The Story Engine Founder Reveals His 3-Story Framework for Magnetizing Ideal Clients

How Experts Who Are “Too Smart for Their Own Good” Transform Scattered Content Into Systematic Business Growth

You’ve probably spent countless hours creating valuable content, sharing your expertise, and teaching everything you know.

Maybe you’re even getting some engagement and positive feedback.

But if you’re honest, you’re also dealing with low conversion rates, audiences who don’t take action, and the frustrating feeling that your brilliant insights aren’t translating into the business results you deserve.

Here’s what Kyle Gray discovered that changes everything: Most expert content fails because it’s knowledge without connection. Expertise without emotional resonance. Brilliant insights without the story structure to make them stick.

Kyle calls this the expert’s blind spot: “We as entrepreneurs relate to ourselves wrong. What we think is our curse is actually something that sets us apart in the marketplace.”

Today’s episode demonstrates how the stories hiding in plain sight – especially the ones you might not want to tell – become your most powerful tools for magnetizing ideal clients and driving systematic business growth.

Your expertise combined with strategic storytelling is what generates the most important transformation of all: turning your knowledge into magnetic authority that attracts premium clients who are excited to work with you.

The Story Engine Expert Who Gets Results

Kyle Gray is a world-class presentation coach, story strategist and author who helps coaches, startups and executives use storytelling to better communicate their unique value and improve sales with their audience. He combines timeless storytelling with cutting-edge marketing to ensure you have the right story to tell while presenting, on a sales call or in conversation, both online and offline.

As host of “The Story Engine Podcast” and founder of Story Engine, Kyle works directly with experts who struggle to convert their knowledge into compelling presentations that drive business results.

What makes Kyle different?

He’s not teaching you generic storytelling techniques.

He’s showing you how to uncover the specific stories that are already hiding in your experience – the ones that will magnetize your exact ideal clients and transform your presentations from information dumps into conversion engines.

Kyle’s 3-Story Framework for Expert Authority

In this game-changing conversation, Kyle reveals his systematic approach to story discovery that prevents scattered content efforts while maximizing presentation impact.

His framework demonstrates the practical application of strategic storytelling for expert positioning:

Story Type 1: Authority Stories (Origin Stories)

Purpose: “Paint your client’s language on your experience to show you understand exactly what it feels like to be them right now”

Three-Act Story Structure:

  • Act 1: Painful Moment – Experience the same problem your clients face
  • Act 2: Montage – Describe your journey of putting together a solution
  • Act 3: Transformation – Experience the transformation your audience wants

Key Insight: “The purpose is not to brag about yourself. It’s to create context for the rest of your teaching.”

Story Type 2: Success Projection Stories

Purpose: Tell client stories in the middle of presentations to validate teaching points and overcome objections before they arise

Strategic Application: “Just like a chess player anticipating their opponent’s move four moves ahead” – address limiting beliefs during your teaching, not after your offer

Implementation: Share client transformation stories that demonstrate what it’s like to work with you, making your eventual offer feel natural and non-threatening

Story Type 3: Aligned Ending Stories

Purpose: End presentations on an emotional note that leads naturally to your desired action

Story Categories: Take action now, hire an expert, try something new

The Magic: Use stories completely unrelated to your topic that lead to the same emotional conclusion, creating powerful emotional resonance without obvious manipulation

The Story Engine Insights That Will Transform Your Approach

Kyle reveals counterintuitive truths that challenge conventional expert marketing wisdom:

Why “Teaching Everything” Destroys Conversion Performance: Most experts think more value equals better results, but Kyle’s client David Perez increased conversions from 5% to 24% by cutting his webinar from 2 hours to 45 minutes and focusing on belief shifts instead of tactics.

The “Too Smart for Your Own Good” Advantage: Your biggest perceived weakness or struggle often becomes your greatest differentiator when positioned correctly through story.

The Belief-First Teaching Model: “No amount of showing how you do something matters unless you address their belief systems first.” Strategy beats tactics every time.

The Anti-Generic Positioning Power: Kyle’s approach helps experts move beyond commodity expertise into unique market positioning through personal experience integration.

The Connection-Before-Teaching Principle: Audiences won’t listen to brilliant insights unless they feel understood first – emotional connection creates the context for logical acceptance.

What’s In It For You

After listening to Kyle, you’ll walk away with specific strategies you can implement immediately:

  • Story Discovery Framework: Kyle’s proven questions for uncovering your most powerful authority stories hiding in plain sight
  • Three-Story Presentation Architecture: Complete framework for structuring presentations that connect emotionally and convert systematically
  • Belief-Shift Teaching Methodology: How to focus on changing minds instead of dumping information for dramatically better results
  • Client Language Integration: Techniques for “painting your client’s language on your story” to create instant connection and trust
  • Objection Prevention Strategy: Success projection stories that address concerns before they become obstacles
  • Emotional Closing Techniques: Aligned ending stories that leave audiences motivated to take action

Chapters:

  • 00:00 Introduction to Storytelling and Its Importance
  • 01:14 Kyle Gray’s Journey: From Music to Storytelling
  • 07:07 The Core Problem: Helping Experts Share Their Stories
  • 12:24 Transforming Stories: The Power of Personal Experience
  • 16:21 Types of Stories: Authority, Success Projection, and Aligned Ending
  • 22:01 The Process of Crafting Your Story
  • 31:02 Overcoming Overwhelm: A Personal Story from Park Howell
  • 34:54 Finding Clarity: The Moment of Realization
  • 44:24 Practical Steps: How to Start Crafting Your Story

Links:

Deepen Your Storytelling Mastery: Three Essential Episodes to Explore

To amplify your transformation from today’s conversation, these carefully selected past episodes provide complementary classical wisdom:

Each recommendation selected to deepen your mastery through The Business of Story’s archive of classical storytelling wisdom enhanced by modern application.

Connect with me:

Transcript of Show:

Park Howell: Hello, Kyle. Welcome to the Business of Story.

Kyle Gray: Park I’m so honored to be here. I have some of the most fun working with and speaking with other storytelling experts and I’m so excited to share some things with you guys today but also learn from you today and that’s a rare thing that that you get to get that as a guest on a podcast.

Park: Well, that’s cool. I appreciate that. And you are the founder of Story Engine and you have a very unique way of going about revealing stories that are kind of hiding in plain sight, maybe for leaders that helps them with really, I guess, developing their origin story. And we’re going to go through that today, your process today. I think you’re going to use it on me and the whole idea here for all of you listeners out there. As Kyle takes me through it, think about your own story and how you can use his process and even use Kyle to be able to help you find your origin story and make it extraordinarily compelling. So with that, let’s do a quick backstory of you. How do you find yourself in the world of the story engine these days?

Kyle: Absolutely. There’s kind of a couple of threads that come together to make who I am and what I do today. When I was younger, I was a singer songwriter musician, and I thought that was the only way I was going to live like a happy and fulfilled life. And I put a lot of pressure on myself to perform and like, write hit songs. But yeah. It, I ended up burning myself out on it. then I knew that I wanted to travel and I found lots of ways to travel the world. And I started to hear about entrepreneurs and business owners that were building businesses from their laptops and, living, living creative, interesting lives. And I wanted that, but I didn’t, I wasn’t really much of like, I didn’t study business in school and didn’t think it was that accessible for me, but I learned, that I could sell my skills in writing. I started blogging and telling the story of the growth of a startup and helped them grow quite quickly by getting thrown into the deep end. And after that, I traded my writing skills and blogging and content marketing for like copywriting. I started working with great people and I had the real fortune of Everybody that I worked with, I could learn a tremendous amount from. worked with a self publishing school, now self publishing.com, learned how to write books. And then somewhere along my, my career, I discovered somebody talking about using speaking as a way to grow your business. And it reminded me of what it was like to be a musician. And I wanted to learn how to do that. and so I started creating webinars. applying my copywriting to webinars, helping people with webinars and writing and working with a couple of companies facilitating speech workshops. also at this time, I kind of the third thread of the story is I was getting very sick through my twenties. I had really bad joint pain. I had fatigue. I had this crazy anxiety. And over the course of about five or six years,

Kyle: It would take me to understand what was going on. had really bad gut health problems and an autoimmune condition of the thyroid that was just sucking the energy from my life without me really knowing it or understanding it. And, I can remember my first coach I ever hired. and he said, I have this condition called Hashimoto’s and he was like, what if Hashimoto’s is your superpower? And I laughed at him and I almost hung up the phone. but a couple of months later, I was facilitating a workshop full of speakers and this workshop happened to be filled with health and wellness experts. And I sit down next to one woman and she says, Hey, my name’s Dr. Grace. help people overcome chronic autoimmune conditions with better gut health. And I said, my gosh, your people must have these problems. They want to do this, but that happens. This is what their experience is like in her jaw dropped. And I was just sharing the truth of my story. And something magical happened in that moment. this would be a big turning point for my life. I would start working with her and writing speeches with her and ghost writing books. And she started taking me through a health protocol that like returned my life and my youth and so much to me. And also the most interesting thing that happened was in an instant, The thing that I was sure was the curse of my life, the worst thing or one of the worst things to have happened to me turned into something that set me apart in the marketplace. wasn’t just another copywriter. wasn’t just another person with a certain skill set, but because not because of my talents, but because of my personal experience, I became unique and valuable to a certain group of people who needed my skill set. who made a big impact and who paid well for it. And this kind of gets out where like the bigger philosophy that I really embody and the work that I do and kind of what you hinted at is that we as entrepreneurs, we relate to ourselves wrong. And just like I did, what I thought was my curse was actually something that was a strength and something that would magnetize

Kyle: the right people to me and it’s not always a health condition or something but very often most of the people I work with have this same blind spot where right in plain sight the story that they might not want to tell that they might not feel like is the victory that they would like to share from the stage if we can actually change how we relate to that story you’re going to be excited to share it from stage and gets results and that’s just the beginning of the magic that happens. When we start to relate to our own stories better, we start to value our own time. make different decisions as visionaries, as entrepreneurs, as leaders, when we start to value the who we are as much as the what we know. And practicing from the stage and influencing with your authentic story is the perfect sandbox and playground to change the rest of your life through it.

Park: So if you were to boil the story engine down to solving one major problem, what is that?

Kyle: It would be helping experts who are too smart for their own good share what they know and who they are from stages, podcasts, and webinars in a way that magnetizes their ideal clients.

Park: So give us an example of maybe someone you helped, can save the name to preserve their innocence or whatever, but give us an example or two of someone you’ve helped and how they were maybe headed down the wrong direction or weren’t embracing that particular story and how you pulled it out and helped.

Kyle: Yeah. One of my favorite clients of the last few years, his name is David a Perez. maybe, maybe an interesting guest for your show too. He calls himself Mr. Economy and he runs a tax planning, business and, we were creating a webinar targeting people with six figure, tax burdens while he was running a webinar weekly to cold traffic. for people with six figure tax burdens. And his webinars before he saw me would run for like two hours and he would have so many great things to share. So many, would be dumping value out. had a whiteboard behind him and would just be like, we can use the Augusta rule here. We can use this thing here. We can move this money around and then through there and all this way. And he feels like he’s on fire. He thinks it’s, it’s going great. But his webinars just aren’t converting that well. They’re like at 5%, which isn’t bad for cold traffic, to be honest with you, but it’s not sustainable if he really wants to, build up high ticket clients. And so he was teaching so much and it felt good to him, but it wasn’t having the effect on his audience that he wanted. And he was so close to his work that he knew he had some blind spots as a numbers, you know, kind of authority guy. He didn’t. understand why a story would be interesting or useful or how that would fit in. And so we started with an authority story that he could open up his talk with in the same time where he was confronted with his first six figure tax burden, even running a tax planning business. And he just like his clients was so busy growing the business and rocking that one day it came around and he was just hit with this huge tax bill and he went to somebody he trusted. And this person he trusted was said, you’re, right. Paid pay the United States a hundred grand, you know, are you a patriot or not? Be happy. You have taxes to pay. And it like just sat with him and he wanted to become the person that could learn how to navigate this system better. And it transformed his own business. So we added that story in, but the best part is we cut a lot of his teaching out.

Kyle: He, like many of the experts that I work with, when they think about what their teaching is, a lot of the time, it’s like they’re looking in the mirror and thinking, what does this person want to learn? Because we’re so steeped in it and immersed in it. And when he’s writing on the whiteboard all of these tactics, it feels good to him. But that’s not what people want necessarily in a stage presentation or a webinar. No amount of showing how you do something It matters unless you address their belief systems first. So somebody who believes that they should just trust their tax planning client or their current tax planner, they’re not going to listen in. And this rule applies to many different things. And so we cut out a lot of the teaching and we just focused on shifting their beliefs instead of, were you aware these things are out there? Most tax planners are just trying to focus on getting you the highest return for the year. But that means they’re neglecting all of these long-term strategies and long-term plays, but they just don’t really have people who are asking for these kinds of things, so they don’t know. And that’s why we do things differently here, and here is how we find things. So this cut his webinar down from almost two hours to 45 minutes. We got rid of the whiteboard. And his conversions went from 5 % to up to 20 to 24%. and he was having more fun and, the, the conversions started going so well and the process got so dialed in that he was actually able to delegate that webinar to one of his team members to start running it. And then he started working on more B2B offers, helping other tax planners. And so he. created more freedom in his life. We generated easily six or seven figures in additional revenue in a year. And it came from simplifying a lot of his content and really challenging him consistently to think about what the audience needs versus what he thinks he needs to say.

Park: And how did story play into that?

Kyle: The plays into it in a couple of ways. We have our authority story or origin story, the story that we use at the beginning, which I gave you a little hint at. And the purpose of this story is not to brag about yourself. It’s not to say, look at how cool I am. I’m an authority. The purpose of this story is to take a moment from your life and paint your client’s language on it. so that you say to them, understand exactly what it feels like to be you right now and I’ve worked hard to find a solution.

Park: And what was his story that did that?

Kyle: His story was being confronted with his own six figure tax bill and his tax mentor telling him, pay up if you want to, if you want to be called a patriot or go to a different country, if you don’t like taxes. And he, I think he ended up having to pay that bill that year, but he dedicated himself from there on to become the person that he needed to find in that moment, to become the person that understood the bigger strategies. of being a tax advisor rather than just a tax planner trying to get you a better return at the end of the year.

Park: And the whole goal of that story is what I would call a connection story. You are obviously communicating your authority, but you’ve got to connect with your audience so that they can say, yeah, he’s like me. She understands me. She gets me. Okay. Let me, you know, listen, and you build authority that way. First is through just pure and simple trust.

Kyle: Mm-hmm.

Kyle: Exactly. They don’t want to, they’re not going to listen to the teaching, all of the awesome ideas that you have, unless they feel like you understand them as a person. It creates a context for the rest of their teaching. But a lot of people devalue that and just go into the teaching. and speaking of teaching, there’s another story that I like to tell or a type of story that I like to tell when we teach. And I call these kinds of stories, success projection stories.

Park: Mm-hmm

Kyle: This is the story we tell our stories about our clients and we give testimonials not at the end of our talks where people are like, really? You helped him that much, but we give it in the middle of our talks as a way to validate or venerate whatever teaching point we have. And then we can also through the process of this story, have our clients in the story that we work with present the objections park. I don’t think I have a good story. I don’t think I’m an interesting person. What can you do? And then you explain how you helped them and how you overcame that objection, how you shifted that limiting belief for them. And you’re doing it just like a chess player is anticipating their opponents move four moves ahead because we know that this objection is going to come up sometime in the decision making process of working with us or not. And if we can tell a story that adds value, that has people taking notes about what it’s like to be working with us and shifting their beliefs about what’s possible. Then we are talking about our products and services in a way that’s entirely non-threatening and value adding. And so by the time we make our offer, they already know what it’s like to work with us and, what it feels like and what they can expect. And so it becomes a much more natural and easy thing rather than just offer stacking and slashing numbers. you know, for 50 slides.

Park: So you’re anticipating that objection or their anti-story, how they’re going to push back and then you foreshadow that answer even before it pops up in their mind. So when it does pop up in their mind, like, well, actually they’ve covered that. No, I’m good with it.

Kyle: Mm-hmm.

Park: Do you have a third category of story? You’ve got the authority story, the success projection story. Do you have a third?

Kyle: I do have a third. It’s a story that we would use to end a talk. I call them aligned ending stories. These are tricky because they’re also a moment that doesn’t naturally come to mind. There are moments that we would never think of as a business story, but I’ll, I’ll give you an example. When we want to, a great speaker is going to end a talk on an emotional note. We want to have the same experience like when you just see a good movie and the credits are rolling and you feel good at the end of your talk and a lot of it’s not enough to just be like, okay, everybody buy this thing. Here’s the QR code. That’s all. And then you walk off the stage. That’s not very fun. and that doesn’t do good for your sales either. And, so we want to leave them on an emotional note. And so there’s a couple of, kinds of emotional morals that we could leave our audience with. Take action now. I’ll give you an example of at least one of these. hire an expert or try something new. Or for marketers, the marketers are the hidden gem story. And so we take a moment that has nothing to do with anything we’ve been talking about, but leads to the same emotional moral. Let’s play a hire an expert story, okay? This is one of my favorites. So I was working with a financial planner for his 90 minute kind of sessions that he does to get more clients in, different than the tax guy I was talking about. And we needed to hire an expert story. And so I’m going to just pretend to be Bob. This is, this is what his story sounds like. Okay, everybody. Thank you so much. I have one last thing to share with you. A couple of months ago, I was, I walked into my kitchen and my wife was in there and she says, Bob, the dishwasher’s broken. Will you please fix or will you please call a repairman to get the dishwasher fixed? And I say, honey, I’m a financial planner. I’m a smart man.

Kyle: I’m going to fix the dishwasher myself and what the money I save. I’m going to take us out to dinner. How does that sound? She shakes her head. It’s good enough for me. I open up my laptop, search dishwasher repair on YouTube and I’m off to the races. I open it up. I’m seeing all these parts and pieces moving and worrying. And there’s this one back there and I just can’t seem to get it. And then all of a sudden snap. and now it’s really broken. I peek over the counter, hoping my wife’s gone. She’s still there. She’s still shaking her head. She hands me the phone. The repairman’s already dialed. I call over the repairman. He comes over, looks at my dishwasher and sees the part that I broke, replaces it, closes the dishwasher and says, Bob, you’re good to go. And I say, wait, repairman, the dishwasher was broken before I broke it. Did you fix that too? And he says, Bob, you were just putting too much soap into the dishwasher.

Kyle: we get him to this point. It’s a little bit of a ha-ha. If you feel that feeling in your gut, that means the trap is sprung, my friends. And here’s how we spring the trap. You know, was on that day that I realized the one time I tried to fix a dishwasher on my own, how important it was to hire an expert, a repairman who fixes dishwashers every single day. And you know, the funny thing is if I just would have called him in the first place, He would have told me I was just putting too much soap in the dishwasher and I could have saved enough money to take my wife out to dinner.

Kyle: You know, how many times are you going to plan your retirement in your life? And how much more important of a commitment of a plan of a circumstance is that? You know, I help people plan their retirements every single day. And just like it was to that repair man, one phone call to me could make such an incredible difference in your lives. So I hope that you will join me. and hiring experts so we can create the retirement of your dreams together.

Park: Ta-da! So you throw them a curveball, you’ve got them reignited for the end and it’s an end that closed for a presentation that they’re not going to forget.

Kyle: Yeah.

Kyle: And it leaves them with that feeling and that satisfaction. And of course, they come to the conclusion, I should hire an expert. That sounds smart. But if we try to tell a story about like financial planning and the time that he tried to hire a financial expert at the end, and that didn’t work out, they’d be like, I can see where this is going. This guy’s I’m not buying it. But the innocence of the story and the far away Ness

Park: Mm-hmm.

Kyle: allows us to emotionally move them right where we want them. And people are equal parts or maybe not even equal parts. give them too much credit. Logical and emotional. And so of course we want to conclude on an emotional note.

Park: Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so let’s dive in and go through your process. I’ve just rung you up said, Kyle, I’m a leader of a big tech company, and I’m trying to ignite my sales, I need a better stage presence. My webinars aren’t quite working. Where do I start? And what do you walk me through?

Kyle: course. Now, this is one of many different kinds of stories and possibilities and tactics and techniques that make up what I think of as a martial art of the mind. And we’re going to start with one of these. That’s going to be a great Chuck Norris roundhouse kick to your arsenal. You’re not going to be able to win every martial arts tournament with just a good Chuck Norris roundhouse kick, but it’s going to get you pretty far. But, so We want to start with an authority story. An authority story has three parts. The first part is the painful moment. we want to experience the same problem that our clients are going through. Act two is our montage. That means that we kind of start to describe that we go out on a journey and we are putting together a cocktail of a solution to solve this problem. And we describe what we want to put in it. And then in act three, we experienced the transformation that your audience wants to experience. And by taking them through these three scenes, we mirror the customer’s journey and the promise at the end of it. So to start with this, We must start with our client. Can you tell me the top three problems that your ideal client is facing that you solve?

Park: Number one, overwhelmed. They are just so completely overwhelmed by running their company. They may have a great business. Well, they always have a great business model actually in a solid product or service. And they’re trying to kind of do it all. One of their big things is their branding. It is not working for them because it’s not clear. It doesn’t differentiate them. They want to take it on, but they are so overwhelmed with everything else. They can’t even embrace the idea. the overwhelming process that it’s going to take to clarify their brand story.

Kyle: How do they know that this is branding? How can they tell in the midst of overwhelm? What is the evidence that this is a branding problem? Or what are the symptoms of the branding problem?

Park: Number one, they’ve got a sales team that is out there that is not telling the same story. They’re shooting from the hip and which then typically makes them lead with logic and reason, meaning I’m going to sell you a bunch of features and functions of our widget and you are naturally going to buy it. you know, the sales aren’t there. Number two, internally, they realize that their internal team is not aligned with the same vision, mission and story that the founder slash business owner has in their mind because they haven’t done a good enough job of communicating it to them. And then number three is they just look at the amount of money they’re spending and the amount of time they’re spending on marketing and it could be webinars and other things. And they just know in their heart that their message is not landing.

Kyle: Can you go in a little bit deeper? What is the symptoms of the internal team not being aligned? How would I know that this is happening?

Park: You have an intuitive sense that they’re just simply not getting together and they’re not getting along. You hear them, you overhear them talking about the brand, maybe to a customer client, maybe it’s to a service person, and you can hear that they are kind of grappling for the story and you’re like, no, no, no, no, that’s not the way we say it. There’s just frustration and a lack of camaraderie that they can feel and they can see in their people.

Kyle: Probably like they don’t come to me with ideas. Nobody takes ownership of anything. And they just always, every time there’s a problem, it falls back on me to figure, figure out and make things right. And so I’m really busy. Park Howell (26:08.94) Right. Well. Park Howell (26:17.43) And it’s the reason why that happens is the lack of a crystal clear brand story that communicates the vision and the mission of the company. So everybody is following the same map, the same guide, and they know what needs to happen.

Kyle: Yes, yes.

Kyle: Yes. Okay. Now we need the next ingredient. need three things that makes your process specifically how you get there, not what you get, but how you get there. How do you get us there better, faster or differently?

Park: So I had this same problem when I was running my ad agency, Park & Go. The first 10 years was a blast. Traditional branding, advertising, marketing, TV, radio, print, direct mail, that kind of thing. And then of course the interweb showed up. And then in the early 2000s, I was flustered. I didn’t understand it. And I know other people, other business owners like myself were going through the same thing. And I could not articulate our mission very well to our my own colleagues because I didn’t know what it was until I found brand storytelling and primarily the hero’s journey. And when I looked at the hero’s journey, Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey is I said, well, this is a customer journey. This is my journey. This is a journey every human being goes on in one way, or form. That is the process that I brought in and said, first, I’m going to use it on me to get my act together so that Park & Co can grow and thrive. And then I’m going to teach my customers and clients how to do it. I took the hero’s journey, boiled it down to the 10 steps story cycle system, basically mapping it to brand building and business building and leadership. And that is the methodology I have since followed and taught and consulted on for the past 20 years.

Kyle: I understand the what in the methodology, but I don’t know if it answered why is it better.

Park: because it gives you a templated way of approaching every customer, understanding their journey. And this is something that we didn’t invent. I mean, The Hero’s Journey has been around since the beginning of recorded storytelling time. And so it’s better because it gives you basically the playbook to life. One of the best books written on this is called The Writer’s Journey by Christopher Vogler. And if anybody, we use that a lot as a guide, but That’s what’s so powerful about the hero’s journey and now the story cycle system map to business is it gives you the proven step-by-step guide on how to build a brand story that connects with your core audiences.

Kyle: So we’ve got templated way of approaching every customer, time tested and proven. What’s the third thing?

Park: Results the ROI you see we’ve grown brands by as much as six hundred percent following this process one company pre-auto partez, which is a used car dealership for credit at credit risk Canadian buyers use the story cycle System and they created their entire business model out of it. And in fact, whenever they were hiring anybody They make them first read through their whole brand narrative story based on the story cycle system. And they became one of the fastest, well, they grew by 400 % and they became one of the fastest growing auto dealerships in Canada. So you can ascribe real ROI return on investment when you follow this framework.

Kyle: And then if we translate our problems into solutions, overwhelmed becomes simple and clear.

Park: We like to say overjoyed because you go from just like, my God, I got to do this overwhelming process of fixing my brand story to now you can do it following this proven process. And it’s an overjoying experience. mean, you get enthralled with how your story comes to life.

Kyle: Beautiful. The sales team is predictable and clear. The internal team is aligned and

Park: And you as the owner know how to talk about your story and how to share it and get people enthralled about it, including your colleagues, your customers. And I even say the communities you serve because they all know what your brand stands for.

Kyle: Great. Okay. We’ve got our ingredients. Next up. I want to hear about you park. This is sometimes a challenging game. I’m going to, so here’s the game we’re going to play. I want to hear about an experience that is specific in time and place, a room that you were in a moment in your life. And we’ll, we’ll find that there. what I don’t necessarily want to hear. is what you did to solve the problem or like how, what, what happened after, but the experience of the problem. So park, tell me a time when you were feeling completely overwhelmed. had a good business model, but you could feel stifled. You were so busy. You were so hard working. And when you were looking around at your team, the sales team is shooting from the hip. They’re not producing consistent results and that’s stressful. The internal team, you can tell they’re not jiving. Nobody’s coming to you with ideas. They’re all coming back to you with problems, making you more overwhelmed and frustrated. And you’re spent seeing how much time and money you’re spending on marketing and it feels like it’s going out the window. When park, did you feel like this?

Park: Tuesday, September 11th, 2001, 9-11. And when we all experienced that horrible attack on the Twin Towers, I was at home with my young kids and my wife and we were watching it and I got a call from my creative director and said, everybody’s in here and they need you in here to show leadership on what to do next. And I thought to myself, how weird is that? I mean, I’m at home. with my family at the moment, which takes precedence over anything and everything in my life. And yet now I’m being summoned into my own office to help my, some of my colleagues. And I thought, well, okay, I got to take that seriously. And I got in there. And of course that, the whole nine 11 thing impacted everybody’s business for a while there. And then we were hit later on by the world recession, but that was what my wake up call that we knew that our business and our lives could be torn down around us in a moment. And that when I came out of that, I was not only searching for answers of like, okay, how do I protect my family? And then how do I protect my business? Because we have no idea what the next shock was going to be on the economy. And that was the first time I woke up to the fact. And I was like, you know, eight years into running my agency, and I really had to ask myself, is this what I want to be doing? for the rest of my life. And that was the first thing that said, hmm, maybe there’s something else out there waiting for me. That doesn’t mean I had to do a full shift. It was more of an off ramp into the next level of what I was supposed to be doing.

Kyle: Perfectly done, Park. Perfectly done. It’s rare. It’s rare high compliments to you. You found a moment, a very common moment that most of us can remember with the same level of resolution, but the precision is outstanding. Many people, many, many people, many experts, many smart, talented, great people will approach a vulnerable moment like that and they f***

Park: Well, thank you.

Kyle: feel it just for a sec and then they’re like teaching. And here’s how I solved that problem. And that’s why you need this. And they, they miss the point of it entirely. But anyway, let’s go in the opposite direction. This is also a tricky one. Most people, they can understand the pain moment, but they all, they sometimes have a hard time finding this one. Tell me a time in your business after this.

Park: Mm-hmm.

Kyle: perhaps in the business of Storybrand or maybe before that, where you wake up and things are simple and clear in your business. The first time you felt what you recognize as the word overjoyed. Your sales team is predictable and clear. Your internal team is aligned and you’re saying, look at the abundance that I’ve created because I know my story.

Park: Well, mine changed and it is not an answer to that. But here’s, let me tell you, and it was about 10 years later. So I spent a decade after 9-11 trying to figure out, okay, what am I going to do? And that’s when I really started studying story a lot. And I found I was just fascinated by it. But let’s fast forward to 2013. It was June and a hot, muggy summer in Washington, DC at the Gaylord National Hotel.

Kyle: Mmm.

Park: I was working with our largest and longest client at the time, Forever Living Products, and this was their annual sales convention where they brought in 4,000 of their salespeople from around the globe. This is network marketing company, so these are all individuals coming in that spoke all different kinds of languages. And in fact, the show is translated in eight languages real time from the stage. And my client, I was teaching them some of the things I’d learned about storytelling. And they said, why don’t you take Center Stage on Thursday morning for our training and our product launches and teach our 4,000 distributors in attendance, how to tell the story, their story, the Forever Living product story and our new product story. So I took the stage, I wrote my script. I mean, I was on stage for two hours. And I did the rehearsal the night before and here I am reading the teleprompter and it just felt clunky. my client was looking at each other like, God, do you think he can actually pull this off? And I knew I could. I got on stage then that morning on Thursday. I just pretty much ignored the teleprompter and used it as just prompts of where am I in the overall thing. And for the next two hours, I owned that stage and I knew that’s what I was supposed to I was no longer an ad agency owner at that moment. I was now a coach, a consultant, a teacher on storytelling. And so it got me aligned and crystal clear on what I should be doing from that moment forward.

Kyle: And nobody on your team called you while you were on the stage asking me, what do I do here?

Park: Right? No. I mean, I have very good colleagues and really, really smart creatives and, they did a really fantastic job for me at Park & Go. It was me. It was my inner turmoil because I just didn’t know what my exact trajectory was supposed to be and how to communicate that to those people until that day at the Gaylord National Hotel in 2013 in Washington, DC. That’s when I said, This is my calling. And it took me another three years to actually pivot away from Parkland Company as an agency. And in 2016, I just evolved into the business of story.

Kyle: Okay, are you ready to hear your story?

Park: Yes, I am.

Kyle: It was a Tuesday morning almost all of us remember. September 11th, 2001. I’m there around a table with my family watching my picture of what the world is crumble. The feeling of safety and invincibility that I had was gone and I had so many profound questions. I’m glued to the screen ready to just take the day off and be with my family and all of a sudden my phone rings. It’s my team. Everybody’s here and we need you in here to show us what to do next. We’ve got a deadline. The urgency has come back. This is basically every day for me. Come back and put out all the fires. Nobody knows what to do. I’m so busy. I’m so overwhelmed and I feel like I need to work so hard just to keep my head above water because the sales team just doesn’t seem to be getting it. in selling the products and services, my internal team, nobody has any ideas. Nobody’s taking any leadership or ownership of anything. It’s all falling back onto me. And now on this day where I’m feeling so unsafe in the world, I need to go into my office right now. What if I wanted to take a day off? Was I ever going to be able to do that or were there always be an emergency like this?

Kyle: What if I got sick? Would my business even be there if I was gone for a few days when I came back? And I realized in that moment that I needed to do something different. I asked myself, how do I really protect my family in a world like this? And how do I protect my business? Because I don’t know where the next change is gonna come from. And from there, I set out on a decade long journey to understand what was at the heart of this problem. and what I wanted in a solution. It seemed like everybody in my business was going in every direction and I wanted a templated and clear way to approach every decision, every customer, every move. I wanted this process to be time tested, proven, and I could know that I was going to generate ROI from this so I could know how to invest my time and finally focus instead of being caught everywhere. I wanted it to align my team. I wanted it to clarify my customers and align everything with my vision in a way that I knew was going to get results.

Kyle: More than 10 years later, after a couple of businesses transforming everything that I did and studying story profoundly, began to put together a system that I structured my businesses with first. I began to share my story in a way that my team members could see it in, my clients could see themselves in, and that everybody was starting to speak the same language. And I can remember being at an event for one of my clients at a muggy summer in Washington, DC at the Gaylord. And my client comes up to me in front of this and points to this huge room of people, of business owners, of leaders. And he says, you need to train us all, train these 400 people on your process and storytelling. This was one of the biggest callings of my life. I felt so much pressure and I started working at it, writing the script, developing things. I was so nervous when the day actually happened that I actually had to fall back on my trainings and stories, ignored my script, ignored the teleprompter and just spoke from my heart. And so many people came up to me afterwards. But one of the most important things that didn’t happen is I had my full heart and soul able to focus on this. My team wasn’t coming to me with fires to put out. There weren’t problems in my businesses that were constantly distracting me. And because of the space I created for myself, I finally realized this is my calling. This is what I want to do.

Kyle: And now I’m going to teach you how you can do that yourself with this story process.

Park: Yeah, that’s pretty great. Right off the cuff like that, taking that in, of course, with anything like this, and I’m sure your customers do it with you too. You tweak a few things. So number one up top, I don’t want to throw my people under the bus because they were very, very good at what they did. It was me. I was the bottleneck because I wasn’t crystal clear on what I wanted them to do. So I don’t want them to sound like they just weren’t doing their jobs. They just weren’t as effective or as good as they could have been because of me, not because of them.

Kyle: Fair. It’s a symptom of a problem. And yeah, of course, it’s all yours and I can’t do it perfectly, but that’s exactly the response that you would want to have. And hopefully you can take a version of this and apply it to something you’re doing.

Park: Yeah. Yep. Yeah.

Park: Yeah. And I would imagine with your customers, they’ll do the same thing. They’ll, you’ll take them through that. You will then repeat back their story and then they’ll make it their own. Yeah, that’s not quite right. Let’s tweak this here or whatever. You had mentioned 400 people in attendance. There was actually 4,000. So it was quite a large crowd and it was being translated in real time in eight different languages. Plus it was the very first time back in 2013, Forever Living Products. had broadcast their national sales convention live to hundreds of thousands of distributors around the world. yeah, there was a lot of pressure there, but was as soon as I took that stage, that pressure just went away, because as you said, to the point that I spoke from my heart and from my knowledge, I really, really knew the material and believed in it inside and out, that I could then just go and use that prompter as kind of a guide of where am I currently? in the two hour presentation and then, you know, the rest of it was kind of off the cuff. So that’s great. So for those listening, what are that? What are a couple, three, four steps? I mean, you kind of talked me through it by answering, asking those questions. What can they do right now? What questions would you ask of them that they could go away and do this on their own?

Kyle: Awesome.

Kyle: You can ask yourself the same three questions that I asked you, Park. What is my ideal client’s problems? What are the three ingredients that makes how I do what I do better, easier, faster? And what are the three outcomes that I provide? And usually I just look at my problems and turn them into the opposite of whatever those problems are. And then when you have those three ingredients, you just ask yourself the questions. When did I feel like this? When did I experience this? And the real art is being able to paint your client’s language, your client’s words on your story. even if

Park: because you want to connect with them and get to that belief, that belief mechanism.

Kyle: Yes, yes. And if you can do it well, your audience will feel like you snuck into their house the night before and started reading their journal. And if you can describe the problem that they’re experiencing better than they’ve ever heard it before within a story, that’s what creates authority and credibility, not showing the screenshot of your LinkedIn profile or telling me how many years you’ve been doing it or all of these things. Though those are all good and we all seek those things in our experts. If you can show me that you understand it, then I will trust you.

Park: And that’s a trick there. Show them, tell them an emotional story that hooks them and then they can level up into their logic reason driven brain and say, yeah, he’s got two books and a podcast and this, that. So it justifies the emotion they’re feeling that like, this, this person is legit. That’s cool. That’s very, very cool. So far, all of you listening out there, give it a go. Try it on yourself or give Kyle a call and have him walk you through it. You’ve got a great podcast that you take lots of people through. What’s it called?

Kyle: called the story engine podcast.

Park: And you literally do this with every single guest.

Kyle: this is the process I take all of my guests through. So everybody leaves with applying this same framework to their stories and something that they can share on more podcasts, more stages, and start making more money and more impact with their message.

Park: Yeah, that’s awesome. And as my career has evolved, as you captured in the story there, of course, we are now into the world of AI and we have created our StoryCycle Genie and we put the StoryEngine brand through the genie and I sent you the results. What was your first reaction?

Kyle: I thought it was really great. I was my first place is I was curious where it was pulling the data from. I know it was coming some from my website and maybe some from the mini show notes on my thing, but I felt that it, it had a deeper understanding of me and what I was doing then. Then I was expecting was being broadcast by my brand, to be honest with you. So it helped me feel. that I was doing better than I expected, to put it simply.

Park: Well, that’s good. it’s validating that you’re doing things really well. It also reveals gaps. Did you see any gaps in your story that you feel like you need to go and tweak because it didn’t show up in the report?

Kyle: Not necessarily. I didn’t see gaps as much as opportunities. It phrased things and described what I do in ways that I hadn’t considered putting it together or framing things in that way before that made it a little bit simpler. I also suffer from all of the same problems my clients do with my own things as we all do, which is I love what I do because I can. Yeah, just like show you the gold nugget that’s right in front of your face. But I, I, it’s always an honor to have somebody, and, a tool that’s so scalable and precise do that for me too.

Park: Well, that’s the third thing it does, you said there, that it highlights or inspires you with fresh ways to think about your brand story. Does any of those come to mind right now, where you were reading through it, like a line that you really liked or hadn’t thought about talking about your brand that way?

Kyle: let me see. It was something like it, had a, a really, it said anti-generic. loved the word anti-generic for me. And I had never, heard that before, but, yeah, it really, what it captured that I, I feel I articulate on podcasts and in long form conversations, but, but I don’t think that I articulated as much in my like. website or things like that. the, yeah, the deep transformative process and how leaning into authenticity helps you make better choices as a leader as well as, make, make more money from the stage. And really just like it’s the pathway towards coming into alignment with a business and a life that you really wanted to make when you set out to do it. But most of us get so caught up in managing Park Howell (51:00.29) Mm-hmm.

Kyle: whatever success that we’ve created that we lose any space to be in what created the success in the first place.

Park: So it says your position statement is the story engine is the only storytelling consultancy that transforms scattered content efforts into systematic business growth engines through proven master story methodology with documented seven figure results.

Kyle: Mm-hmm

Park: Is that accurate? that about right? Have you ever said it that way before?

Kyle: like I said, I haven’t said it that way, but it brings it all together. While my process is like I really help people bring a lot more emotion into their messages, it is systematic. It is process-driven. It is proven. These are all deeply practical things, though they are quite unnatural to most people. despite being talented, despite having great content or, you know, a lot of the things making this, this logical leap in storytelling is hard. But so I think that that defined it really well. And I love proven seven figure results are documented seven figure results, which absolutely is the case.

Park: And did you have a unique value proposition before? Because of course the StoryCycle Gini creates one for you based on that position statement. Do you have a UVP?

Kyle: Yeah, it’s something along the line of I help experts who are too smart for their own good get dramatically better results every time they get on stages, podcasts and webinars with better teaching and storytelling.

Park: Yeah, and I like that too smart for their own good. think that’s kind of a fun colloquialism you put in there. It must not be on your website because I don’t believe the genie picked up on that. And it’s interesting enough that it would be an area I’d say really explore that. mean, the UVP it came back with was systematic business growth through proven storytelling methodology, which to me is fine, but I think it’s missing some interest in it.

Kyle: No.

Kyle: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Park: which means that maybe on your website and some of your other materials, you can bring more of your personality to it. The anti-generic it came up with, you like that. Could you throw that in there to work with leaders who are too smart for their own good to create brilliant storytelling that actually moves the needle or something like that, but really bring more of your voice to it because you are so good. You are so articulate in the storytelling.

Kyle: Mm-hmm.

Park: realm. Some of this stuff I felt it was a little generic and not doing you justice, which to me as a brander, I’d say, Kyle, go in and really look at some of the content in there and see if you can’t bring your own fun and whimsy and voice to it a little bit more.

Kyle: Thank you.

Kyle: I agree that this is the current frontier and opportunity for my business is to try to be a little less business and let the rest of who I am. Just kind of like I said at the beginning of this podcast, what set me apart and enabled me to grow was not what I knew, but who I was. And just like many of my clients, I fall into those same traps of just showcasing what I know and trying to add value in that way. So I appreciate the challenge and I agree that, especially from my brand and my website perspective, I spend and invest a lot of time on podcasts or in person and in places. And sometimes I feel my website kind of is like a weedy garden that hasn’t been tended to, as much as it deserves.

Park: We’re all there. You’re not alone. And probably everybody listening is nodding right now and saying, yeah, Kyle, I feel you because I’m so busy practicing and teaching and coaching and working with people that I’m not taking care of myself. the stories that you are preaching and that I preach, the emotional stories to get your leaders to do what you want them to do to grow their business, maybe aren’t showing up as much on your website as they should. Your own story, sell with emotion.

Kyle: Mm-hmm

Park: and then back it up with logic and reason.

Kyle: Absolutely.

Park: Yeah. Well, thanks for letting me put you through that and thank you for putting me through your process. That’s the absolute best way to teach is just to show it, to model it. And that was a lot of fun. I really appreciate it.

Kyle: Thank you so much and thank you for sharing this labor of love and this platform and your your brilliant tool with me. It was an absolute honor and I absolutely like everybody listening in. Please give Park like a rating on iTunes. He can’t say this as much as I can from this position, but he works really hard. It’s so hard to get a real reviews. from people for your podcast. And if you’re listening right now, support him because he puts so much into this. You have no idea how generous he’s being. Give him a review.

Park: Thank you, Kyle. I appreciate that. And where can people learn more about you?

Kyle: You can go to the story engine dot C O there. You can see hundreds of episodes of podcasts, many different articles and books on storytelling and marketing for businesses. And, you can, you can learn how to work with me and how to connect with me there. Or, I spend some time on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Instagram or my socials. And you can find me at Hey Kyle gray.

Park: And of course, we’ll have all those links in the show notes. So thank you, Kyle. I really appreciate you being here. This has been a lot of fun.

Kyle: Thank you.

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