The Storytelling Shift That Will Make Your Clients Say Yes | RR441 [ENCORE]

Okay, hello everyone, and welcome to this

week's episode of relationships rule. Today I'm joined by Chris

Jones, a seasoned branding expert, story brand guide, and

now author of a new book, from click to client has a subtitle,

but we'll get into that in a minute. So from click to client,

Chris has helped powerhouse brands like Nike and Adidas in

her early days, I think before, she went out on her own, as I

recall, and now dedicates her time to Empowering Entrepreneurs

with her signature story selling system. And in this episode, she

shares how to replace all your marketing with a single story

that sells and how to build a website that works for you. 24/7

so first of all, welcome back to the show.

Chris, thank you. Janice, I am thrilled to be here

today.

Well, first of all, congratulations on your

book. I know it was a long time coming and pretty exciting to

have that out there. I looked back that we had spoken earlier.

You were on my on my podcast back in I think it was May 2023

it was episode 205 we're now up to in the three hundreds, I'm

proud to say. So that's kind of cool. And in that episode, we

talked about writing compelling copy, which was part of the

website journey and so on. But today, I think we're going to

focus on your book, because there's more to it than just

writing compelling copy, right?

That's true, yep. So

first of all, what inspired you to write your

book now you've been in the industry 20 years. What inspired

you to write your book now?

Well, in the last five to seven years, I've really

incorporated storytelling into every project that I do. So I

really started out in the early days as a visual storyteller,

and then realized over time in marketing that the visuals

really aren't effective if they're not working with really

compelling copy. So now everything I do is based on

telling a very compelling story that's actually going to

motivate your potential clients to know confidently that you're

the one they want to work with. So I may I've made that

transition over time, and now everything I do is really about

the story, and design is secondary to that, and that's

the way that my clients get the greatest results. So the the way

the book was born is because over the last handful of years,

I've really streamlined my process, which is the signature

story selling system, and I've been able to work with my

clients in a very efficient way, in a very deep, a deep way, and

in a way that gets them the results that they're really

hoping for. But essentially, I honed my process to the point

that if you don't have the budget to work with me one on

one, I still want you to be able to get the results that my

clients get. And so I was able to with a process that I know is

proven to work time and time and time again. I was able to just

take all that information in my head and put it into a book, and

that way I can help more people, reach more people and and

honestly, it was something that I've been wanting to do for a

long time, but it all just kind of came together as things do

when the timing is right

right, when the time is right for sure. Well, at

the beginning of your book, you talk about something that that I

talk about when I'm doing LinkedIn training as well,

especially with the part that's about, called the about section,

which is not really about you, but you have seven seconds to

make that first impression, whether it's on that LinkedIn

profile or it's on your website, and why you talk about why

traditional websites fail and the mistakes that people make

based on the fact that that things are different. Now, can

you speak to that to the audience? Yeah.

I mean, one of the biggest mistakes that happen is

that, if it's our website or our LinkedIn profile, we

automatically and understandably would think, Okay, I've got to

write about myself here. It's about me, but really your your

messaging. The way you make it compelling and make it engaging

and make it interesting is to really talk about your hero, and

your hero is your client. And so it's a very different way. Way

of of sharing your message about your business, because you're

really making your potential clients the central figure of

your story. And you are in the story. You're You're the most

powerful, strongest character in the story. You are the guide,

you are the Mr. Miyagi, or you are the Yoda, right? But your

clients are the hero. And so what happens is, all over

LinkedIn, I would say 99% of LinkedIn profiles are doing

this, and 99% of websites are doing this. They're the business

owner is making themselves the hero of their own story, because

they're talking all about themselves. And when you're the

hero of your own story, you literally kick your potential

clients out of the story. You kick them out of engaging with

you. And when you flip the script and you really look at

your business with a new lens, a lens where you're the guide and

they are the hero. What you're doing is you're inviting them

into a narrative with you. You're inviting them into a

story where they play the hero. They're the central character,

and you are the strongest character. You are the guide. So

it's it's a totally different way to put yourself out there.

And for the person who's coming to your website or visiting your

LinkedIn profile, it feels good. They don't know why,

necessarily, it feels so good. They don't know why they're

feeling such a connection with you, but we do. It's because

that's what story does. It cultivates authentic connection.

It builds authentic trust, and it allows them to really

envision what their life would be like if they decide to work

with you, and what their life would be like after they work

with you, all the wonderful things that are going to happen

for them if they engage with you, right?

And just very simply put, I think if, if we

start by writing about how who we serve and how we serve them,

or what and I'm just generalizing here, or even the

pain points that they have that we we come and guide them away

from to success. Then they say, Hey, that person's talking my

language. They get me. Maybe I should talk to them rather than

us starting about all about us and our background and our, our,

you know, our, our accolades and things like that that doesn't

mean anything to anybody until, like it's the expression that I

always use right that I don't care about you until you care

about me. And so you have to make the reader, the viewer, the

listener, feel as though you're caring about them first. Would

you agree with that?

Oh, I would totally agree with that. People, people

don't actually want to work with the best person. They choose to

work with, the one they feel the most connected to, right? And

the way we cultivate that connection is by showing that

they matter to us the most there we we understand their struggles

and when we articulate their struggles, and we start our

messaging in that way, by showing them that we get them

like just like you said. They feel seen, they feel heard. They

feel not alone in their struggle, but most importantly,

they feel like Janice is in my head. She must be, she must be

the one that I need to work with. She is clearly the best

one to solve this problem, because she understands that so

intricately, intricately.

So do you ever come across clients when you're

starting to work with them, even though they've come to you

because you get them, they feel it. They've chosen you because

there is a connection of some sort. Now you start to work with

them about shifting the way they write about themselves, the way

they position things on their website and so on. Do you ever

come across people that fight that because they feel that

they're they, I don't know how to say it without, without, like

it's so important, they hang on to things that really aren't

that important, but they think they are. Does that make sense?

Like, maybe you don't because you've got the right people, but

sometimes I find, for me anyway, that if I say something about,

you know, like you've got these letters after your name on your

on your LinkedIn profile, just, can only use my example. Yeah,

you know, there's a zillion. Coaches out there. And yes, I

know you've got the recommend or the credentials to be a coach,

and I love that. Let's put that here and here and here on your

profile, not there where it's not supposed to be. Sometimes

they, you know, you can feel them tense up because that was

so hard for them to get or they wanted it so badly. Do you know

what I'm saying?

Like, I yeah, I really do know what you're

saying. I think that part of my process is really about

educating people to think differently about their

messaging and so really, by the time we get into the deep work

together, they're really aware of what works, what doesn't, and

they're ready, you know, they're ready because that time, because

they also know, okay, I've had it that way for the last two

years, and I haven't gotten one new Client from my website. So

it's not working, and so they, they are typically open and

eager to make those shifts and follow my guidance.

Yeah, they trust you by that time, by the time

you get to that, yeah, yeah, yeah, Does, does? Does SEO still

matter when you're doing those things, when you're doing

websites? Is that still important?

You know? I mean, the online space is so saturated

that you could pour 1000s of dollars into SEO every month,

and maybe you'd come up on like the fifth page. You know what I

mean? It's kind of like a drop in the ocean. So it's, I think,

in the earlier days, like you could really, if you had the

money, you could really pour gas on the fire and get your SEO to

work for you. And I'm not saying that SEO isn't important, I

think it is. But I had a client come to me. He was a mortgage

broker, and he was pouring like $2,500 a month into SEO, and he

was getting a great amount of traffic to his website like it

was totally working. The only problem was the messaging on his

homepage was written for bots. You know, it was written for the

Google algorithm, and so it was working. But then when people

were coming to the website, they were not at all connecting to

him, and so he wasn't getting any lead calls. He wasn't

getting people to take that next step. So it's doing the good

work of of, you know, being strategic with SEO. But I

really, I write for humans. I write for human connection. I'd

much rather you have, you know, 50 visitors that come to your

website and and identify and connect with you than 1000

visitors who come and don't feel a connection. And so there is a

work around to that. I mean, I still really, I'm all about you

got to write for humans like we can sniff it out when we can

tell a website has been written for SEO. It feels off. It

doesn't feel quite right the way that I implement SEO on my own

site. I write everything that people are going to encounter. I

write it for humans. I write it for them, and then I have a blog

in which I post podcast episodes, articles, just kind of

whatever I'm up to. I post on the blog. But I don't have that

blog in my upper navigation because I don't necessarily want

people to get bogged down with all the information that's in my

blog. I put it, I tuck it, I I don't like hide it, but it's in

my footer. And if somebody wanted to find it, they totally

could. But nobody wants to read a blog these days. They want to

be efficient with their time. They want to get to the heart of

the matter. Then when I get to the essence of who you are, what

you do, can you help them? And what do you want me to do next,

to engage with you? And so when, when we offer our blogs in the

upper navigation, or we like we feature that in a big way on our

website, what happens is, it might be a well written blog. It

might be very interesting, it might be very educational. But

when that person, your potential client, is at your website,

they're reading your blog, and they're like, Wow, this is good

information. I'm learning a lot. I'm going to come back to this

when I have more brain capacity, like right now, have to go make

dinner and I You're I'm feeling my brains full for. The day,

right? So they're like, I'll come back tomorrow when I have

some more time. And guess what, they never come back. So you've

just information overloaded your potential client into not taking

action when they might have if you had not thrown all that

information at them.

We really have to be mind readers, don't we, as

well as everything else. So how does someone go about uncovering

their signature story? You talk about your signature story?

Yeah, well, the first thing that I do is called

mine for gold. That's mine for gold. Your story is inside you.

It's in your head, it's in your heart. And we dig deep to pull

out those golden nuggets and that golden thread that is your

story. Your story is not something that's created or

invented outside of you. It's already inside of you. And it's

my job to kind of clear out the clutter and identify what are

the golden nuggets of your story.

So can I just ask for clarification? Then here,

because when you say your signature story, I would think

like your bio in a sense, right? But you don't mean that, do you

this is a is this in reference to putting the the hero first,

still.

So, yes, heroes first, right?

So in a signature story, for example, Humor me

here. If it were me, would it be something that speaks to like

you would draw out of me? Stories and things that I have

experienced over the years that maybe show that I'm all about

relationships, or that these are the things that that, is it

things that I help with? Or is it things

that, yeah, it's not necessarily like digging up

stories from your childhood background. It's really asking

you the questions that I know how to ask to pull that story

out of you and those components are your hero, what they're

struggling with? Who are you as the guide? What is what is the

plan like? What's your process? What do you want them to do

next? So we really uncover all those components of story by

doing that mining for gold process.

That makes total sense. Then, okay, thank you.

Yeah, no, that makes that that's important, though. I think that,

you know, people see that that's what you mean by the your

signature story or your signature story telling system,

really,

yes, yes, it's, it's, it's really, I want people

to think of it as, this is a narrative that you have for your

business that doesn't this is not your founders story. It's

not how you kind of got into this industry. It's really a

narrative that we craft, a narrative that your potential

clients are the hero and you are the strongest character as the

guide. So it's a narrative that we craft. That narrative lives

on your website. The same narrative lives on your

LinkedIn. That same narrative lives like in a video that you

might have. What any all of your marketing, right? Your your

signature story, when it's done well, it contains all of those

Hero's Journey components. But the reason that we can use one

story in all your marketing is because it, it really works like

an accordion, right? It it can stretch out, it can go in, it

can go middle and it just like an accordion. Your your

signature story never changes. It just depending on where it

lives, right in LinkedIn, it's going to be the same story

components, but it's gonna you have a different word count that

you have to work and so those are, those are kind of the way

is that we do it. So step one is mining for gold. Process. We

pull that story out those raw, rough golden nuggets, and then

that's Once that process is is done, your story has really been

pulled out from your head and heart. Then I polish up that

gold and I write your story for you. If you're reading the book,

I show you how to do it yourself. But this is the way

that I work with my clients, and it's the same as in the book. So

I write your story for you, I polish up that gold, and then we

get on a call together, a 90 minute call, and we refine the

story together. So I walk you through your signature story,

and the goal of that is to really help you understand the

thinking, the strategy behind every word that I've written,

because I believe every word is guilty until proven. And

innocent. So less, less is more, but it also the reason the

signature story feels so good and it feels so aligned with who

you are is because every step of the way we're collaborating, I'm

pulling the story out from within. You on step one. Step

two, we're collaborating and refining the story together, so

it really allows us to craft a story that feels really

authentic to you, as opposed to often as business owners will

hire a copywriter, they'll go write in a silo, bring the copy

back to us, and we read it, and we're like, Huh? Just kind of

feels off. It just doesn't feel right. I'm going to make a bunch

of changes, and then it's like a back and forth change, a THON,

and it ends up, you know, being number one, expensive, and

number two, time consuming. And number three, you probably could

have done it quicker if you just did it yourself. Yeah.

Do you still do you do websites for people too,

though, or do you just deal with the copy?

Yes, so step three is really taking your signature

story and integrating it onto your website. Lot of my clients

have their website in like a Wix or a Squarespace or Kajabi or

whatever. I don't care what platform you're in, I'm platform

neutral. But whatever platform you're in, it's very easy to

copy and paste the story, the words over into whatever builder

you're in, and then I work with my clients to make sure that the

visual story that they're telling is really in alignment

with the written story that we've so carefully crafted. So

they'll send me the link to the page once they've integrated the

news story, and then I record a loom video giving feedback on

photos, colors, fonts, spacing, flow, all those details, and we

usually go back and forth a couple of times just to get it

totally dialed in. Because if you're if your story is great,

but your visuals are are mediocre or don't look

professionally done, people aren't going to take you as

seriously, they're not going to trust you as as much, right? So

the the visual story is, is as important as the written story.

I You've got a new website since the last time

we we met, and it, it feels like it's leveled up. Yeah, yeah,

yeah, yeah. So that's cool. Um, the so in your book, you talk a

little bit about confidently charging premium prices. How

does storytelling support that?

Well, premium prices, really. It comes down to

building trust. Number one, we build trust by really showing

the hero that we understand their problem, reminding them of

what's possible for them in their life. Should they solve

this problem, really taking the time to show them that they

matter most, and then really people pay for problems based on

how badly they want to solve them. So if you solve a really

important problem for me, I'll, I'll happily pay for you to do

that. You know, like I have a, I have a seven year old little

boy, and he's been having some behavioral challenges, and it's

been a couple years now, I've been kind of looking for a

guide, you know, I've been looking for someone who can help

me parent him in a way that's really Effective for him and for

me, and so, you know, like many people, they've tried a lot of

different things. They, you know, I've DIYed it, I've taken

courses, I've hired coaches, and I'm still, I have still been at

this place where I'm like, Okay, this is a really big problem,

and I really need to solve it. And I finally found I actually

read a book. Again, this is the power of like, what a book can

do for your business. I read a book, and it's called Raising

lions, and then I went to the author's website, and I booked a

call with him, and now I'm working with him, and I have

finally found the person to guide me through this. Now, if

he had told me that he charged $10,000 to do this work and to

work with me, and. And he could guarantee that he that he was

going to turn things around. I would have, I really would have

paid it. I mean, that's a lot of money, but honestly, to me,

it's, it's so important, yeah, and so yeah, that's worth it to

me. He, he didn't charge me that much, but, but I, but I would

have paid it. So that's, that's kind of what I'm talking about.

Okay, yeah, and I, I just did an interview with

a gentleman who wrote a book called The generosity mindset.

His name is John Ray, and he's a wonderful man, and he talks

about value and your value, and in the sense of pricing, right,

you have to believe in yourself, and then people have to see the

value that you bring to the table. So I just wanted to hear

what your take on that was,

well, you I love that you brought that up,

because you know, charging, what you want to charge, is half the

battle. You have to really believe that you deserve that.

And I've gone through certain iterations of the work that I do

like I charge right now, that the price that I charge is

different than what I was charging two years ago. I also

added a lot of value to my offer, but I remember the first

few calls,

how you're choking.

Yeah, I liken it. I told my partner, I'm like, it's

like, I'm doing acrobatics, like I'm throwing in free things and,

you know, and like, it's, it's funny, and I don't think there's

really any way around that, other than

have to speak it enough times and you start to

Yeah, it starts to become more comfortable, for sure.

And I think your website, I found this to be

true. My website and my clients websites, it can help. It can

help you step into those bigger shoes when you know you're

ready. Your website can kind of be like your front your front

man, or your your bodyguard. It can put you out there in the way

that you you want, or at the rates that you want. And even

if, like, for example, I have a hidden page on my website that

outlines all the pricing and what I charge and everything,

right? So if you have a page like that that you can pull up

during a sales call and the prices right there in writing,

you know it's it takes the the pressure off.

Yeah, I've been saying, you can sometimes feel

them asking, wanting to ask, but they haven't yet. And, and, and

so sometimes I might ask them, you know, would you like me to

talk about pricing? You know, yes, you know, because they want

to, but they don't want to. And then I don't show it to them

right away, and then I I say it, I'll give a range or something,

and then I'll say, you know, if you'd like, I can bring up the

pricing page or something, you know, but, yeah, it's

interesting. I know we and we have to grow into it, which

wherever we are, for sure. Okay, so I'm gonna put you on the spot

for a second. I'm sure you have many stories, but can you share

a transformation story from one of your clients who's used your

system,

who you Yeah, absolutely. I worked with a

client named Andrea, and she had a great coaching business. She

did, she was an infidelity coach, and what she would do,

really interesting and very focused talk about solving a

problem. She her program was called no in 90 know if you're

going to stay or go in 90 days. And so she had this beautiful

program and and she was, you know, she's a confident person,

but she found herself on her sales calls kind of selling, you

know, and she didn't like how that felt, and she she didn't,

she wasn't stepping into her story on her website and in her

real life as the Guide. And so we work together, and we really,

you know, mined for gold. We got her story, I polished it up for

her and and we got it to a point where, like, it felt really

good. And she came to me because she wanted more clients, you

know, she wanted to reach more people. What she didn't realize,

and honestly, it wasn't until working with her that I really

realized, you know, the gravity and how good this, this little

byproduct is of getting clear on your story, is she became so

much more confident, and she started when she had the words

to communicate what she did, and she knew in her bones how. How

powerful it was and how important the work she was

doing. Was she her website started working right? She she

started getting a lot more calls booked, but then when she would

show up on those calls, she was calm because she knew she didn't

have to sell anymore. She was using her signature story in her

sales calls like her value, right to show her value, she

knew she knew her her value, and really it was less about her

talking and more about her asking the right questions to

her clients in the call. So prior to working together, she

was closing about 20% of her calls, meaning for every 10

calls she booked, she was getting two clients. After our

work together, her her close rate went up to 95% so for every

10 clients. She was getting nine and a half for every 10 calls.

She was getting nine and a half clients. But mostly she just

told me, because I talked to her a couple months later, and she

was like, You cannot put a price tag on this work like it just

the confidence that it's allowed her to step into the world in in

such a more profound way and impact more people like people

need her help so and now

as your as your book says, from click to client,

how to easily create a story driven website that turns

visitors into clients love it, which is so true. Your dream

clients visit your website and quietly click away to

competitors. I'm looking at the back now, sorry. And what, what

would you say is one step that our listeners can take today to

start applying the story selling, selling system to their

brand.

Well, yeah, the first thank you for sharing

that. Janice, the very first and most important thing you can do

is just shift the lens in which you look at your business, in

which you talk about your business and really get clear on

who your hero is, what they're struggling with, and what

they're wanting. And then in all your all the materials that you

create for your marketing, be consistent, be congruent, like

people don't want to find you on LinkedIn and then go to your

website, and it's like a complete disconnect like Troy,

that's leaking trust. We don't want to leak trust. We want to

build it. And ironically, having a consistent message is less

effort. But we somehow, as humans, we think, Oh, that's

lazy. We got to we got to be fresh and clever everywhere we

show up. Well, the The more consistent you are, the more you

can beat that drum over and over and over, just the more people

are going to remember you. They're really going to

understand what it is that you do. So the number one thing you

can do is really step into this story as the guide and identify

your potential clients as the hero. And if you want to do that

for free, you can go to my website, red door stories.com,

and I have a freebie on there called How to write compelling

copy in five minutes. It's just a very short video with a little

worksheet on it, and it will get you going. It will forever

change the way you talk about your business.

That's great. I'll put that in the show notes.

Thank you so much. Chris. Well, this has been a delight. I'm

very excited for you with your book and I, are we allowed to

talk about that? You're writing another one.

It's in the works. Okay, so, yeah, we'll

talk about that when the time comes. But it

sounds pretty exciting with what you shared with me. So a huge

thank you to you for sharing your wisdom and for showing us

that marketing doesn't have to be complicated to be powerful.

Your signature story selling system reminds us that the right

story told simply and clearly can do the heavy lifting in our

business. And if you want my audience, if you want a website

that truly converts and messaging that reflects the real

value that you offer. Chris's book is a must read, and you can

find it on her website and on Amazon, I'm guessing anywhere

that books are sold, and we'll put the link to it in the show

notes as well. So thanks for being

here. Thank you, Janice, was delightful.

Thank you, and thank you to my audience. And if

you like what you heard, please let us know and check out. I

encourage you to check out Chris's book and her website as

well, to see a true example of her storytelling system, and

remember to stay connected and be remembered. Thank.