Your Transformation Station - 63. Designing Framework Around My Story Seth Erickson

Episode Date: November 1, 2021

How to Hack Humans is the business book you didn’t know you needed, a unicorn in a world of publishing that is too often dry and emotionless. Learn how to use the ancient and organic art of storytelling to tap into the human brain and connect with others more efficiently. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How do we know if we are the hero? What if I were to say, what if I'm the only one in my own peer group? Because I always assumed I was the hero, but then I look around and I don't have any friends. Now, am I still the hero or am I the villain? How can you create a transformation in others if there's no transformation in yourself? Join your host, Greg Favaza, as your voice on the hard truths of leadership, your transformation station connecting clarity to the cutting edge of leadership. As millennials, we can establish change, not only ourselves, but through organizational change, bringing transparency that goes beyond the organization and reflects back into ourselves. Extracting, actionable advice.

and alternative perspectives that will take you outside of yourself. I feel like anybody can resonate from my story. And I want to be able to hone my own achievements and be able to go into a room and be comfortable with sharing everything that I have because I know it's unique and whatever anybody says,

I know it can it can outweigh what they can say with the mission that I'm going towards, if that makes any sense. Okay. So let me ask you this then. Do you want to tell a brand story or do you want to tell a personal brand story? Because it sounds like you want to tell like a personal brand story, but I know you also have like Transformation Station is kind of separate from I mean, you're connected, right?

Like, there's the Apple story and there's the Steve Jobs story, right? But, like, they're connected. So I'm just trying to understand how you want to... Sure. So I want to do a personal brand story. Okay. Because, I mean, if you look back at my work from season one, that was all for my own progress. I mean, if the listeners listen to it, fantastic.

If they didn't give a fuck, fantastic. Because I look at it as I. grew from every experience that I recorded with who I encountered with. Okay. So, yeah, so two points to make. Just for your, like, as you're thinking about this. So when you're telling, whether you're telling a brand story or a personal story, you have to think about it from the context of you're telling the story for,

the edification of others, which I think you already get. But what happens is, um, oftentimes people will be like, I want to tell a story. And then it's 100% about them. But in a personal brand story, it needs to be, um, about you, but really about the people who are listening. But you are, you're sharing your learnings through the story that you tell. Sure. So let me start. Let me open up the floor a little bit and kind of get things rolling here because I know we are behind. What I'm grasping from you is that I need to do is, one, I'm trying to help people articulate the words that they're searching for in their own lives. Those are the specific people as far as starting at the surface that I'm going towards. And for me, my main focus is looking at organizations, how they don't give people chances because, one, they don't either have a degree or they don't have the right experience or what is perceived as the right experience.

I lived in a town of population after the military. This is passing everything. I experienced trauma, sexual abuse as a kid for a long, long time. A social upbringing being the youngest of seven, not learning anything from them, to experiencing the loss of a best friend of 16 years where he committed suicide, to going through, I would say, I was in 114 different relationships. And the majority of ended up cheating on me to the military, to a traumatic experience, a flashback, a trigger, which ended up in humiliation of about 500 individuals for a few days out in the middle of the desert in the Mojave Desert of California to trying to get kicked out of the military, deranged when I was the most prestigious, disvalued soldier on Fort Carson.

I have achievements. I have my picture was presented on the brigade level, disintegrating down 4,500 troops that they should dress like dress right dress off of my uniform because I set the standard. I was a very, very high achieving soldier because I had nothing prior to the military that helped me obtain just a foundation of being human. meaning yes my parents never gave me any values they never gave me anything to understand or what meant to be understood as something important i've taken everything from every company i've worked at i've worked at 17 different jobs that's not including the military if we say the military i'm looking at about 60 but outside the military when i transitioned out i did national guard uh i got put in a crappy unit they tried to put me as a wall because of me relocating and I could not come there because of financial reasons. To moving to state to state because I was lost mentally and thinking I had a different purpose at one point in my life where I should track down pedophiles and kill them.

To completely dropping that to moving to Texas and almost getting robbed as soon as I get. to not which part of Texas it's a fuck it's San Antonio it's right by Georgetown Austin the first night I got there I had to fucking fucking homeless dude tried to break into my truck as I'm there with a trailer

and everything he's like screaming to me open the door and then I pull out my Glock put it in his face almost shot him and just at that point I had to make that decision do I shoot this individual or do I drive away is he worth it he's not worth it and then the light turned greened and then I just drove the fuck

off to Texas to actually going through the symptoms of having a heart attack because I stayed up for five days straight, didn't drink any water, nothing but caffeine drinks just to get my show, I think it's number four, episode four with Angie Rooker is a two-part series and there was just so many issues. I stayed up for five days on energy drinks that I didn't know the symptoms that I was experiencing. that I end up calling an ambulance and going to the hospital by essentially almost killing myself just to get to release a podcast to coming here devoting every day working on the podcast because I'm a veteran now.

I collect military benefits. I'm very thankful for that because of what happened and also mental issues. And in my sense, time, all I wanted was a job from living in the town of Bayfield just outside Durango, 2,000 people couldn't get a job to save my life. I have people to this day call me back saying that they would hire me in Bayfield. But when I was out there, nobody, they wouldn't give me a job because they thought I was too good with my background. I have very good experience in my background. So it didn't do me anything for a fucking population of 2000. Then I moved to a town.

of two million didn't do me shit because I didn't have a degree and nobody valued experience. And then the only place I got called in, I showed too much eagerness and too much preparedness that they, I'm assuming that I'm going to make everybody look bad because it was just washing cars. But I came up there with over 50 questions, dressed up, ready to do whatever I needed to do, I've got nothing. And it's been like that ever since. So I know I have a lot to offer as far as with people who are trying to articulate their voice so they can get heard and then address organizations on how their HR process is

being handled on finding the right candidate and why there's just turnover. And then if you look at a company, they're training people for what, just their position or how about you train them for their life? You should give them skills that will be, so they'll be prepared for their next position. They're not going to work at your fucking company for the rest of their life. Fuck, no.

They're just doing it because they need a paycheck. They need a paycheck to pay for their fucking kids, and then they need to go somewhere because they all have a passion and place where they think that's where they need to be. So there's a lot more to that. I got seven pages written down here. from top to bottom full shit.

And that's just a quarter of my life, not even a quarter. I would say about 18%. Wow, there's a bunch of things I could say. So, well, the first thing I kept thinking, as you were telling me, the story is I was like, man, you need to write a book. Like, you know, because- I wrote one, but it has nothing to do with it, has something to do with pod, about podcasting. Everything you want to know about podcasting. If you want to get your show in every single country,

you can read my book because I'll show you how to translate languages and how to actually find locations because I have a collection of distros that will put your podcast in over 54 different countries. Nice. But I think going through the process of writing the book would allow you to codify that story. And like I said, every one of these experiences, I think, I mean, you're kind of saying it. Like, I learned this from this experience. I learned this other thing from this experience.

I learned this other thing from this experience. So you definitely have takeaways that I think, like, if you almost organized it where, like, you tell the story of trying to find work in this, you know, in that city and not being able to find work. Like, and then at the end of it, you say, here's what I learned from that experience. experience, right? That would help kind of pull your story together. And then after you have kind of written in a book format, then you could go back and start to take pieces out and shrink it down so that it's more concise. And then position, you know, you could position it

however you want. Like I could see that book helping other veterans who have come out of the military and been like, I don't know what I should do next. Like I've heard that story a lot. from people like trying to find their way. Yes. I think what you're talking about is interesting. So, yeah, like, I think a book like that, I mean, you were talking about like HR practices and not seeing people for who they really are or what they can really do, right? Like, that's part of what I hear in your story is like you're just looking at a piece of

paper. You're looking at a stat card and saying that's what that person is. And people are much more than that, right? But that's only just one piece of it. I see different parts. I'm very intuitive of how organization works because I worked at the very top in the military. I started at the very bottom, the lowest of the low, complete infantry. Like you're treated like shit to the very top working side by side of the individual delegating his intent of the colonel to 4,500 different troops.

and how they treat people, how they communicate, what they look at versus the people down there. And what I see in the civilian world, that still happens. Even though I was in the military, it's exactly the same thing. Fucking all the corporations use the military model for their businesses. I mean, if we look at values in a mission statement, how many organizations actually believe that shit? You can tell when you look at everybody inside.

Very few of them. And most people don't even know, they don't know what their, what their mission statement is or what the vision of the company is because it's so like it's oatmeal. Yeah. It's like, we want to create a better world.

What they write is so complicated that by the time you're done, like what the fuck does that mean? But nobody has the balls to ask them, what does that even mean? What does this company actually stand? for. Part of my story is that, you know, I ran a web design agency. We had 22 people. We were killing it in 2015. But I started becoming really dissatisfied, even though I was making a shit ton of money because I wasn't moving the needle for my clients. Like, I went to design school

and they said, oh, you know, design changes the world. Design is so amazing. And I'm like, but I'm designing these great websites for clients for winning a ton of awards. And I asked my clients, so we redesign your website, like, have your, you know, have people contacting you go up, gone up? No. Well, like, what about like, you know, are you getting more product purchases? No, but we're really happy with the work you did for us. And I'm like, well, fuck. Like, it's great to make money and win awards, but it's also kind of meaningless. Like, I want to help them, like, move the needle and grow their business, like, and help them succeed. And I'm not doing that. that. So what the fuck am I doing?

Like, yeah, like I said, it was like, I was great at designing shiny things, but that wasn't actually helping the businesses grow. It wasn't helping make my customers life better. You know, like I said, it was great that they were happy about the work I was doing for them. But like, it, it, you know, it was meaningless to me. And, and so that's, that's what actually took me down the route of storytelling and going, well, can I use this to push the needle further? Can I actually help my clients? And really, I started learning about communication. And it dawned on me, like, at the end of the day, no matter what you're doing, you still have to deal with humans, right? Like, and how do you deal with humans? You communicate with them through

verbal word, written word, right? And you just, you can't stand there and pan up. mine in front of them and hope they figure out what the fuck you're talking about. So going back to what you were talking about, like mission and vision, yeah, I see most organizations is giving these bland generic visions that don't mean shit. They're not very specific. And nobody even knows what they are because it sounds like the five other companies they worked for, you know? Yes.

And one of the things that I pointed out to people is like, vision is a story. It is a story of a place where you are trying to get to in the future. That is what your vision should be. And it should be clear and succinct. Like with StoryFy, our vision is to basically reduce the startup failure rate by 10%. It's very clear. Everybody understands where we're going.

So every day we can take action towards doing that thing. I hate hearing 10% these numbers and shit. Not because I hate math because that definitely. is one of my things, and it's because I suck at it. But if I say that, I know that makes it much harder to do it in the first place. I'm very aware of my behavior on how that impacts others and the perception of what I say and what that impacts on them. But what I'm saying is the fact that there's companies that have this vision of wanting to do something in micro increments. What does that look like? how are you ensuring everybody that works there that there is no bias in their own decision-making process?

How do you know it's professional favoritism over favoritism who gets promoted? Like that's what I want to know. I want to know the root cause of everything because everything ripples into everything. And that's why I look at an organization because it's so relatable to a human mind. that's what a organization is. If you want to fix it, you do the exact same things you do to fix yourself. All it requires is consistency, short goals, and what you want as your future self. That's how you view your organization.

That's how you view yourself. Your story creates your culture, right? Because everybody says, well, we're like this, right? We're Apple. So we're rebellious. And then actions come. out of that. You said somebody's story creates the culture. So if the culture is flawed, does that mean the individual's story behind the organization is complete BS? It doesn't necessarily mean it's

BS, but it could be broken, right? Like, um, like, um, like, like they didn't actually believe in the very thing that they claim to believe. Well, that definitely happens, right? Like, there are definitely leaders. I mean, I think you can look at the Catholic Church and say, well, you know, we acted one way, but we were really acting another way. So that's a consistency issue. But yeah, I mean, they're telling one story and then doing another. But that's, I think that falls on the leadership. Whereas, you know, what I'm talking about is when you have a leader who tells us,

a consistent story, follows that through. You know, the first thing that you, that I always talk about is you need to understand who the hero is, right? That's the person you want to help. We already talked about, like, the story is not, it's, yes, it's your story, but it's more about them because they're the hero in their own journey. While you are a hero in your own journey, your experiences have grown you into being somebody that can say, I've been through this shit.

Here's, here's how you deal with this. here's a better way of handling it. Here's how you can grow from the situation, however you want to describe that, right? How do I know I'm the hero? How do you know you're the hero? Yeah. Because everybody's a hero.

Because everybody's self-focused, right? So that automatically makes us a hero. How do I identify the villains? That's where I was going to go next. I said, or I said, I was going to. going to say. The villain is is quite often the problem or the challenge that your hero has. Right. So when I talk about telling a story, this would be in a shorter format than like a book or something that that would be a different format. But in a shorter format, you want to talk about

what is the problem your hero's facing. That is your, that is the villain, right? What is what is the problem? What is the villain doing to the hero? How does the villain make the hero feel? Right. So understanding what is their emotional state, understanding sort of the internal and the external things that are happening to the hero because of this villain in their life. And a villain could be self-doubt or it could be apparent or like it can be or it could be an idea, right? Like a bad mindset or a bad philosophy or ideology. Right. So you'll need to figure out what the villain is that you want to focus on because

the problem is if you have too many villains, the plot just goes all over the fucking place and nothing, nothing's coherent or makes sense, right? Like, it's,

like, what was that Batman movie where they had like three different villains running around. They had like Mr. Freeze and, oh, yeah,

you know what? Yeah, that story is just a complete mess because it's not focused on, here's the one villain. We need to deal with this problem. And if you go all over the place, the story gets confusing, convoluted, hard to follow and understand. So you need to be able to identify what that villain is.

And like I said, it can be an idea. It could be a person. It could be, you know, bad life choices. I mean, it could be any number of things. So you need to understand that villain. So that's level one. Level two is what is the villain doing to the hero? and level three is how does the hero feel about that, right?

Because there's always emotions attached to this shit. Like, you know, we're not robots, right? Like, we can't just go. I'm going to be totally emotionalist about everything. I mean, unless you take like a ton of like Xanax or something and then you just mute out your emotions completely, they're going to be there. So identifying that emotion and then talking about that villain helps the hero go, oh, this person must know what I'm talking about.

Because an expert doesn't just talk about things at a surface level. They talk about it at a deep level. Like they can go into that problem and go, yeah, and you're having this experience. And I bet you probably feel this way about it. And you're probably having, you know, you're probably waking up in the middle of the night or you're probably whatever. I'm obviously speaking in very general terms. But you can see how that conversation can get to the point where like it's almost like

you're cold reading people. And they're like, what the fuck? Like, how did he know? And it's like, because I fucking experienced that shit. Yes, Seth. So what I'm doing is I'm challenging you on your understanding. One, because I find this very interesting. It's because I struggle with it.

But everything you're saying, there's a lot of holes in there that I want to poke. And if I can do that, and I'm sure that there's a lot of other people can do that. So we just backtrack one second. and say, okay, how do we know if we are the hero? What if I were to say, what if I'm the only one in my own peer group? Because I always assumed I was the hero, but then I look around and I don't have any friends. Now, am I still the hero or am I the villain? Okay.

So in your own story, you are always the hero. Like, always, right? And you could be a villain. Like, I actually talk about this in my book, how I was the hero and the villain because I was doing things to myself to trip myself up. So the villain was actually within me and not so much external to me. Right. So you can definitely have that going on. And a lot of people, you know, we call it self-sabotaging, right?

So that is. Yes, fear of success or in terms of. no dialogue thinking you can't do what you think you can do. Right. And that is a, so I mean, that is, that comes from a story that exists in your life. And like, especially in, so now we're going to go into a little bit of psychology, but especially in, go to psychology. People with trauma, I'm sure you've heard that like, um, we create, we create a story that works for us as a child. well daddy always hits me because right and and then the problem is we grow up and become adults and that story never gets upgraded.

Nope. You back rationalize off of our child. Yes. I'm very familiar with this. Yes. So that's where being able to identify that and go, okay, I need to work on this. And there's obviously lots of different methods from psychology to work on. changing that story so that you can kind of grow and not just be stuck at that,

you know, 10 year old stage still afraid of your father. Like I mentioned that for myself because I was abused by my father. And it wasn't until I was 20 that I actually confronted him. And it was just like, fuck you. Like, we're going to have this out. And even if you beat my ass, I'm not going to be afraid of you anymore. Fuck you. So.

That's what I'm talking about. Fucking break his nose. Way of fucked out. Well, we actually never got into a fight. He totally backed down for me. So, like, it was a random situation where I ran across him in the middle of the night. And he, like, I was like, you know, you were an asshole to me as a father. You weren't a very good father.

You were never around. And when you were around, you were angry and you were drunk. And my dad was a construction worker who was also a brown belt and judo. So like he would do judo shit to me, like wrist locks and things like that and fucking hurt me. Like, and you know, by the time I was 20, like I said, I didn't care if I lost. I just knew that I wasn't going to continue being afraid of him anymore. And all I got from him was a boatload of excuses about how his dad died when he was young, how his brother died when he was young.

I mean, he had his own trauma, but he wasn't taking any personal responsibility for his action. affecting you and now us today are trying to unlearn the shit that was brought on our own social upbringing. Yeah. So to answer your question, you definitely can be a villain, right? Like, but it's really, I think you brought up a great question. So mostly when I'm focused on the storytelling aspect, I'm thinking about like the marketing and branding of it.

Right. And so that's why I don't, I don't necessarily focus too much on the villain side being an internal, an internal piece only because people, when they're thinking about buying products and service, they're thinking external to themselves, right? Like, that's why, you know, weight loss marketing never says, you're a fat ass because you keep eating too much fucking food. I wish they would say that because I'm willing to bet that America might be a lot skinner than they are now if we just bluntly said that and didn't give a fuck about their emotions because that's only temporary.

They didn't learn the very basic fundamentals to learn how to cope with pressure, trauma experience. They had to do it themselves whether if you're a badass and you need to lose weight or with actually marketing and looking at what's

How modern society is becoming now digital. And when we are digital, we're not interacting with people. We're actually interacting more with our own self and our perceptions. So that would be wise if you would to look at the perceptive side of who is the villain and who isn't. Because when we are marketing that, that's the very thing we need to break through is an individual's perception. their own history is who they are now. How do I get through to this individual? Yeah.

So my, so to answer your question, yes, you can be the hero and you can also be the villain. But that works more at the psychological level. Like we're talking now psychology. Whereas my focus is more, like I said, on the branding and storytelling. And like as I was, you know, writing the book and doing research and all this other stuff, I started to see it going how it could go in that direction. But I was like, fuck, there's so much information over here that I'm trying to get distilled down for people that I don't want to go down that rabbit hole because I'll spend another six months, you know, trying to read all the psychology papers and tons of more books on the subject. So, hey, if you want to go down that rabbit hole, I would love to help you do that because I'm the individual that has read all of those fucking papers on perception on how people perceive things, on how internal dialogue affects people's actions, how they're not successful. And it comes down to one fucking sentence, embracing your vulnerabilities as your authentic self.

Yeah. Yeah, that's something that I actually had to work on over the last year because I was in a relationship where I was always told, don't say that, don't do that. That's wrong. People won't like you because of this and that. And it took me, what, 11 years to get my head snapped on straight. But that's how, like, confused and in fog that I was over like what was going on in the relationship. So I had to deal with like, manipulation, gaslighting. Yes, I was about to say gas lighting. Yeah, all kinds of stuff. And when I, when I, you know, finally left and, you know, the only thing that kept me in the relationship was I just didn't want to be, I didn't want my girls to not have a mother and a father. But I also realized that I was dying slowly in the relationship.

And the only way that I was going to survive was to basically be, become somebody unrecognizable. and and I was like, well, if I do that, I'm not going to be a very good father to my girls, right? Like, I mean, in my relationship, I was literally walking around on eggshells every day because I'd wake up and I had done five things wrong while I was asleep. And that's the old school generation. And that's why happy, what is that fucking saying? Happy wife, happy life.

That is a bunch of nonsense. Oh, yeah. It's total bullshit. So in that, I also had to realize that I had to take. personal responsibility for my actions. What I, so Mike, what I concluded was like, I wasn't like in the relationship, somebody has to lead and somebody has to follow. It's like driving a car, both people can't have their wheel, their hands on the wheel

and on the gas, right? You're just, you're going to fucking crash. And so I see it as I was not a very good leader. I didn't create any boundaries to say this is acceptable. This is not acceptable. I went with the, like you said, the whole happy. wife, happy life. So, you know, she would say jump and I would say how high because I was trying to be a good husband, right? Because that's what I thought I was supposed to be doing. And yes,

and I wasn't leading the relationship. And because I wasn't leading the relationship, I kept giving her control over stuff because I'd go to work and I'd be in control of everything. I wouldn't take shit from anybody. And then I'd go home and I would just be like a bitch, basically. And and so I had to go okay. It's because you knew everything about your position that when you go to you, when you work, you wear your heart on your sleeves because you take pride in it. You know exactly what works well,

what doesn't. And that's why when somebody comes at you and says there's a problem, it's like, look, fuck stick. This is the reason why. How do you not know this? Right. It's clear and simple. Yeah.

But when I'd go home, I would, you know, like I was a lion at work and a lamb at home, you know? And I'm like, no, there needs to be consistency across my life. Like I need to apply the same principles that I'm applying at work. I need to apply them at home.

I need to apply them in friendships. I need to apply them in family relationships. Like I need to be consistent, right? And so, yeah, so I, I fucked up a lot, basically, is the conclusion I had to come to. And I had to own that and take that personal responsibility and go, yeah, You know what? Like, I don't know if the relationship would have been better if I was a better leader and a better husband in the relationship. But I know that I wasn't.

And so I have to look in the mirror and go, yep, you did that. You know, you got fat. I'll fuck. I'll tell you the truth because I'm honest as fuck and I have no reason to lie to you. Yes, you would have, the relationship would have been 10 times better if you would have took ownership and stood your ground and said, Fuck, no, you're not going to get away with that. You let the light on? Like, I got to tell my significant other.

Why are you going to leave the light on? That shit is like fucking 10 cents a minute. I'm just rounding up or if they leave their shoes out because I know if I don't squash that shit at the very moment I catch it, then that means I have told myself internally that's okay. And then guess what happens?

I start fucking doing it. And then I'm not the person that I thought I was because I'm taking up their own bad habits what becomes toxic. Yeah. You let the dog shit on the carpet. It continues to shit on the carpet. That's how I look at it.

And the next thing, you know, you're shitting on the carpet. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, it's, man, I was formulating a thought that totally relates to this. It's like when when you do harm in your relationship, you do it to yourself and the other person. It's not a one way street, right? like in and so that's exactly what I think you're saying too so but we've gotten a little off track here no no no what other what are there that's it this is this is what this is what

this is the whole thing of why we went into this is because that applies to relationships but also applies to organizations is with the relationship of how a significant other and their partner, that is exactly what it's like inside an organization, like with a military organization, because one, this is easy. There's a commander and there is a, who's a captain, and then there's a first sergeant who is also the individual who's in charge of operations, commander who's in charge of the entire objective, them too. That's the relationship.

So if their behavior doesn't match up, then the whole fucking company is fucked. and that's the morals, the principles of the army is affected by these two people in charge. What if that is happening with other organizations, which obviously, that is the person who's in charge puts these in perspective of what's expected, their mission, their mission, vision, direction, okay? So that individual up there, but what if they're the board, the people who's in charge that oversee, who, pretty much delegates the authority of what's expected, what if their perception is actually infiltrating the vision, the mission, and the direction. And now it's disintegrating down and it's infecting the management and all the individuals who's in a leadership position. That's what I want to go after.

Yeah, I mean, I would sum that up as bad leadership. or poor leadership. I mean, just to simplify it, right? Like, I'm always, I always try to simplify things down because then when you're passing that information on to other people, it's easy for them to go,

okay, I get what you're talking about. So are you sure, though? Because when I say bad leadership, what is, what does their natural response go to? A previous experience?

Or do they actually listen and say, tell me more? Well, it would, it would, you'd have to frame bad leadership, right? Like, you would have to say, and here's what I mean by bad leadership, right? You'd have to say they're doing this type of activity or this type of activity. They're letting their ego get in the way.

They're not taking instruction from the people above them. They're misleading or misguiding you in, you know, how things are supposed to be done. So if I was in the middle of two stories, one one's telling a story and the other one's telling the story, how do I decide or come to my own reasoning, which story is accurate or honest or right versus the ones that are not? That's a very good question. And I don't know the exact answer to that. What I can tell you is that they've done studies that show that even when people, like, if people are told a story and then two minutes later told that that story is wrong, they still hang on to that story as if it's true.

So that is a, that's a, that's an issue, right? Like, um, and that's, you know, like to use a, it's hard to break that habit that we've learned because it's a lot, it's a lot harder to, uh, remold than it is to mold. Well, that's where I want to do more study down that path, right? Okay. Because the, because everything else that we know says that a story can rewrite another story. But again, it's like, well, how does that mechanic specifically work in, in that type of context where somebody is basically believing a lie? Understanding more about the psychology aspect of storytelling would round out my understanding better to be able to answer your question in a way that was actually legit and not me, not me just going.

Well, here's what I know. But, you know, like I said, my, my, my storytelling is more on the on the marketing and branding side of selling, you know, yourself a product to service an idea, right? And so what other holes do you want to poke? Like, I'm excited about that. Like, I'm like, okay, do I need to explain something better or do I need to learn something that I don't know right now? Definitely learn. Definitely. Definitely learned, yes, because there's still a lot of.

of holes within what we covered. That can go for hours. I mean, that could be a whole season of what we just talked about within the duality of a story. I think that's fantastic. I mean, I don't know. I think I copyrighted that, but who knows? But the whole reason why we're here is so you can help me articulate a story.

So with everything that I shared with my... Just a very small snapshot, there's a whole bunch more. But just with that, how can I convey my message that I have complete honesty, and I'm embracing my vulnerabilities because I'm sharing everything I can fucking share to show you that there's nothing to hide. And why you should believe in my company or my story. versus somebody else's. Yeah.

Well, I think you hit the nail on the head. I think it's vulnerability of saying, it's not just saying this thing happened to me, right? And it's also saying this thing happened to me. And I made this really stupid decision, right? That's the vulnerability side of it, right? Like, it's not just saying, it's not just saying, yeah, I was abused as a child, right?

and then leaving it there. You can jump to the positive side and say, here's what I learned from it. Or you can say, I was abused as a child and I was really fucking angry for a long time. Like, it took me forever to get out of this whole. 2015 happened.

We had our biggest year. We did almost a million dollars in business. Three months after that, I had to close my doors. Why did that happen? Well, because I relied solely on referrals. I didn't know anything about marketing. So we didn't market at all, which was completely my fault, right?

We had a ton of money in the bank that we should have been spending on getting new customers, but we were just like, oh, it'll be fine, right? Like, work just keeps coming in, and it's been coming in for, you know, years. Like, we grew through, you know, the recession. Like, everything, it just always, it always was so it always will be. And that was a really ignorant way of looking at the situation. and then guess what happened after that? After I had to let go those 22 people, I went into, I don't know if this is an accurate term,

but I went into what I would call a functioning depression where I just was like on autopilot because I was so upset about and in grief about the situation. And so all of that just kind of compounded to the point where like I just was fucking lost. Like, I didn't know what to do. I wake up every day. I actually spent a year and a half literally going to my office and watching YouTube videos. That was it. What kind of videos?

I was watching a lot of political videos and getting really pissed off about stuff. And I was watching, I mean, I was watching marketing videos. I was trying to learn how to, like, become a marketer. And yeah, and what actually kind of turned the whole thing around. was prior to everything falling apart, a friend of mine gave me a book called Story Wars by Jonas Sacks. And I read that book and started becoming fascinated by storytelling. And then I read a ton of other books on storytelling. I've read probably over 50 at this stage. And then in those books, they were talking about neuroscience. And I was like, oh, wait, there's some science behind all

the story stuff. So then I read all these papers on storytelling and neuroscience. Like what happens when the brain starts interacting with the story and learning about like the fact that we create simulations in our head. You know. Yes, it helps you prepare for the outcome. Yes. Yeah. So, yeah, that's one of the things I talk about like the first chapter of the book is all

about neuroscience. And then I talk about other things like bias and whatnot. How does memory work? Things like that. Fuck, yeah. That's the shit we'll uncover. So the, but yeah, so essentially what you just said is what I said in the book is that you create a, like you watch a movie, your mind starts creating the simulation and it starts asking the question, what would I do if I was in that position, right? And then you start to zone out and you start to lose time when you're reading a book or when you go see a movie or whatever. Like, you know, if the story is good, if you're connected with it, right? Like if the story sucks and you're just like, I'm not engaged, right?

Like, that's not going to happen. But you've seen movies, and we all have, where you get into that story and two hours flies by and you're like, man, has it been two hours already? You know, like, that's because you were in simulation mode, right? Like you were sitting there identifying with that character and putting yourself in those different positions over and over and over again. So that is one of those. Then you can relate that simulation mode to autopilot when you,

leave for work because you know that route very well that your brain just shuts off and then you ask yourself, how the fuck did I just get to work after 20 minutes driving? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, the brain loves patterns. And so once it picks up on a repeating pattern, it locks in. And then, yeah, like, you're like, I need to go here and I turn left here. I do this thing or whatever. And every now and again, you can be in that mode and then thinking about something else and be like, oh shit, I missed my turn. Well, it's because even though you had that pattern, like you were, something else was on your mind

and your brain was like, oh, wait, I need, oh, okay. Get back over there. So, yeah, I mean, did I? No, you're cool. I'm going to ask you another question because we're here. That idea, having something on your mind during autopilot, is that affecting us in the storytelling process when we represent ourselves or our brand? I like your questions because these are not the questions I've been getting from other people.

Well, so let me frame it a different way. You know, like I mentioned before, like you can have too many villains in your plot, right? Well, you can try to sell too many ideas in your story, and that can get you distracted because your story is not focused. And so you'll see a brand that's like they come out with a product that doesn't seem like it fits at all with what they're doing. You know, like actually Apple had this problem way back when, right? Like they made the Apple computer.

And then all of a sudden they were like making printers and facts, machines, right? And they were making all, like, and, and the story is like Steve Jobs had to come in and cut like, I don't know, 100 plus products or 300 plus products out of Apple's product line, because he was like, you're not focused on what you're doing. This is what we do. We make the world's best computer. That's it. Like all this other shit is related, but it's not specific to where Apple should be going. And I think that again ties back to your vision, right? Like you can get kind of divergent thoughts and things and then go go off from where you where you want to be and having a having a strong vision of here's where we want to end up in the future helps kind of cut cut out

all those additional things and also helps remove shiny object syndrome yes so I think part of part of your question I think part of what you're what you're talking about is kind of like when a company is doing something but then they get shiny object syndrome and now they got this other thing on their mind that doesn't have anything to do with what they're actually trying to do. You know, it's like, and so it makes the story muddy and confusing. And then it creates confusion within the organization as well. And that's why a lot of brands have to be very careful when they have like a main product and they're trying to create a secondary product because that can, it can water down the brand

to the point where it's just like, well, we do everything now. You know, and it's like, no. It's like in and out, right? Like they have like five things on the fucking menu. And, and you know what? Like, then you look at like Burger King and every month they got a new chicken french fries and, you know, this thing and that thing and whatnot. And in and out is fucking killing it.

And every state I've been to, they have cars wrapped around that place. like night and day. And it's because they have a very specific story. We have a burger. You can get one patty or two patties. You can't even get fucking bacon on that burger. Like, you know, we have French fries. You can get cheese and sauce put on those French fries and that's it.

We got drinks and shakes. And you know what? That's great because the customer can go there and go, I know what I'm getting. I have very few options. I don't have to make a ton of decisions. I don't have to burn a ton of calories figuring the shit out. And then go. And then I order and I'm and and then guess what?

The production side is like we don't have to make 50,000 different things over here. We don't have to have all these different things going on so that we can make sure that, you know, that one random customer that wants the Doritos flavored chicken fries, you know, like has them. And so then everything stays focused on on the production side. Everything stays focused on the customer side. So, yeah. Pause. Yeah. That, I, was you just.

said, so I learned this for one of my guests. It's called the experience design. With that, every customer that goes to in and out knows what to expect every time they go there to get a burger. That's what I want to put together and articulate for my show. So when they listen to your transformation station, they know to expect Greg with his witty humor, fucking deep, complex,

M-death questions, and he cusses like a fucking sailor. That's what I want them to know that they're going to expect. And then they're going to get information that every other company isn't thinking about when really it's just me being hyper-focused and aware of what everybody's doing

and asking things from a different lens, a different angle. And also to caveat that, Waterburger, fuck yeah. Yeah, the people in Texas, fucking love Waterburger. Yeah. Let's,

yeah, Chick-fil-A and Waterburger are like national treasures in Texas. Outside of barbecue, it's like, those are the, those are the spots. I mean,

in and out here, and they do, they do fairly well here as well, but, like, if you ask Texans, they're like, uh,

water burger. That's where I'd get a burger. So, right, yeah. Okay. So, with my brand, how can I make it, how can I turn that into a story when they just see YTS?

Yeah. So it's kind of the same idea. With the brand story, you don't have to necessarily say, here's what I've learned. That's really important to a personal story. It's less important to a brand story. A brand story is really about establishing yourself as the mentor and then defining what type of mentor you are, right? Like, I would say that, um, you know, there's, there's all, you know, there's the muse, the, the, the, um, the leader, the magician, the, um, the rebel, right? Like, the trickster. I had no, no clue what you're telling me. Are these, um, these are like ideas of, of, so, so these are archetypes of types of personalities. Got it. Yes, I'm back. All right. Yeah. So, so your, your, your, your brain.

brand should have an archetype, right? Like you see so many companies that have no archetype. They just talk in corporate speak and it's just real bland and boring and it's all the same, right? So there's no personality to the brand. Well, I think of brands as being very much like people, right? Like you have experiences with people. They talk a certain way. They act a certain way.

They dress a certain way, right? The dressing a certain way is sort of their design, right? How do you put it for mine? How do they, can they just look at it and laugh? Like, that is fucking for Vaza. Well, you, like, as the mentor, need to decide what your archetype is, right? Once you pick that, then you can say, okay, well, if I'm this type of archetype, then I need to have these types of interactions with my customers.

I need to, and those end, and then create those types of experiences. So, for instance, there's, I'll give you a really good example that I just ran across recently that I thought was like amazing. So there is a heavy metal water brand. The brand is called Liquid Death, right? And their tagline is something like kill thirst, right? And everything that they do is consistent with this heavy metal theme of like from their packaging.

And all it is is water. Like it's not special, but the brand has a personality. And that personality is what draws people in. Like people who are into metal and hard rock and stuff like that, they're going to be like, yeah, I resonate with that. Like, I love that. You know, it's a black can. It's got so understanding that archetype then also helps you understand how you communicate, right?

Because now you're, if you think about it like a person and you're a heavy metal person, well, a heavy metal person talks in a certain way, right? They, because that's, that's who they are. Right. And so, so for you, you need to understand what your, what your brand are. archetype is. Like, I put like 10 or 12 in the book, like so you can go through and go, oh, this, I think this fits me. And then, and then from there, you can build the story out and talk kind of like, like that person would talk or how you see that person talking. And, you know,

the reason they're archetypes is because there's overlap with, with everybody. But there are different personalities. And so it's a matter of aligning those two things together so that, so that there's consistency and clarity and communication. So problems with that right there. What if I feel like I can't choose the archetype because I feel like I embody all of them at once? And then there's a part of me if I come to a decision and I have to settle because I feel like I resonate something like the revel, I guess. We'll just choose that as an example. And then I'm doing a half-ass job because now I feel like I have to live up to that description because I'm very adaptive individual.

If there's something I'm going to say I'm going to do, I'm going to put 120% into it. And then now I feel like I'm off the type of person that I'm not. Like with you in your past relationship, being that type. What I feel like is I feel like the people who experience me should label me as that. Like if you're on a team, a squad, we come up with nicknames with individuals because that's what Let me see. I feel like that's how it should be. You can always change, right?

Like these aren't, I mean, do you want to have consistency with your brand? Yes. Fuck yes. Right? Like every relationship you have, you want to show up as the same person, whether you have a different relationship with one person or another person. You're still you, right? Oh, no.

You're a better version of yourself every time. So I would say picking an archetypal. is a starting point for you to figure it out, right? Like, you can go into basically almost like sub archetypes, right? Like where you can be like, well, I'm a rebel, but I'm more like a Loki type of rebel than I am a James Dean type of rebel. You know what I mean? Like they're both rebels, but they're different from one another, right? Like one is creating chaos and provocation.

The others is a rebel because he doesn't follow the rules, right? And so, but in the Loki archetype, there is also that aspect of not following the rules. So do you see what I'm saying? Like, you kind of got to, you pick a starting point and then you can dig deeper into it and then start to define that a little bit better as you go along. But I don't want you to see it as putting yourself in a box as much as just having a starting place to work from. I'm not perfect. There's no degree for storyteller, right? Like this is all, I had to do self-study and whatnot.

And so there's areas, like I said, there's definitely gaps in my understanding and areas that I need to fill in more over time. But in general, you know, it's working. That is what I want to address with organizations because they all think that there's, but they don't want to say it because if they say it, then it reflects. there's no confidence. There's no, there's no, like, I have to believe this guy runs a billion dollar corporation when he says that. Well, I would actually be fucking on it.

Like, thank you. Because I knew it this whole time, but the fact that you told me, now I can settle at ease because if he's aware of it, then he's obviously working on it. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah. And I mean, it's, that's the funny thing about this whole thing is like, it's so much easier to be honest and to be yourself because it takes a lot of work to be somebody else and to to cover up your mistakes in your lives takes 10 times the amount of work to to live that life um and so yeah I just find it easier to be like I don't know about that or this is who I am I you know like you I fucking

like to swear but yes um I used to apologize for that and um and now I don't and you know when I wrote my book I was like, you know what, fuck this. I'm going to write this book like me and not like this prim proper, perfect business person who's never made any mistakes and has all the wisdom in the world. It's like, no, I know a lot of shit and I'm always getting better, but I don't know everything. So. Yes, that's, that's good. That's, that's embracing your vulnerabilities. That's what I, that's what I see from, if you look at like a marketing website, it just looks, it just screams spam. It just screams fraud. right when you look at it.

Like, I'm getting the fuck out of here. Like, there's too much shit popping up saying 15% off, 50% off. Join now for our free course. Yeah. Well, yeah, I think it's, it's, I mean, they're using psychological tactics to manipulate people. And I don't, I don't really like that. But I cover a lot more of the neuroscience.

I cover more of, like, a lot of different things. And I think you'll find it interesting. But also, like, I give away a ton of shit in the book. Like, you know, here's, here's a simple way to write a good story, you know, and here's the stuff I learned. I didn't come up with all this shit on my own. I'm standing on the shoulders of giants.

Like, you know, this is what I learned through my study. And here's the people who actually did this shit. And I'm basically parroting what they said because they, you know, are like did all this other work. So I'm building on top of that, but I'm not not perfect at all. Sure. with your book, what is your intention behind releasing it? I just want to educate more people about storytelling,

because everybody tells stories, but they don't think about it, like they don't think about breathing, they just do it. And so if you can understand that you do this thing and then become better at it, right? Then you become a more effective communicator. Then you can connect with people on a deeper level

and build relationships and do all kinds of shit that companies, just don't do very well with their customers. What about when you market it, when you put it for sale? What is that price? Because this is what I really look at. And this was brought to my attention from a very powerful influencer who raised this assertion here. And what if I sell it for $10?

Because I think that's fair because I want people to know this. And I want them to get it at a good price because I know money is hard, especially during COVID. But nobody reads it. Or they only start it and don't finish it. And then if I wait from one side and I look at the other side, okay, what if I put it for $100? Would people buy it? Well, if they bought it, they sure as hell read the fucking thing.

Yeah. Yeah. So right now for the pre-order for Kindle, it's 99 cents. And when it goes on sale, which is October 15th, so you can get the paperback or the hardcover. It's $7.99 for the Kindle and for the other one. And it's $14.99 for the hardcover because just the cost of the hard cover. So I try to make it affordable, but and something that's like, oh, yeah, I'd read that for a few dollars, right?

But I wasn't too worried about like making money off the book. I was more concerned about like, how could I get this book in more people's hands? and so that's why I went with a lower price point. Well, so no, no, that's what I thought too. Okay. But the fact is, do I want to have an impact on everybody? Or do I want to look at the income? Because I feel like our perception is skewed.

Because if we have it at a lower price, okay, a lot of people buy it. Everyone buys it. Say a million people buy it. But did anybody read it? Versus the people who spent a hundred. 100 bucks actually read it and they're applying it and doing something about it. I see what you're saying. So they value it at a higher degree because they paid more for it.

Yes. Yeah. That's what I'm now coming to terms with on how I should sell something because I feel like if I look at my podcast, oh, it's free. Is it worth anything now? Yeah. I mean, I'm, so the way that I look at that is, can I sell it at this price? Does anybody want to buy it? Right. And there's nothing that says I can't raise the prices. I mean, at any point in time, you can go into Amazon and click a button and raise the price $10. So if you want to, Amazon doesn't say, oh, well, you set it at this price. That's what we have to sell it at. So, you know, like in our own, uh, Like in my business, like we started selling services very inexpensive because we were like, well, does anybody want this storytelling thing?

And then we've slowly been kind of raising the prices because we're going, oh, they're getting value out of it. And what we're finding is that the clients who are willing to pay more money also tend to be better clients. Yes. Well, because they, I feel like with if we're establishing our brand and saying that it's worth this amount, I feel like we have to double it for somebody to actually look at it and say, that is crazy. For a fucking storytelling book, you want to charge $1,000? I'll tell you what, the people that are buying it are applying it and changing their business. Yeah, so I hadn't really thought about it with the book.

I think that's a good question and an interesting thing to think about. You've been listening to your transformation station, your voice on the hard truths of leadership. We hope you've enjoyed the show. We hope you've gotten some useful and practical information. Make sure to like, rate, and review the show. Remember, your transformation station is on all major platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok, and YouTube at YTS, the podcast. and visit the website at YTSThepodcast.com. Till next time.

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