Latest / Christian Business Growth Podcast / Your Story Has Power with J Loren Norris

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Your Story Has Power with J Loren Norris · Christian Business Growth Podcast

• 0:00
  Hello, and welcome to the Christian Business Growth Podcast.
• 0:02
  I'm here with Jay Lauren Norris.
• 0:04
  Jay, how did God get you into business?
• 0:07
  You know, the the concept of what we're doing today,
• 0:10
  and first I want to say thanks for having us on,
• 0:11
  Lyle. I I really appreciate the opportunity just to speak to you and
• 0:14
  to speak to your crowd. ~ I think I was probably seven,
• 0:18
  according to my mother. The first time I lined all my stuffed animals
• 0:21
  up beside the the house and started talking to them.
• 0:24
  So talking to at and about creatures and and life has been ~ I guess
• 0:29
  has been a lifelong ambition of mine.
• 0:30
  Converting it to a business didn't happen until about two thousand and twelve.
• 0:34
  I mean
• 0:35
  We've had our entertainment, a DJ business since 2005.
• 0:38
  We did kids' entertainment before that.
• 0:39
  But what we do now was born at a Laurel Langmeyer event in 2012.
• 0:44
  And so it it's been modified and accelerated and changed and transformed
• 0:49
  in the last 14 years. But basically the start of it was I heard somebody sharing
• 0:53
  their elevator pitch and it was a train wreck.
• 0:55
  And I was like, there's gotta be a better way to do that.
• 0:58
  But I also listened to them privately over coffee.
• 1:00
  And so when the time came.
• 1:02
  To share my pitch, I didn't tell my story,
• 1:03
  I told hers. And she sold out of the product that she brought with
• 1:07
  her because of what I said about her and her product,
• 1:10
  not her elevator pitch. And everybody in the circle said,
• 1:13
  I will pay you to do that for me.
• 1:14
  And Story Power was
• 1:15
  Yeah.
• 1:16
  born.
• 1:16
  Wow. That's cool. So tell us what is story power and give us a snippet of that.
• 1:20
  Well, the concept is really simple,
• 1:21
  and that is you can throw all the data,
• 1:24
  all the credentials, the certificates on the wall,
• 1:27
  the degree programs, the letters behind your name that you possi
• 1:30
  you could possibly imagine. You can throw out,
• 1:33
  as they say in sales, the features,
• 1:34
  benefits, and advantages. And all of those things get measured instantly against
• 1:38
  the price, against a better product,
• 1:40
  against a better reputation, against a better brand.
• 1:43
  And since people do business with people they know,
• 1:45
  like and trust, not with a product.
• 1:46
  You're already behind the gun.
• 1:48
  What I found though is telling a personal story about me that causes people to know,
• 1:52
  like, and trust me, then makes the product that I offer seem a whole
• 1:56
  lot more tenable if it just meets the basic standards of good quality.
• 2:01
  But the story is really what allows people to go,
• 2:03
  you're my kind of person. I like the who that you are.
• 2:06
  I like what you do. And so that's what we've trained people to do for
• 2:09
  the last 15 years is
• 2:11
  Find the story in your life that identifies the moment where you learned
• 2:15
  to do what's most important to you and what people are going to buy from you.
• 2:18
  And when you tell that story, people are like,
• 2:20
  You're my kind of people. I want what you offer.
• 2:23
  Makes total sense. So what's God doing your business right now?
• 2:25
  You know, we for the last 12 years or so have offered this training in a six hour,
• 2:31
  one day, it's not even drink from a fire hose.
• 2:34
  It's like jumping the lake with weights on your ankles,
• 2:36
  kind of drowning type of training scenario.
• 2:38
  And I had a lady that went through the program.
• 2:41
  She went through, you know, the earliest part of the class,
• 2:43
  she signed up for the online academy,
• 2:45
  she came to the retreat. We did all of the training that we normally do.
• 2:48
  And when we were done, she looked at me and she said,
• 2:50
  you know.
• 2:50
  I have a master's degree and I've been doing education for the hospital
• 2:54
  for a couple of decades. And I really think that what you have to offer is powerful.
• 2:59
  But I also think that what you have to offer is way too much drinking from
• 3:03
  a fire hose. And if you would change your instructional methodology,
• 3:07
  you would get A, you would attract a lot more people,
• 3:10
  and B, you would get a lot more growth out of the people that
• 3:13
  are there because they'd have more time to apply it.
• 3:15
  And I said, okay, well, what do you think?
• 3:17
  Is best. She said, I would shave off like 95% of what you teach and just give them
• 3:23
  5%. I thought, well, that's that's like selling the icing and not the donut.
• 3:27
  She said, no, you don't understand that most people can't keep up with
• 3:30
  the way you think and teach anyway.
• 3:31
  And so you're already overwhelming them just in a phone call.
• 3:34
  If you'll back off, give them the icing,
• 3:37
  so to speak, and let them process and apply,
• 3:40
  they'll be much better off.
• 3:41
  So the main thing we did was we took that six hour course,
• 3:44
  shaved off the most easily applicable immediate results kind of things
• 3:49
  we could find, and we broke that down into a six weeks course.
• 3:52
  So it's 30 minutes of teaching,
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  a little bit of a homework assignment,
• 3:56
  and then a two-hour group call.
• 3:57
  For six weeks, we do exactly the same thing.
• 4:00
  We have an assignment that you watch at your own leisure,
• 4:02
  you do your homework assignment,
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  and then you jump on the call and you share the stories that were crafted by you.
• 4:08
  In the time that you're doing that assignment.
• 4:09
  And then I give feedback on that,
• 4:11
  and everybody in the group gets feedback on that.
• 4:13
  And we have seen an exponential growth,
• 4:16
  not just in the number of customers,
• 4:18
  but in the total revenue generated just by changing our instructional method,
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  as opposed to an online course do it your own or a drink from a fire hose.
• 4:26
  We allow them to integrate what they're learning in small gaps
• 4:30
  and immediately apply it. And it made all the difference in the world over
• 4:33
  the last three years.
• 4:33
  That makes sense, yeah, because when people take it all at once,
• 4:36
  it's kinda like eating a meal.
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  You can't eat it all at once sometimes.
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  You gotta eat a piece at a time.
• 4:40
  Interesting. And how does God fit
• 4:40
  No, I
• 4:41
  into this whole story concept?
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  Well, it you know, the the truth of the matter is we overcome the evil
• 4:45
  one by the blood of the Lamb and the word of our testimony.
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  And I remember the first time I heard the shortest testimony in the world.
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  Six words. I was blind. Now I see.
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  That's it. That's all there was to it.
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  But when you really dig into that story,
• 4:58
  what you find is there were people in the synagogue who are like,
• 5:01
  so ~ this guy who gave your sight back,
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  ~ how did you convince him to do it?
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  I mean, was it your religious ritual?
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  Was it your baptism? Was it I mean,
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  who was he anyway? And he's like,
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  I don't know. But I don't know,
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  seriously, who who was he? And how did you convince him that he I don't know
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  the guy's name? They're like, so some random guy just walked by and you said heal
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  me and he healed you. And he's like,
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  No. He walked by and asked if I wanted to see.
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  It was his idea. I don't know who he was.
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  I I I don't know what he was doing.
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  He just said I could, I did, there you are.
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  And they're like, Well, we need to know who he is.
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  It's like, what do you want to be his disciple?
• 5:33
  And all of that relationship, all of that dialogue came from I was blind,
• 5:39
  now I see. And I think there are a lot of people walking through life right
• 5:44
  now that they can't put their finger on the moment that God stepped into their life
• 5:47
  and said, I have the power to transform you and I want to,
• 5:50
  if you want to be. Do you want to be healed?
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  That's what he asked the man at the pool of Bethesda.
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  That story has the power to change your life.
• 5:57
  And when you tell that story, other people flock around and go.
• 6:01
  Tell me how this happened. I want it to happen to me.
• 6:04
  And that's the power of the story.
• 6:05
  That is powerful. Yeah. I think about the woman at the well,
• 6:07
  the same thing. She went and proclaimed this story and the entire region
• 6:11
  was impacted because of one person talking to her in a specific way
• 6:15
  and her sharing that story.
• 6:16
  Absolutely. And often that story is just my experience,
• 6:19
  which you can't argue with. I mean,
• 6:21
  Mm.
• 6:21
  you don't know what I experienced.
• 6:23
  Did I get the theology right? I don't know.
• 6:25
  But I think it was ~ Alistair Begg told the story about the man who showed
• 6:29
  up at the gates of heaven. And they're like,
• 6:32
  What are you doing here? I mean,
• 6:33
  what church did you go to? Are you licensed or ordained?
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  How long were you in the church?
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  And the man's like, I don't know.
• 6:37
  The the guy on the cross said to me,
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  said I could come. ~ Well, that settles it.
• 6:41
  Right. It really is
• 6:42
  Mm-hmm.
• 6:42
  that simple. Jesus said it. I believe it.
• 6:45
  That's the truth. But in my story,
• 6:47
  in my life, it's not about my truth.
• 6:49
  It's about his truth through the lens of my experience.
• 6:53
  I mean, it I was molested at nine years old.
• 6:55
  I spent 25 years addicted to pornography as a result.
• 6:57
  That's my story. Is that theologically accurate?
• 7:00
  I don't know. I know it's my life,
• 7:03
  and I do know that God redeemed me and brought me out of that addiction.
• 7:07
  And so for over 20 years now, my wife and I are married 32 years Labor Day weekend.
• 7:11
  The first 10 years was a mess because of me.
• 7:14
  But the last 20 years, we're still working out our salvation with fear
• 7:17
  and trembling. We're still living that.
• 7:19
  But we have a story that other people have lived through,
• 7:22
  but maybe they're not willing to tell it yet.
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  When we tell that story, people like,
• 7:26
  my gosh, me too. Tell me more.
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  That's the power of the story.
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  That's the power of exposing Christ.
• 7:32
  through my own lived experience.
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  And nobody can argue with that.
• 7:35
  And I appreciate you and I met many years ago and you shared that story
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  and you were so open and so vulnerable the way you communicated that
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  I think you just drew people to you.
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  And that that vulnerability impacts people more than people realize,
• 7:47
  that authenticity that we're missing in today's world.
• 7:49
  Yeah. Well, I think a lot of people are so busy protecting their fiefdom that they
• 7:53
  forget about the power of the story in the kingdom.
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  My story is not about me, it's about him.
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  My story is not about what I've accomplished,
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  it's about what God has overcome in me and through me.
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  And the minute I start telling the story that only aggrandizes me,
• 8:05
  that may be marketing, that may be branding,
• 8:07
  but that's not kingdom. And so the the challenge for a lot of people is they want
• 8:11
  to they want to polish the story.
• 8:13
  They want to
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  Gloss over the story. They want to get past the hard stuff and tell what draws
• 8:18
  people to them. And I'm like, that's not what he said.
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  He said, lift me up and I'll draw everybody.
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  But if you're trying to draw people to you,
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  that's a fiefdom, not a kingdom.
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  It doesn't have to be a marketing and brand statement.
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  It has to be a true story about your life,
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  not something made up, not something polished,
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  not something glitzy and glamoury.
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  It does have to be crafted well.
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  Don't trigger people on purpose just because it feels good or
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  Because you get an emotional rise out of them,
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  you've got to be responsible for the path you lead them down.
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  And that's part of what we teach in Story Power.
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  How do you select the right story?
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  How do you craft it in a way that's relevant?
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  You have ownership of it. It's not somebody else's story.
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  You speak with authority because you've already overcome this battle
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  and you're responsible for how people feel.
• 9:00
  That allows you to go to the next step,
• 9:01
  which is to connect with the audience and then eventually to lead the narrative.
• 9:05
  When I say people have been lied to,
• 9:07
  everybody knows they've been lied to.
• 9:08
  But when I say you've been lied to by
• 9:10
  The media, by social media, by your school teachers,
• 9:13
  by your next door neighbor, by the kid down the street.
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  Well, you may believe that that's true,
• 9:17
  but you don't know what to do about it.
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  Leave the narrative is the process that allows you to go,
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  that's not the story I want to live by.
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  That's not the story. I agree that it happened,
• 9:26
  but that's not the life I want to live.
• 9:28
  I've been to Cuba, I've been to the Congo,
• 9:30
  I've been to Honduras, I've been to Beli to ~ Brazil.
• 9:34
  Those are not places I want to live.
• 9:36
  I like the country I live in now and I like it the way I was raised in it.
• 9:39
  And that narrative comes from the stories I've lived through.
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  Those stories have to be told.
• 9:45
  Exactly. Thank you for that. So we're gonna shift into our business growth concept.
• 9:49
  what business growth tip do you have for us today?
• 9:51
  You I think the one that was the hardest for me to hear is when that nurse
• 9:55
  instructor said to me, your problem isn't your content.
• 9:58
  Your problem isn't your delivery.
• 9:59
  Your problem is your packaging.
• 10:01
  You're trying to give away so much that there's no chance people can consume
• 10:06
  it and apply it. So the growth tip for the day is don't just offer
• 10:11
  as a business what feels good to you to offer,
• 10:14
  to provide.
• 10:14
  If you have a product or a service that you're making available to the marketplace,
• 10:18
  make sure it's something the marketplace wants first.
• 10:20
  Make sure it's going to bring about the change in their life that they're looking
• 10:24
  for. Anyone can buy a $20 drill bit.
• 10:26
  The question you've got to answer as a seller of drill bits is why
• 10:29
  in the world would they want it?
• 10:31
  I have a story for that. That story will convince you that that $20 drill
• 10:35
  bit was the best solution for the moment and nothing else would have done it.
• 10:39
  When you have a story like that,
• 10:41
  You can offer an answer to a problem they have,
• 10:44
  not just the thing you want to solve.
• 10:45
  And what would you tell someone if they were struggling to find that fit?
• 10:49
  What's a good practical experience that they can do to kind of find that
• 10:52
  fit better for their own business?
• 10:54
  So, as I understand your question,
• 10:55
  when you're redeveloping your program or you're making sure that what you offer,
• 10:59
  the product or the service reaches a target audience.
• 11:02
  As we know, if you feel like your audience is everybody or your marketing goes
• 11:07
  to everybody, the chances are you serve nobody.
• 11:09
  Because you can't serve that many diverse people.
• 11:13
  That's why I'll often people will say niche down,
• 11:15
  niche down, niche down. Now I'll tell you from a communication standpoint,
• 11:19
  whether you're
• 11:19
  Marketing on social media, or you're standing on a platform,
• 11:22
  or you're doing a podcast as a podcast guest.
• 11:25
  The challenge often is we want to give answers that reach everybody.
• 11:29
  But the truth is, not everybody is our buyer.
• 11:32
  So you have one of two solutions.
• 11:34
  You can try to market to everybody and hope that everybody buys what you offer,
• 11:38
  or you still serve everybody in some capacity,
• 11:42
  but you speak specifically to those who are your ideal customer.
• 11:46
  Let me give you an example.
• 11:47
  Jesus on the Sermon on the Mount.
• 11:49
  Five thousand people showed up that day.
• 11:51
  Some made long journeys. Most of them brought their family with them.
• 11:54
  They gave up an entire day of work or worship or whatever they would normally do.
• 11:58
  And here they are gathered around as Jesus is talking.
• 12:01
  But a lot of what Jesus said, religiously,
• 12:04
  culturally, just in a personal way,
• 12:06
  went right over their head. And the truth is it wasn't for them.
• 12:09
  he was speaking to the 500 that might see him after resurrection or
• 12:12
  Or the 72 that he would later send out to do the mission,
• 12:15
  or the 12 that followed him to the very end.
• 12:18
  When he spoke to those 12, though,
• 12:21
  there's a lot of overflow that,
• 12:22
  you know, if you got ears, you can hear this.
• 12:25
  If you think about it, it makes sense to you.
• 12:27
  Now, whether you're ready to bite right now,
• 12:29
  to buy in right now, to change your life right now,
• 12:32
  well, that's up to you and where you are in your progress.
• 12:35
  But see, there's nothing wrong as a communicator.
• 12:38
  Putting myself out there in such a way that 5,000 people hear it and go,
• 12:41
  that's really good. I'll remember that when I need it.
• 12:44
  Well, I have to be memorable for that to be true.
• 12:46
  I have to have something worthy to offer for that to be true.
• 12:50
  And when I meet those objectives,
• 12:52
  now my target is to speak to the people who are most likely to buy what
• 12:58
  I offer right now. How do I communicate to them?
• 13:01
  What do they want? As someone put it recently.
• 13:03
  You know, if you decide that you want your teeth to be prettier,
• 13:07
  you might go through a two or three week process of whitening your teeth.
• 13:10
  You might get veneers, you might just polish them a little differently,
• 13:14
  a little more regularly. But if you've got a toothache,
• 13:17
  you don't want a two or three week from now solution.
• 13:19
  You want a right now solution.
• 13:21
  What we have to learn to communicate as speakers,
• 13:24
  as teachers, as leaders, as business owners,
• 13:26
  and I don't say care if you're selling hair bows or heart surgery,
• 13:30
  you don't speak to
• 13:31
  Everyone in the same way that you speak to your ideal customer.
• 13:35
  And so part of what we do at Story Power Academy is help people figure
• 13:38
  out who is that ideal customer,
• 13:40
  what words, what solutions, what pain,
• 13:43
  what problem are they dealing with right now?
• 13:45
  When I say I spent nine years,
• 13:48
  25 years addicted to pornography after I was molested at nine years old.
• 13:52
  Listen, that story is true. 5,000 people may hear that story and go.
• 13:57
  Yeah, mm, yeah, mm. I'm sorry to hear that for you.
• 14:00
  But when I say I found the way out and I've written a book on it,
• 14:04
  and my wife found a way to stay in our marriage,
• 14:06
  and she's written a book on it.
• 14:07
  And now we do some work with couples,
• 14:10
  mentoring and coaching with couples who have that same problem.
• 14:12
  And what happens often is that of 5,000 people most go.
• 14:15
  You're not talking to me. I don't have that problem.
• 14:18
  I wouldn't know what to do with you.
• 14:19
  I don't share that story in every audience because a lot of people are
• 14:23
  not ready to come face to face with God and repent for the sin in their life
• 14:26
  in order to get the transformation in their marriage.
• 14:28
  So instead, what do I talk about?
• 14:30
  Look, you've had problems in your life.
• 14:32
  I know. I've had problems in my life.
• 14:34
  You found solutions to keep going through that problem.
• 14:37
  I know. I found solutions to keep going through the problem.
• 14:40
  But the problem and solution that I've had.
• 14:42
  And the problem solution you've had may be completely different.
• 14:45
  My job is to help you identify the problem and the other people
• 14:48
  who have that problem and speak to them in their language.
• 14:51
  When I went to Brazil, I didn't speak Spanish,
• 14:53
  because they speak Portuguese.
• 14:55
  When I went to the Congo, they speak French.
• 14:58
  I use a local interpreter, somebody who knows his language and mine.
• 15:01
  When you're communicating as a storyteller,
• 15:03
  the story is a different language.
• 15:05
  So you don't have to stop speaking to the 5,000 or
• 15:08
  Providing products and services to the 5,000 or encouraging hope to the 5,000.
• 15:13
  But you should be able to speak very clearly,
• 15:15
  very succinctly, very deliberately to the 12.
• 15:19
  Because the 12 are the ones that after Jesus said,
• 15:21
  You gotta, you know, eat my flesh and drink my blood.
• 15:24
  And 5,000 people went, Ew, no,
• 15:26
  I'm out. And Jesus turned to the 12 and said,
• 15:28
  What about you? They're like, Where would we go?
• 15:31
  You're the only one with the words of life.
• 15:32
  That's a
• 15:33
  Powerful understanding. That's what I want.
• 15:36
  If 5,000 people walk away and 12 stay and go,
• 15:39
  you're exactly the coach I was looking for.
• 15:41
  I can meet your needs, I can meet your expectations,
• 15:44
  I can address your problems and offer you solutions and teach you to
• 15:48
  do the same thing for your clients.
• 15:49
  And that's why I'm here. I don't need 5,000 customers this year.
• 15:52
  I need 12 right now.
• 15:53
  Good word. Thank you for that.
• 15:55
  So as we end up here, how can our audience get in touch with you?
• 15:57
  And what little tidbit of wisdom you want to leave us with today?
• 16:00
  The best way to reach me is through storypoweracademy.com.
• 16:03
  Because of our server, you do have to put www in front of it,
• 16:06
  or you get a 404 message. I don't know why we've argued with our server,
• 16:09
  and that's just the way they play.
• 16:11
  So ww.storypoweracademy.com.
• 16:14
  And you can find all the courses we offer.
• 16:16
  There's ways to contact me. You can you can reach out to me.
• 16:18
  You can find me on any social media.
• 16:20
  we produce four different television shows.
• 16:22
  Leading Leaders Podcast now has eighteen hundred and forty episodes.
• 16:26
  You can find that on Spotify, Substack.
• 16:29
  Facebook, YouTube, you name it.
• 16:30
  It's out there. Apple even is about to go video.
• 16:33
  So it's in all those places. ~ as far as the the source of wisdom that
• 16:38
  I would leave you, learn to tell better stories better.
• 16:41
  And there's two sides to that coin.
• 16:43
  On the first side, understanding that a lot of people have a story,
• 16:46
  and it's really nothing more than commiserating.
• 16:49
  They're not telling a story that's going to bring redemption to anybody,
• 16:51
  not even themselves. They're just soliciting pity.
• 16:54
  Tell a better story. Tell a story that looks forward to the future that people look
• 16:58
  at and they go, that's so inspiring.
• 17:00
  That's what it means to tell a better story.
• 17:03
  And then tell it better. Be more intentional.
• 17:05
  Be more purposeful in the crafting of that story.
• 17:08
  So it doesn't just sound like you're recalling or remembering,
• 17:11
  but you're reliving a moment that other people feel like they're living with you.
• 17:15
  If you want to communicate with people to the point of transformation,
• 17:18
  transforming them from not your customer into your customer,
• 17:20
  from lost to redeemed.
• 17:22
  From hopeless to hope filled for eternity.
• 17:25
  If you want to transform people,
• 17:27
  tell better stories better. It's the best advice I got.
• 17:31
  That's a good advice. I appreciate you leaving that s with that information.
• 17:35
  Well, thanks for being with us today.
• 17:36
  I appreciate your time.
• 17:37
  Thank you, Lyle. I appreciate you having me on.