anything else, we just everything else was the same. We just said talk to an expert. Even the demo request form was the same 40% increase in inbound leads in a month, simply because we said this is what you want when it gets out of that granularity.
Speaker 1:So question then so businesses, where do they start Wes? Yeah, we have a ton of hundreds and thousands of entrepreneurs that listen to this podcast, where they're listening to this today, going holy cow.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:What do I do when?
Speaker 2:do I start. Am I supposed to be shameless and say hire me? That's really no, I never can do that.
Speaker 2:I grew up around. I mean I've watched TV preachers over the years. No, I think there's a couple of things. One I would read building a story about Donald Miller. It's a great book. It's one of the few business books that's not going to waste your time. The second thing I would do and this is an exercise I do when I a lot of times with teams and I go on site with executive teams I don't think the ideal client profile thing is actually very useful. I think it's great jargon on a slide deck. I don't think it's useful. I like to do idol client stories and here's what I mean.
Speaker 2:I like to get in a room and I would encourage leaders listen to this, get your team to get the next meeting and say here's what I want to, here's the. Here's the question I want you to answer. I want you to say look at your last 12, 24, or 24 months or timeframe done at least 12 months, it could be 24, 36, doesn't matter. Look at all the customers you've had in that time. Who are the customers that, deep down, were your favorites? So good, so good. Just think about those people and I'll even say like these are the people that you think. Man, if we could hit all of our revenue goals just with this kind of person, life would be so much easier. Right, that's, that's the frame of mind we're in. Now I want you to think about how did they find you? Where did they find you? What did they buy? What was the main problem they were trying to solve for? Did they become a repeat customer? Were they a raving fan? Or they referral source, like? Who are those people? What I'm looking for are the stories that we can then go replicate. So then I'm looking.
Speaker 2:Then I would say I would start to ask that question and have the conversation with your team. I did this last summer with the team in Dallas and I had free. I had preloaded the question to the executive team as my my one of my robots is talking to me. I had preloaded the team the question. So we came into this session this is a two day session I was doing with them with that question and we start talking and I said, all right, let's get to that question. And one guy immediately says, oh man, there's this one. There's one group in Atlanta that was a customer of ours that we loved. I was like great, tell me why. They started unpacking it and they're like, okay, there's another one in Chicago that we love. We get a couple minutes into that and the chief operating officer was in the room and she goes, can we talk about the Chicago one? And the head of marketing was like, yeah, why? He was like he was all gung ho about the Chicago group and she was like I don't think he's a good, I don't think they're a good fit, I don't think they're a good customer of ours. And it was like the record scratched and I was like what? And she starts unpacking. Her reasoning is why? And then somebody else in the order in the group is CFO, I think, was like, yeah, you know, I was thinking the same thing. And within 15 minutes they had consensus among everybody realizing they are not our customer. We liked our contact there. That guy was great.
Speaker 2:The reality was they didn't buy in, they didn't, they didn't get full value out of what we sold them and they're not going to come back to us. And so then it became. But there's this other group out of I think it was out of Dallas or California, I forget what it was. But there's this other one we didn't even bring up as an idea. They're actually an ideal, and here's why is what the CEO said. And then, all of a sudden, we get clarity on oh. So this is the problem we solve. This is the type of customer we're trying to sell to. I don't have to sell to everybody, I've got to sell to the right people.
Speaker 2:So that's the number one thing I would say is, do that kind of ideal customer story. Look back at your own tracker and say who do you want to replicate? And then go replicate them, because the reality is for the probably everybody, almost everybody listening you don't. There's 330 million people in America. You don't need a single digit percentage of those people. You need a fraction of a fraction of a percent of those people. You know, if you had a 500 or 100 new clients, a lot of people would be doing really well Right. So I would say what is your idol client story? And think about what problem did they have? How did they find you? What did they buy? Why did they buy? Again, look for those commonalities and you'll find a few. Of us say, oh, these are the comments. Okay, great, we need to go start talking to these people. That's the second thing I would do. So rebuilding a store brand idol client story.
Speaker 2:And the third thing I would say and this is a super practical one is when you look at your website, especially for those who have frontline sales so you B2B, real estate, that kind of stuff You're dealing in a sales, a lot of sales relationship. Look at your website and go if I had a sales rep who said this, would they be my top sales rep or would they be unemployed? And if they'd be unemployed, go fix it, because your website is your number one sales rep. It ought to be. It's 24-7-365, never takes breaks, never has vacation, never has issues, you never know HR complaints. Your marketing is just sales at scale. So think about is my website a great representation of my sales? Those three things I think I'm gonna put you significantly ahead of probably where you are now and they're gonna put you in a better place to really thrive through the next year and beyond.
Speaker 1:Why do you think people miss that? What do you think the? Why do you think people miss that simple thing? As far as a website, and dude, again, we've talked about art, we've talked about we're both men of faith. Like I've been to church websites and I'm like how do I find out what time you have a service? How do I find out just where do I go? Yeah, like, what is the address for the church? Yeah, like it is so like I hop on. I'm like, scrolling down the page, do I go to the bottom of the page to find the contact? It's like service times boom, boom, boom, boom. Location boom, boom, boom, boom. And if you have different campuses, it's like why do we continue to think that people want to go on our website and search for information instead of saying the number one barrier for this person buying from me or attending my church or doing business with me is they just gotta know how to contact me and how to follow me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think there's a couple of reasons. One of the things I've seen over and over again is I think we just get really busy and we just don't prioritize it. Quite honestly, we just, oh man, we're just busy, we ain't got there yet. I think that's one thing. I think two we also think of we also get caught up in our own world. We start, we want to impress ourselves, right, we don't go through.
Speaker 2:The paradigm shift of. This is not about me, this is about my audience. I mean, I worked at a church one time where they had spent an egregious amount of money on their website right before I got there and they had all this fancy stuff on the homepage and about us and blah, blah, blah. And I was like I gave it six months and I looked at the data and I was like the only thing people are doing, they're going to the homepage and then they're going to the kids page because they want to know what's the kids check-in like? Where do I go, what is for my kids, what time is it? Like I said, why don't we just prioritize that? And so, sure enough, we put that stuff on the homepage, where it was easier to find and more people engage. It's like we have to think through. What does it people want?
Speaker 2:I heard a story I think it's in the book Measure what Matters by John Doherty, the guy who kind of invented the OKR framework, the objectives and key results, and he tells a story of Bono. I think it's Bono in the red campaign and I think the Gates Foundation does it too. They do this thing where Bono, particularly with the red campaign and the AIDS stuff, they literally put an empty chair in their board meetings to represent the AIDS victims they're serving. Same thing with Gates Foundation they're doing stuff with malaria and the AIDS stuff across Africa or whatever. They have an empty chair and they say we're gonna look at that chair and we're stuck and they think, well, what matters to the people we're trying to reach, we're trying to serve?
Speaker 2:I had a client one time in the software space. They're 40 million, 40, 50 million a year. They've been around a long time and they ended up doing I coached one of their, the head of marketing, for this and the executive team did it because they were kind of at an inflection point in their business and they said we've got to make some harder decisions about where we're gonna go and so, sure enough, I told them, I kind of coached them through it, and they ended up putting an empty chair in the middle of the board meeting or a bit of the executive offsite and it was like what matters to the people that we know and it wasn't just like you know saying your back.
Speaker 1:It goes back west, to what you talked about just a minute ago. What problem do our clients have? That's it. Like it's that. And when you think about it from that perspective, it changes the way you look at it. It literally changes the way that you look at it, because I think we're like, oh, we've got this product and we just want to go, hey, here's who we are and here's what we've got, instead of stopping and going what problem are we trying to solve? That's it. Who are we trying to solve the problem? I love what you said about ideal client stories. Who's our ideal client? Because I'm thinking like, literally, when you're talking, I'm thinking about my community, our collective our mastermind and I'm thinking, who am I ideal?
Speaker 1:I just had two people sign up 50K a piece in the last two days for our mastermind and I'm thinking I'm looking at both of these guys. They're both right around a million to 1.3 million in revenue last year is what they made and I'm thinking, man, that's. And then I start looking through the other three dozen or more people that are in it and I'm thinking that's my ideal client.
Speaker 1:That's their story, and so now we're right at that high six, seven figures and we're wanting to bump it to two to five million a year. What room do I need to?
Speaker 2:be in and how do I do that Exactly. And then it becomes. Then it focuses in the problems, because the problems that are one and a half to two million dollar business face are different than what a 25 million dollar business face is, and so then I can speak to problems that attract that audience. I've talked to a guy one time he was in real estate and I he said hey, can you look at my Instagram? Sure, so I looked at his Instagram and he was fine, I mean, it was creative, it was interesting, whatever.
Speaker 2:And I said who's your target audience? And he was like I really do well with families who are wanting to upgrade. Like you know, the kids are getting bigger, they need more space, whatever. I was like great. And I said well, why is most of your Instagram content about first time home buyers? And he goes oh, and I said you're going to attract what you talk about. You talk about first time home bar, you're going to get first time home, you want to upgrade. You talk about all the challenges or problems of upgrading, all the, all the, how busy life is and you just don't have time to look. You need somebody to guide you. So you talk about all that stuff and suddenly you're going to start attracting more of those people.
Speaker 1:We've done. We've done 300 million in real estate transactions and we've done a lot since you did the wording for my, for my, landing page, which was real estate doesn't need to be your part time job. We have a team that will handle that for you. And you're literally like, listen, we know this isn't what you do. You focus on what you do, you let us focus on what we do, and we have a team of professionals from inspectors to attorneys to mortgage guys to real estate. We can handle this transaction and this process for you, so you don't have to worry about it every step of the way. I think pretty much verbatim, that was almost the yeah, that sounds right.
Speaker 2:It's funny. I would challenge everybody to watch Shark Tank. If you don't like, go back.
Speaker 2:I mean it's, we love the show, it's great and it's so it's. Some of the products are ridiculous, but there's a lot of them. They're really interesting. But even then I can almost tell when somebody's going to get a deal based solely on their pitch and it's whether or not they highlight a problem. But I've also literally seen Mark Cuban in the Q and A section go okay, what problem do you solve for people? Here's a guy who's worth billions and it was been in rooms that I'll never be in and know and can do in his part of things. I just don't. I do not understand somebody does a love is prescription. What he's doing on prescription.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:It's incredible, but it's like here's a guy, and he's literally. Here's a guy who's worth he's the, he's the highest net value or highest net worth of anybody on that show, and he goes. But what problem do you solve? Do I think this problem is something people pay money to solve? That's it. You figure that out and you've unlocked a cheat code Marketing for sales and even leadership.
Speaker 1:Yeah, dude, that's so good. What problem do we solve? I love that Create conference. In a month we'll be in Atlanta Me, you, erwin McMahon. We got a crew coming to Atlanta. It's going to be a phenomenal time. Why should somebody invest in three days at a conference like that, wes?
Speaker 2:I think about events and I think there's really three reasons why you go to that. One is obviously the content. You want to be in a space where you get to sit down not on a webinar, not on a podcast and you get to hear from somebody live who knows something you don't know or has been somewhere. You want to go. Obviously, the content. I think the second thing is it's the connections. Who am I going to meet?
Speaker 2:I mean, you and I have been to events with eight or 10,000 people and the best part of the event was who you met in the hallway, who you got to catch up with you haven't seen in a while, or who you got to introduce to because somebody you knew was there. Those connections can prove invaluable. My third one I want to alliterate this so bad because I grew up around Baptist preachers, but unfortunately my third one is not alliterate. The third one is just the ability to get away and focus. When you get out of, you may think, oh, I can read the books, I can do the podcast, I can do it, yeah, but you're in the midst of the chaos of day-to-day business.
Speaker 1:How about a guy who's preached about 300 Sundays or more? How about clarity?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you get clarity.
Speaker 2:Content connections and clarity Because you're giving yourself space to say I'm going to physically get out of town, I'm going to physically go somewhere different for three days, be around different people, hear different things. I am always amazed when I do stuff like this and how many new ideas I have about my business. How many times I've gotten problems in my own head about what I'm trying to solve for my own business that I get clarity on Every time because I give myself the space to go do it. So I get. It's the content I want to learn from the people, I want to learn from the questions and ultimately, the clarity is because I give myself the gift of space.
Speaker 1:Love that, I love that. Dude. What's the best way for people to connect with you, wes.
Speaker 2:You can hit me up on LinkedIn. It's WesGayX or slash, the artist formerly known as Twitter at WesGay and the website WesGaycom. Here's one thing I want to give. I want to make mention for this audience. If you go to WesGaycom, slash Leader Grows I've got a resource there called the Five Minute Marketing Fix that's going to unpack more of this idol client story thing and also give you some really powerful practical tips for your website. So go to WesGaycom, slash Leader Grows and get access for that resource for your team.
Speaker 1:We'll drop that in the show notes as well for you guys. Guys, listen, if you're a business owner and you're struggling with marketing and what to say which that would be about 99.999% of all businesses this is the guy that you need to know. He'll be doing a session. He'll actually be doing two sessions at Create the Mastermind Thursday afternoon and then a session on Saturday. It's going to be a phenomenal time, guys. Thank you so much for joining us on as the Leader Grows.
Speaker 1:Again, if this has been something that's added value to you, do me a favor. I'm not going to ask you to do three things, just one thing Hit the subscribe button. Make sure you're in line. Guys, we're about to drop Irwin McManus, my guy at WesGay. Walker Hayes, the Applebee's guy. I got to meet Walker this week at an NBA dinner. I did. I spoke out for my good friend, dave Meltzer. Dominique Wilkins met a world peace and I walk in and Walker's doing a podcast with Dave and I'm like that's Walker Hayes and he's sharing about his faith and everything that's going on. So we got connected and so I'm recording a podcast with him as a well guy. So listen, hit subscribe. I promise you, the value that we give you is immense and it's super transformational if you take and put it into practice. Wesgay love you, bro. Can't wait to see you soon. Guys, again thank you for joining us on another episode of as the Leader Grows.