The Storytelling System | Stories With Traction Podcast

PODCAST SUMMARY: In this episode, Claire Davis and Matt Zaun talk about how they created a storytelling system and positioned it to boost sales and enhance their marketing efforts.

CLAIRE DAVIS BIO: Claire is a branding consultant that helps people write their stories.  The Stories With Traction podcast wouldn’t exist if it weren't for her.  Claire has been one of the most influential individuals when it comes to marketing, crafting messages, and getting stories to connect with an audience.

For more info, check out Claire HERE.


MATT ZAUN BIO: Matt is an award-winning speaker and storyteller who empowers organizations to attract more clients through the art of strategic storytelling. Matt’s past engagements have catalyzed radical sales increases for over 300 organizations that range from financial institutions to the health and wellness industry.

Matt shares his expertise in persuasion with executives, sales professionals, and entrepreneurs, who he coaches on the art of influence and how to leverage this for profits and impact.

For more info, check out Matt Zaun HERE.

 

*Below is an AI-generated transcript, which may contain errors.

 

Matt Zaun 

This episode is an episode that I have wanted to happen for the like the last few years now.

My guest today, if it wasn't for her, this podcast wouldn't exist. And I, it's Scary to think where my business would be if it wasn't for her.

So she has been instrumental in many areas of me understanding content creation, different elements of storytelling. Her impact on my business has been incredible.

So today I'm joined by Claire Davis. She is a brand and consultant that helps you write your story.

 

Claire D (Traction Resume)

Welcome, Claire. Hey, Matt, thank you so much for having me. I have been looking forward to this a long time as well.

 

Matt Zaun

Thank you. Not only for being here and for your time, but for everything that you have helped me with the last few years, we met through LinkedIn.

Is it three years now? I want to say three years. And it I have learned so much from you regarding content creation strategy, elements of storytelling, just the marketing aspect in general.

There's been So much that I've learned from you. So I want to dive into your business a little bit, but also kind of unpack the journey thus far because I'm when I say that this podcast wouldn't exist if it was for you.

 

Claire D (Traction Resume)

I mean it like this podcast would not exist if it wasn't for you. So we'll get to that in a moment.

But can you just tell people what you do, what you're excited about, any current projects you're working on right now?

Oh, yeah, absolutely. So I am Claire Davis. If we haven't met, I'm a resume writer and career coach by trade.

And it all started because I ended up going into pharma sales or pharma recruiting and then medical sales myself and went through five layoffs.

And when you do something like that, you get really good at starting over and figuring out how to tell your story well to do that.

So now I help medical sales people get great jobs for more money and more fulfillment with resumes and interview prep.

So that's what we're doing now. And it's So, gosh, we've been open now for, geez, since 2016, and it's been a wonderful ride.

I'm sure you can relate to that. It's interesting how sometimes your business finds you. I don't think I have a friend intended to be an entrepreneur or to have my own business, but once you start doing something over and over and people take notice and then you help enough people, you think, huh, this sticks.

And so it's been good.

 

Matt Zaun

That's awesome. So you said five layoffs, so multiple setbacks. And what's interesting is those setbacks through the genius strategy that you have utilized it as a way to make a business out of it.

And I feel you, I don't want you to kind of sell yourself short on this because I know more about your business than people listening, like you've created a machine with what you do.

You figured out a way to help. people on as big of a level as you can, and you've created this machine out of it.

So you have helped a ton of people over the years with everything that you do. So I want to, I want you to touch on like the set back piece.

So these are multiple setbacks. You figured out a way to bundle this into a way that you could help people for anyone out there that the last few years have been challenging because I feel like that's for almost everyone that they may have experienced setback after setback.

What kind of hope could you give them that they could be utilizing this for more in their life? They could be utilizing it for a way to grow and actually have productive change versus viewing it as a blow to them.

 

Claire D (Traction Resume)

Oh, yeah. You know, I think everyone now can absolutely relate in some way, either if it's their own work life.

And what's interesting about out that is when you come into the job market as a recruiter, which is where I started.

My family had a business in pharmaceutical sales, executive recruiting. And so you learn to have that kind of career conversation, that kind of personal marketing element from a very young age.

And in fact, Matt, I was thinking about this before we hopped on today. I was the only 13 year old I know who interviewed for her volunteer city job with a full on Bragg book.

Who does that? That's called obsession level career status right there at a two young age. But I think what I've learned through going through those five layoffs is that without them, I wouldn't have been able to know what my system that you're talking about for success or my my story really was.

And I think that That's where storytelling is really difficult because we want to position ourselves in the best light.

We want to be relevant to the people that we're talking with or who we're trying to market to or sell to or just be around.

But it's almost more difficult to position yourself without a challenge or a major objective in your life. Because it forces you to burn all of the preconceptions down.

All of the things you think other people know about you and you know about yourself. When you're in that moment, when you're in that layoff moment, you're hitting rock bottom or you're in a career and you absolutely hate it.

You go into work and you're crying in the car. It's almost not until you go through that situation and then learn from it and then look back on what that meant to you that you can even tell your story.

So now I have this incredible privilege of having been through it and now. have times that regardless of the person I'm working with, it doesn't matter really if they're new with their career, if they're a manager, an executive in their career, if they've got their own company, entrepreneurs too.

So now I have this opportunity to look from the outside in and see what those challenges formed those people into.

And the reason it's so hard for us to do it ourselves, I'm sure you see this as well, obviously, because storytelling is your expertise, is we're so close to our own story.

So I guess the hope I would give is that right now, if you're listening to this, you have an incredible story that you probably don't even recognize.

And it's just because it's so familiar to you that it doesn't stand out as something worth telling. So that's why I really am thrilled that, you know,

I was just talking to somebody this morning about how storytelling and positioning brands now has changed from when I was in school getting my advertising degree.

And it was all about being the brand authority and being the biggest and the flashiest and all of these tips and tricks to get out there and be the biggest.

Now it's who's the friendliest? You know who is being welcomed into a home as a brand that they are comfortable talking around the kitchen table about in their, you know, in their became less.

And anyway, so I think it's really amazing that storytelling is now becoming part of the everyday conversation, especially on LinkedIn where I market a lot, especially in business.

I know with especially what you do actually reaching customers through storytelling. And everybody's got a great story to tell.

 

Matt Zaun 

It's just a matter of learning. and how to tell it or getting help doing so. Yeah, so I appreciate you mention that.

So there's a lot to unpack with what you said. So I appreciate you also setting the groundwork for the direction of this conversation, mentioning the story system.

We can get to that as well as I really like that verbiage so close to your own story, so we could definitely unpack elements of that as well.

So let's get to it regarding the story of telling peace. So everyone knows storytelling is important. What I find fascinating is one of the blessings that I have had is, and I've mentioned you in the past, it's a blessing and a curse, just the sheer amount that I travel.

So the blessing is I get to see technical places, the curses, it can rally your brain, traveling as much as I do.

But I love meeting people. I've now had the opportunity to speak in almost every US state, every industry that people can imagine, both sides of the political aisle, no one in all of my traveling has been in the past.

told me storytelling is not important. And think of how many differences we have as a culture, right? Like they are vast, but yet everyone agrees storytelling is extremely important.

My challenge that we're listening is are you doing anything about it? Everyone knows it's important. Are you building a system around it?

Okay, so Claire mentioned a system of storytelling. So let's dive into this because I want to kind of paint the scene for people and let people kind of know where we both came from within this storytelling system journey, if you will.

So as I'd mentioned the beginning of this episode, I wanted to have this episode for years. And that was not an over exaggeration.

So this podcast has been running now for over two years. I really wish that this would have been episode in the single digits, right?

This should have been one of the single digit episodes, but it wasn't life got in the way. I feel Claire and I have had to kind of episode numerous times to YouTube family.

situations due to us having a client meeting at the exact time that we planned on this episode.

 

Claire D (Traction Resume)

So I think this is our fourth try at actually recording this. So at minimum.

 

Matt Zaun 

So here's kind of where we both been. So as I mentioned, so Claire and I connected on LinkedIn about three years ago.

At this time was months into the world shutting down due to COVID. So my business took a huge hit.

So we're talking about setbacks. You know, Claire mentioning five layoffs. Obviously, there's a numerous setbacks. My business had a major setback.

In 2019, there were 400,000 conferences that took place. Okay, so let me repeat that. 2019, 400,000 conferences, it was the largest training and development year on record in the United States.

More companies were pumping into the training and development of their people than any other. Any other time in your sister 2019, we know what happened in 2020 that fell off the cliff.

My business was focused on conference talks. I would do breakout sessions at conferences. I'd do a lot of keynotes.

I did a ton of talks, a ton leading up to COVID. And then the world shut down. Everyone was afraid to be near each other, which is not good when you're in a speaking business, so in comes Claire Davis.

So we connect on LinkedIn a couple months into this whole thing going down. All my ability to network dried up.

And my business was fueled within person networking. So now that all goes by by and I'm in panic mode.

I'm like, what do I do? So I turn to LinkedIn. And Claire and I end up having numerous conversations where we're both putting our heads together, trying to figure out what is the best way to work.

We could share stories on LinkedIn knowing that this is a social media platform that a lot of business leaders prospects are on.

Plus it has incredible organic reach, meaning the amount of money you need to pay on other social media platforms.

I've pumped a ton of money into Facebook ads. I spent almost no money on LinkedIn. It's incredible. The sheer amount of reach that I've been able to have as well as bring in clients to LinkedIn.

So we both put our heads together. So let's talk about that, Claire, and then we can kind of dive into other other elements as well.

But we really strategized about this because we knew if we could share better stories that related and connected to people in LinkedIn, we would bring in more business.

 

Claire D (Traction Resume)

So can you speak to the LinkedIn strategy piece? Oh, gosh. Well, I think where we really took off because interestingly,

My business, sadly, ticked up. It really picked up in 2020 when people were being hemorrhaged from their companies. I mean, when laughs really, really started to come out in full force in 2020 is when everyone suddenly needed a resume.

And so for me, it was how do I not just find clients? Because someone put it to me this way one day.

They said, OK, Claire, if someone said, here you go, here's 100 clients. Can you take them all on right now?

And the answer is no. There's one me at the time. There was one me. This was before our team was built.

And so the mission really for me was, how do I disseminate the information that people need to know, even if they can't work with me?

How do I give that system that I had been forced to create through those challenges to more people? So instead of one to one, sharing this kind of stuff, one to many.

So then you and I bumped into each other on LinkedIn. And actually, I think in the beginning, storytelling as far as posting was important, but where you and I really started to change, I think, in the way that we told stories or engaged with people was when Clubhouse started.

I really feel like Clubhouse was the turning point. And if anybody here, if Clubhouse is still a thing when this is airing, you know, it essentially started with the fear missing out, you know, it was an exclusive, invite only platform.

We are both really excited to try it out. And I remember thinking, if I'm going to get engaged in social media, I want to do it with like-minded business owners like you so that we can grow together and feel

people each other because my I like to think I got a master's degree in layoffs by going through them.

And so I find that when I want to learn something, it's almost more it's so much more enjoyable when you go through it with another person in a similar situation.

So we started that clubhouse room. Do you remember we were just trying to mastermind with other small business owners?

We thought let's get everybody together. You know, seven a.m. before the kids have to be rushed off to school and let's just toss around ideas.

Let's see what's important to people and how we could tell, you know, help each other. And and then it turned into a regular weekly show.

I was shocked. People wanted to come. They wanted to listen. They guests wanted to come and speak. And every single one of those guests, if I had to think back, we had some incredible people.

We had Amber Little Turner with Michelle Griffin. We had Incredible people come on and just share generously. Some of which are still doing so.

I think Michelle does a lot of room still. And the best speakers, you know, when we've strategized after these clubhouse rooms, the best speakers were the ones who told stories.

And that for me was a quick education in doing events, because other than speaking in front of a physician myself or working with a client, I hadn't done much public speaking at all.

I mean, to consider that I would actually be on your podcast today three years ago, would I would never believe you, it would blow me away.

But it was going through all of the reps and doing those clubhouse rooms and seeing what stuck and what always stuck.

It didn't matter what we were talking about or who it was when they could convey their experience through storytelling.

Those were always the guests who got the best traction. They were the best, easiest to market. They were the ones who were most memorable and the ones who I think are the point across most effectively.

Do you agree?

 

Matt Zaun 

I'm 100%. And I appreciate you bringing up clubhouse. So let's talk about clubhouse a little bit more. So, all right.

So we, those are really good segue. So we, you and I figured out the system on LinkedIn. Okay. So we, we basically, we created a system on LinkedIn that we get millions and millions of views.

So just, just for anyone listening, I don't care who's listening. I don't care if you were a CEO of a thousand person company.

You know that attention is gold in today's world. If you can get eyeballs on your website, you can get people in your door.

That is extremely important. And it's interesting because here, Claire and I are kind of in a weird spot with COVID.

I mean, you had mentioned like this uptick in layoffs. I mean, we were, we were. We're thinking we were going to be in the Great Depression again.

I mean, think about all the people, the layoffs were staggering at this moment. I mean, it was a dark time for many people.

There's a lot of fear, a lot of panic. And it's interesting because you and I were able to leverage LinkedIn in a way that brought in millions of views for us, where there was a ton of attention on what we were doing on our stories.

And then you gave the idea of let's start a clubhouse room. And I remember I made fun of you at first when you had said this.

 

Claire D (Traction Resume)

You were a hard sell.

 

Matt Zaun

What's that?

 

Claire D (Traction Resume)

You were a hard sell on clubhouse. I remember being like that. Come on. Just just give me like, just give it like one chance.

Just one shot.

 

Matt Zaun 

Yeah, I totally made fun of you. I was like, this thing is ridiculous. Like, why am I putting my time into this?

So again, who knows where clubhouse is going to land? And it was a huge deal in 2020. So this is a time where everyone was locked in their

house, they needed a place to gather, quote unquote, gather. And Clubhouse really taught me how to run virtual meetings.

There's a huge difference between an in-person workshop. So imagine a workshop, you know, you have 50 people there, 50 business leaders, and you know, you have to work on the setup and you make sure that the audio is good and make sure there's a lot of different elements on on on staging and all this.

It's it's different when it comes to virtual. How do you run these masterful virtual events? And Claire and I learned that through Clubhouse.

So we were doing this, like Claire mentioned, weekly. We were having these weekly Clubhouse events and for people that have never gone on a clubhouse.

It's a way where you could have speakers, people would come into the room, they would listen and we started building a following with this and we were unpacking.

of all kinds of topics from storytelling, sales, marketing, company, culture, all kinds of stuff. I mean, I pick a topic, right?

We had it on our clubhouse room. And then I was talking with a very good friend of mine, his name is Scott Mason, a phenomenal podcaster.

And he actually mentioned to me, why don't you start to grow outside of clubhouse? And it started to become more of a natural fit where Claire and I, and correct me if I'm wrong, but we got to the point where it was like what we're doing week after week, the content was phenomenal.

Like the guests we had on were top tier guests that are offering tons of value. We're like, we need to go bigger.

And the next progression was actually linked in lives, where I remember us saying, my gosh, if we could get hundreds of people to come in and listen to

what we're doing at Clubhouse. We can get thousands of people to listen to what we're doing on LinkedIn Live.

So can you talk a little bit about the progression from, so we have LinkedIn written word to Clubhouse to now LinkedIn Live.

 

Claire D (Traction Resume)

So can you talk us through LinkedIn Live? Oh yeah, so I just want to go back to something you said.

It was about getting the reps in. I mean, we you obviously have honed your craft of storytelling public speaking from your political speech writing days.

So I mean, these kinds of things you've been practicing for so long. And we both came at the idea of hosting those virtual events, I think, from different the different sides of the coin, different experiences, different perspectives.

And it was so fun because after each show, we would round table on what we could do better. How we could do, how we could reach more people.

How we could get more resources out to people after the show. I remember at one point we had been, we had built a system where we would prep the guest, then we would have the show.

We would be chatting in the background of the audio show on a messenger to make sure that we were staying on track or if we needed to direct the guest a different way or someone needed to take over the room.

And then after that, even give out resources to those who are really, you know, loyally following this room, it was incredible.

And it was getting the reps in, I think, that gave us the confidence that, hey, what if we brought in the scope here?

And I remember a conversation you and I had, and this was right after we had added two more co-hosts to the show, which we eventually called Power Hour.

Power Hour was our show. And we said, This room, this audio room is terrific, but it stops here because once the conversation is over, unless you've done a really wonderful job of leveraging the transcript and building from that, the experience is over for people.

You can't go back and revisit it. You're out of the party at that point. And so we said, why don't we take it live so people can connect with us even better.

We can reach more people and then we can use that content more effectively. So now we're talking about, you know, production, post production, creating clips, marketing with clips and therefore a while.

Matt, do you remember when we would do those video clips with you and I sort of introducing the topic that would come up for the next show?

And then we had the guest come and send a 10 second clip of their own and then we released an unleash it.

So it was really a learning by dealing, which is just the. think the best, most motivating way. And it takes a special kind of courage, I think, to do it that way, because you're also testing it out in the public eye, which was new for me.

Because, you know, up to that point, I could relatively build anything I was working on without having anybody see it until I had chosen to launch it or to publish it.

So it was really, it was really a neat time. So that, yes, so then we started, we started the live show, similar format.

We, it was, it was small, but mighty, we had a really loyal following. And people would come every week and we would watch the stats just grow and grow and grow.

And the best thing was the content is evergreen. In fact, if you visit Power Hour, there's still a LinkedIn business page for Power Hour.

You can go back and you can watch every single one of those episodes, you know, and And it was a, it was, I think a way to get even more connected to our audience.

So, you know, we're talking about what's interesting is, is, is Matt and I, you know, we've, you know, you and I have thrown around a hundred different ways to market together, to work together and tried to see like, well, do we have the similar audiences?

How, who can we serve at the same time? But what's really interesting to me is that every single thing comes back to better connection, more direct connection with who you're talking to.

So, so if it's a resume, it's how do you better connect to the company and the hiring team for the challenges that they are facing?

If it's storytelling for your brand, how do you get to know your, your customer and what they're worried about at night, even better, so that when you're marketing, when you're sharing a message or a story, it's hitting home for them, right?

You know, right in the center of what they're worried about. So, And obviously, if you're listening to this podcast, you can also tell which one of us was the long-winded one on Power Hour.

So I'll turn it over. I'll turn it back over to you, Matt. Nothing changes.

 

Matt Zaun 

That's funny. So, that's funny. So Power Hour, man, I have so many different memories with this. So this lasted.

It was over a year that we did this. So Power Hour also was a podcast, too. We had on all the major podcast channels, as well.

So the idea was one hour a week. It was going to be the hour that we bring together. It was more that mastermind element that we had on.

We started on Clubhouse, go to the Power Hour, and we had quite the outfit. So we had an awesome videographer.

So professional videographer shout out to Jay Edwards, one of the best videographers I've ever worked with, phenomenal. And we would do...

these ads that would run to really get the excitement built. I remember we had a whole system in place, all the messages that got sent out to people to make sure that we had the audience, and it continued to grow and grow and grow.

Then you had mentioned adding a team, so we added Aaron Geiger, who is a copywriting expert as well as Dan Mott.

Dan Mott is a strategist on LinkedIn. We have a lot of intention behind that. They were incredible co-hosts as well.

Then from there, what ended up happening is we created a problem for ourselves. The problem was we were so good at what we were doing story sharing wise and marketing that our businesses grew more than we could handle at that moment and we had to have massive change.

Since then, Claire is a team, I have a team, we've grown more than we ever thought possible and we had to end power hours.

It's almost a great problem to have. I remember I was traveling so much I couldn't even make some of the recordings and then from there when I say that if it wasn't for Claire this podcast wouldn't exist.

Is I had to figure out all right I learned all these different skills through what Claire and I were doing with all these different avenues.

I need to continue to do this interview wise I need to continue to share stories. I'm not able to do it with this medium.

I need to start a podcast and then that's when this podcast was born stories of attraction and all it all was the progression and I love what you said about about designing the system creating that system for storytelling.

This was years in the process so when you look at all these different elements it was year after year continuing to grow ad tweak change make better that all came back to the very first discussions that we had regarding how do we tell our stories better.

 

Claire D (Traction Resume)

Mm hmm. Mm hmm. You know, I think that's so, um, that's so evident in the, the change in the effort.

This is going to sound strange. The change in the effort and the time that it now takes and the feelings that we, I don't know about you, probably not because you've had more experience public speaking than I have, but, um, I used to get incredibly nervous before speaking engagement or before I would go on to show or guest on a show or even host the show.

Even when we had three of the co-hosts, I was, I was, you know, kind of, you know, shaky before, kind of doing my jumping jacks in the background and trying to get ready.

Um, same thing with content. So before I would, I would sit and stare at that blank page on LinkedIn, on that blank, you know, post button, you know, and, and start to thank God.

I mean, I know what I want to share and strategically, I know I'm trying to really focus on this one area.

It serves a specific person, but what if it flops? What if it's terrible? Am I writing it the right way?

Is it going to be compelling? Am I using the modern methods of marketing, like all of those things? But once you do something so many times, patterns start to emerge.

And then it becomes a system in itself. Ironically, that's very much how the business, our business started was my husband and I tallied it up, last year, and over my career, I've looked at more than 16,000 medical sales professionals' resumes.

So not any resume, but these specific types of resumes. Wow. And so when we're talking about how we've gotten the reps in over the last two, three years, it was show after show after show and that system of, OK, I'm going to try to really prep my guess.

in this way, I'm going to try to really tell my story in this way, or I'm going to write a post with this kind of a hook and see what happens.

And then after you do that for so, you know, over and over for so many times, that system starts to emerge too.

And so that has been evident, I think, in the way that now when I hop on a podcast, like when I when I came on here with you today, I was so excited because, you know, the the jitters have turned into excitement.

If that makes sense, it's not that you're, you know, have that anticipation feeling. It's just that when I go to write a post, I know what I want to get across as far as the message goes.

And now because we've practiced it so much because I've learned so much about hooks from that line, right? And I had learned so much about how to follow the data from Dan Mott from our Power Hour Days.

And I had studied so much about compelling, really. a personalized messaging from Erin Geiger that now, not only do I sort of automatically know what I want to share, but I've practiced it enough times and I've failed plenty of times that now I can use the system and those different elements of how to tell it.

So it's sort of like next level in storytelling because started with what am I going to talk about and who am I talking to?

And now it's how am I going to say it? And that has become easier for me over the last three years and it's because of all that practice.

 

Matt Zaun 

It's a lot of reps. Yeah. A lot of reps. Now I want to go back to the clubhouse piece for a second because I want people to understand the importance of that.

So clubhouse was supposed to be like the next big social media platform. I mean, everyone 2020 a lot of very.

prominent individuals were thinking this could be like when Facebook launched all there are a lot of people that got involved in Facebook early on the early adopters and YouTube ended up crossing it later down the line because they had these massive audiences.

So there was tons of people flooding clubhouse. I know Twitter was getting very concerned that they had to actually tweak different elements of what they do now.

They have Twitter spaces. It was because of clubhouse. And they were offered many many entities wanted to buy clubhouse out before they became an even bigger threat clubhouse.

When I really think about it, it was a pretty big failure. Right. But here's the interesting thing that I want people to recognize with this.

You know, Claire mentions that she got nervous and all that and that I'm Yeah, I appreciate what you said about transitioning into excitement.

But Claire was masterful at running these clubhouse meetings. So there's something to be said, I call it stage dynamics.

So if you've ever seen seen a very engaging speaker from a stage. So think of you're in an in person live event.

And someone just really connects with the audience. Like, and you can kind of fill whatever speakers you might be thinking of.

One of the speakers that always comes to mind, which isn't really, it's not like deemed a speaker, but a comedian is Jerry Seinfeld, unbelievable stage dynamics, meaning that man dominates every element of the state.

He connects with people on such a level. You have to experience it to really understand just the depth of the connectivity.

We're basically, it's almost like on command, he could get you laughing out of your chair on command at one moment, you're about ready to cry and then boom, you get hit with this incredible joke and you're you bust out laughing and then like it's just incredible.

That stage dynamics. Claire had this. of like a stage dynamic in the clubhouse rooms. And she became so good at when, you know, if we had an incredible guest on, awesome expert and they were able to really dive into a lot of insightful pieces, like Claire knew when to let that person go and like meaning let them talk and really share with the audience.

Maybe we get a guest on that isn't as good of a communicator. Well, now, you know, Claire stepping in and she's really taking more of the charge on, like all this is a learned skill that Clubhouse really helped us with, right?

And I don't think you give yourself enough credit where these events were masterfully run. It all goes back to Claire.

She was the one that really was the keystone, if you will, when it came to these events. So I just wanna mention that, that all these reps, even though Clubhouse is an entity, the social media experiment, if you go a clubhouse, it didn't go over very well.

And there were a lot of influencers that put a lot of money, a lot of money. time, a lot of resources in the clubhouse and it was not good for their business.

Again, another setback. You mentioned five layoffs, all these different setbacks. We utilize the skills with clubhouse to get to the LinkedIn Live Power Hour, to get to now the podcast that we run.

You also run a very successful podcast right now yourself. It all came from all of these different reps.

 

Claire D (Traction Resume)

I would love to own all of that.

 

Matt Zaun 

You said it's true.

 

Claire D (Traction Resume)

Okay, so now you can all obviously see why it's so wonderful to work with Matt Zahn. And while I would love to own all of that, I would say that it's two things.

One, sometimes that's still shocking to hear because kind of like we were talking about earlier in the show today.

It's really hard to assess yourself in what Your strengths are sometimes and I remember there was a lot. There were many months, probably gears when I would say, oh Matt, you're just trying to make me feel better, right?

Or you're just pumping me up. I think sometimes we're too close to the things that are more comfortable for us to do to even recognize them as a skill.

So I'm so grateful that's how it was. And I think that what's really amazing about it too, and this is a testament to, you know, you as an incredible professional, Aaron and Dan too, it was so much more enjoyable to build and to learn as a group.

That's something that I took away from that period of growth in my business, that if I were to, if I was doing writing content, producing, you know, making my own little videos, sales outreach.

The most effective piece was doing any piece of those things, any part of those activities, with like-minded people supporting.

That sort of community effect was, if you were to look along the timeline of the business and how it grew through clubhouse, through power hour, and to now, it's every time we went forward with something and helped each other as a team almost, the growth was exponential.

Each time, I wanted to become a better storyteller. It was those days that you and I would hop on a Zoom call and we would sort of process through ideas and we would talk about hooks and we would talk about customers and what the intention is for things.

And every time that I wanted to get better with email marketing, it was really leveraging time with Erin Geiger.

I mean, she's brilliant when it comes to- to putting together emails that make you think someone's already in your head.

And then when I wanted to see what sort of data I was missing or see, you know, maybe why something wasn't working, their Dan was with the numbers.

So I have to say that one, I think we're too close to our own story. And two, going as a group really was the best way to learn and grow.

 

Matt Zaun 

Yeah, it's amazing what a great team can do for sure. I want to talk about that, that people being too close to their own story, kind of what that means and what they could do to kind of combat that.

So when we're in our day to day, we're not fascinated by what we do, which is understandable, right? Because it's what we do day in and day out.

I learned this the hard way where, you know, you'd mention the political speech writing. I was very involved in messaging strategies.

So my expertise many years ago was debate prep. I would set up mock debates for different political candidates, I took on the persona of their opponent and basically it was it was incredibly fun.

I literally get to tear into my clients, they pay me, right? Because I'm I'm taking on the persona of their competitor, right?

And the whole idea was if they can withstand the quote unquote abuse that I was going to give them verbally, they could do well on the big debate stage, right?

Ton of fun. I still even to this day, I love doing that. There's a lot to be said about different elements of messaging strategies in the political world.

But that was my day to day. I wasn't fascinated by that. So when I started going to these different business events saying, Hey, here's what we do in politics to connect with the audience better.

Here's what we need. What we do here to pull people in. And all these business leaders were coming to me saying, Oh my gosh, I could use this for my sales team.

I could use this for my marketing department. I could use this. That's when I knew I had a business.

I had a business model there, right? The business model for me was key, keynotes and workshops. I started going into a bunch of different companies sharing with them all these different strategies.

That was my day to day. It wasn't fascinating to me. I was obsessed over it and I was in my world.

It was fascinating to other people. This is so important that I don't want people to miss it because right now there are business leaders listening to this podcast and you're not fascinated with what you have going on.

But maybe your people would be. Maybe your clients would be. And what's what's mind boggling to me? Is there too many businesses out there that don't set up systems for those stories that we're talking about, Claire?

What are you doing to create this vibrant company culture that you claim you have as a business leader through these storytelling pieces?

Are you utilizing LinkedIn? Are you like here, some just very. Just some ideas. Okay, I'm not saying to do this, I'm just saying take it and maybe make it better.

The LinkedIn route. Okay, you could be sharing with your team different prompts, different themes. Your first day on the job, something you learned a year in that was surprising to you.

Your worst day and how you turned it into a positive for your client, creating themes and prompts with your team to create this company culture storytelling on LinkedIn.

It's the marriage of sales and marketing. What about a podcast? Very, very few companies run internal podcast. This is absolute gold to get different employees on a podcast and have conversation and have all these stories that come out that now people are going to learn about other individuals that they work with to create more of that culture.

It's amazing to me. Businesses that'll say storytelling is extremely important, but then they do nothing with it. It doesn't make sense.

Doesn't make sense. So I challenge everyone listening. What are you doing regarding your stories? One of the reasons why I want to have Claire on was not only because this is a lot of fun, and I think it's nostalgic in a way to kind of look at our journey, it's what journey are you setting up for you and your team?

You could do the exact same thing. We're not saying go into Clubhouse and LinkedIn Live. Well, that's arger, and that's Claire and I's journey.

What are you doing as a business leader to create a system within your organization, a platform for you, your senior leaders, your employees, your clients to come and have a surge of storytelling?

If you don't, if you're not even starting plans to do that, I think you're gonna have a really rough road ahead.

And why? I say that is because a lot of people are talking about artificial intelligence AI. They're not sitting in the groundwork to combat that, meaning AI cannot take the place of empathy, compassion and love.

If you want to create a vibrant company culture, you need to have a surge of storytelling and storytelling touches on all those different elements.

So if you really want to combat the robots, if you will, and the machines and you want to have that human connection, you have to be setting up systems for storytelling.

So Claire, based on what I said, can you throw out a couple other ideas that people might be mindful of regarding setting that system in place for storytelling?

 

Claire D (Traction Resume)

Absolutely. I think that one area I have first spun out nervous about and then came up a little feeling like it got feeling a little wanting was with

the AI. I really thought, okay, I'm a writer, I'm a career consultant, AI is going to put all of us content creators, all of us writers out of business.

So I thought, well, you know what, I'll get ahead of it, and I'll jump in, I'll learn how to prompt, how to use this thing, and I'll see if it's true.

And I spent an entire two weeks going through prompts, learning from the top tier AI, chat GPT, promptors, people who are building businesses off of this platform.

The one thing that it can't do is the human element of story, which fortunately for me, and for anyone who is in business, especially if you're leading a team, that means that it's still easier, and I would argue even easier than before to stand out as a business and as a leader, because

Everyone else who's going to try things like AI or, you know, language models to build out stories for their businesses are based on prompts are based on information that has been preloaded now into these large data sets where AI is pulling from and generating content from which means same prompts, same perspectives, that's all going to be the same.

So if you listen really to what Matt's talking about here, which is keeping the empathy in your story and having that human element, then you will continue to stand out.

What's interesting to me is that this is something that's never changed. I mean storytelling is really what connects us and I think that outsourcing it in the by using AI and other programs like that can really make those who commit to building a story.

system, a way to routinely generate stories and share them through an organization and learn how to tell them well, it's only going to make them stand out further.

But then the question becomes, well, how do you do it? So for me, we tell a lot of stories from the leadership perspective and believe me when I tell you, I have read more resumes that start with the same language than I can count.

It's usually something that starts with, you know, executive sales leader in the such-and-such space, team player, market disruptor, focus on profitability, P&L, XYZ.

It's all the same. But where I think that can feel a little bit, you know, frustrating for people, like, oh, how am I going to stand out?

Recognize this is an incredible opportunity for you to stand out should you learn to tell that story well. So,

The way that we do it is we focus on three core elements and they all tie back, all of them tie back to making a more human connection with whomever is on the other end of that story.

The three elements we use and these literally organically showed up after looking at those 16,000 resumes. There were three things that once I had looked at all of these resumes and recognize which people were being pulled out of the pile for the interview quickly.

And those that were really, you know, being put back into the pile or putting the bin. There were three things and they were story, they were style and statistics.

But the real key is not just talking about or using the same language that everybody's using, but you have to go beyond to the specifics.

So specific storytelling elements are what AI can't give you. Specific, specific actions you take and ways of doing business that people love you for is what you're known for.

That's your brand. That's your brand. And what's amazing to me is that for a long time, you know, we've heard the term company man, right?

You're a company man, you represent the company, and that's all fine and good. But today, people want connection over anything else.

That's why Clubhouse became such a big deal in 2020 because we were all separated. That's why live content still is prioritized today.

So if you want to really connect with your customers, storytelling and doing it with a strategy behind it, going a little deeper on the specifics of what makes your story different or unique is the way and it's got to be practiced because it takes a while

But once you start to learn this, once you start to get more specific in this way, it's a phenomenal way to connect with your with your clients.

So I would say that, you know, I was talking to, I know I get long ended map, but I was talking to a manager the other day.

Let me tell you a story. And, you know, he called me his name is Tim and he said, hey, Claire, this is, I don't know if you can help me with this, but I have a question for you because I am looking to get my team is re inspired to engage again.

I said, well, what do you, you know, what do you mean in spot? I heard he said, well, you know, now, every Monday we have these check in these round table meetings, but everyone is expected to be on camera and to chime in and to engage in this call.

We're going to refresh about the strategy. We're going to have a meeting of the minds before we get out there in front of our positions that week.

And people are just not talking. In fact, they won't even come on camera. And a lot of times they just claim that they're driving.

thing and they can't be on camera for safety and you shouldn't be on camera if you're driving. But the reality is people have checked out and so we sort of talked through what his routine was for the call.

He would generally start with a little state of the union address with what was going on with the company, what he's hearing from his boss.

They would talk quota again and everybody would touch on what product or what big accounts they were trying to get into.

And people were giving the information and then closing their mouths. It wasn't a conversation at all. And so we went around and around on it and finally realized, Tim, well, yes, you could get really strict on requiring people to be on camera and if you're late, you're going to be penalized and so on and so forth.

There are all those things. There are all the standards you can set. But what if you, you maybe want to get on the call?

What if what you were talking about and the information that you were the way you were conveying the information, made them want to want to engage.

And so what he started trying, what we decided was, why don't you tell stories, literally? And so on the call, try using stories to connect with your people.

And Tim's an incredible storyteller. He's one of my favorite people on the planet. And so he did. And we said, okay, well, let's organize this, right?

So back to your system. So the way that he organized it was, we said, well, we'll tell one story that has to do with the struggle that you're having that you'd love their input on.

What are you working on? So it increases the vulnerability with his team, but also helps him to convey what he's working on in a safe space so that they can feel like they're also part of his leadership strategy and important part of the team.

The second piece was he would tell a story that he... would get and we encouraged him to do this anonymously from another team and what they, when those reps were, were, you know, working on what struggle they were going through and then see if that was relevant to anybody on his team.

So they could kind of round table that and say, oh yeah, me too and not feel so alone. And then the third thing was a story about a patient.

So in this case, he works in the rare disease space and he would bring a specific patient story every Monday and it would, you know, they ran the gamut.

I'm sure of people who were thriving, people finally getting treatment, people who were finally able to be, you know, put into a clinical study and give people out, give his team something really tangible to think about and then to carry with them when they're talking about it.

And so sure enough, he calls me back a month later and he's like, my teams are turning their, they're turning their zoom cameras on again.

They're pulling often to the parking lot so that we can actually have a conversation because now they feel engaged and I feel like that's what storytelling really can do when you when you set it up as a as a system the results are there.

 

Matt Zaun 

I love that. I love you mentioned you got to want to want to engage right you they need to be thirsty to connect and that all comes back to I also want to mention about the danger in delegating this.

Okay, so if you are a leader you need to leave this process. I always bring up Steve Jobs when it comes to this.

Like do you really believe that if Steve Jobs just delegated all the storytelling of Apple that the company would be what it is today.

There's no way he understood the marriage between sales and marketing he understood he needed to get on stage he needed to share stories and he did exceptionally well.

was able to build one of the most profitable businesses in human history. That all goes back to this story telling piece.

I did a podcast episode somewhat recently with a gentleman named Craig Andrews. I highly recommend people listening to this.

Go check this episode out. It's called How Appenions Surveys Are Hurting Your Business. It's episode 75. How Appenions Surveys Are Hurting Your Business?

Craig Andrews. And it is phenomenal. Okay. So basically, the reason why I bring this up is because Craig dies into if you're a quote unquote numbers person, sometimes the numbers are bad.

So he brought up the story of Apple, where in 1984, they launched a Super Bowl ad. Okay. So some people listening to this might remember the 1984 Macintosh Super Bowl commercial.

All the data pointed to them not running that commercial. The board nixed it. The board said This is horrible.

The focus group said this was going to be a complete failure. And Steve Jobs, because of his connection with Apple customers, because of his understanding of storytelling, said, no, I'm going to pay to run this ad.

He did. And there are a lot of advertisers and marketers in the world today that would consider that one the greatest Super Bowl commercials of all time.

So bad data, but someone that was connected with a store telling piece was able to do that. He also talks about new Coke.

New Coke launched the new flavor based on numbers. There was a sample size of 200,000 data points that they said, this is what we're going to do.

They lost $30 million in product alone based on that. And today's dollars, it's $90 million of product loss. That doesn't include all the time, the resources, all the different things that

They allocated for new Coke. It was a complete and utter disaster. So I bring all this up because of leaders think that they're just going to delegate all this to AI or third party alphits to go tell our stories for us.

You are in for a whole heap of trouble and misery. You have to take the lead as a leader and do what Claire is talking about where you're setting the tone for your your team regarding sharing stories and also creating a system around it.

So we we unpacked a lot today and I very much I'm happy that we have this conversation again it's been a long time coming.

I wish that we could have done this episode two years ago but at least we're doing it now. So Claire thank you for your time.

I got a lot of this was really cool to kind of reminisce about all the different stages along the way.

There are three things that I want people to really take away from this episode. The first is what Claire had mentioned to Claire.

close to your story. Okay, I'm paraphrasing. I think said so close to your own story, I believe is the exact quote that you mentioned.

And if it's part of our day to day, we're not fascinated with it, with it anymore. But it is still fascinating to other people.

So I challenge others. I challenge you. If you're a leader, you lead a team, bring people around you so that you can start unpacking elements of your stories.

They'll be fascinating for your clients to hear and other team members to hear. It's very important. Often we're too close to our own stories.

The second takeaway is figuring out how to build a system around storytelling. Okay. Often we don't want to have mistakes in business, right?

Because we're constantly questioning what's the ROI. Are we allocating to resources too much time? It does take time to set up a system.

when it comes to storytelling, it will be worth it. I know it because I hear it time and time again with different businesses that come back to me and say, we figured out a way to share our stories and now our sales has skyrocketed.

It is radically enhanced our marketing and it has created a more vibrant company culture. So it is worth putting in the reps that Claire and I talked about to figure out that system.

And the third and final piece that I want people to recognize is at the very beginning of Claire doing this.

She mentioned how nervous she was and how she transitioned that nervousness into excitement. So there are people listening to this episode that they might be thinking, I'm not an incredible orator.

I can't speak that well or I can't do this or I can't do that. You need to lean into the strengths that you have and you need to develop the skill regardless of if you have nervousness or not.

Olympic athletes and a tourist for this. If you ask an Olympic athlete, you know, are you nervous? They will never talk about the nervousness.

We'll talk about the excitement. They have figured out a way to transition that nervousness into excitement that ends up working very, very well for them.

We can do the exact same thing. So too close to our stories, set up a system for storytelling and transition that nervousness into excitement.

Those are my three biggest takeaways. So, Claire, thank you again for your time. Thank you for your patience and help.

If anyone wants to get more information on you, what you do, they want to reach out to you.

 

Claire D (Traction Resume)

Where's the best place they can go to get that information? Oh yeah, absolutely. If you're having trouble telling your story or really figuring out what that story even sounds like and should be, just send me a DM on LinkedIn.

We're helping people do that every day, whether it's you're trying to re-inspire your teams by defining what your leadership really looks, feels, and sounds like, or if you're looking for a better job.

Storytelling is out. Absolutely pivotal to set you apart from the pack. So just send me a DM on LinkedIn and you could find me at Claire M Davis.

One.

 

Matt Zaun 

Perfect. I will include Claire's LinkedIn account in the show notes. Just click connect to her there. Thanks again for your time to declare a very much appreciated.

 

Claire D (Traction Resume)

Thanks for having me, Matt. Anytime.