74. Why Story-Powered Marketing Will Help You Succeed in Your Service Business with Dr JJ Peterson

Learn secrets to customer-converting marketing! Dr. JJ Peterson spills top storytelling tips to boost your business on the Master Your Business Podcast.

Enhance your listening experience with our detailed show notes, featuring bonus resources, additional insights and takeaways from this episode.

Timestamps:

[01:59] JJs Story

[15:12] How to Narrow Your Niche

[25:19] How to get People Off of Social Media and Into Email Lists

[33:26] AI in Storytelling

[41:10] Skills that Cultivate Success in Marketing

Transcript

This is a way to serve more people. The clearer your message is, the more people you get to serve. The end of my social media post today says the more people you help, the more money you make, the more money you make, the more people you help.

Absolutely. Yeah.

Yeah. You know how if more people just knew the value of what you could do for them, you'd be away in a hack. Your business will be like, you'd be rich. All you need is a clear path to clients for that to happen. So in this episode of the master your business podcast. Oh, I've got a doozy for you. This episode is probably going to be your lifeline.

Seriously, download it now. Save it. Be ready to come back and listen to it a few times. Because I'm interviewing Dr. JJ Peterson, one of the masterminds behind StoryBrand. And he breaks down the secret weapon you're missing. Can you guess what it is? Spoiler alert. Storytelling. J. J. is so practical and has a wealth of experience at this game of marketing.

And boy, does he get straight to the heart of why your ideal clients aren't knocking your door down in this episode. And what you can do so that they end up shouting, Yes! That's exactly what I need! Because who doesn't want that? This episode, I promise you, it's like your step by step guide to fixing your marketing.

For good. No more wasted time on strategies that go nowhere. So get ready to simplify your message, connect with the right customers, and finally turn up the heat on your marketing so it turns into a client attracting magnet. Are you ready? Let's go.

 JJ, you're so welcome to the master your business podcast. Thank you for joining us. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. I'm like, I feel like I've got my marketing hero here for a one to one call where I get to ask you tons of questions. 

But JJ something I've been so curious about for so long is what sparked your interest in applying storytelling in marketing in the first place?

There was it's funny when you go back through my career, it feels like it was all over the place. Like they're literally, people would say to me, wow, you've jumped around a lot. And to give you some context, where I w I was a comedian for a while, like I actually toured and did comedy, which led me into Hollywood.

To do some television film and screenwriting actually directed a documentary. So I had that in my, in one part of my life. I was I worked for right out of college. I actually worked for a nonprofit who needed. Public relations and actually needed like marketing fundraising, which I didn't.

My background was in communications from university, but I was like, I love this nonprofit. So I'll go work for them. So I didn't really know what I was doing, but I did marketing for this huge international nonprofit. Then I had Hollywood side of me, and then I also was a professor. I taught, ended up going back and teaching communications and got my master's in actually theology in the arts, a study of story, and then got my PhD in communication in narrative theory and narrative marketing.

So that was my world. It was Oh, you work for a nonprofit. Oh, you. Are in Hollywood. That's weird. Oh, you're a teacher and a professor. That's so strange. And I actually met Donald Miller, who was the creator of the StoryBrand framework and narrated and really honed in on narrative marketing.

And I was a professor at a university and he, I was leaving 'cause I had sold a reality television show to a production company, . Wow. And he came in. Yeah. And I had him speak to my students and he said to me. I've got this new thing I'm starting up that kind of really teaches people how to use story theory and narrative frameworks to clarify their message and create marketing that actually connects with customers and makes them the hero of the story instead of the company, the hero.

And I went, Oh, that's cute. That's a cute thing. I've been studying story. I've done marketing. We'll go, I'll go see what you're doing. And I came out to Nashville to rebrand myself actually at one of the very first story brand workshops and immediately just fell in love with the framework. It really was a combination of all the things that I had done that I didn't know were all connected and all converged in this one thing, and that was 10 years ago, and I, for the last 10 years have been refining and learning even more about narrative theory and marketing, and I use those frameworks, the story brand framework to now help companies all over the world clarify their message. And boy do you do it so well because I have heard you do it live so well.

And jj, I know you've written this book as well. Marketing Made Simple with Donald Miller. And I have to tell you, I've shared this book with so many clients and a lot of people are afraid of marketing. Like they really don't like it. But when I've given them this book, the feedback they've been, they've given me is whoa, I can't wait to go and do some marketing. So tell me how this book came about. It actually came out of my PhD studies. And so one of the things that I studied was narrative theory and narrative marketing. And I need, wanted to ask, Basically two questions does when you use narrative principles in marketing, does it work?

And the quick answer to that I've discovered through research was yes, narrative. The most effective way to engage customers is through story and narrative marketing. My second question I wanted to ask was, who does it work for? Does it work for large businesses, small businesses? If you're male, if you're female, if you're.

Service based if you're industry, I just looked at every category I could think of every variable. And basically only one variable came back to the research showed that there was one thing that influenced success. Nothing else mattered. It worked for everybody, every industry, every size, every background.

The only thing that made a difference was did you actually put it into work into practice? That was it. And the research showed that the more you use story brand and narrative theories in your marketing, the more effective it was in creating success for your business. So if you put it in your website, that showed that had an increase in success.

If you put it in emails, increase in success. If you put it in lead generators, social media, the more you used it, the more success people had. And it really was all about execution. So we realized that If our clients, if our customers really were to succeed, we didn't just need to teach them how story works and how to use story and marketing.

We needed to make it easy. We need to make it really simple and clear how to do that in emails, in websites, in elevator pitches, all of those things. And so that's why we created marketing made simple. In fact, we had another book we were about to write. And when I did all this research, we realized, Oh no, the most effect, the most effective thing we can do for customers to help them succeed is actually make this even easier.

And so we wrote marketing made simple because we just genuinely believe that marketing should be easy and it should work. If you're investing in marketing, then you shouldn't just be, it shouldn't just be this Cash hit that you're throwing money into. You should get results and it should be easy, especially if you have really good products and services that are going to help people.

We want the good, we want to give the good people, the microphone. That's really what it came down to. It's if you have a great product and a great service, If your marketing isn't working that not only that doesn't serve you, but it doesn't serve your customers. If you have a product that solves a problem, more people need to hear about it and have easier access.

And so that's why we wrote the book. Heck yeah. To all of that. Completely agree. And actually I was listening to your most recent episode of the Marketing Made Simple podcast. And I loved what Macy Robinson said, where marketing is like, it's it's just a way to get people to memorize what your message is almost.

And exactly like what you said there, JJ it's the same message book communicating across all of the different platforms and channels. And how does that translate into social media? Because sometimes let's say with the StoryBrand framework, yes, for websites and for all that stuff, but social media, Instagram, TikTok, it's like short form video.

Can you talk, touch on that a little bit and tell us what your thoughts are there? Yeah. Social media is such a. Complicated landscape in the sense that you a lot of people use it for personal and a lot of people use it for business. And so it feels a little weird sometimes of can I post pictures of my family while also doing a video about marketing?

And the quick answer to that is yes. Yes, you can. But. What we really believe first and foremost is that if you are using it for business purposes, you need to narrow in your focus. And I would argue you need to have three things that your pages are about narrowed in. So for me, my three things really are about family, adventure, and marketing.

And I try to only post about those things. Occasionally some other things. Go in there. But I have this kind of mix of personal and business. And so I try to narrow it in so people know why they're coming to my page. That's really a big thing that you want to start with. Then from the business side of things, you really want to think about who you're reaching out to and why.

If you are trying to get customers. To hire you for, to either come into your store or to hire you for products you're making or services you're offering, you want to position, you want to think about that, the story that you're telling, even though you're the face of it, you are not the hero of that story.

Your customer is the hero. So really the story, excuse me, the story that you're going to tell on your social media is all about your customer. So you want to start by thinking about what is it that your customer wants from you ultimately, and what problems are they experiencing. How does your product solve those problems?

And really those two things should drive much of your social media content. So when you're thinking about it, if you're a fashion brand, then they want fashion. So you want to show them a lot of fashion, you want to show them you wearing it, other people wearing it, give them tips and tricks about fashion, just really focusing on fashion.

If you are a service based industry, like myself, like we help people with marketing, when I'm creating videos, The main videos that I should be using, I need to be talking about my customer's problems and how to solve those problems. So the thing that I'm often doing is saying, here's 3 mistakes that people are going to make on their website.

Here's 3 tips that will help Get you a increased engagement in your emails. Here's three ideas for new lead generators, because my customers need more leads, they need more effective emails, and they need more effective websites. So if I can solve those problems for them and offer value to them in the content that I'm creating on social media, not only am I going to get more engagement on the platform, but ultimately I'm going to get more engagement with sales.

And and facilitating workshops and all of that stuff. Now, that's the area that I say you should focus on the most, because that's the areas that you have control over. You don't have control over algorithms. You don't have control over. What the new trends are now you can use, you can step into those.

You can use the trends. You can use the music. Sure. Stay up to date on that stuff, but the thing don't focus as much on that focus on solving customer problems and offering a ton of value. And then here is the biggest thing I would say with social media. You have to use your social media to get people's email addresses.

That is the most important thing. If you are not getting people's email addresses off of your social media account, and there's a lot of different ways to do that, offering lead generators and having them come to your site asking them to DM you so that you can give them a lead generator or a video or something special like that, but you always want to offer something that can, you can exchange.

For an email It has to be valuable enough that somebody is going to give you an email and here's why again, you don't have control over who your audience goes to if those, I'm sorry, who, which audience your videos go to, who has access to those, if they go down, which Instagram recently went down, Facebook recently went down, if you are relying exclusively on those to sell your products and services, there, if they go down, you lose money.

If you have the email addresses, you're still able to connect with your audience. My friend, Amy Porterfield, who I adore, she's an amazing email marketer. She launches courses. One of the things that she says over and over, and she's taught me, and it's become a mantra is never build your business on rented land.

Never trust Facebook, Instagram, and all those things. To all the social media platforms to be able to build your business. They're great for reaching new audiences, going after people who would not see you otherwise fantastic, but the goal should always be to move people away from those platforms so that you actually have control over the community, the communication and what you're sending to people.

I love that. And oh my gosh, there's so much to unpack there, right? I can take a breath now. I know I just talked for five minutes. Yes, please do. Okay. First off. Okay. Let me go back to a little bit to the who and why, because I talk a lot about that as well. Who are your target audience?

What are you selling or offering? What problem are you solving? And why should they care? But the who, and this is something that comes up a lot with my clients and I'm sure for people listening, they probably experienced this as well. They might have a lot of who's JJ. 

 So where do you guide people when they have a lot of who's as in a lot of different ideal clients?

Yeah, what I, the first place I look for is how do I, can I put all of them under one big umbrella, so like it, are they all interested in finance? Now they may be men, women, old, young, doesn't matter, but they're all interested in learning about finance. If I can find that kind of umbrella, that's one direction I say is look for the umbrella and go with an umbrella kind of messaging.

However, one of the things that I'm seeing a lot more success in for people these days is niching down. Now, niching down actually feels really scary because it's Oh, I know I can help men in their fifties and women in their twenties with finances. Let's say you're in finance world. I know I can help those kinds of people.

However, When you go into that kind of market, you're really now competing against everybody who's in the financial space. And nobody in those places really knows why they need you specifically, because you're trying to go to too wide of an audience. But if you actually said, I help women in their twenties with their finances, and that is your ideal client.

Now Women in their twenties don't have to choose between all of these other people. They can choose you, if you are a marketer who helps chiropractic offices, who do you think all the chiropractors are going to go to the person who helps chiropractors? Instead of if chiropractors are looking for somebody to help, and they're looking between 10 companies that help everybody with their marketing.

And one of those companies says, I help chiropractors, who are they going to choose? And so I've seen a lot of success recently with a lot of people that we work with. Not being afraid to niche down their audience. And so for social media, I would say there, those are really the two different approaches.

You can either find an umbrella message that really goes after everybody, but if that's not really working for you, I actually think it's going to be more effective. If you niche down that audience, define who. Are the people that you like working with the most. If you're a personal trainer, who's the personal trainers that you like to work?

Who's the clients you like to work with? If you are a business coach, what are the types of businesses that you like to work with specifically start narrowing that in? And I will admit that feels scary. Because it feels now I'm actually limiting the number of people that I'm going after.

Yes, but your message is way more clear and you move to the top of the list for that group of people because you're so specific in your language. What he said. Okay. So if any of you are listening to this episode and you later become my client, I'm just going to redirect it back to this episode where JJ just said that.

Thank you, JJ. And I completely agree. And, the other thing, and we talk about this a lot in the StoryBrand community is around, you might be able to solve 57 problems, but you can't talk about the 57 problems you solve. So when people, and again, this is a challenge I have with a lot of clients because they still want to talk about the 57 problems, but you can't.

And so it's how do you guide or recommend that people choose the primary or most specific problem to talk about? Yeah. When I'm working with, especially say really big organizations who have a very wide client base, what I, a couple of the questions that I ask is, all right, can we pick a problem that really fits 75 percent of your customers?

So if we can do that, I think we're actually doing really well in our overall high end message, first date kind of message. So when you're talking about elevator pitch, social media, And website, if we can pick a problem that we solve that really hit 75 percent of our clientele, that's great.

There is going to be this 25 percent that it's a little bit different problem over here. It's maybe more nuanced for them, but really go after that 75 percent because that's your greatest opportunity for growth, right? I was working with this giant, giant organization. They're a, they're actually a, 200 billion dollar organization.

Okay. And I went in and they were known for one thing. Okay. I'm going to I don't want to say I'm not allowed to say who they are, but I'm going to say, I'll just say I'll make it up. They were known for weight loss. Okay, that's what they had built their brand on and everything they were trying to become.

Let's say a holistic health company and they had released all these new products that were going into that holistic space and there was a huge argument over. Do we solve weight loss? Do we solve holistic health? And there was, and the majority of people, because they had launched these new products, wanted to go into holistic health.

It took us a day. It literally took us an entire day to try to figure out who we were going after, and I finally got them to give me their. Actually, they're financial sheets. I finally was just like, okay, we're going to the numbers here. I want to know how much of your money comes in through the weight loss stuff compared to the new products.

They say the holistic health stuff. They showed me that 85 percent of the money that was coming in came from weight loss. And so they were like we're missing out on this 15%. If we don't, and I said, all right, now tell me how many of those 15 percent bought the weight loss stuff first before they bought the new products.

And they said 95 percent of people bought the weight stuff. First, before they moved into the new product. And I said, you are a weight loss company. You are stop running from that. And yes, we can have some other campaigns and we can have upsells to those other people. And we can have maybe even a very different lead generator and a different website that goes after those people.

But the reality is go where the money is. So when you're looking at. We have all of these different types of clients. Can 75 percent of them fit under one primary problem? And if that's the case, then yes, we go for that. Also, where is your greatest opportunity for growth? Where is the easiest place for you to grow and where's the greatest market for you to grow?

If that is, if there's a big difference there, then go after the money, chase the money. Don't chase the individual. Don't waste time with the 5%. Go after the 95%.

Oh, I couldn't find my unmute button there for a second. Oh my gosh. Yeah that's so valuable. I think for people to JJ, because I guess often people get lost in sometimes the thing that they love and the stuff that they bring them the most joy. But actually, until you break it down and look at the numbers, it's not always 100 percent crystal clear.

Where is the money at? Where are people, what are people coming to you for? Why should they buy from you? But if they're coming because of X, then lean into that. I completely agree with you. Okay. So I said, I will say too, it's not just about a money grab. It's not just a money grab, although it, we're in business, we're not, there's nonprofits and there's for profits.

We're for profit, right? But it's not just about a money hungry grab to do that. What that tells me when you're making the majority of your money from a specific type of, Language or problem you solve that means when you hone in on that message, you're going to be able to solve that problem for even more people's lives are going to be able to be changed because more people will understand why they need your product or service.

So that to me is, yes, we want your business to grow so that you can build the life of that you want and help other people, but also. This is a way to serve more people. The clearer your message is, the more people you get to serve. The end of my social media post today says the more people you help, the more money you make, the more money you make, the more people you help.

Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I'm with you. I'm with you. Okay. So I want to go back and unpack. Okay. So you name dropped. Amy Porterfield, right? Huge fan. I'm like, I missed her in Nashville last year, but I am making it to Nashville this year for the summit. I'm, so hopefully she'll be there and I'll get to meet her too.

But a question, I want to go back to the email addresses, right? And capturing email addresses from social media, because I 100 percent agree with you. There is It's enormous value. I've heard you quote statistics yesterday. I heard Macy quote statistics, HubSpot quote statistics. It's 36 percent ROI or something like that for every one every one euro or 1 that you spend for email marketing.

Actually social media statistics, actually, that statistic is, it's 36% higher than the next form of marketing investment. Yeah. So it's, I believe it's 41%. And by 41%. No, it's not 41%, it's 4100% return on investment. Yes. So 40, I saw that as well. Yeah. $41 for every dollar that you invest, which is $36 higher than the next investment you can make.

Yeah, and honestly, I think probably 95 percent of the people that I meet don't have an email list or don't actively use their email list. And one of the biggest struggles that people have, one is tech and the other is 

how to get people off of social media onto email lists. So you touched on that, but I'm going to ask you to delve into it a little bit more if you could, that would be amazing.

Yeah. The way that you get them off of social media. So you build your community and build your following on social media, and then you need to offer something of value, a webinar, a video series, a PDF, a coupon. Really anything that of value that your customers are willing to give their email address for.

And the way that then you do that is you can do that through DMS. There's a whole bunch of now. Actually AI tools that you can use to say DM me and I'll tell you where to go thing, or you can say, go to my website or follow this link. Something like that and set up a very simple website, one page that is just to gather their information, make sure that they're opting in for emails, make it legal, so you're not tricking them.

And then give them value there. So either give them the coupon, give them the access to the video series, or give them a PDF. The key to this is it has to be something of value. You have it because most of us, right? We know that when we give somebody in our email address, they're going to be emailing us marketing.

We know this is not a surprise. You should, so you shouldn't be shy. About getting an email address. If people are signing up, they know what they're signing up for. Now, you don't want to send them a ton of spam and all this other stuff all the time, but they know you're going to email them and that's okay that they're signing up for it.

So that's why most people are hesitant nowadays to give our email address away. Unless we're actually interested in getting the thing that you're offering, the piece of the valuable piece you're offering and hearing from you. If I'm giving an email address, I want to know from, I want to hear from you.

And typically, I could say right now, if we had the podcast audience in a room together, I bet I could ask everybody that's listening right now. I say, okay, do you check your email every day? And I bet almost everybody would raise their hand. The statistics say it's between 92 and 93 percent of people check their email every single day.

Then I could probably say how many of you have emails in your inbox that maybe you read, maybe you don't, but probably pretty infrequently, but you don't unsubscribe from those email addresses. I bet everybody would raise their hand again. It'd be 90 percent of people. A lot of times we're afraid as marketers to say I know everybody's sick of emails and they don't love emails and they're overwhelmed with emails.

Here's the thing. Emails still work. They still work. If we're if I'm signing up for an email is because I want to hear from that company. Everybody out there, when you are finding ways to get people from social media to own the email address yourself, give value, do not skimp on it, do not make it cheap in the sense of make it like just a piece of white paper or three tips that you're just emailing in an email.

No. Design a nice PDF that's three tips or five tips or six tips or three pitfalls to avoid, something like that. Make it pretty and send it out. If you're going to make a video series, don't just do it looking into your computer, get a camera, make it nice, look nice yourself, look professional in the process.

If you're going to do a webinar and have people sign up for a webinar, make it worth their time. If they're going to give you a half hour to an hour of your time of their time, make it really valuable for them. Give a ton of tips and tricks. And if you're giving a coupon, coupons, I don't love because it's discounts, but the reality is people will give an email address for a coupon.

So these are coupon, whatever you do, make it valuable enough that people feel comfortable giving you their email address. Yes. To all of that totally agree as well. And you're right, there are simple tools that that people can use to leverage the messages that come through when people are looking for your freebie or whatever it is.

And I'm always shouting about the value as well. I think give your family farm. And the example I often use. I always give JJ's. I blow dry my hair every day. I don't do such a bad job, but when I'm going somewhere nice, I still go to the hair salon to get it done that bit better. So give away all your free stuff because people are still going to need you, right?

They're not going to be able to do everything by themselves. They need a guide. Yeah, and one of the things we always say is you're never going to be punished for being a generous brand. It's all about relationships. You want to build relationships and here's and the way you do that is by giving a ton of value.

And the reason why you went, you'll, you're willing to pay for the hair salon is because they offer value. They're better than you. Take their time. I'm sure they wash your hair very kindly. And it's it feels good on your scalp. They go above and beyond. They're kind to you. I'm sure you've developed a relationship with the person who does this on a regular basis.

That is, that's value. So you have to just go above and beyond in that space. And when you do, you will be rewarded for it. And also it just. To be honest, it's just a better way to live. I like to be a generous person, right? We all feel better when we get to be generous. But the other thing is in this day and age, being a generous business is a differentiator in the marketplace.

Most people these days do not go above and beyond. That, you just hear it, you see it in the news, and if you can be one of those businesses that does a small thing to go above and beyond, that becomes your competitive advantage. Somebody may be faster than you. They may be even, they may be better at their job than you.

They may be more fancy than you, but if you're building that relationship by being generous and continuing to offer value and being kind, that is a competitive advantage in the marketplace. I love that. I love that. And I, and that's part of the human aspect too, right? So it's that human interaction and like kindness doesn't come from AI.

And I'm veering the conversation that way because I really want to hear what you've got to say about AI, but I agree with you in terms of. And I want to challenge you a little bit too, because I think going the extra mile, everybody expects that a company will go the extra mile. So I hate that language.

When somebody tells me that's a brand benefit or like their USP, we go the extra mile. Is it though, because clients expect that now, how can we take that another level? How, how can you demonstrate that? How can you prove that you go the extra mile and really share that? So I love how you've called that out in terms of generosity, because actually that can be your differentiator rather than go the extra mile.

I'm like, that language is not allowed for any of my clients. I don't, I would never say that. That's the thing. Have you ever used that as a marketing tactic? Because, in the story brand world, and I mentioned this a little bit earlier, is that your business, you are not the hero of the story. Your customer is.

So when you say we go the extra mile, or we are in it, Or we do all these things. You're starting to make yourself the hero. Don't say that, do it, show it. That's what I mean by being generous and all of that is by, and just give a ton of extra value. Let your customer say you go the extra mile. You don't need to say it.

Cause if you're saying it, you're probably not doing it. Yeah. Yeah. And that's how you create such an amazing reputation about your brand. And, as Martin Neumeier would say, it's not what you say it is. It's what. Your clients say it is, so that's how you create that sort of reputation. So I do wanna ask you about ai.

jj, I am so curious to hear what your thoughts are about 

AI and marketing and the, how it's gonna affect human storytelling. What are your thoughts? Yeah, I'll start by saying truthfully, I'm excited about it. I'm not as nervous about it as a lot of, I think marketers are. I think people who are bad marketers should be nervous about it.

And people who just, who don't bring the human element already, like they're just a content factory. If you are a content factory in the marketing world or as a marketer, then yeah, you should be worried about AI because AI is a content factory and it can get to you. Scale faster than anything, but I was just actually, I was reading I talked about this in LinkedIn.

I just put a post on my LinkedIn page about the new state of marketing report that HubSpot put out. So HubSpot for people who don't know, is basically a platform that allows you to connect with customers. More easily and do emails. This is not a commercial for them, but it's a customer management software tool, basically.

And they work with thousands and thousands of companies and did a huge research thing. And 1 of the things that came out of it is that in 2024, in particular, people are looking for more personalized. In connection with companies, what I can do in many ways is allow that personalization to happen at scale, but it still requires a personal touch.

We're still selling human to human. That's the reality is we're still selling human to human. So the message needs to be more human, putting yourself out there from a, on social media needs to be human. Stories on your website need to be human. All of that still needs to be humanized. What AI does is allow you to do that at scale, send out things in unique ways you.

Add human features to emails what's your closest store, right? That's a human touch of saying, Oh, we want to actually personalize these emails a little bit more, but we don't know the way we do that is through AI tools, right? We can do that at scale. So there's a couple of things like that.

But the biggest thing for me is that if you are a marketer who is either in working in your company. As a marketer or you were a marketing agency, the, really the differentiation is that you bring to the table is your point of view. AI doesn't have a point of view. It can only create content based on the input that it's been given the prompts, the language that's put in there.

And the part that people AI, as I said, it actually helps things scale faster is that. More junk is going to be out in the marketplace, because if you're already have a crappy message, that's that's confusing and then you put it in AI, it's just going to get to people faster and louder. Okay. So junk in means even bigger junk, louder junk going out.

So it's more important than ever. To have a strong perspective, a strong point of view when it comes to marketing. So people who are in our StoryBrand community come with the StoryBrand guides, StoryBrand agencies, come with the point of view that the customer's the hero and that we need to clearly and easily be able to articulate what our customer's problems are, what they, their aspirational identity is, how to clarify a plan.

Can AI do some of those things? Yes, it can. Just very honestly, AI can do some of those things, but ultimately people want to know that it is a human who is actually reaching out to them. In fact, 80, I believe this one of the statistics I saw recently was that 80 percent of people, if they believe they're talking to a chat bot when it comes to customer service or.

Even on social media, if they believe a chat pod is responding to them, they will disengage because they want a human connection. So AI is helpful. It's great getting, I think, great for helping launch new ideas, help me refine ideas. It helps me get, I use AI tools to get my ideas to scale quickly.

But ultimately, if you're not having a human perspective, if you're not actually, If you're just coming at it with a very distinct and personal point of view, then you're just going to be putting out worse messaging in the marketplace. I even one of the things I did recently was I asked AI to tell me five tool, five facts about myself and only one of them was correct.

They were all close. Like they said that I worked for this company called Infusionsoft and I was their director of diversity, I believe. I spoke at a conference with their director of diversity so there's even stuff like that where AI, just you can't just put it out there. There's a lot of, it makes a lot of mistakes.

It's not there yet. It's going to be refined, but I like it. I love the AI tools that are coming out. They help me do things faster, quicker, and at bigger scale. But I, you can't just trust AI to do the job that the human needs to do. We still always need to be humans connecting with humans with a strong perspective, strong point of view, and get a good message to start with.

And then put, plug it into the AI tools and let it do its magic. But if you start with a, with an unclear message and then plug it into AI, it's just, You're giving a bullhorn to a monkey. It's just louder. Yeah, that's great. And I completely agree with everything you've just said there.

And I think, one of the big things that, that I've come across with clients as well, and the people ask me about when we're talking about AI is, The emotional aspect, because that's what makes us human, it's how we process things emotionally, physically, how those emotions manifest or come through in our bodies as well, and AI just can't get that stuff, right?

No, I can't look in, it can't be in the room with clients and at least not yet, it can't be in the room and see what they're saying and how they're saying it and interpreting things through a human lens. Can't do that yet. Now, could it maybe in the future? I hope not because that's when it gets a little scary for me, just like from a technology side.

But the reality is I think I'm not scared about AI and what the future is for marketers. I think. Bad marketers should be scared. Yes, but people who actually understand how to connect with humans and how to help clients and how to, humanize message and step into the emotion of it and also be kind and generous.

I think again, that's your differentiator in a world that really is going through A little bit more in that space, as far as a little bit more disconnected, a little bit less human, when you can actually step into that human side of things, it's a differentiator in the marketplace for you.

Yeah. And you talk about kind of future proofing and differentiation and you've touched on skills as well, JJ, but like a lot of the people listening to the show are small business owners, they're entrepreneurs, they're doing their marketing themselves, they don't have any marketing training.

And I suppose what I'd love to know is if there was a particular skill or mindset that you think Or believe that they should try to cultivate and grow, or, nurture, read up on, maybe they need to read Marketing Made Simple and building a story 

around. What kind of skills would you recommend that are mindsets that they cultivate and adopt to help them be successful with their business and their marketing in the years ahead?

There's really, yes, I would say read building a story brand to the book that really helps people understand the power of story and how to use story in marketing. And then marketing made simple just really shows you how to apply that very easily. So I would say that unabashedly. But then I would say mindset perspective, there's really two things that, that we've built our entire business on and really help companies build their entire marketing platforms on.

And the, and these are this clarity will win out. over creativity. So when you're thinking, especially if you're a small business and you're going, man, I just can't compete with the branding of Nike or, or Apple, or, any big, the big guy down the street, you don't need to, you don't need to click, you don't need to, put out all those fancy videos and all that flashy logo.

What you need to be is clear and you can build in creativity and flashiness later, but always start with clarity. Be very clear about what you offer and be very clear about the problems you solve. And if you can start there, the rest is icing, but you've already got the cake. Just start with that kind of clarity.

What do I offer? And what I mean by that, and this is what most companies we work with, think that they have that down and they don't like, even I was just talking to somebody the other day and he said to me, he literally said to me, we're actually really clear about what we do. We help companies make more money.

And I said, Oh, so you invest for them. And he goes, no, we're not investors. And I said, Oh, so you're a sales team that comes in and works with them and gets more sales. And he goes, no. And I said what do you do? And he said, he actually said was we I'm a business coach who comes alongside them. And I and really we help them scale and I go, okay that's what you do.

You don't just help company. Like when you say we help companies make more money, that's not clear. That's not clear. That leaves a lot of questions in my brain. So for everybody listening very clearly, if somebody was almost going to Google. What you do, what would they Google to find you be that clear, make sure a third grader could understand it.

Don't be vague. Don't leave any questions. Be really clear. And then the 2nd piece of that is just always talk about the problems that you're solving for your customers. That's what I mean by clarity. So the 1st thing I would say mindset shift is. Is clarity over creativity. Start there. The second mindset shift is when you are creating marketing, you are not the hero of your marketing story.

Your customer is. So don't make the messaging, the website, all the things about you. And what I mean by that is talk to your customer. Don't say we have these great features of our product. Talk about the benefits. That the features give your client, when you talk about features, you're talking about you.

When you're talking about benefits, you're talking about your customer. So don't make yourself stand out, talk about how everything that you do impacts your customer, how it solves a problem, how it makes their life better, how it helps them avoid pain. That's focusing on your customer and making them the hero.

I think those two mindset shifts can change everything for everybody. Clarity over creativity. And you're not the hero of the story. Your customer is gold, pure gold. There are folks. I hope you've been taking notes because if you have, you need to write down those two bits. They're pure gold. And JJ, I'm not going to ask you too many more questions, but I caught it.

Because you're giving me such gold for these people who are listening. I've got a question for you about books apart from your own books. What one or two marketing books would you recommend that everybody should read? I'll be honest. I don't read a lot of marketing books and I'll just tell you why I talk to a lot of marketers and I do a lot of research.

Kind of those spaces, but we try to be a little bit more unique in that space. So I read a lot of things outside of our genre in order to inspire the things that we're doing. And one of the things, one of the books I just read recently, that honestly has changed so much for me is a book by a guy named Will Gadara, and it's called unreasonable hospitality.

Now you've already heard me talk a little bit, I was talking about how this is a competitive advantage and all of this stuff in your marketing. But he really, he was a guy who. At 26 went and basically ran what became the best, literally named the number one restaurant in the world. And the differentiator for them was hospitality.

So that's that's I'm obsessed with that book right now. I'm read over and over again. And then interestingly enough I'm going back and I'm in the process of beginning to. Rewrite a screenplay that I wrote and the screenplay. And so the book that I'm rereading right now is called save the cat.

It's by a guy named Blake Snyder. We talk about it with story brand world a lot, but it's it's basically shows that. Every movie in Hollywood is the same movie and is written the same way. And he basically shows you how to craft a story with a powerful story arc and how to pitch stories to production companies, which is what we use a lot in our marketing of how to connect with people quickly.

And tell an amazing story. So those are right now in on my, they're literally at the end of my table here is unreasonable hospitality and save the cat. Oh, and that ties in really nicely with what the show is about because we talk about all. Things brand marketing and customer experience on here.

So folks, you're going to love that book by Will Guyder Unreasonable Hospitality. I haven't read the Save the Cat one, but I'm absolutely going to check it out, JJ. Thanks for that. Do you have any final takeaways or anything that you feel you just need to tell the folks here on the show or? What do you think?

I think the biggest thing that I've discovered in my years of marketing and then working with a lot of people in marketing is there, they want to get everything perfect before launching. They want, they feel like in many ways that there's these magic words out there that they're going to miss if they don't do it just right.

And that's going to be the difference between a 1 million a year and a hundred million dollar a year. The reality is, your audience. You know who they are. The problems that you can solve for them. So begin crafting messaging and start testing it and get it out there. Just start getting it out there.

Don't wait. If you were saying yeah, I need to create a lead generator to put on social media, but I want to make sure it's the right one. And I want to make sure that it, no. Create one and go test it. And if it works, put more money behind it. If it doesn't create another one, start there. We just get, I think, paralyzed with fear that we're not going to do it right.

There isn't a right way to do marketing. There's some great tips we can offer, but there's not one way of doing it. Get it out there. Get going on it or surround yourself, hire somebody who will do it. Like just invest the money and just get it out there. You will start to see amazing results. And then again, what we've been saying this whole time is it's not just about you.

More people will get access to your products and service, which means that more people's problems are solved. More people's lives get better because you are getting your information out there to your audience faster. So just do it. Yeah. Just do it. Don't wait for it to be perfect. Get it out there so you can start helping people now.

Love that JJ. Marketing is really just one giant experiment, right? Yeah, it is. It really is. And things change so quickly. Don't get overwhelmed by the change, lean into it, go great. All right. I'll put something out there for a while. And if it doesn't work, then I put something else out. Great. Things are changing all the time.

Good. Take advantage of that. Don't be held back by it. Amazing JJ. Oh my gosh. You've talked about so much. I don't even need to know where to begin with the recap. I've got like pages of notes here, folks. So I'm guessing you do too. JJ, thank you so much for joining us on the master of business show.

And it's been a pleasure. Oh, I had a blast. Thanks. 

Fricking hell, that was a mind blowing episode, right? I am actually so buzzed. I, seriously, I'm doing a little bit of a happy dance here after interviewing JJ. And not just because he shared some serious knowledge bombs, but also because he dropped the name of one of my other marketing heroes, Amy Porterfield.

Seriously, folks, wasn't JJ great though? I have got to tell you, when we finished recording, we also had another great chat about Moonshine. Like seriously, moonshine. Oh my god. I'm so there in Nashville, this, later this year in October, I'm so totally there. I've got to bring JJ some Irish whiskey, and he's gonna tell me where to go for the moonshine and some really good Tennessee whiskey.

We might need to do another episode with JJ later on. No whiskey involved, or moonshine for that matter. But for now, it's time to turn the those insights from this episode into action for your business. Because business mastery doesn't happen from just listening to the show, folks. You've got to take action.

And somebody who listens to the show regularly sent me a message on Instagram a while ago telling me that they have gotten really and managed to turn their business into a six figure business by taking action from listening to the content that guests share and that I share in this episode. So what I want you to remember about today's episode with JJ is that marketing is like the engine for your business.

So I want you to get that engine firing on all cylinders and marketing. The enemy of marketing is not competition, it's confusion. So JJ really stressed the importance of clarity. So this week folks, I challenge you to revisit all of your marketing materials or as much of your marketing materials as possibly you can.

Look at your website, look at all the words on your website copy. Look at your social media posts for the last week or the last month. Look at any brochures or proposals that you send to clients. Give everything a second look over. But when you're looking over it, ask yourself, is my message clear?

Does it instantly communicate the value I offer? And if not, it's time to fricken simplify the heck out of it. Okay, seriously simplify. And don't forget your customers. You're not selling widgets here. You're offering solutions to people's problems. So this week, step, hook, line, and sinker into your ideal client's world.

Think about what are their biggest struggles? What's keeping them awake at night? What's making them cry those ugly cries? You know what I'm talking about. Oh, I do them every so often and it does feel good. What makes them ugly cry? How can your service be the guide that swoops in to help your clients win the day?

Reframe your marketing message so that it focuses on the benefits you deliver and not just the features of your service. Because JJ also emphasized the power of experimentation. Sometimes you've got to talk about features, but maybe not always upfront. So test it and see. Marketing isn't a one size fits all game.

There's no cookie cutter approach that's going to work for every single business. And if there was it'd be fricking boring. Our brains are hardware to spot stuff that's different, but also our brains can understand stuff that's communicated simply. That's why simplicity is key. So this week, don't be afraid to try something new.

Maybe test a different headline on your website landing page. Maybe run a new social media post or a new social media ad with a tweet message. Something like that. The key is to track your results and see what's going to resonate with your audience. And remember, marketing, it's not going anywhere. It's a marathon, not a sprint.

So don't be discouraged if you don't see results overnight. Most people don't. That's normal. What you should see is slow and steady growth. Slow and steady wins the race. My daughter used to tell me that when she was six, but it's so true. So keep refining your message, keep testing and keep putting yourself out there.

The more consistent you are, the more likely you are to attract those dream clients. And here's the thing. You have the power. You do. You have the power to transform your service business with the magic of story powered marketing. You do. Genuinely. JJ has given so many nuggets in this episode. He's given you some tools and now it's up to you to use them.

So get out there, craft a clear, compelling message. And oh my gosh. Watch your business store. I want to hear all about it. Tell me when it's happening. Tag me, share, send me a message, do the things. But hey, do me this favor as well. Remember to go in and rate, review and subscribe to the Master Your Business Podcast.

If you haven't done it before, please go in and do that. Share your thoughts and subscribe, please. Because when you do, it helps me and my podcast team to bring more incredible episodes and guests like JJ, Onto the show so that you can continue to fuel your success. So folks, let's keep this momentum going until next time.

Keep mastering your business. Bye.