Ep. 118 - Build Through Meetings, Not Just Marketing

Tired of “storytelling” as a buzzword? We dig into the gritty, practical side of it: stories that earn meetings, align teams, and drive revenue. We start with the culture shift from storyteller-as-exaggerator to storyteller-as-operator, then map a simple rule: content only matters if it gets you in the room. From there, we unpack how to turn posts, talks, and seminars into face-to-face time where tone, body language, and real dialogue build trust and close gaps fast.

Inside the company, distraction is the enemy. Notifications, meetings, and feeds shred attention, so leaders have to repeat the vision long after they’re tired of hearing it. We share tactics to make the message stick: paint the personal benefit, get in the weeds with front-line teams, and run career-development lunches that surface obstacles and tools people actually need. Keep score the simple way, one page of visible metrics, open to all, so everyone can see progress and correct course together.

We also challenge a dangerous myth: prior wins and fresh cash won’t save a weak model. Bailouts train bad habits. If you want speed and flexibility, consider service businesses amplified by AI and lightweight automation; they launch fast, cash flow sooner, and pivot cleanly. As the holidays approach, use the quiet time to sharpen your deck, clarify pricing, line up examples, and book meetings that hit hard in January. The compass is clarity: tell a story that gets you in the room, then keep telling it until your team can tell it for you.

If this resonates, follow the show, share it with a founder who needs a reset, and leave a quick review so more small-business builders can find us.

Subscribe and tune in for new episodes of Big Talk About Small Business with Mark Zweig and Eric Howerton. Each week we focus on practical insights and real-world strategies to grow your business!

Stay Connected: 
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bigtalk.pod/ 
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61564547079280
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/big-talk-about-small-business
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@bigtalkpod
https://www.bigtalkaboutsmallbusiness.com/

Transcript

From “Storyteller” Insult To Industry Buzzword

SPEAKER_02 0:00

In the past, if we said that about somebody, it was a negative thing. It had a bad connotation. Oh, really? Meant they were liars. Oh, okay, gotcha. They were exaggerators. Oh, that guy's a big storyteller. Okay, that's that was the expression. Now it's changed. Now it's a positive. Now we've got seminars on it. Now we've got consultants that teach you how to storytell. Now we've got webinars on storytelling. Oh man, this is gonna be a fun day today. It is, man. Isn't it? We're back in the studio. It's day before Thanksgiving. Yep. Day before a giant food orgy, my daughter's house. I'm bringing the honey baked ham. That's all I know. I don't really like turkey that much. It's disgusting. Yeah. We had to take uh my mother-in-law's turkey over there yesterday to Anna to spatchcock it. Do you know what that is? I know that sounds profane. Sorry, folks, but it is a disgusting process where you remove the spine of the turkey and flatten it out like a pancake. Wow. And then you cook it and it comes out better. It's called what? Spatchcock. You spatchcock it. Yep. And you just flatten it out. You just flatten that thing like a pancake. What is it? Does it like break all the bones and stuff in it or something? Yeah, you just cut that out and then you just flatten it down and it cooks more consistently if it doesn't. Really? That's interesting. Yeah. So we had to take my mother-in-law's turkey there because neither my wife nor her wanted to spat to spatcock it. And then she has the spatchcock, the one we're all having for um Thanksgiving tomorrow. Yeah. I think that's really actually a good name for a business. Spatchcock. Well, it's like cut out the backbone and flatten it out. It's kind of like a caught a turnaround company.

unknown 1:51

Right.

Thanksgiving Banter And The Spatchcock Metaphor

SPEAKER_02 1:52

Go in there, you gut the thing, gut it out, cut out all the unnecessary overhead. Even even it out. Yeah, flatten the organization structure, right? Get rid of the intermediate managers we don't need anymore. That's right. More doers, less managers. And it becomes more juicy. We should, man, I'll tell you, we're on to something. We are. Spatchcock.com. We could invent a new term, buzzword in business. We're going to talk about a buzzword today in business, by the way. We are storytelling. Storytelling. Storytelling. That's your favorite one. I am if you get on LinkedIn, I swear to you, Eric, and you just put storyteller in search, you will get a list, an unlimited list of profiles of people who are. People that claim to be storytellers. They all claim to be storytellers. Okay. Aren't we all as human beings storytellers? I guess. I mean, some of us, you know, maybe have more stories to tell than others because we've been around the block more than once.

SPEAKER_03 2:54

Fair. You know? But storytelling's kind of, I mean, it's a big deal to the to the human race. I mean, we've been doing it since the dawn of time, right?

SPEAKER_02 3:01

Yeah, before we could write, we told stories. We passed down, we passed down lore over time.

SPEAKER_03 3:08

Yes. Myth, legend, and and lore. Well, that was the first, I mean, the first way we communicated. Yep. You know, I mean, you know, I used to do this, I had a um a presentation I did back in the day uh for like content and stuff like that for Walmart. But I mean, I had this presentation where I did do like a history of communication. And I had like two slides. One was uh how people communicated, and the very first one, according to my research, was the running man, the guy that would run from tribe to tribe to tell the story or news flash this tribe, you know, the whole village just burnt down. Right. Right, you know, or we're all sick. You know, then it moved to um like uh like the um writing letters and things of that nature, and then it kind of just continued to graduate radio, TV, internet, etc. But what was interesting is that advertising I show that how advertising just always follows that communication over time, you know. I guess the first advertisers were like hawkers.

SPEAKER_02 4:12

Yeah, like get your red home, you know, 100% miracle cure right here from Dr. Wonder.

SPEAKER_03 4:21

The snake oil sells it. Yeah. 100%. They would pull up in their carriages, have the sound that they painted. That was the first advertising, wasn't it? Yeah, cure uh, you know, cure cure syphilis. Consumption. That's correct. It's usually just like alcohol, you know, some sort of rum or something. Yeah. Well, you know, um John D. Rockefeller's dad was used to do that. Was he a snake oil sis? He was. I didn't know like very like yeah, according to his to a biography on him, but he was a uh like one of the most prominent ones. Like he was legit, like legit snake oil. Legit snake oil. And John D despised that. Like he didn't really have a good relationship with them. Oh, he wanted to shed that yeah, 100%. Yeah, yeah, he didn't want to talk about it or anything. Yeah, but he'd always appear in his life at random times, of course, especially after he started staying in the wool and started becoming you know the mogul that he was, right? Yeah, he didn't really want to distance himself from it. Hey, dad's back, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:22

Proud of you, son. Oh Lord. Well, thank God neither of us ever had to like overcome our parents doing something bad or dumb, right? Or unethical. Blessed by that, man. Yeah. Blessed by that. You know, you think about there's a lot of people who are in that situation, and it's like, ee. I was just talking to recently about somebody that my wife and I know. And anyway, her husband had some significant legal troubles that almost sent him to the pen and he got out of it. But I mean, what an embarrassment for her and her professional job, you know, to think that she had to go through that and she works in a place that, you know, they just wouldn't want to be soiled or have their reputation sullied.

SPEAKER_03 6:06

Exactly. Well, I mean, you know, business and life is hard enough without these additional things, right? That you have to overcome.

SPEAKER_02 6:14

Don't even tell me. Business, as you've said many times, is nothing but problems. And that's where I'm going through right now with one of my ventures. Yeah, it is just extremely stressful. But I can manage it. And that gives me some stories to tell. Well, now you're a bona fide storyteller.

SPEAKER_03 6:32

Okay. Mark, tell us some stories. What do you want to know about? I mean, you mean you seem to be a self-proclaimed storyteller, so tell a story.

SPEAKER_02 6:43

No, I mean, I I'm not a self-proclaimed storyteller, but I do tell stories. But and it, you know, to me, storyteller, if in the past, if we said that about somebody, it was a negative thing, it had a bad connotation. Oh, really? Meant they were liars. Oh, okay, gotcha. They were exaggerators. Oh, that guy's a big storyteller. Okay, that's that was the expression. Now it's changed. Now it's a positive. Now we've got seminars on it. Now we've got consultants that teach you how to storytell. Now we've got webinars on storytelling. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, positions. Yeah, but it's all the same thing. I mean, it's like put your thoughts out there, right? So you can put them out in a variety of different ways. We can have podcasts, we can have new videos, we can put social media posts out, we can write articles, link to articles. There's all these ways that we can share our experience, right? And put our thoughts down. And then, you know, uh, yes, we can give talks, you know. I was I gave a uh seminar uh speech here last um couple weeks ago at the ULI conference. I guess you could say I was storytelling there. But uh one thing I will say about this topic is that in order to be able to tell stories, you gotta have experience. Yeah, that's fair. Isn't it? Yeah. It's hard to be like a 22-year-old storyteller unless you've had a tremendous amount of work, business, experience by the time you're 22, which is possible. I did, and you probably did too. If you think about the jobs we had, well, no, nobody could have written about that stuff.

SPEAKER_03 8:22

Well, I mean, you know, when I was 22, I was trying to start that magazine, which was nothing but a storytelling book. Endeavor. Right. Yeah. I mean, the whole endeavor was about telling the story of Arkansas Outdoors, you know. And then you have to tell the story when you go to advertisers to try to get some advertising money or storytelling to the contributors, and then obviously to the readers, you know. I mean, so there's some storytelling going on in every nook and cranny of it. I mean, I guess that's true. Like, you know, the the uh not really the position as a storyteller, which you know, you and I both kind of scoff at that a little bit, but the reality that you have to tell stories well.

SPEAKER_02 8:59

That's how you gain credibility and you get trust.

Storytelling’s Role In Work And Credibility

SPEAKER_03 9:02

Yeah, and it's you know, and it's hard, it's definitely harder when you're younger. I mean, I think that there's you know more continuous storytelling. But I mean, I'll I'll be honest with you, like on the flip side of it, I do find myself constantly. I was actually talking to my mom about it a little bit just the other day. They're in town and stuff, and I was like, you know, just the the continuous need for me to kind of to keep telling the same story over and over again about the direction of where we need to go. Oh, so true.

SPEAKER_02 9:32

It I'm your job as the leader, it is it is so hard to keep the case.

SPEAKER_03 9:36

It's so it's so much difficult more difficult in today's time, too, I used to experience.

SPEAKER_02 9:40

And these are even businesses that you've started. What about when you come in and you didn't start it?

SPEAKER_03 9:46

Oh, yeah, and you're trying to change the culture. Oh, yeah. It's it's brutal, man. And I think I think a lot of this is that folks don't have my experience is the team not because of who they are, but because of the inundating amount of information that's coming to them at every nook and cranny of their life, whether it's personal, but through their phones, right? Through all these devices. Oh, yeah. We're just the ability to retain, retain a that a direction is getting more and more difficult. Like if you say, Hey, Eric, I need you to go, you know, go down to this store, get that, and go over there, and then come back, like because I in the in the midst of when you were telling me that right before I was checking my phone, my email, then you told me that, then I left, and I was probably checking my emails and stuff on the phone.

SPEAKER_02 10:34

Yeah, that is so true, isn't it?

SPEAKER_03 10:35

You know, yeah. And so you get you're so distracted. You're so distracted and so overwhelmed. You're mentally overwhelmed. Yeah. I mean, and whether you, you know, whether that's true basically.

SPEAKER_02 10:44

You don't process it. It's kind of like advertising, right? It's like only a very small portion of it do you even process. Exactly. There's so many ads I know that I could tell you what the ad is, but I could not tell you who the company the ad is for. Oh, 100%. You know, it's that's absurd if you think about it.

SPEAKER_03 10:59

It really is. And I and I mean I kind of like I've been experiencing that as you know, you know, social media increases the ability to do video like what we do here. Now you got AI, you got Gen AI and stuff coming in, which is basically all this stuff just and then you got content creators. All this means is that there's more and more and more content that you have the ability to consume or that you're being impressed upon. And so I feel for the team, you know, uh that whenever I you know I'm trying to cast the vision or tell the story of what we're trying to accomplish, right? They might retain it at that moment, but then the next day or like a few hours later, they're already being pulled in different directions because they're just trying to navigate the freaking chaos. Sure. And I I mean I hate it for them. I hate but it what's interesting, I guess, is that as a founder, an entrepreneur, and doctor, it's like I don't really lose it like that, though. Yeah, no, I get it. You just expect that you have to do that. Yeah, well is that what you're saying? Well, I mean, like I don't lose your I don't lose the vision of it.

SPEAKER_02 12:05

Right. No, you don't lose the vision at all because you've been thinking about it for a long time, you're preoccupied with it, you're refining it, refining it, refining it. Telling it over and over. I get that. But you also expect that you have to repeat relentlessly.

SPEAKER_03 12:21

Yeah, and I think I need to I need to lift my expectation. Like here's here's my problem as the entrepreneur on this, or the business owner, whatever. The problem comes in when I start getting frustrated or disappointed or discouraged. You know, because I mean, let's be honest, like as an entrepreneur or business owner, I am paying people to work at this job. Sure. I need them to stay focused to produce so that we can continue to grow the company and so we all get paid more. The problem is that they don't retain the story or the direction. Right. They forget the why. They forget the why, yeah, and then they get confused, and then that confusion or their their lack of clarity causes a ripple effect of not doing things that are moving the company forward. And see, they're flatlining. Very rarely does it like down degrade the business, yeah, but it doesn't progress and grow. Yeah, no, I get it. It's so like we what might should take an hour to accomplish something ends up taking four hours because I've had to re-explain it. Or 16 hours because people did the wrong thing first. And I get so incredibly frustrated by that. And my frustration then turns into a little bit of my own discouragement. I feel you know, I just feel like I'm running in mud.

SPEAKER_02 13:44

But you have to expect that. I do well that's the thing. If you if you realize that's normal, yeah maybe then you don't get discouraged as easily, right?

SPEAKER_03 13:53

That's right. It's that and then I also think that to put to prioritize how do I become better in the face of all the distractions and the noise, become better and more consistent about articulating where the direction is. Like there's a magic to that that I haven't I haven't really figured out. Or if I figured out, I don't prioritize it myself.

Distraction, Retention, And Repeating The Vision

SPEAKER_02 14:16

It's just a can it's a continuous refine, it's an iterative process. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. You're constantly refining the message and trying to get it across to people different ways. I think. Um, and you know, some would say, well, there's got to be a you've got to communicate the benefit to the other person of buying into that vision. Okay. And maybe that's that maybe that's where we fail as leaders. You know, that people don't realize what that means. Maybe we can say over and over and over, this is where we're going, this is how we're gonna get there. Okay, this is why we're doing it. But maybe it needs to go farther in terms of paint the picture of what will life be like for you if we do this. Okay. Maybe that's where we fail. Is we've got to tell that we've got to take that story even a step farther. You know, and your story you're talking about is is is casting the vision. Uh, you know, how do we get that across? Well, there's a lot of different ways. Certainly, one of the ways is we share our experience of how we've accomplished uh visions before, right? Yeah, that's true. That builds a little credibility with people. It does. It does. But it's got to be more than that, too.

SPEAKER_03 15:34

It does because it's not just that. Like I think that to expect that you've built a business and you've had some success, and then you're gonna turn around to it again, as you and I both very well know. It's not any freaking easier, man. Dude, I was thinking that today.

SPEAKER_02 15:48

I was stopped at the car wash on the way over here. It's kind of like a shower, you know. I do my best thinking in the car wash.

SPEAKER_04 15:56

Do you?

SPEAKER_02 15:57

Yeah. I can see when I'm out there vacuuming, you know, with cleaning and wiping stuff down.

SPEAKER_03 16:03

Yeah. You like that?

SPEAKER_02 16:04

I do. I like a clean car. And I'll tell you, it's a lot easier when you got a small car than when you're driving a monster truck. Dude, the truck I have has a lot of real estate. Oh my god, that does. We got a new four-wheel drive recently. I don't know if I told you, but it's not as big as yours, but my God, it's black. Everything on it is black. Yeah. So you can see. It's freaking enormous. You gotta climb up on top of the damn thing. Like, God, it takes like four times the effort to clean. Yeah. But anyway, I was out there vacuuming and and it, you know, and I got this sort of epiphany today that even though I've known this all along, success in one business does not guarantee your success in another or the next venture.

SPEAKER_03 16:47

Not even close. Even if you have money. It just doesn't. Money doesn't solve it. Your previous success doesn't solve it. It doesn't. It's the same data ground all the time.

SPEAKER_02 16:58

It's in fact, sometimes it's even harder than the first one.

SPEAKER_03 17:01

Yes. Yeah, there's some aspects to that. You know, I feel like that I um, yeah, it's it's interesting. I think like my experience has been like I feel like that there's it's like there's more elasticity to the um, you know, to you know, to the to the funds in a way, right? Yeah, like yeah, you know what I'm saying? It'll be okay.

SPEAKER_02 17:25

It's kind of like uh Yeah, you can kind of put things off because you just inject another 300 grand into it. Yeah. I mean, I that's where I am this morning. Okay. It's like three 350, 350, 350. No, it yeah, so you kind of keep stalling things out to solve the real problem.

SPEAKER_03 17:47

Well, you know, and like you mentioned before in one of the companies like, oh, it's okay, the um you know the investors will take care of this. Oh, yeah, that's my biggest concern. But I mean it's that it's that type of attitude, right? And and it's and it's just self-destructing for people to think that way. It is, it is so self-destruct.

SPEAKER_02 18:04

Too many rescues of the business. It it it it really it's bad habits. It's like it's like your kids. It's just it's the same, it's like you wreck your car. Okay, it's okay, don't worry. As long as you're safe. Yeah, you know, I'll buy you a new one.

SPEAKER_03 18:18

Okay. It's like, hell no. Like you should be like, dude, you're screwed. I don't know how you're gonna get a new car. Exactly. You're screwed. This is exactly way to go, stupid.

SPEAKER_02 18:28

It is the same thing when you keep bailing out the business over and over and over, that that business, because you now have the resources that you didn't have the first time around. Yeah. But I mean, and the other thing is just some of these businesses. I mean, I'm sorry, but uh if you want to make money in business and you don't want to go broke and you want to um do things that take the least amount of capital, you got to be doing service business. 100%. I mean, it's just they're so much easier to start, they're so much easier to get positive cash flow, they're so much easier to shut down if you had to. 100%. I mean, it just you don't acquire the overhead that is that going concern overhead that you cannot get out of by pulling the plug. 100%. Yeah, you know, 100%.

SPEAKER_03 19:16

I mean, always get try to get people to to realize that it's such an incredible opportunity right now in service business because you can actually leverage AI and the tech that have the billions being poured into it, use it to your advantage, go fix a very niche problem. Exactly, and build your services around the little bit of that automation, and you'll just smoke everybody that's been out there in the business.

SPEAKER_02 19:40

And thanks to the internet, you can have a solve a niche problem and be discovered. Boom. Because 25, 30 years ago, you might be a niche provider, problem solver, and people didn't even know you existed. It just made that model a lot harder than it is now.

SPEAKER_03 19:57

But you know, I think on the like the the the Story, what I've also still been experiencing is it still requires this face-to-face meeting with clients, having a deck that you can show them to visualize and articulate what you're talking about. You need examples, you need portfolio, you need reference, you need pricing structures, all these things. And you still need to have that face-to-face correspondence with them because I mean that that has not ended. That's actually, I feel like, is just as much or more important than it's ever been. I mean, it's it's it's crazy. Yeah. Because again, I think the same principle we were talking about earlier about the team being distracted, the customer's distracted. Yes. Amen. Right? And so if you're a attention.

SPEAKER_02 20:44

Yeah, I can't get an email from you. Yeah, it's but if you sit down face to face with them, they're not looking at their phone, hopefully. That's right. Yeah. And if they are, I usually kind of just a really good point. Yeah, I'll just stop and wait a little bit, you know. Uh well, I just wrote an article on that recently on this whole idea that I mean, it is a problem in our culture that, you know, and I I don't want to generalize about young people because old people are the same way. People avoid face-to-face. Yeah, they just want to email and send texts, yeah. Never call anybody and never go see them. Okay. Call is like a last resort and then physically go see them is really not going to happen. But it's essential to get your story across and to have trust and credibility and memorability. You know, I think that's a really good point. You can't do it all with these other media. Dude, I I the purpose of that is to set you up to have that face to face.

Success Doesn’t Transfer And Money Can Mislead

SPEAKER_03 21:41

100%. Isn't it? Yeah, I mean, uh, like getting the meeting, like we have in our company, like one of our big metrics is how many meetings have you had? Like, to me, that's the minute metric on sales. Oh, in sales, it's always been the case. When Parker's running around here, and you know, like, I'm like, how's it going? Man, I've had I've had 20 meetings this week. He's been doing that lately. Right. 20 meetings a week over.

SPEAKER_02 22:02

Good shit comes out of the dude.

SPEAKER_03 22:04

I'm like, I hate it. I love it. I love it. Keep going. You're doing good. If you have that many freaking meetings, it's so true. Shit's gotta happen. It is. But if you're like, oh, I reached out to a hundred people this week. Yeah, no, I've got a hundred sales. Yeah, I'm like, that's still soft. Uh, you know. You're so right about that. But you get meetings, baby. Now we're talking.

SPEAKER_02 22:23

Now we can tell stories. Yes. Okay. That people may actually remember.

SPEAKER_03 22:28

That's probably it. And get through. That's probably it's probably that's probably why it's so important, right? Is that because you I know that you've had a specific amount of time, whether it's 30 minutes, 45, to tell the story in a way that is going to be received by the customer. Right. And they can have dialogue back. Yeah. But their face-to-face meetings is so it's like the it the epitome of sales.

SPEAKER_02 22:52

And you see the other feedback too. Yeah, I mean, that with the body language, the facial expressions.

SPEAKER_03 22:58

They're I learned a long time ago. I was a young entrepreneur, and I went to this, uh just happened to be at like this convention or something. This guy was talking about communication, and he was like, you know, uh, there's you know, most people think it's the verbal what you say. Yeah, and it's a stuff. No, it's like 10%. Yeah, exactly. 40% is their body language and 40% is their tone of voice. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:22

No, you're right. I've seen I saw something like that recently myself.

SPEAKER_03 23:25

Yeah. That's so true. It's so when you have a face-to-face, you get the both of those 40s. If you're on the web meeting, it's you know, it's it's a little bit harder.

SPEAKER_02 23:35

You know, you know, that is so true. I mean, if you think about like when I was building um the company that's why group today, now I didn't I didn't make any sales calls on anybody, but I gave a whole lot of talks. Okay, because that's another way I was. I was doing anywhere between probably 25 and 50 talks and seminars a year. I mean, I remember sitting 25 to 50. Wow. I remember it there were weeks that I did more than that. Okay. There were weeks I went to four locations in a single week. I would do a seminar, I'd fly that night somewhere else. I'd do a seminar, I'd fly that night somewhere else. Can you believe that? That's that's that's heavy hidden right there. It is. I'd leave on Monday, Tuesday, I'd do one Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. But getting in front of the people is is so painful. How did you get those gigs? How did you do that? Well, if you were talking, I mean, there were two different ways. There were two things. One were seminars we put on.

unknown 24:35

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 24:36

Okay, you know how we got that. We sent out a ton of direct mail. Okay. Inundate them, baby. Later on, it was email. Okay, but that's how we did it. But the other one was how did I get the talks from the the um professional societies and trade groups and and people like that? Um was by putting out so much content that wasn't what everybody else was saying that they called me. Okay. Did you not have any solicitation towards them at all? No. I never did any solicitation. I never said I'm available as a speaker or provided done. Really? No. And the other thing I did is I never I didn't do it for free. I charged. Okay. And so, you know, again, that that you're gonna have people. It's always been mysterious to me how you were able to do that. It's not an easy thing to do, dude. You just put it out there and they figure, oh, if this guy's gonna do that, he must be. So how did you put it out there?

SPEAKER_03 25:34

You in the Zwag letter?

SPEAKER_02 25:36

No, they when they contact you.

SPEAKER_03 25:38

No, but I mean like your original content.

SPEAKER_02 25:40

You're saying you're not gonna be like, Oh, yeah, the content, sure. It was the Zwag letter originally. That was the entire content vehicle.

SPEAKER_03 25:45

And so you just write this letter and you direct mail it to people. That's correct. We just constantly get new lists, mail it to them, add them to it. Absolutely. Just keep sending it.

Why Services + AI Beat Capital-Heavy Plays

SPEAKER_02 25:53

Yeah. I mean, I started with 250 people on my Rolodex. By the time I got done, I had, you know, we had like 200,000 people in our in our database. Yeah, but you haven't missed a week of writing it. No. Still today? No, still do it. But it's it's telling the stories, though. Okay. That's what you're doing. I'm just telling stories and you're a storyteller. Oh shit. Once upon a time, there was no, I but but it, yeah, that that does work. But you're but I think you brought up something that is so important today. So all these other things that we do, all this content we put out, the real purpose of it is to get in front of somebody. That's right. Whether that's one person or a hundred, whatever. Get in front of people. Well, if I get in front of a hundred, then the goal is to get in front of several ones.

SPEAKER_03 26:47

Yeah, right. Right, exactly. Like I still got to go down to one. That's right. You're going to yes, because you're up speaking in front of a hundred people. 10 come up and talk to you. Meeting set, meeting set. All about the gosh dang meaning.

SPEAKER_02 27:01

I have not seen that articulated in any of the bullshit that I see on LinkedIn about storytelling yet. The purpose is to get in front of people.

SPEAKER_03 27:11

So you can really tell your story. Yeah. Yep. That's really good. That's that's encouraging me. This is why I like doing this show because it refocuses me. That's and it kind of goes back to like the whole thing that we were talking about earlier, too, about with the team as well. You know, but I mean, but but to sit more meetings, just more meetings.

SPEAKER_02 27:32

Yeah, yeah, it's it's true. And and you know, when you start talking about the team, I think where a lot of people fail, honestly, where where some of the biggest failures um are in getting that vision across of what you're trying to accomplish. It's because the top management doesn't get down in the weeds enough with the lowest level people in the company to work side by side with them and share the vision and and have it be received properly by them because they know you're okay. Okay. You're you're a worker too. You're not you're not evil, you're not just trying to exploit me. You're you're you're in this just like me. Yeah, I mean, I'm 100%. I mean, I I I always think that's so important in any of these situations. I used to practice that a lot at White Spider. Yeah, I believe you did. I mean, you do it here. I mean, you talked everybody. Well, I'd well you bring everybody into it.

SPEAKER_03 28:33

I don't have a one-on-one like I used to, like White Spider. I mean, I've kind of lost the grip of that. Yeah, well, you're busy here, probably. But I know, but that's but that's I know that's not an excuse. No, you're right. I should have I need to go have one-on-one coffees with with my team, everybody on the team. All you know, just constantly doing that. You know what I'm saying? Like it's just a habit. Because I've here's my thing about it. I always I get a lot out of it. Like anytime I ever have that, I just feel I feel closer to the company. I'm sure that they do. You know, I also understand their ambitions and their goals in life, and so that helps me to align them better if I see things. Like I got there's some ideas I'm working on in the company, new positions, new roles that I'm about to maybe put some investment behind. And I may not know that this person over here is actually really perfect for that. I'd much rather hire somebody that I know. Oh, God, yes. Right? Always try to promote from within. 100%. And I mean, it's always worked out better for me.

SPEAKER_02 29:35

Yeah, oh, I always worked with you, 100%.

SPEAKER_03 29:38

And so I'm missing that shit if I'm not if I don't know who the hell these people are in a deeper way.

Face-To-Face Selling And Reading The Room

SPEAKER_02 29:43

Yeah, well, that's why I used to do if if you go all the way back to my my 80s uh career, I used to have what I call career development lunches with three or four people a week in the company. And I would interview them individually over lunch and take good notes. Really? Like, tell me about yourself. Why, why'd you come to work here? Okay, what do you see, where do you see yourself in five, three years, five years? What are the obstacles to accomplishing that here from your perception? What is it you think we could do better? What tools would help you do your job better? That is legit. Okay, and I would take all those notes and I would boil them all down and I would take all those and put them in one document, send them all to the CEO, the executive vice president, the the um CFO. You're talking about to your clients? No, no, I'm talking about in the company I worked in, which was a multi-hundred person company. Wow. Okay, and then we would sit down once a week and go, what are we gonna do with this feedback? And it is so powerful. Was that your job? That was part of my job. Yeah, it was part of my. Were you in HR? I was in charge of HR and marketing. I always started in HR and then within months I ended up being in charge of marketing every time. Really? Yeah, because back in those days, it was like, oh, you can sell, you should be doing marketing too. You know, the marketing heads back in those days were people who could sell. Now, what does HR have to do with selling, though? Selling people on going to work there, selling people on staying there. It's all selling. What do you mean? What does it have to do with it? It's not the way it's treated today. It's like you're a pariah, okay? All you do is tell management they can't do what they want to do. Get the hell out of here, okay? That's what HR, that's where everybody hates HR people for that reason in management. Yeah, yeah. But back then, you know, I mean, to me, I I saw it as like my job is to get the best people in this place, okay? And have them and keep them and keep them engaged. You got it. It's all about that. Okay, and then they're like, ah, this guy's pretty good at that. So maybe we should make him in charge of marketing too.

SPEAKER_04 31:55

He's serious.

SPEAKER_02 31:56

That's serious.

SPEAKER_00 32:01

Ready to level up your show? At podcastvideos.com, we offer industry-leading recording and expert marketing to help your show reach more listeners. From creation to distribution, we've got you covered. Visit podcastvideos.com and elevate your podcast today.

SPEAKER_02 32:16

That is such a powerful lunch, though. I mean, it is. If you look at my HR book I wrote in 90 or 91, published by Wiley, the whole process is detailed in there. And even like example notes that were blinded are in there on this on this process.

SPEAKER_03 32:31

What's the great book?

SPEAKER_02 32:33

Human Resources for the Design Profession. Okay. It's called no Human Resources Management, the complete guidebook for the design profession. You can probably get one for like two bucks. It's like 72 million, ranked on Amazon. It's out of print now, but seriously. I always love those rankings. It's like I look at my book sometime. I'm like, oh great. You know? Shit, I'm only like I'm like the 2,500,000th most popular book on Amazon today. That's fantastic. The other day I looked, I was like 200,000. I'm like, holy cow, we've really moved it up. I'm 200,000. But but no, it's all laid out in there. But but you know, this all weaves together. This this thing that we're talking about.

SPEAKER_03 33:27

And well, even when you were talking about your meetings, like it's a one-on-one. Yes. And you're the recipient of their story.

SPEAKER_02 33:34

And I'm sitting there writing down, man. I'm taking notes furiously, looking for direct quotes. The reason I like quotes is that then helps me communicate what they're saying to management in an unfiltered way.

SPEAKER_03 33:48

You know, Mark, as we're sitting here talking about this, it gives me this um, I feel this big uh yellow or red flag, right? Okay. To all of the listeners out there. If you're starting to start up a small business, I'm not talking to you if you're a freaking anthropic or a freaking Google. Yeah, right. We're not talking to you folks. We're talking to Oracle. Or Oracle. Yeah. Right? We're not talking to you. We're talking to the to the to the the the really the foundation of all of our economic stability. Which is 20-person companies. Exactly. Small business owners and one. 20-person companies. Number one, I would tell you all that with with all this tech stuff going, like there are so much, so many opportunities for you. Uh don't, you know, it you can feel discouraged because it feels like they're just crawling into every nook and cranny, but but you can actually leverage it. But number two, right, you're so right about that. Yeah, and number two is don't get fooled into thinking that you don't have to have one-on-ones with clients, yes, with your team, yes, with your vendors, yes, right?

SPEAKER_02 34:56

Absolutely. They need to know what you're trying to do, they got to support that 100% and feel like it's worth serving you.

Content As A Funnel To Get Meetings

SPEAKER_03 35:02

If you are meeting and meeting and meeting with individuals all the time, then you are actually on the right track. No, you're really as the business owner, you're just constantly, and you know, and that's the thing is like the truth behind it is is like there's a weird, and I still struggle with it. Like, man, I'm I'm pretty good, I found out, like, overall, and just using design softwares and making, you know, resizing things and laying things out to get to whatever. I mean, like, for whatever reason, I I mean, I've got a long life. It's like it's I had one of my my It's not one of my strengths. Right. What if my teammates was behind me? I'm sitting there and it'll be illustrator just like bow pow cranking out, you know. I wasn't doing anything super creative, right? But he's like, damn, man, you're pretty good. I don't know what the hell you're doing. And then I pop it down, save it as that, put it in here. Um to me, it's also like me's like, dude, you know, and I've been told that for a long time. But it's hard for me to let go of that. Yeah, I understand. Because I can just get her done real, real easily. But but then I feel when I'm in meetings all day, I'm like, man, I just I need to be behind the doing something, doing something tangible. But I'm getting pulled into meetings, and so but really what I need to do is be constantly meeting. Because if I could get somebody to help me do right, I could be meeting with them too.

SPEAKER_02 36:17

Yeah, you're you're you're absolutely right. I mean, I think that I think a lot of us think the only way we're gonna be able to advance our companies is these long periods of solitude where we can actually focus.

SPEAKER_03 36:29

That's what I'm keeping the month of focus is coming up December. Yeah. Like actually, it starts today when everybody's in Thanksgiving. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:39

I get excited when people, when we're all it's funny. I was talking to a to a friend of mine. This guy he runs a construction company, took it from five million to over a hundred million in less than five years. Okay. And we were talking, it was, I can't remember, it was either Monday this week or Friday last week. He's like, I can't wait till next week. He goes, We are gonna get a jump on everybody else. They're all sitting there thinking we're shutting down this week, we're not gonna get anything done. He goes, I'm gonna I will come in with a freaking shake. That's what he's now at the end of the year.

SPEAKER_03 37:14

I'm gonna that would be grabbing their business out. That's exactly right, man. Wouldn't it? That is a hundred, dude. I have not not worked a holiday. I don't even remember. I don't think I've ever not not worked one. I don't those times, those quiet times, yeah, when everyone is just spending time and sleeping. We should be meeting. I'm freaking, well, I'm just grinding, dude. I'm like, I'm like eight hours into like some real weird black holes of research and competitive analysis and then like design or whatever it might be and communications, and I come out and then come out swinging. Come out swinging, yeah, swinging, refine your story. Like that first meeting back from Thanksgiving week, it's like all right, bam! And then the first one in the first of the year after uh Christmas. Yeah, it's another bang. That's usually a big bang. I usually do some pretty big pivotal things, excuse me, things, major things. Uh uh you could say pivotal, it's not the same thing as pivoting. Oh, okay. Pivotal things like at the first of the year, because I've had all this time to just to dive in.

SPEAKER_02 38:18

Well, yeah, it's always a good time to get your business plan together before the new year starts. 100%. Okay, not after, like, well, we're gonna do that in February. Bullshit. You're already the year is well underway. Okay, get a jump on it, do it now. Get your story down, refine that story, sell that story, paint the picture, meet the clients, meet the vendors, meet the employees.

SPEAKER_03 38:42

You know another big thing about storytelling? Exactly what you're saying. Like, yes. But then having what I've found is uh like our strategic deployment. JS has come in and talked about it. Super simple way of clearly communicating what those big objectives are. And ours is in this very simple spreadsheet. Everyone has access to. Oh, dude, I it's not overbearing with information.

Managing Teams: Get In The Weeds And Listen

SPEAKER_02 39:07

It they that goes back to my open book reporting. Yeah, it's the same thing. Simple metrics, and knowing what the metrics are, knowing what the goals are, and then tracking your progress and sharing it with everybody. That's it. Don't hold that close to the best. Tell that story.

SPEAKER_03 39:24

Yes, right, in a very simple, clear. Don't make it into some big software. I know. Don't freaking make it into the so simple. The sim, you know what, you know who does excellent at that? Who's that? Give them credit, Doug McMillan. Yeah, I'm sure.

SPEAKER_02 39:42

Dude, I told you years ago, the first time I walked into Federal Express Corporation was 1983. They had their performance metrics posted in every room. They were in the hall, that's it. They were in the conference rooms. There it is, one sheet of paper, absolutely. Simple. God dang it. I have thought about that a hundred times. 42 years ago. I got to freaking do that. And Fred Smith was a genius, okay? 100%. I mean, absolute genius.

SPEAKER_03 40:11

And it all comes back to some just set to staying simple and clear. Yes. Yes. I mean, it makes me think of Warren Buffett. It makes me think of Steve Jobs. I mean, just query, just simply one star.

SPEAKER_02 40:24

Yes. Yeah. Don't get off track. Man, those are the to me, those are some of the most brilliant people out there. Yeah. Okay. I mean, God, Steve Jobs was a true genius. Let's be honest. Yeah, he was. He absolutely did not buy into conventional thinking. He bypassed so much in the process. So much waste of time.

SPEAKER_03 40:44

I'll tell you, um, another genius I've been seeing rising up is that CEO for uh AMD, like it's the NVIDIA AI chip competitor. This lady is like she's got it, does she unbelievable? Yeah. Like in what she's doing. Like just so focused. That's tremendous. It is, man. I mean, but but that clarity of this, this is our target. And you don't, I mean, it's literally like if you're a captain of a ship and you let everybody on the all the deck hands, everybody's working, sailors are all freaking out because there's, you know, look, we should go here. No, we should go there. We should do this. What do we do again? We're going there, and you keep the freaking compass. This is what we decided when we started and set out, and nobody's going off track unless I say it. And the only reason I would say it is because I am so confident that that's not what we should do anymore. But this is where we're going. Stay course. It's absolutely true.

SPEAKER_02 41:40

Well, we're out of time, buddy. Okay. Believe it or not. Hey, happy Thanksgiving. Same to you and same to all our listeners. We're thankful that you tune in every week and listen to what we have to say.

SPEAKER_03 41:53

And I'm inspired to walk out of here with the emphasis and priority of meanings, clearly articulating the story, the top lines like you're talking about. And I hope you are too. Because the big concern is like, what do you do? What are you supposed to do as a small business owner? You got too many things to do. Well, these things are the important things right here. You're right on with that.

SPEAKER_02 42:17

All right. Well, don't eat too much turkey. And um if you do, don't drive. And and what was your turkey making secret you call it? Spatchcocking. Pick it up. You need to spatcock your turkeys. Spatchcock your turkeys. I'm gonna be eating a honey-baked ham. I tell you, they should be a sponsor of this. They have the best product ever. Is it? Is it like that? Oh, it's better than anything. I love it. That's absolutely and I'm changing my diet, by the way. I don't know if I told you for about 10 days now. My my cholesterol was elevated. My blood sugar is borderline, borderline um, you know, uh diabetic. Really? Yeah. So I mean, you know, for 67 years, I've eaten anything I want. Ribs and fries twice a day, okay? Folks, and I've seen it. So I've stopped all that. I'm eating some salads, I'm eating a lot more chicken. Dang, sorry. I've stopped eating bags of candy at night and brownies and really yes. So I've already feel how long would you start 10, 10 or 12 days ago. So you definitely feel I already feel better. Yeah. Yeah, that's good. You're gonna feel a lot better. My gut's going down. Yeah, you look like you're freaking trim it up. I eat six-packing it, mate. Yeah, I'm so yeah. The diet, um, I guess I'll make a little bit of an exception on Thanksgiving, but I won't eat like 10 rolls like I normally would.

SPEAKER_03 43:41

Was it really that hard for you to change that? That diet at all? No. Really wasn't. Just decided to do it. Yes. It's important, so you just do it. Yes, exactly. Make your decision. Yep. That's what you gotta do. That's life, isn't it? It really is. And everything's business. Oh man, I'm telling you. Just like what we're talking about. I need to start meeting before decide to freaking do it, then prioritize it and just do it.

SPEAKER_02 44:01

Yep. Yep. Action is what gets you ahead. Not sitting there hypothesizing. Right. All right. All right, man. Been great. Thanks, everybody. This has been another episode of Big A. Talk about small businesses.

One-On-Ones, Career Lunches, And Open-Book Metrics

SPEAKER_01 44:26

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Big Talk About Small Business. If you have any questions or ideas for upcoming shows, be sure to head over to our website, www.bigtalkaboutsmallbusiness.com, and click on the Ask the Host button for the chance to have your questions answered on the show. Stay connected with us on LinkedIn at Big Talk About Small Business. And be sure to head over to our website to read articles, browse episodes, and ask questions about upcoming shows.