Kyle Gray is the CEO and Story Strategist of The Story Engine, a company specializing in helping coaches, startups, and executives use storytelling to improve communication and sales effectiveness. He has authored books and developed strategies that combine timeless storytelling with cutting-edge marketing techniques, ensuring that his clients can effectively present their unique value online and offline. Beyond his professional achievements, Kyle is passionate about empowering leaders to connect with their genius and make a significant impact in their respective fields. His work is a testament to the pivotal role stories play in human-centric business paradigms.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
[3:00] Kyle Gray discusses how The Story Engine help businesses grow through storytelling
[6:16] How storytelling builds stronger connections than credentials
[10:48] Ways to communicate your narrative concisely and engagingly
[16:35] Kyle explains how to connect personal truths to audience needs
[17:57] Applying storytelling in business
[24:41] Storytelling techniques to evoke emotions and engagement
[31:24] Can simplifying messages double audience conversion rates?
[33:20] The art of asking questions to uncover client needs
In this episode…
In today's information-saturated landscape, storytelling has emerged as a powerful tool for businesses seeking to differentiate themselves and forge meaningful connections with their audience. By embracing the art of storytelling, brands can transform their communication strategies and deepen their relationship with their customers and mission. How can harnessing stories unlock the true potential of your business and create a lasting impact in a world increasingly dominated by technology?
Kyle Gray, a world-class presentation coach and story strategist, tackles these questions head-on by helping business leaders master the art of storytelling to better connect with their audiences. He believes that many talented individuals are not reaching their full potential due to an inability to communicate their unique values effectively. Through his Story Engine framework, Kyle aids entrepreneurs in crafting narratives that resonate with their audience's emotions, drawing them into a shared vision and enhancing trust. He demonstrates that storytelling is not merely about conveying facts but about creating an emotional journey that aligns with the listener's values and desires.
In this episode of The Customer Wins, Richard Walker interviews Kyle Gray, CEO of The Story Engine, about transforming communication through storytelling. Kyle discusses how The Story Engine helps businesses grow through storytelling, how storytelling builds stronger connections than credentials, and storytelling techniques to evoke emotions and engagement.
Resources Mentioned in this episode
Kyle Gray’s Email: kyle@thestoryengine.co
The Story Engine: An entrepreneur's guide to content strategy and brand storytelling without spending all day writing by Kyle Gray
"A Reliable Process For Change With Rich Walker" on The Story Engine Podcast
"[Perspective Series] Strategies for Winning Customers: A Conversation With Peter LePiane" on The Customer Wins
"[Perspective Series] Exit to Excellence: Guide to Strategic Business Departures With Jerome Myers" on The Customer Wins
Fix Your Period: Six Weeks to Banish Bloating, Conquer Cramps, Manage Moodiness, and Ignite Lasting Hormone Balance by Nicole Jardim
Quotable Moments:
"The process of building a talk is a process of relating to yourself; of upgrading your visibility."
"To get to where you are in this life, you’re probably a little bit addicted to your achievement."
"The only and the last advantage that we have as humans is our own experience and our own stories."
"Stories create trust, especially in an age where there's so much information and AI."
"What’s the least amount I can teach that will provide a perspective shift?"
Action Steps:
Embrace storytelling as a tool for connection: Storytelling can transcend mere facts and figures, enabling you to convey your vision more effectively and create a deeper emotional connection.
Focus on understanding your audience's needs: This approach ensures that your communication is relevant and resonates with your audience, helping you address their specific challenges and demonstrate empathy.
Simplify your message for maximum impact: Rather than overwhelming your audience with information, focus on simplifying your message to highlight the most important insights or shifts in perspective.
Practice vulnerability and authenticity in communication: By sharing personal experiences and challenges, you can foster a genuine connection and illustrate your understanding of your audience's journey.
Refine your storytelling skills continuously: Storytelling is a craft that requires ongoing practice and adaptation to remain effective in different contexts and with diverse audiences.
Sponsor for this episode...
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Episode Transcript:
Intro 0:02
Welcome to The Customer Wins podcast where business leaders discuss their secrets and techniques for helping their customers succeed and in turn grow their business.
Richard Walker 0:16
Hi, I'm Rich Walker, the host of The Customer Wins where I talk to business leaders about how they help their customers win, how their focus on customer experience leads to growth. Today is a special episode in my perspective series to bring a different way of thinking to our audience. Some of the past guests in this series include Nickie Froiland of Motus9, Bennett Maxwell of Dirty Dough Cookies, Peter LePiane of Idea Bridge and Jerome Myers of Exit Excellent. Today I'm speaking with Kyle Gray, CEO and Story Strategist of The Story Engine. And today's episode is brought to you by Quik!, the leader in enterprise forms processing.
When your business relies upon processing forms, don't waste your team's valuable time manually reviewing the forms. Instead, get Quik!. Using our Form Xtract API, simply submit your completed forms and get that clean context-rich data that reduces manual reviews to only one out of 1000 submissions. Visit quikforms.com to get started. Okay, before I introduce today's guest, I want to give a big thank you to Eric Berman for making it possible for me to meet Kyle. Eric is the founder of Speakeasy Mastermind, a group I also belong to where we meet monthly to learn from each other, grow together and greatly improve our businesses. Go check out the speakeasy website to find a chapter in your area at speakeasymastermind.com and connect with others in the world.
Man, I've been looking forward to this today. Kyle Gray is a world-class presentation coach, Story Strategist and author who helps coaches,startups and executives use storytelling to better communicate their unique value and improve sales with their audience. He combines timeless storytelling with cutting-edge marketing to ensure you've got the right story to tell while presenting on a sales call or in conversation, both online and offline. Kyle, welcome to The Customer Wins.
Kyle Gray 2:14
Rich, I am so excited to be here. Thank you for having me on the show, and I'm so excited to continue this process of creation together, especially I recognized a few of those names in other people who have been on this list, and it's star-studded. So thank you for having me today.
Richard Walker 2:32
Yeah, well, I should also mention I was on your show, and it was just groundbreaking to me, and that's why I'm so excited to have you today, because what you gave to me, I think we need to share with the rest of the world. So for those who haven't heard my podcast before, I talk with business leaders about what they're doing to help their customers win, how they built deliver a great customer experience, and the challenges to growing their own company. So Kyle, let's understand your business a little bit better. How does your company help people?
Kyle Gray 3:00
There are a couple of different layers to how my company helps people. And the first thing that I want to point out is kind of the biggest picture and the biggest vision of this. Everybody understands the concept of the environmental resources crisis. It's at least understandable. We all have opinions on whether it is and what it's not, or if it's bad or if it's good, but there is an overlying conversation that everybody can engage with that the way we are using our natural resources is causing some interesting changes, and we're probably not utilizing them as efficiently as we could. Now, this has been a big problem. It's a big discussion everywhere around the world. People are talking about this or experiencing this, and I believe that there is an equally pernicious and lesser-understood problem of the Human Resources crisis.
And what I think the Human Resources crisis is, is I believe that there are Einsteins, there are malalas, there are leaders in business, in faith, in culture, in all kinds of things that haven't been able to connect with their genius. And so this Einstein is still working in a box factory or something right now, and at this particular moment in time, we are facing some of the most profound changes we've ever experienced as a civilization. And I deeply believe that we have all of the human capacity within us as a population, to solve those problems, but many of those geniuses are asleep right now. And I believe that one of the roles that I do is to help empower as many leaders as possible to translate their expertise in a way that will wake those people up, that will allow them to access their brilliance and make an impact. And through being able to help more leaders share who they are, attract and enroll more of their ideal clients, their clients and their people are also going to be better.
I only work with people who I feel are progressing the world in a way that is best for everyone. And so it's not just the people that I work with, but the people that they touch, and ultimately, the people that will be touched beyond that that will help serve the course of these next few years, and what's been leading up to it to usher in a time of freedom, of creativity, of responsibility and of abundance for everyone.
Richard Walker 5:36
Kyle I love what you just said, but I want to point out you did something that I think of as brave. You didn't just come out and say, I help people tell their story. I help people connect with their audience. You didn't concisely say, this is what it is. You actually just told us a story. You drew us into a vision, into an idea, and wrapped it up with a whole story to bring it all to life. And that is the nature of who you are. That is what you do for your customers. You just demonstrated it by doing it. But the reason I call it brave is because I don't think I've had a single guest on the show do that. I think everybody answers the question of what you do with what. Why is that?
Kyle Gray 6:16
Because to get to where we are in this and to get to where you are listener, to be listening to a podcast like this, I know enough about you to know that you are a high achiever. You have worked really hard to build this skill set and this knowledge and this experience, to be who you are and to do what you are doing. And in order to get to where you are in this life, you've probably a little bit addicted to your achievement and what you do, or you've learned to reward yourself on the things that I've done and I have achieved are what make me valuable. And of course, we would be this as high achievers, but the fact is that this implies a deficiency of self. We feel that we might not be enough without the things that we have done, without the acronyms behind our name and the long list of achievements that we have. And this influences the choices that we make when we communicate. It influences what kind of stories we would want to tell.
It influences how we teach and what we teach, and it influences how we show up, and we are very good at broadcasting our professional persona, but because we don't know how to tell stories or why to tell stories, or where, and the purpose and the strategy within those we often default to just giving the facts about our achievements, because that's in our own misconstrued perspective. We what we think is important as the expert, and it is important how we solve the problems is important. And you're doing a lot of good things, and the work you've done is great, but how we communicate about that and create an experience to move someone towards working with us is different than actually how we solve the problem. And so we separate, and this is a process of validating and valuing who you are as much as what you have done, and when we can blend these together, that's how we tell stories that are effective, that create trust, especially in an age where there's so much information, so much AI, and all copywriters are gone now, copywriting is only a matter of how well you can prompt your AI and the research that you can put into it, and the only and the last advantage that we have as humans is our own experience and our own stories, and they are not replicatable.
And this is what people are looking for more than ever. Of course, we want the studies. Of course we want the information, but we also want the context of somebody that we feel understands us and can trust us before we start to process or listen to any of that information. And so storytelling is becoming a rarer thing, and by valuing ourselves and our vision and who we are as much as what we have done, we can get dramatically better results when we are communicating with our prospective clients.
Richard Walker 6:50
Yeah, man, I got to tell you, when I was 18, I said, I want to be a Fortune 500 CEO someday. And while that's not exactly my goal, it led me down a path to ask, what is really great about a CEO? What are the skills they offer? And there are a couple of things I really honed in on. One is I was amazed at how well CEOs could present. I mean, get on stage with no scripts, no paper, no three-by-five cards, and just start talking and presenting. To me, that was magical and inherent in that is the second thing, the ability to tell stories. And Kyle, I would offer that I have a really great skill that's also a negative. I have the ability to distill very complex things into very concise, understandable statements, and therefore I tended to speak in very few words, and I didn't understand how to tell a story.
That's, again, why I look at what you did as brave. It'd be so much easier to say, oh, I'm just the CEO of Quik!. I help people automate their process with paperwork, versus why I do that, right? So I totally agree with you that the advent of AI is making it even more scarce. But I do think people have to have this mindset of wanting to tell the story and learn how to tell stories. And I think telling stories is a craft, right? I think you were telling me there's what you do in the legal version, in the courtroom versus what you do in marketing. Can you talk about that?
Kyle Gray 10:48
Yeah, this is one of the biggest distinctions that creates, especially for those who are very smart in numbers, like your audience. This is one of the most liberating concepts or frameworks that changes the lives of a lot of people that I work with. So most of us only think there's one kind of truth out there. The truth is the truth, the science truth, or what I call it, the courtroom truth, which we could immediately begin to picture what this means and what this says. If you were called to testify in a court and talk on the stand about your story and what happened. You would give every detail equal. You would tell as much detail as possible. You would talk about all of the facts. And this is how we tend to approach the truth in our stories, or in our teaching. If you were talking about a car and the car was red, but you actually said that the car was blue for some reason, in the courtroom, that would be a problem, or it might have been an SUV instead of a motorcycle or a smaller car. And so this is the courtroom truth. And a lot of times when I'm working on telling stories with people, they're so attached to this, and they're like, well, but in that moment, there was also this person in the background who said this, or these other things happened, and they're important.
And a lot of the times this happens because we're so close to our stories, we're so close to our ideas, we're so close that we don't know what we need to share. And because of this concept of courtroom truth, we just try and share everything, but it ends up the real gems and what we have to say and why we have to say it get deluded and distilled in the everything else. And then there's personal truth. Personal truth means that there is something that you have to share underlying with this, and there's a story that you have to share. And there's a truth to the moment that may not necessarily be factual, but there's an idea, a vision, who you are, similar to what I was talking about with like the Human Resources crisis. And emphasizing personal truth creates freedom in only giving the details in your story or ideas that support that personal truth, which usually cuts out about 95% of the other things.
And this creates a lot of freedom for people who maybe when a lot of us have had many different challenges, many different stories to how or why we've become the person that we are, and maybe just telling one story about that one July, back in 2016 when you decided to make a change, I know that there were 17 other moments when you decided to become the person that you did, but we don't have to share every single one of them and build out our entire resume in order to have the effect that we want, which the effect that we want, particularly in when we begin a talk, we begin a podcast, or we begin a conversation, is to show our audience, hey, I understand you and I understand what's going on in your world. When we can focus on that and bring in our personal truth, it just takes so much pressure off of us as speakers.
Richard Walker 14:13
And because we don't have to remember all the details, or focus on the details being right. So this is actually a corollary to public speaking, and it's something that one of my teachers taught me. When you're on stage, you're the expert. Nobody knows more about it than you do, and if they do, they're not on stage to debate you. So if you make a mistake in your presentation, you're the only one who knows it. You don't have to correct it. And to me, that's kind of what you're saying is, if you're telling a story and you say the car was blue instead of red, nobody really cares. It's the fact that the car was going so fast or swerved around the corner and hit another car, whatever the event was, that's exciting. It's not about that specific detail. So that's why you're saying it's liberating, right? Because you don't have to go through all that depth in order to get the point across.
Kyle Gray 15:03
Exactly, and, yeah, we have this conception that, because we're so close to these things, and we don't really know, like there's a lot of emotions involved. And oftentimes in telling a story, particularly, to open up a talk, we would talk about a vulnerable moment. And it feels risky to navigate these things, and when we don't have systems, there's all kinds of choices that are made that aren't really in our best favor. And so we tend to err on the side of give as much detail as possible, teach as much as possible, showcase our brilliance. And there's also this gap to become the expert that you are like what you think is normal, the language that you commonly use, the things that you would say with your friends are very different as a result of you doing all of the work that you do than what your customer is or does or think.
And a lot of the times, speakers will strategize their stories and their talks and their teachings on what's relevant to them, what's interesting to them, what's the cool shifts that are happening with their clients right now. But instead, we want to think about where are my ideal prospects right now? What's important to them? How do they talk about their problems? And oftentimes, it's going to be a very different language. We want to think about somebody who would be sitting across from you at a coffee table and talking about their problems the day before they met you. And what would they say then, how would they describe it if they didn't know that your tool existed?
Richard Walker 16:35
Yeah, this makes me think of something else I started doing, gosh, 15 years ago. I found that if you went out and started meeting people, social events, networking, business meetings, whatever, one of the common questions was, hey, Kyle, what do you do? And what's the default answer? If you're talking to an accountant, they're like, I'm a CPA. Talk to a lawyer there. I'm a lawyer. And these one word answers didn't really carry the conversation, because there's nothing behind it. And I started thinking, well, really, the accountant should say to me, instead of saying I'm an accountant, say I save people an average of $15,000 a year in their personal finances, because that's more engaging. Like, well, how do you do that? Oh, I help them with their taxes.
There's certain things that we do that everybody can benefit from, whatever, it helps open up the conversation and really conversations live and breathe off a story. So I started asking a different question, not, what do you do? Tell me about one of your passions. And I find that people start resonating with that and saying, oh, this is something I'm excited about, because it's easier to tell stories about things you really have a strong interest in and have a passion for. So I want to ask you, with that kind of framing, if most of our audience started their business or are in business because they have a passion for what they're doing, how do they tell the story? How do you get them to say the story versus the credentials?
Kyle Gray 17:57
Well, in line with the philosophy of this podcast, the story that we tell doesn't actually have anything to do with us, at least in the beginning, like we come second in the story. And our understanding of our client, and you experience this on the podcast is how we start to construct and strategize our stories. So when somebody wants to create a story, particularly an authority story, this would be something that we would use to introduce ourselves in the beginning. There's lots of stories that we would use in the middle and at the end of our talk. And there's a whole world of depth and philosophy beyond what we're just going to share right now, but I would ask you, tell me about the three biggest pain points that your client has, what are they facing? What are they going through? And a lot of the times, we have a lot of discussion around this, and as a marketer and as a copywriter, and as somebody who thinks about things like this a lot, I'm going to challenge you on your ideas.
I'm going to make sure that they're clear. I'm going to ask you about, well, okay, if it's a cash flow problem in your business, how does this impact your relationship with your kids? What do you think about when you wake up first thing in the morning and you're trying to get ready for the day? Do they feel like they're progressing in their lives? How else is this impacting? We want to get as clear as possible. And once we have those details and an understanding of our client, I use a reverse psychology, or almost like reverse therapy, I want to do the opposite of what a therapist does, and invoke the emotions that your client is feeling in your body. So after asking a bunch of questions, I read the words to you, and I'm trying to get you to feel something in yourself. And words are magical, and there's a whole another world to storytelling and speaking and stuff for our personal development. We probably need another podcast for but once we start talking about who your client is, what it feels like to be in that room, and we ask them, when did you have a moment like this?
Oftentimes people will say to me, wow, well, I never thought of sharing a story like this before, because often it's a moment that involves some vulnerability and pain, but now that we are using it to tell an authority story, we're channeling purpose and strategy and structure into this moment, and it allows us to find times the perfect story that leans into our client and says, I understand exactly what you're going through right now. Instead of saying I have all of these accolades and things and listen to these great results, I can create for you, we want to create the effect that our audience starts sweating in their seat because they feel like we snuck into their house and started reading their journal at night.
Richard Walker 21:00
I think that's also to say a couple things. One is that your client is your ideal prospective customer, like they fit within your niche, right? So maybe the CPA can't help everybody Save money every year, so it's only the clients who feel that need and that pain that they're going to address this with. So does the storytelling help identify the customer at the same time? Because if they're not sweating in their seat, does that mean they're not the right type of customer?
Kyle Gray 21:28
This is a very good question, and there's a couple of ways. They might be the right customer, and our understanding of them is ineffective. Another problem people have is, what if I was like in the military, like I worked with a guy who was like a Green Beret in Afghanistan and having all these high falutin military adventures, and then he wanted to work with people in corporate and the experience of being a Green Beret and getting shot at all the time is very different on paper than somebody in a corporate office. But there is an emotional resonance, the feelings that the Green Beret felt and the challenges and the struggles, there are ways that we can use, the language that somebody in a corporate office would use to talk about their problems and lay it on there, and there's a universal truth underneath the story of like, well, for me, it was learning how to survive in these intense, high stakes communication environments.
For you, it might just be in an office at a water cooler, but one thing's for sure, if we're not clear on who we are and what we're doing and why we're doing this, then we're not going to be able to get anywhere. And so there is a flexibility in our understanding of our client and how we meet them and address them, especially for those of us who may have unique or different stories that don't exactly look like what our client has gone through. But again, there is a personal truth underneath these that we can speak to, to create the effect of understanding, of leaning in in our audience. So there's a couple of ways that we don't necessarily know how to diagnose this problem without some experimentation and testing.
Richard Walker 23:23
Sure, but what you're also saying is you don't have to have personally experienced the same thing as your client in order to feel the pain or help them see that emotion and bring it out. Right?
Kyle Gray 23:34
Absolutely.
Richard Walker 23:35
Yeah, I think that's one of the challenges. I mean, you're actually talking about something else that I think is really important, that if you're not super clear on what you're doing, your purpose for doing it, how you're helping people, then how can you tell a story around that? You don't want to tell 15 different stories. You want to be direct to the type of story and the type of person you're trying to work with. And we see this with financial advisors. They'll form a niche like I already work with dentists, for example, or certain types of people or certain types of families, etc.
But then here's the other question I wanted to ask you that I've been thinking about through this podcast, if somebody does have all those credentials and they have built their career on the credentials, like I got all these certifications or degrees or what have you, and they feel like that is what has built their business, because that's trustworthy. They've proven themselves. How do they not lead with that? And how do they know that the customer doesn't want to hear that? Where has it become appropriate to introduce those credentials then?
Kyle Gray 24:41
This reminds me of a story of somebody who sounds a lot like a lot of the people that are listening in. One of my clients, his name is David A Perez. He is a tax expert in Harlingen, Texas, and he helps people save hundreds of 1000s of dollars on their taxes with his process. And he also works with a lot of other CPAs to help train them in this process. And he came to me as somebody exactly like this. He doubted that stories could really resonate versus when he first started working with me, he had like this slide with like eight bullets of like, in 2008 I opened up my business. I had my first million-dollar year here, and this here, and I got this here, and he wanted to show it. He was like, trying to show off and read his resume in a lot of ways. And he really doubted, like Kyle, is anybody like, nobody wants to hear my story. They want to hear the facts.
These are many people. They want the facts, but amazingly, David trusted this process, because you just have to experiment sometimes and get it out there and see how your audience responds differently. And he was doing writing or sending paid traffic to his presentation every week. So we figured, why not? I'll tell a story. And so we go through the same process that you and I went through, which is, is nice, because when somebody like this, they have a lot of misconceptions about their own story, or what stories are, how it goes. And so to get out of your own way, when I work with somebody, I just ask you questions and I draw the stories out of you, and then when I have enough information to create the story, I'll tell you your story as if I am you, which is a both delightful and confrontational experience, because somebody else is driving the wheel of your life for the first time, but it takes a lot of pressure off you, because you can actually see how these moments can be applied and put together in a way that you never saw before, and that's enough for high achieving people like David to get a smell for what they need to do and what they need to do differently.
All of a sudden he started telling a story at the beginning of his presentation, and things started to change. Before we started working together, he would do this presentation for two hours, selling like a $2,000 assessment at the end. The offer is, I want to look at all of your taxes, all of your history, and see how much exactly I can save you. And before we started working together. He would spend hours on a whiteboard, like drawing all of these different like, look at this strategy here. We can use the Augusta rule over here, and just you guys know all this a lot better than I do, but you can see all of the scribbles that he would put together on a whiteboard, showing off all these tax savings. And once he finally understand its story and also how to teach.
And I really encouraged him, we don't need to teach them how to apply the Augusta rule or everything else in their things. We just need to address their misconceptions and show them new possibilities. So instead of teaching them how to move all of their taxes around, we just started showing like, hey, there's probably some things that your CPA hasn't thought of, hasn't considered, and they value things in a certain way. They're trying to just get you a tax return and save you money this year, but they're not being strategic over the long run. We started cutting out a lot of his how-to and just focusing on, how do we really serve our clients by shifting their perspective and showing something new. We went from having a two-hour talk that he would give every week, oh my God, so exhausting, to bringing it down to 45 minutes, and his conversion rates doubled, which actually kind of means they quadrupled, because he was doing it in half the time. So he could go live the rest of his life and hang out with his mini poodle and work out with his team, and all of these things.
He was actually, he's super high achiever, and just like going and speaking more. He ended up once, once we got this talk converting well enough, he ended up delegating it to his team so he could work on more B2B offers. But it came from the careful practice of simplifying, of testing and as soon as he saw how his audience was responding differently, I call this the click sometimes, and I think you experienced a little bit of this. When you start telling a story that's structured in a way and you can immediately see that the audience is responding you in a different way than they ever have before, there's this validation. Oh my gosh, this works. You're more excited and you're proud, and they can feel that more, and we're off to the races. And this happens very quickly when we start implementing these ideas and these structures.
And so we don't want to discount, this doesn't discount all of your expertise and everything that you've done to bring to the table is all valid, but we just want to understand that in this moment and in this engagement, in this slice of time that we have with our prospect and their our ideal customer, it's much more valuable to them to help them see new possibilities, to understand them well and describe the problem that they're experiencing so precisely that they feel understood, instead of trying to force them to understand and extrapolate how everything that we've done in the past is important to them now.
Richard Walker 30:17
Yeah, man, I don't even want to ask you more questions, because I'm just absorbing and learning. This is so learning this is so amazing. But I will ask questions. I'm thinking about how it's one thing if you have a 45-minute presentation to build as long of a story as you want, but if you have a 32nd elevator pitch or just short moments to have conversations with people, how you can weave storytelling into it and not lose the audience. Because I do see the power of this Kyle. I mean the idea of me saying my credentials, I have this degree and I have this certification, whatever, that's me standing on my own.
What I think is confidence the pedestal, but nobody else cares about that, because that's supporting me. And when I tell the story, I'm really opening it up to who they are and letting them stand on the pedestal instead. So I'm just kind of thinking through, how do you weave this into short conversations? How do you weave this into the first introduction with somebody? Because you don't want to necessarily go on a five-minute story ride when you just first meet somebody. So what do you say to the short intro?
Kyle Gray 31:24
The bigger picture behind this is I see a lot of the work that I do in constructing high-converting signature talks. I think of a high-converting signature talk, the thing that people come to me, which includes different stories and different teaching and making an offer, and a certain level of statements that all bring it together into one coherent thing. And I like building it piece by piece. I know some people think that it's just like write it all at once, but I broke it down into the tiniest, smallest bits possible, and I see this, these series of small movements and ideas, like a yoga practice, or like a martial artist would practice a Kata. They wake up in the morning and they do their speech, ah, this way, that way, same way, every time. And we start to practice it.
So it becomes natural, and when you become natural, you start to say, okay, well, in my origin story, I want to speak to these pain points and this teaching point. I want to speak to speak to this. You start to know how and why to tell stories, which ultimately starts to create a presence within you. When somebody will, you'll notice the change in conversations. You'll go from when you're talking to somebody constantly thinking about what's the next thing I'm going to say to this person to prove to them that I'm smart enough to what is this person saying and what do they really need? And you can listen for they will provide the answers to what stories to tell within them.
I know this is a little bit different in a stage context, but there's you can start to see a landscape and know how to respond, and it's going to change you again. You will show up differently. The experience and the quality of who you are in front of this person going to be entirely different, even if you don't say any words going from what do I say to this person, to what is this person saying, and what do they need from me? And how can I speak to that?
Richard Walker 33:17
And how can you ask questions to get them to open up on things? Right?
Kyle Gray 33:20
Yeah, so there's kind of a wax on, wax off that happens. And when you start to understand the purpose of stories and the purpose of good teaching, and a lot of the times, one of my philosophies, and one of the things I'm constantly trying to teach my clients is not like, how do I teach as much as possible about this topic? But what's the least amount I can teach that will provide a perspective shift? I'll give you one more client story. And these client stories that just, I'll reveal the magic tricks as they're happening, but this is a persuasion technique. I'm going to talk to you about a client that I've served, and I'll show you what it looks like to work with me, but I'm going to do it in a way that adds value, and you're going to want to take notes as I'm talking about this.
And this is the effect that we would always want to have about talking about our products and services. So I had a client named Nicole Jardine who came to me. She wanted to launch a book called Fix Your Period, helping all kinds of women with hormonal problems get in control of their period and their lives. We wanted to write a signature talk that would convert all of the people that were reading our book into a group coaching program. And I asked her, okay, how do we fix our periods Nicole, what do we do? First teaching point, you need to fix your blood sugar. I know 12 ways that people can fix their blood sugar, and she just starts going, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I get overwhelmed immediately. I'm just like, oh, Nicole, I can't do this. Let me pretend to be one of your ideal clients. I know I have a beard, so I'm not very convincing female, but if we have hormonal problems. Maybe I actually am okay. I'm like, Nicole, hold on.
You're like the 12th person I've seen who's told me to do the keto diet before. I've tried every kind of exercise. I've done, all these therapies. I'm exhausted. I'm a hopeless person, Nicole. I promise I will do one, but only one, and only if it's the easiest one. What is that? And she said, oh, well, let's chew your food more. But who wants to hear about chewing your food more? That's boring. I've already talked enough about chewing my food, but I don't know how else I can teach about that. There's no science or fancy things behind this, she starts going up. But let's think about our client and our customer, as per the ethos of this show, and if somebody is coming to listen to Nicole again, they've tried a bunch of diets already, and they have this well-developed belief system that maybe this doesn't work for me, or maybe I'm not able to actually lead my life or figure these things out in a way that works. And all of a sudden we can start talking to somebody about chewing their food more.
If you just chew your food more, you don't have to change your diet. You don't have to add more things into your life. You can keep eating the same way that you're eating right now, and you could start experiencing better health benefits, because as you start to chew, your saliva is going to break things down more and create more enzymes, because you're going to be able to absorb the nutrition in your body, and you're going to be able to feel health results. And as I'm talking about this right now, we're all starting to feel a little bit healthier, even though nothing has happened yet. And it's because we are targeting a belief system and a perspective, instead of a process of how to do something, and this is what made the difference in her book launch to selling out a group coaching program that she could do over and over and over again, instead of just fire hosing people with more information and making them confused and doubtful and run away.
Richard Walker 37:05
Man, it's brilliant. Don't give me 12 things. Give me the one thing, the one thing. There's a book on that. Man, we're running out of time, Kyle, I love this stuff. I keep talking to you. I have another question to ask before I do that, what's the best way for people to find and connect with you?
Kyle Gray 37:22
My website is thestoryengine.co that's where you can go to learn about my books and my podcasts. They can see your episode. I'm not sure if it's out yet at the time of our recording, but it will be definitely by the time this one releases. And I interview all kinds of experts just like you, and help them create high-converting, powerful stories alive on the show. It's like a magic trick. You'll tune in, you'll listen. How is Kyle gonna turn a story into this person's world? And every time I'm able to do it, so it's a labor of love myself. I love doing it. I love serving people just like you. That's the best place to go, or you can find me at Hey Kyle Gray on Instagram, where I'll, I'll post a bit about my life and all the other things going on in my world.
Richard Walker 38:10
Okay, Kyle, I'm going to be a little sneaky here. We didn't talk about this, and I'm going to put you on the spot. Would you be willing to give a gift to one of my listeners and have them on your show and help them with that transformation that I went through?
Kyle Gray 38:21
Absolutely, I would love to give a gift to one of your listeners and to give a gift to all of your listeners as well.
Richard Walker 38:27
So if anybody wants to go through this transformation process, and trust me, it's amazing. In 30 minutes of talking to Kyle, he hears your story and repeats it back to you, like you're on a TEDx stage or something. It's amazing. You get a whole new perspective. So yeah, reach out to Kyle and ask.
Kyle Gray 38:46
Please do Kyle@thestoryengine.co. That's my email. I would love to hear from you. I'm working with all kinds of experts in finance, in health, in marketing and in sales, and we're making the world better. So if you want to make the world better and make more money while you're doing it, then let's talk.
Richard Walker 39:07
I love that you're so generous, Kyle, that is awesome. All right, here's my last question. Who has had the biggest impact on your leadership style and how you approach your role today?
Kyle Gray 39:18
There's two people that I can think of, the first one, his name is Mark England, who runs an incredible coaching program called Enlifted. This is a way to examine the language that we use and how it impacts our physiology, and that it gives us a tools to navigate our language in a way that's productive, in a way that's creative, in a way that is magical. And I met him around 2020, after being in the copywriting and content marketing and sales world for about seven or eight years, I had been writing talks for three or four years at this time, and I wanted to learn how to take better care of myself and my own mindset and tell myself better stories. And the more that I learned from his techniques and his processes, the more that I found that the process of changing how you tell a story to yourself is the same process on how you change a story on the stage or tell a story on the stage.
And the more that I started to implement these ideas, the more transformative impacts I was seeing in myself and those that I worked with. And now that I see that the process of building a talk is a process of relating to yourself, of upgrading your visibility, of creating the enrollment in yourself that you would expect anyone else to feel when they hear your story and I'm so grateful for these gifts, because even though I love to I will sell you. We're going to write a talk together, and you're going to make back all of your money that you invested with me the first time you speak on a high-stakes stage. But really what happens is I'm going to transform how you relate to yourself and your business and then in the world in a way that's going to change how you see the world, create freedom and fun and purpose in your life that you've never experienced before.
Richard Walker 41:25
I love it. You said there's a second person.
Kyle Gray 41:30
And the second person is Pat Quinn. Pat Quinn is a legendary speaking coach, and I had the honor of helping him facilitate and work with many of the Advance Your Reach workshops, which were put on by Pete Vargas, who now works for Grant Cardone. But anyway, I got to spend many, many months learning from one of the greatest speaking experts on the planet, and saw how he coached and how he worked with people. And though I was working for him and with him, he was incredibly generous in helping cultivate my skill sets, my perspectives, and allowing me to grow as a speaker, as a storyteller and as an entrepreneur, and there are a few people that have poured into me more generously without expectation, than Pat Quinn. And I haven't spoken to him in a couple of years. I can't wait to send this episode to him. I miss you, Pat. Thank you so much for everything you've taught me. You have changed my life.
Richard Walker 42:42
Oh, phenomenal. I love it. All right. I do have to wrap it up. I want to give a big thank you to Kyle Gray, CEO and Story Strategist of The Story Engine, for being on this episode of The Customer Wins. Go check out Kyle's website at thestoryengine.co and don't forget to check out Quik! at quikforms.com where we make processing forms easy. I hope you enjoyed this discussion, will click the Like button, share this with someone and subscribe to our channels for future episodes of The Customer Wins. Kyle, thank you so much for joining me today.
Kyle Gray 43:12
Thank you for having me Rich.
Outro 43:15
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