IAM1943 – Marketing Consultant Helps Clients Understand and Implement the StoryBrand Framework

Previous Episode: https://iamceo.co/2019/04/05/iam235-marketing-consultant-helps-clients-understand-and-implement-the-storybrand-framework/

Transcription:

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Wes GayTeaser 00:00

So like essentially a marketing consultant being able to help companies with overall messaging strategy at a high level, but also to still that down at different marketing sales channels.

Intro 00:09

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview?

If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of.

This is the I AM CEO podcast.

Gresham Harkless 00:33

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I appreciate you listening to this episode. If you've been listening this year, you know that we hit 1600 episodes at the beginning of this year. We're doing something a little bit different where we were purposing our favorite episodes around certain categories, topics, or as I like to call them the business pillars that we think are going to be extremely impactful for CEOs, entrepreneurs, business owners, and what I like to call CB nation architects who are looking to level up their organizations.

This month we are focusing on finishing it out, fighting the good fight and closing out the job. I think just as important as it is to start something, it's even more important in how you conclude it or finish it out. So if you think of the different things that you can finish out, it could be everything from a project, it could be from a day, it could also be from a business in and of itself, and it could also of course be for the year. So when you think of finishing out, I want you to really think of these episodes, because what we're going to really focus on is the last question that we really ask, which is defining what it means to be a CEO.

All the creative, innovative, and I think truly insightful questions that we receive from this question is really what we want to highlight during the show. But of course, we want you to enjoy the entire episode and think about how you're going to finish things out and how you're going to finish things out strongly. So sit back and enjoy this special episode of the I AM CEO podcast.

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast, and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Wes Gay of wesgay.com. Wes, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Wes Gay 02:04

Hey, thanks for having me.

Gresham Harkless 02:05

No problem. No problem. I appreciate having you on. What I want us to do is just read a little bit more about Wes so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing.

Wes believes clarity is King. With it, organizations reach more customers, grow their sales and align teams around the mission. He's a writer, marketing consultant, TEDx speaker, and slightly pretentious coffee drinker. Wes has helped dozens of clients understand and implement the story brand framework in their own business.

As a result, they get the clarity they need to achieve their goals. He lives with his wife, two young sons and their overprotective dog in Swana, Georgia. I knew I was going to butcher that. Wes, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

Wes Gay 02:45

I am.

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Gresham Harkless 02:46

Awesome. Awesome. So the first question I had was to hear a little bit more about what I call your CEO story. What let you get started with your business?

Wes Gay 02:52

Yeah. Totally by accident, purely by circumstance. So 2016, I found myself without a job. I had been working in nonprofit organizations and went through about a six month stretch, right? And have anything in the middle of that. I actually became one of the paid contributors over at Forbes. com, which is a crazy experience, very interesting. But as a result of that, I was starting to get a little bit of work as a kind of a freelance writer, copywriter, just small projects here and there. Some of your audience may be familiar with what's called the story brand framework based off a book called building a story brand by a guy named Donald Miller.

In 2016, they offered us a copywriter certification because they'd had a few thousand businesses go through the framework, but nobody really felt comfortable writing copy for websites or email campaigns, et cetera, using this formula. So it was 5,000$ certification. I didn't have a job, so I didn't have any money. But I had a credit card and I thought, let me put this on the credit card and just see what happened. We've got two little kids. Our youngest was six months old at the time. Our oldest had just turned two and it was like, this is a make or break thing. I'm just going to venture out on my own.

The original plan was I want to do this for a while until a regular job works out. So I did it, got home a week later, I had my first client and that contract was equivalent to almost of a single month salary of any job I'd ever had previously and I thought this is not a bad deal. So I quickly gained about a half dozen clients doing copywriting projects and within about three months, I was actually starting to move into more marketing strategy and more of a consultant from a messaging standpoint.

Then in 2017, I became certified as what Storbring call their guides. So like essentially a marketing consultant, being able to help companies with overall messaging strategy at a high level, but also distill that down to different marketing sales channels. Like I said, it was by accident. I thought I'm just going to do this for a season until a real job works out. It turns out this is my real job and in late 2018, I transitioned to become one of the story brand certified agencies. So now I actually run an agency called Wayfinder.

You can find us over at hirewayfinder.com where we help organizations understand and implement this framework in marketing sales and their customer success. So that's a little bit, was totally by accident. Now I find myself actually running a team. It's completely virtual, mostly in the U.S with folks over in Europe too.

Gresham Harkless 04:57

Awesome. Awesome. It's funny to hear and see how taking one leap of faith rolls into all that and you're just like, I'm just going to try this out for a little bit. The next thing, like you said, it becomes your job.

Wes Gay 05:05

Exactly. Like a lot of folks, probably early twenties in my career, first of my career, I thought I want to work really hard and I would love to be a consultancy speaker type one day. But I thought I got to go get 10, 15, 20 years of experience in an industry or in a niche to be able to be considered an authority. But what ended up happening was because I went and got certified.

I actually got to experience what I call the benefit of delegated authority because I had that certification. I get to benefit from the authority of those who are doing great work and I get to be associated with it, which has really helped accelerate my ability to work with some really big and really incredible brands.

Gresham Harkless 05:39

Could you tell us a little bit more about Storybrand, exactly what that is?

Wes Gay 05:41

Sure. So most people, especially in today's modern marketing area, waste an enormous amount of money on marketing because they're chasing all the wrong things. They're running after Facebook ads, which aren't necessarily bad. They're running after better websites, which also aren't bad. My team does both of those things. But the real issue is you need to have clarity in what you're saying to your audience before you figure out how you need to go out and say it. Because if you know what your audience is experiencing, the problems they have, you're better positioning your brand to be able to win more customers.

So the storyboard framework takes a seven-part formula of storytelling. And it's a formula that you can use for everything from the hunger games to Mary Poppins to star Wars. It's a Tommy boy. You name it, it all works in this framework. It's a formula, that store that like screenwriters for movies, we're just finished up the Oscars, they all use this formula because story is something that people naturally understand. So by using this formula, you're able to create messaging that better resonates with your audience and therefore gets them, it's going to drive more business simply because you're speaking a language they understand and you're showing how you solve their problems.

Now, one example we love to use is there's a lady who went through this about two years ago. She was a quarter of a million dollars in the hole that year in business. She makes a cauliflower pizza crust. Obviously, it's a health trend. People love it. It's great for you, but she's a quarter of a million in the hole. She goes through this workshop, fires her marketing agency, takes all the marketing in house and in her first year does 7 million.

Gresham Harkless 07:04

Wow.

Wes Gay 07:05

And it's not because she hired some gurus. It's not because she had some grand wizards or something or other. It's not because she had some guy on the mountaintop telling us how to do everything. What she did is she said, I'm going to figure out what my audience cares about. I want to figure out the problems they experienced, and I'm going to talk about that. And then I'm going to make it really easy for them to buy from me 7 million, I think, in revenue.

Year two, she's on track to do over 20 million in revenue simply because she got her messaging right. By using a formula of story that's worked for thousands of years.

Gresham Harkless 07:35

Yeah, absolutely. That's huge. I wanted to ask you for what I call your secret sauce. So you might've already touched on this, but do you have a secret sauce or what you feel distinguishes either you or your organization?

Wes Gay 07:43

Yeah. So I think what distinguishes me particularly in the marketing world is I want to figure out your problems before I tell you what to do next. Because what I want to do is I understand kind of my guiding principles and marketing are the story brand framework, because for me, I know I can develop every piece of marketing cloud that you need. But what I want to do is come in and say, and I guess the best way to distill down to the secret sauce is am I always providing value at every point of the conversation? Am I going in to provide value? Cause I learned early on, if you provide value, you'll always be valuable.

There is a price tag with being valuable when it comes to business. So if I can come in and provide value by understanding, by trying to, it's like Stephen Covey said, seek to understand before trying to be understood. If I can come in with that posture, this morning, I had a sales presentation and I didn't prepare a single thing for the presentation, nothing. I walked in and opened my notebook and I asked questions for the first half hour. Then I transitioned it and started showing how I can help them based on what I knew.

But I thought I can't provide value yet until I understand what their problems are and where the opportunities to provide value are. So for me, it's always trying to leave with how do I provide value? And then how do I create clarity for them so they can go out and grow their own business?

Gresham Harkless 08:52

Absolutely. I love that. It's kind of like, you go to the doctor's office and the doctor says before they even talk to you, you take this pill, this pill, this pill. This will make you all better. But I don't even know what's wrong with you. I don't know if your knee hurts or if your head hurts. So I'm just gonna give you whatever I think because this is what I have.

Wes Gay 09:05

I'm gonna put you on this plan like in marketing and there's a marketing agency orders. We're gonna put you on this very specific plan because this is just the one thing that we do is I gotta diagnose your problem first and I'm not valuable to you until I diagnose and tell you what's wrong.

Gresham Harkless 09:17

No, I absolutely love that. What I wanted to do is switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO hack. This might be an app, book or a habit that you have, but it's something that makes you more effective and efficient.

Wes Gay 09:27

Yeah, I got a lot of them. I love to read. So there are a lot of books, but I would say that there's a book that is tied into a habit and the book is the Bullet Journal Method by Ryder Carroll. The Bullet Journal thing has been popular. Don't look at it on Pinterest because you're going to see a lot of people who are very artistic doing it. For me, it's points and dashes, but the greatest thing about the Bullet Journal is in today's world. I feel like there's so many places where I have tasks coming from.

We use Base Camp, so I have Base Camp for our team. I have my own personal list. I've got lists everywhere, but the biggest, I think, hack for me in the Bullet Journal world, my kind of the way I personalize it is I do in a weekly review. So on Sunday night or Monday on the left side of a two page spread of my most good notebook, I'll put my calendar. So I'll do Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and list all of my appointments on the right side. I list here the project priorities are main tasks I need to accomplish this week to stay on target here. The people I need to contact and here are my personal goals for the week.

So then with my calendar in place, I'll take my tasks as big project and move those to these days. Never putting more than two on the same day. Two is a lot. Two priorities a day is a big task anyway to really get done effectively to still leave margin for the unknown and the interruptions. Then from there, what it allows me to do is really take an honest look at and go, okay, I've filled up, but I've got all these things I've got to do. What should I start delegating out more of to my team to get more things off my plate?

And so by asking myself that each week, now I'm able to set my priorities ahead of time. So each day I literally will sit down. I did this morning. I write down my calendar for the day. So I always have an offline version of my calendar for the day. I write down my priorities and then just away we go with the day. So that's been the Bullet Journal. I think it's been that my take on the bullet journal with the biggest help for me is just getting it all centralized and being able to delegate more effectively to my team.

Gresham Harkless 11:07

Absolutely. Now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. This is a word of wisdom or piece of advice or if you can hop to a time machine, what would you tell your younger business self?

Wes Gay 11:16

I'll start with the younger self. The younger self, I would say, be patient because Lord willing from the time a lot of us were ready to just take on the world in early twenties, and we think if we haven't made an under 30 list by the time we're 30, then we've failed. But the reality is when you feel, say you start your career at 22, if you do traditional college, you're going to start at 22 or 23. As long as your health is good, you legitimately have 50 years potentially of a career. That's enough to have two 25 year careers, right? So when you start, so you could have two careers that are longer than that are longer in terms of years and the time you've been alive when you started your first career.

So you have a long time, right? I'm not saying these had to be lazy. I'm just saying, and this is what I realized in my late twenties and I would probably say this to everybody is be patient, keep at it, but realize you actually have a long time. Think more long term in the terms of decades instead of days. I had a guy when I was writing for Forbes. I was in the under 30 channel, which is the millennials deal and people just assumed I voted on the 30 under 30 list. I had no power. I had no say. I knew zero about that, how that whole thing worked. But I had a guy DM me who had three or four hundred thousand Twitter followers.

He's a pretty big influencer in his particular space. CMO of a startup, he was like an ambassador for NASA at one point. Like super cool. This guy does really cool stuff. He asked me about the 30 under 30 thing and I'm like, I don't know. I can ask. So I did and he just didn't make the list. He's like man, I've been trying my whole career for this. I'm like, you're 25. If your career started three years ago, like a three-year-old is just being potty trained. It doesn't matter if you've not made the 30 under 30 list or not.

Just be patient and think in terms of decades, not days. I think you'll be amazed at the potential impact and how much more you can accomplish. So that's my advice for the younger crowd. It's just, man, just sit down and be patient and just go to work every day, knowing you're you've got 40 years ahead of you.

Gresham Harkless 13:14

Now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping to have different quote and quote CEOs on the show.

So Wes, I wanted to ask you, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Wes Gay 13:24

For me, being a CEO means it's my responsibility to be the guide for everybody underneath me. That means I need to be that stable character saying a story that understands where everybody else is and is trying to help people get to their version of success. So that means with my team, I need to maybe remove blockers for them or to help them think through challenges or to help figure out how can I help them win in their own stories? For my clients, how do I help? How do we facilitate and make it to where our clients can win in their own stories?

So that means as the CEO I've always got to be a little further ahead than where everybody else is. Which means I'm constantly to be stretched and pushed and think differently, put myself in different situations in order to force myself to grow beyond my current capacity so that I can be a little bit ahead of my team and show them the way. Otherwise, I'm going to be outpaced by the organization. I'm gonna be outpaced by clients. I'm gonna be outpaced by the people. But it's my responsibility to help people win in their own stories and make sure that I can facilitate that and get out of the way so that they're able to go out and win.

Because when they win, when my team wins, our company wins. When our clients win, our company wins because their success is part of a result of our work and us being in the posture of let me help you get to where you're trying to go. So to me, I think it really goes down to how do I do that and then how do I need to constantly stay ahead of the game so I'm better suited to be that for my team?

Gresham Harkless 14:50

Absolutely. Absolutely. Wes, I truly appreciate the time that you took today. What I want to do is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you want to let our readers and our listeners know, and then of course how they can find you.

Wes Gay 15:01

Yeah, I would challenge everybody to take 30 minutes or an hour today or tomorrow and look at your own company's marketing collateral. Start with your website. Can you, in just five or six seconds on your website, answer questions like what do we do? How do people get started, and why does it benefit the customer, right? Those three questions alone will generate enormous clarity for you. I also encourage you to read building a story brand because I think what you're going to come out of with, you're going to be empowered with knowledge to frankly be your own consultant and be able to address some of the gaps in your own business.

You say man, sales are down or we're not closing as many deals or maybe we're B2B brand and our sales pipeline is too long. A lot of your problem is the messaging you're using and you're just not being clear to people in a way that matters to them. So my challenge to you is think through everything your company says for marketing and sales and think about does this really matter? I think the best way to find me is on Twitter.

I'm just at Wes Gay on Twitter. I'm on LinkedIn. I don't really know how you find people on LinkedIn because there's some things about LinkedIn I still haven't figured out. Just look up Wes Gay and you'll find me. You can check out our agency, It's hirewayfinder.com to see some of the projects we're doing and the work we're doing as well.

Gresham Harkless 16:05

Absolutely, and we'll make sure to have those links in the show notes, including the link to LinkedIn. If you could say that three times fast, just because that can sometimes be very user-friendly, sometimes not. But Wes, I truly appreciate your time and all the awesome things that you're doing.

I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Wes Gay 16:19

Hey, thanks for having me.

Outro 16:21

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co. I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes, Google Play, and everywhere you listen to podcasts, subscribe and leave us a five-star rating.

Grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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