Chief Mischief Maker & Partner Of Storify Agency: Seth Erickson AKA The Mischief Boss – S2E53 (#81)

S2E53 Seth Erikson – powered by Happy Scribe

Here we go. All right. Welcome. Welcome back to Boss Uncage Podcast. So this show, I almost guarantee that if you don’t laugh, then obviously our sense of humor is probably going to go a little bit above your pay grade. But I guarantee you, we’re probably going to say some smart shit during this episode. And I was thinking about, how do I name this guess, right. So his name is easy enough. I’m going to name him The Mischief Boss. I really wanted to name them something more related to Marvel, but I don’t like getting a Marvel lawsuit, but I’m thinking more like that character than anything else.

So once you go ahead and tell us a little bit more about who you are and what are we talking about today, Seth?

Yeah. So I am set. Eric, and I’m the chief mischief maker at Story by Agency. And essentially what we do is we work with startups to help them clearly communicate their value to investors and to the marketplace.

Very cool. Very cool. So with that, obviously, reading your bio, I want to start, like, the beginning, right? In your bio. You saying something about in school going head to head with a teacher. So let’s talk about that story so we can establish, like, how we’re going to enroll your story today.

Oh, man. It’s actually a story that that my mom likes to tell, which is that she pulled up to the school. This is basically like preschool. And the teacher met her at the front and she thought, oh, crap. What did my son do? I because I was always doing something. I thought I was in trouble, and she pulled my mom aside and said, Your son is doing something we’ve never seen any other children do. And she said, What’s that? And she said, Well, we kind of have this.

It’s like a little test where you put up three panels and then the kids look at it and they just want to make sure they’re comprehending and understanding what’s happening. So it’s like a rabbit. And then there’s a stick, and then the bear has the stick, and the kid goes, the rabbit gave the bear the stick or the bear picked up. Whatever me. I look at the rabbit. I give them a name. I start creating a back story for the rabbit and then give the bear name, start saying the bears backstory and then explain what they’re going to do later on in the afternoon.

So I’m going way beyond what the quote unquote test is asking for. And the teacher was like, we’ve never seen a child do that. Like they just usually answer whatever questions we ask them about it. But yeah. So I was doing that kind of stuff as a child. And part of my journey is actually realizing that I guess you would say a closet storyteller. I’m masquerading as a designer because I was really skilled at design and people paid me a lot of money to do design.

And I thought I’m a designer and I had to kind of go through this whole journey of kind of going, no, I’m a storyteller. What does that mean? How do I make money as a storyteller? Because I don’t I don’t plan on going to Hollywood and writing scripts or writing a book. Little did I know it was a long journey kind of figure out my purpose, if you will.

I mean, the reason why I wanted to start off with that. I mean, obviously that’s what you do, right? And the thing that I talk about a lot, just branding and storytelling. And these two things have to go together if they’re not working together in the chemistry is completely wrong. So again, if you could define yourself in five words, what would those three to five words be?

That’s a good question. I feel like I’m a pretty dynamic person. So trying to just describe myself in five words, I think mischief maker like, I’m a storyteller and a mischief maker. Those two kind of go hand in hand. Like you mentioned Marvel earlier, I’m probably more low key than I am Captain America or Iron Man. And the reason I say that is because Loki is quite often creating mischief to see what the response is. He’s kind of a scientist in some ways, and often he’s poking people to get them to kind of evaluate their decisions and what they’re doing.

And so I do that a lot for clients. So I don’t think I quite answered your question, but, yeah, I’m a storyteller through and through the fact that you compare yourself a local.

I mean, behind the scenes before I even got on this podcast. And I’m reading his bio, and I’m looking at his profile, and I’m like, I’m about to interview, damn, Loki.

This is.

How do you go from being such a tenacious kid storytelling kid, graphic designer? How do you kind of combine that to create the business that you have right now? Like, what did that story look like?

Well, like I said before I started as an illustrator, I sold my first design to a T shirt company. When I was 14. I thought I’m going to be rich, but that’s like nothing. It was $200. So in my mind, I was going to be rich. And so what I took away from that was like, oh, I’m a good designer. I can make money doing this. I just kind of kept doing it and doing it and doing it until I got to the point where, like, we talked about a little bit before the show, I built a company, had 22 people.

I was making really good money and was very dissatisfied in my job. And the reason I was dissatisfied was that I was not pushing the needle forward for my clients, like they would pay me for design. We won a bunch of awards, blah blah, blah, blah, blah. But I was asking them, like, Are you getting more sales or more people reaching out to you? Well, no, but we’re really happy with the design. And I was like, and fuck the design. And that’s when I kind of had this epiphany of like, okay, I need to get better at something else because this is not working or it’s not working the way I want it to work, which is to help my clients and grow their business and help them, you know, change things for the better.

And so. So a friend of mine in 2015 said, Dude, you’re a storyteller. Like, aside from that, that experience as a child and doing a bunch of crazy stuff in late class. I never thought I’m a storyteller. I just thought this is something I do. I don’t think about it. It’s like breathing. And he goes, You’re a storyteller. He gave me this book called Story Wars by Jonah Sac. I read the book was completely fascinated with it. It was like, I got hit by lightning, and I went on like an Audible binge, like a freaking addict.

Like, I was buying those three credit packs. I was like, Daddy needs another hit. We got to do this. And so I think I raised Audible stock at least 15% in that year. And I read over 50 books. And when I started reading the books, some of the books mentioned the neuroscience stuff, and I was like, Wait, there’s science around this. I mean, I was already sold, right? I was like, yeah, story. Great. And then with the neuroscience stuff, I was like, Well, if there’s neuroscience about this, there’s got to be papers.

And so I went and read another two or 300 papers. They are really fucking boring. So you don’t have to go read them. You can just read my book. I kind of distilled that information down for you. And I was like, okay, so we got the science. So we have some proof here. This isn’t just me trying to blow smoke up your ass and I’m into the storytelling thing. And like I said, the story was booked. That guy was running an agency. So I start kind of going down the marketing path and going, well, do they use storytelling in marketing?

And what I was seeing, it was more being used in the branding side of things. And like you mentioned before, I see story, like, if you’re going to build a brand, story is kind of the caramel new Getty Center that you need and everything else kind of flows out from there. Yeah. So that’s kind of how I got here. And, yeah, it was a lot of change. We had to rebrand the agency. We rebranded a Story Fi, and Story Five just means to tell or narrate and story.

So it’s a very descriptive of what we do and how we help the people we work with.

I don’t speak anything less. I mean, you’re a storyteller. So and that’s why I love the way you’re going to answer these questions. So with that, right. I think this next one is like a gateway for you to be more on the mischievious side. Right. So what is the worst example of the worst case scenario you ever dealt with in storytelling? In your business? It could be the worst client. It could be the worst experience. Like, just tell a story about, like, how did that happen? And how did you overcome that?

Well, I mean, I’ve definitely had some bad experiences with clients. I would say that at the end, I usually end up firing the client. And as entrepreneurs, like, most entrepreneurs are like, fire a client, that’s like a strange concept. Right? The mindset is more like you say, jump. I say, how high, right. But, yeah, I worked with a client one time who paid me $500 and wanted about 100 hours worth of work. And I was making about, like, $2 an hour by the time this thing is done.

And they were calling me at, like, 10:00 at night asking me to make changes and what not. And it took me actually, quite a long time to realize the reason you have bad clients is not because of the clients. It’s because of you. You’re the one who’s accepting them and taking them honest clients, even though you’re completely ignoring your gut and not able to separate, like, yes, you’re getting paid. But you’re going to go through hell, and that sucks. But, yeah, I mean, I’ve definitely had some clients that I’ve had some batter interactions with, and I’ve been mischievous with them where I just start kind of fucking with them because I’m like, I’m tired of your bullshit and they would say something to me and I would take it.

And I would agree with them. But I would blow it up into this completely bombastic, you know, response. Like, yes, I am totally going to create these five new pages that you didn’t pay for. Also, I’m going to come to your house, I’m going to clean it. I’m going to wash your car, I’m going to put your kids to bed, and then maybe later I’ll pick up some groceries for you. That’s what I’m going to do.

That’s hilarious. And I’m sure without naming names, those clients, if they do listen to this podcast, they’re probably sitting here saying, this son of a bitch, right?

They were saying that before they saw the podcast. So it’s okay.

So let’s just talk. Obviously, you’ve had a career with multiple different things. And I think that we talked off air. We talked about the commonalities between our histories. I mean, there’s so many different things that both of us have done, and you’ve kind of taken all these things and you’ve streamlined it into where you are right now. So the perception for the average listeners, like, okay, this guy, he’s telling clients F off. I wish I had a client, right? He has his system in place, and he’s a graphic designer.

He’s done this. He’s done that. He’s on all these different things. But in reality, how long has it taken taking you on your journey to get from where you were day one to where you are right now, 20 years.

Yeah. I guess this goes back to the question you asked before to branding was where I took all my design knowledge and was able to pair it with storytelling and start to create something that was like, oh, this makes sense, right? Because you need good design. But with branding, like, good design is like wearing nice clothes, like the person inside, right? What do they say? How do they act? How do they treat you? What is the experience you have with them? It doesn’t matter if you dress an asshole up a nice clothes, he’s still an asshole.

I just see the design aspect of that is just being one element. But the story is kind of like, how do you talk, right? Like what kind of, you know, like one of the things that we talk with our clients about in the concept of story is what is your brand archetype and understanding based on your brand, archetype, that’s how you need to talk to your clients, right. Like with us. Like I said, we’re kind of Loki. So the book that I wrote is throw in lots of humor, says lots of inappropriate things because that’s on brand with how we are.

But it may not be for our clients. And so we’re always talking about the communication style. Like, lots of companies do this stuff where they just talk in corporate speak or it’s very safe or very bland. And so we work with our clients to go, okay, who do you want to be? Are you the right? Are you the magician, right? Are you the muse? Like, figure that out. And then we’ll start to write the language that works with that, right. The guy just recently showed me a brand called Liquid Death, and they’re basically a water brand.

But they’re like, heavy metal water brand. And I think their tagline is Kill Thirst or something like that. And the whole branding message goes all together with who they are as a company. And I see a lot of businesses who basically don’t even have a brand because they would just vanilla and how they talk, how they communicate, the experiences they give people everything. It’s just it’s all the same. And the basically commoditizing themselves nice to interest about the brand, Archetype.

And I just finished speaking about this. And you can correct me if I’m wrong or you can kind of give me some some insight to what I’m about to say and what your thoughts are on this. And I would say, yes, we got a brand from a perspective of there’s four aspects to any universal brand. The first is the personal brand, the story of the individual or the owner or the executives. Right. And then you have the company brand, which is essentially part of the secondary story of the individual.

And then you have a service brand. And you have a product brand. And I think a lot of times people they don’t really look at their services and their products as individual brands. And I’m just like, well, why not personify them, make them real life, make them have associations, give them psychology behind them, make people attach to them. And the statement that I always say is in your brand for your product or service, stand up in a bar conversation. If somebody going to walk away from that brand because it’s so boring, or are they going to stay there and sit in that bar and have all the communications, all the talks and buy your brand more drinks.

So.

Well, I like the analogy. And I agree with you. I think there is a different story for each one of those elements and and understanding that they are. There are different elements to each one of those stories as well. So people will ask me about personal branding, for instance. And I’m like, so they’ll say, Well, this is my story. And I’ll be like, okay, but when it comes to a personal brand, you need to position yourself as basically the mentor. You have gone through this experience. You’ve learned these things and be able to talk about what have you learned through that experience?

Whereas a lot of people will just tell a story and they’re like, now I’m a CEO. What’s the takeaway? Give me something to work with here. You didn’t just keep working and then end up as a CEO. Like, you learned things along the way. You had trials and tribulations. You overcame things. You went through the freaking hero’s journey. So talk about that. So you kind of have to position it a little bit differently. Whereas the company’s brand, you tend to talk more about, like, or at least this is how we advise.

You tend to talk more about the problem, right? This is the problem that you have as the customer. And I am here to help you overcome that problem. I understand that problem at a deep level.

Right.

So it’s a slightly different story, whereas the products, I mean, services can follow the same kind of model of problem solution that that a brand can use. But products like you said, you can make them have personality. You can tell funny little stories and really interesting stories about how your product goes sky diving on the weekend. You’re just like, creating or scuba diving or whatever. You’re creating fun little quirky things that most people are like, this is my product here’s what’s in it. And it has zero personality.

They’re like, it’s 7oz. It’s made with this oil or whatever. And it’s like, there’s no story so products in particular, I like the idea of creating a personality. Like you said, what is this product to and thinking about it in that way, instead of just being listing all the facts about the product, it’s like it’s not engaging at all.

Well, I think I think it will work. Creep is like the tell tale sign of the scales. Right on one side is all the features. Right. And again, you could look at all the features. It’s a camera and it does 1080p and it does all these different things. And it’s like that’s all the features. But what the hell are the benefits of that camera? And I think if you can tell the start of the benefits, this camera will captivate you while you’re jumping off the cliff doing a back dive without making you look blurry is same as saying it has shock absorbent, whatever, whatever, whatever inside the camera.

So I think to your point, I mean, being able to tell the story and personify it and utilizing those benefits work the features is a hell of a lot more useful than itemizing out all the bells and whistles that the product they have.

Yeah. So I totally agree with how you’re kind of breaking it down and categorizing. It one of the things that I like with branding. If you go Google, what is branding? You’re going to get a hundred different explanations, and then it gets confusing, right? Because this person says this and this person says that Marty New Meyer has a great quote that I really like he said. And marketing is what you tell people about your company. But branding is what other people say about you. I may have butchered that, but, well, we’ll work through it.

And the way that I try to describe it to people is think of your brand as a person. What is the experience you want your customer to have? It’s like, you can think of a friend and is that is that friend fun? Is that friend how do they dress? How do they talk? How do they act? What is the experience you have with them? One friend, you might be like, I love hanging out with this person because they always make me laugh. And we go on these crazy adventures and another friend, you might be like, I love just chilling with this guy because it gets super philosophical or whatever.

We have these deep conversations. They’re not the same. And that’s kind of how I see. Or at least I try to explain branding to people so that they can kind of visualize what they’re looking for and how all these pieces kind of fit together.

Very cool. I obviously I think we went down a Rabbi hole that’s definitely going to e fruitful. Anybody is listening. They hear two people go back and forth like that is definitely interesting. But even more, I want to talk a little bit more about your story, right? So if you could time travel back, we’re talking about Loki, right? I obviously Loki’s all over the damn place. So if you can pop from where you are back in time to anywhere that you can recall, they you have an opportunity to speak to yourself and say a couple of words in your area to change your outcome, where you are to make it happen a lot faster.

When would you go back to? And what would you say to yourself?

Well, I think first I’d have to get over the shock of myself time traveling. I’d be like, how the hell did you do that, dude? I mean, like, what’s going on in the future, man, this. No, you’re not the science guy. I don’t know how this happened. You trip and fall into a machine you shouldn’t have been playing with. Yeah, I would actually tell myself to start investing and understanding storytelling. Like, because like I said, I took it like, a lot of people take it, which is, I just do this.

So I don’t think about it. And what I learned through the process was how to be better at the thing that I was doing. Naturally, I quit it to breathing where it’s like, everybody breathes. Well, everybody tells stories. And with breathing, like, all these really interest crazy things that started happening where people do sports and they’re learning how to breathe to improve their performance. And then we got this guy, Wim HOF, crazy son of a bitch is like sitting in zero degree temperature and keeping his body temperature up through breathing.

It’s like, Holy shit, man, there’s a lot of crazy stuff you can do with something that just seems so benign. And storytelling is kind of the same way. It’s like, now do you want to have a deeper connection with people, get better at telling stories and telling them in the right way? Do you want your customers to remember you, like, long after they saw your website or your one ad or whatever, tell a really good story that will stick with people that kind of stuff when you become really good at it not only helps them remember you in the short term, it helps them remember you in the long term and too many brands and companies.

They have to keep reminding people who they are because they just keep saying a bunch of boring crap, but the story cut through all that. So, yeah, I would I would want to I want to tell myself, like, start learning about story, not just, you know, the concept of story, but how do you tell a good story? What are the pieces that make a good story? What is the hero’s journey? How does that applied to the way that you communicate with people? Because that would have gotten me way further down the path a lot faster.

Oh, very interesting. So, I mean, with that, I mean, I still continuing on the path of unfolding. You know who you are, right? You talked about your mom for a bit there. So again, I mean, you’re a hell of an entrepreneur, but you’re also a hell of a storyteller. This has to formulate genetically, maybe from somebody down that bloodline. So are you coming from an entrepreneurial background? Was your mom? The storyteller was your dad, the entrepreneur. Like, where does this come from that you can kind of look back and think, think about.

Well, Interestingly enough, my father was a very talented illustrator, although he worked in construction because in in his era, it was like, you’re never going to make money doing art like, you need to get a real job. And so that’s kind of what his parents told him. But he still drew lots of stuff. I mean, the guy could, like, literally, you could say, draw me. You could point at something and say, draw me that. And he could draw it in almost realistic, you know, illustration just with a pencil.

But at the same time, he spent all day, like, doing remodel and construction land tile, like pouring concrete, building framing for houses, doing roofs, like, he was kind of an entrepreneur in that sense. But nobody in my family really did entrepreneurship. As far as storytelling, I can’t say that my dad or my mom were big storytellers. My grandfather. I remember sitting with my grandfather a lot when I was young, and he would tell me stories of living through the Great Depression and World War II. And I was always fascinated by that.

Plus, he was a big history guy, so he would always talk about, like, oh, this thing happened. He loved World War II. He was like, this thing happened in World War Two, and this battle happened in this thing, this thing and this thing. I mean, the dude was like, the History Channel junkie. He just, like, flip on. But then he would talk about all the stuff he was learning or the books he read or whatever. So maybe through my mom’s line. But my mom, she’s not wouldn’t be what I would consider a storyteller.

Just, I don’t know. I got the random gene lottery.

So, I mean, contain on the family. Right? So, like, how do you currently juggle, like, your family life with your work life?

It’s a little bit of a challenge right now. I actually got divorced last year. So I’m now doing the single dad thing. But I do have some family helping out, and it’s a little bit challenging. But yeah, as an entrepreneur, I think it’s always a struggle because I find my brain still working on work or problems or trying to solve things after work. Time is over, and it’s a conscious effort to try to be more present so that I’m not like sitting at the dinner table, just staring off into the distance while my children are talking to me.

And so I have to, like, pull myself back to that, like. But yeah, I mean, it’s definitely. And then you get sometimes you get client calls. I don’t get them late, like I used to. But every now and again, somebody is calling at, like, 530, and it’s dinner time, and it’s like, hey, I’ll call you back after I get my kids down. But I can’t talk right now. So I had to start setting some boundaries around that around those things to better manage it because I wasn’t sending any boundaries before.

And it was just the business was running my life. I wasn’t running the business.

Very nice. I mean, it’s crazy that you said that because obviously, I think there’s so many similarities between us and I had an entire decade, plus being an only household, just a son and a dad and just raising him in that environment. So I definitely know what you’re talking about, like having to be attentive having to be there in that space, but also at the same time figuring out how to turn off the other side of you, which is always constantly on, no matter what you’re doing.

And as soon as that kid goes to sleep, you have back on the grid or you’re taking those notes or recording content or whatever it is. So I definitely commend you in that journey, man. I’ve been there. I’ve done that. And I know it’s a hell of a journey, but it’s I think where you are now, it’s probably going to be so compound. It’s going to be so much larger, because now you have this responsibility on your own. It’s going to grow, you leaps and bound for sure.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the last year, there’s just been a ton of growth in my life. And like I said, I had never planned on writing a book. And then one day I was like, I’m writing a book. And it was like, it was weird because it was almost like the book was coming out of me, like I was vomiting. It was just like and it took me two and a half weeks to write the book. It took way longer to get it actually edited. But, you know, I wrote it because it was just like, this shit is just pouring out of me.

I need to put it somewhere. And I realized later after that that I gained all this knowledge and experience, and at some point in the future, it’s going to be gone. So putting it down in a book gives it the ability to live on and potentially help somebody who never met me, never talk to me, never work with me. But I didn’t realize that at the time, I was just, like, crap. I got all these thoughts, and I got to get them out of my head because it’s driving me crazy.

So.

Yeah. But yeah. I mean, it’s just lots of changes.

I mean, with that, I mean, o, obviously your schedule has shifted and pretty much life happens in today. What is your morning routine? Your morning schedules look like.

So it varies. Like, some days I’m doing a podcast like this, at least in this current season to kind of promote the book and whatnot I’m doing client work. I share custody. So some days I’m like getting the kids going and dressed and out the door to school. Some days I’m not I try to go walking for a few miles, three days a week so that I’m staying in better shape. So it’s a mix. And then sometimes it’s just, you know, reading like I am constantly trying to learn and trying to get better.

I’ll fit in a half hour to an hour here and there reading a book. And then once the day is done, I’m back reading again. Like I said, I love Audible. So I’m reading while I’m driving. I’m reading while I’m walking. I’m just constantly trying to learn and get better and go. How do I improve the skills I have? Because if I can improve those, then I can help more people. I can push bigger lovers in their business. And that, to me, is really exciting.

So I think that’s a hell of a segue to my next question. Earlier on, you talked about reading 52 books. And just by being a podcast host, I had the opportunity to ask this question to a lot of different individuals. So because of that, I created a book club. And in that book club, I’m promoting and pushing everyone to read a book per week, much like you read 52 books in a year. So my next question is a three part question. Right? I want to know what books did you read in the first part of your journey?

What books help to get to where you currently are? Second question is, what books or audio books are you actively listening to right now? And then the third part is you alluded to writing a book and having a book. Like, what is that book? And what is that book about? And how do people get access to it? Okay.

Yeah. So like I mentioned, the first book on storytelling I read was by Jonah Sacks. And in there he talked about Joseph Campbell in The Hero’s Journey. So I read The Hero’s Journey by Joseph Campbell. And then I read Story by Robert McKee. I read some Lisa Cron books. I can’t remember the names of all of them. But, I mean, if you look her up, you’ll find those books on storytelling. But I read a bunch of different books. Most of them weren’t about marketing. They were about either how to write a good story or, like Story by Robert McKee, is about script writing, right?

In that you still learn how to tell a good story, like what works, what doesn’t work? Why do you need this thing? Not that thing. What is the order of operations? So those are some of the books that I read at that time. What I’m reading right now is I’ve got actually, hold on, let me just look an audible because I actually have multiple books going at the same time. I’m reading hooked, how to build habit forming products, 100 million offers, and unscripted unscripted. And those are all completely different.

One is about how to make good offers. Unscripted is about living. How do you not live the basic script of life, which I think a lot of entrepreneurs already do. Naturally. Right? Like, they’re not like, oh, I need to get a College degree, then I need to get a job. Then I need to marry somebody. Then I need to have 2.5 kids. I need the wife picket fence house. It’s like the whole concept of unscripted is like, how do you create the life that you actually want that you will actually enjoy and not follow the script of what everybody else does.

So I think that’s a really interesting one. And obviously that kind of appeals to my personality. So my book is called how to Hack Humans Storytelling for Startups, and it’s actually on Amazon right now for pre order until October 15. And then the book will go full price. But if you don’t have a Kindle, you can wait till it comes out on the 15, it will be in paperback and hard cover, which I was like, hard cover. That’s a new feature. And then anybody who’s interested, they can go to story.

Fianc. Com Uncage to download the first chapter of the book for free. It focuses on the neuroscience aspect. So what does science say about this? It’s not me. Just like I said, just making up a bunch of bullshit. Like, the stuff has been researched and we’re learning new things all the freaking time about the brain. And so it’s a really a really interesting topic for anybody who’s interested. Very cool. Very cool.

So I mean, with that, I mean, obviously this is your first book. And I think obviously once you kind of crack the system of creating books, I think you have way more books inside of you. They’re just going to start spelling out like you said, you were bombing out and you were just writing content. Right? So with that, where do you see yourself 20 years from right now?

Well, so I think I can answer this by explaining what the vision of our company is. There’s an often quoted failure rate in startups. I’ve worked with over 100, and I’ve only seen two exits, and one was actually more of a hostile takeover than an actual exit. So I’ve often questioned is like, the accurate number? Or is that just us being positive about a really bad failure rate? But the goal of Storify agency is to work with startups and even small businesses and entrepreneurs to reduce that failure rate by if I look to the future, I want to be able to in 20 years, point back and say, even if we don’t hit it, like, well, we reduced it by, and that made a big fucking dent.

And that helped so many people has ripple effects on the economy.

On.

Companies being able to help their customers employment like, yeah, that’s where I hope to be in 20 years.

Nice. I think to your point, you talk about economy just more of a global economy. That effect, right? You’re trying to help startups, which is essentially the better rock to everything that we’re all working towards, kind of evolve into businesses, small businesses, and then eventually hopefully into large corporations, if that’s the direction they want to go into. So starting from the ground floor up and you’re helping them tell their stories makes them more stronger companies later on. So I definitely commend you for that, for sure. Yeah.

I mean, they got get their story straight, if you will, and build a brand from the beginning. Right? Like, a lot of startups work like they’re building an airplane while they’re flying it. And I get that. But but how you communicate, right? Like, if you take your product to the market and nobody cares and you can’t answer the question the customer has in their mind of, why the fuck should I care about your product, then your debt, you’re dead. And at the end of the day, no matter how cool your tech is, you still have to deal with humans.

And if you’re dealing with humans, you got to be able to talk to them. You got to be able to communicate with them. You can’t place your rates with them or Panama. You got to use words. And often those words are written down on paper on a website in an ad. And that’s how you communicate.

Right with that. Obviously, you’re talking about writing. You’re talking about a lot of different communication devices on the application side. Like, what software would you say that you would not be able to do what you’re doing without having access to it? I.

Guess a dirty little secret is terrible at grammar. So Grammarly is a piece of software that I think Grammarly hates me. Actually, it’s like I hit that button and it just goes here’s all the things you did wrong, you piece of shit. Are you making me work so hard? I use that. I use the Hemingway editor because the Hemingway editor is great at being like, your sentences are just too complicated. Dude, you’re trying to say too much. Get to the fucking point. So those two, I use Google Docs.

That’s how I wrote the book. I wrote it in a Google Doc and then paid a fantastic designer off a fiber of all places to format the book, do the graphics and everything. It was like $35. I was like, you should be getting paid a lot more for this. But I will take advantage of you since you are letting me.

Yeah. That’s hilarious. That’s your software side. So ideally, who’s your ideal customer avatar? I mean, you’re talking about startups, but what’s kind of tell their story a little bit like, who is that person? Is it John? Is he playing golf or is it like, Michael and he’s jumping off a boat, or is it Susan? And she’s going through the store with a kid, like, who’s the ideal avatar for what you guys do?

Yeah.

So.

We’Ve worked actually with all kinds of different startups. Like, everybody usually thinks tech when they think startups. But, I mean, we’ve worked with, you know, nonprofits we’ve worked with, like, currently we’re working with, like, an exercise company. That’s a startup. We’re working with a CBD makeup company. That’s a start up. Honestly, I’m looking for people who want to change their industry or change the world. Some people that I talk to that have startups. I know their goal is making money, right? And that’s okay. But I’m looking for something a little bit bigger.

And so yeah, like I say startups because most people understand what a start up is. But the reason I like startups is because a lot of these founders are they’re the crazy ones. They’re the rebels, the Mavericks that Apple talked about. That like, I don’t know, 1020 years ago, however long it’s been since that campaign came out, the people who want to change things, you find a lot of those people in the startup industry. And those are the people that I want to work with, because I’m I find similarity there with those people.

And so to me, it’s like, I don’t care what your startup is, as long as it’s not about money, it’s about changing things. And that, to me, is the most interesting.

Very cool. So if you had to say the final last words of wisdom to an individual that fits that category of your ideal avatar, what insight would you give to them to keep them motivated on their journey to success?

Motivated? Yeah. I mean, that’s a good question, because, obviously, you know, doing a startup, you have days that like, you’re just winning everything. And then you have days that, like, everything is going going wrong and crashing. So I would say you need a strong vision for your company, because if you don’t have that without it, you’re going to get lost. I think running a company without a vision is like driving a car without a steering wheel, you push the gas, you can hit the brakes. But if the road turns, you may be flying off the cliff.

And the vision help steer your actions, your decisions because you understand where you’re trying to go. And I ran a company without a vision. And I ran that son of a bitch right off the road. And when we rebuilt and rebranded, I came back and I said, okay, I got to figure this thing out first. I need to know what we’re doing, where we’re going. And the reason I that I say that is because, you know, having a vision, it’s a future state. This is where we want to go.

So every action that I take is focused on, how do I get to that future state? But it’s also a story. It’s a story that you can tell to your employees to anybody who may be thinking about working with you. This is where I want to go. Isn’t that great?

Right.

And the other thing is, don’t make the vision about yourself. Like, I’ve heard people be like, well, our vision is to make $2 million by next year, and it’s like, Well, nobody fucking cares, dude, because that vision is about you. I think a strong vision is like building a house that other people can see themselves living in, like, your vision should draw other people in. And when those people come in, they can go. I know how I can help push this thing forward. I know what we’re doing today because I know where we’re going without it.

You’re just getting your car on the road and who knows where you’re going to end up. Make sure you figure that out. I think that’s really important.

Very nice. So the listener does listening right now is probably thinking about, okay. I love this guy. I love his energy. I want to contact them, right? How do someone get in contact with you? Obviously, there’s social media, there’s websites, there’s podcast, funnel them. Where do you want them to go?

Yeah. The main way to get a hold of me is just to go to Story Fagen dot com. That’s just S-T-O-R-I-F-Y. Agency dot com. There’s a there’s a button on there. It just says, schedule a call or something like that. And we can definitely sit down and check. Other than that, you can connect with me on LinkedIn. That’s, like, the platform I use the most because it’s business focused. I tend to kind of like, say, random shit on Facebook and then post an image on Instagram, like, every six months.

So I’m not on those platforms as much. But on LinkedIn, you can connect with me and you can start a chat or whatever, or you just hit the website and you can schedule a call. We got, like, everybody else. We got calendars and all that fun stuff. So it’s easy to do.

Nice. So we’re going into the bonus round. I got a couple of bonus questions for you. The first and foremost, I think, going back to the commonalities that we share, I think indirectly, without you saying, you’re on an adventure, gentlean junkie of sorts. So let’s talk about some of your past times and some of your hobbies.

Sure. So I took a Brazilian jujitsu last year. A great time to take a close quarter combat sport. I have been a scuba diver since 2004, so I’ve done about 150 dives. I’ve been to seven, eight different countries, most of which are Islands. Most people wouldn’t consider countries, but I’ve been to Turks and Caicos, Aruba, Bimini, Mexico, Belize. So I Dove all over and then not necessarily an adrenaline junkie type thing. I do some artwork, and I also produce electronic music on the side, so I keep myself busy.

I think that this one statement, right? I got another one for you.

Right.

And I think it’s pretty interesting with a diverse background. If you could spend 24 hours with anyone dead or alive uninterrupted for those 24 hours, who would it be? And why.

Who would it be? You know, this is probably going to seem like a simplistic answer, but I think Elon Musk is a total crazy ass, but I would love to hang out with him and just kind of talk about the future, because obviously he’s pushing a lot of things forward. And he also has a very unique perspective on just about everything he does, how he runs his business, where he’s going next. So I think it would be really interesting to sit down with him and just pick his brain and see what he has to say.

And like I said, it may be some crazy ass shit, but some of the things that he’s been doing is, I think, definitely pushing the needle forward for humanity, like creating Tesla, trying to move towards being more electricity focused versus, like, fossil fuels going into space. Like, I read a ton of science fiction, and I, like, in my lifetime, we’re probably going to start having round trips to the moon. And it’s because of what he’s doing and what Bezos is doing and Richard Branson are doing.

They’re pushing the envelope and saying to the point where spaceflight becomes normalized. Well, when spaceflight becomes normalized, then going to other planets becomes normalized, then colonizing other planets becomes normalized. Then people having kids on other planets and growing up becomes a normalized thing. But you got to start somewhere and we’re seeing that right now. So it’s awesome. Yeah.

Definitely. Also, we’re at the dawn of things that we’ve read about as kids through comic books or we’ve seen TV and Sci-Fi. We’re living Sci-Fi now to the point to where people are, like, non astronauts are leaving the atmosphere is kind of like, what the think about that in the 60s, they were just trying to get out outside the atmosphere. And now it’s kind of like we’re just setting up random people into space and they’re going to come back down perfectly fine, considering that NASA has blown up probably more Rockets than what they want to tell us about, right?

Yeah. Spacex the same thing. They’re blowing up rocket. It seems like once a month and it’s like, oh, yeah. Yeah. Can you imagine being o in the 1960s and they’re like, yeah.

Okay.

So we got this ten. Can we’re going to pressurize it and then strap a fucking rocket to it, and then we’re going to hope you make it back. And somebody was like, I’ll do that. Sign me up, please.

Yeah. Yeah. Kind of like interstellar is like on of my favorite movies is kind of like when you just see it, sell it to. What you’re talking about is kind of like once we figure out the whole time thing and figure out how to collapse time in spaces, we’re into a whole another ball game, man, for sure.

That is a great movie. It’s actually one of my favorite of Christopher Nolan, although I really like, tenant like, man.

Cool. So going into closing, man, I like to give the boss and Cage podcast over to my guests, and the microphone is yours. I show is yours. Do you have any questions that you’d like to ask me?

Yeah. Here’s a question. How would you summarize what you’ve learned from your journey? Because you’ve had so many different kind of roles and you’ve evolved as you’ve gone through those things. Like, what? What would you say your takeaway has been through that process?

I think a way is simple, man. Break a lot of eggs a lot faster. I mean, a lot of people are scared, man. I think fear is such a huge factor to where you come out of College. You’re thinking about, okay, I have to work to provide, or I have to make money to survive or whatever it is. But in those first, I would say probably from ages 15 to 25, like, that ten year break as many eggs travel, explore Dibble dabble if you have opportunity to go somewhere and you’re like, okay, I’m short $50.

Find the damn $50 and make could happen because when you get older, that’s when the responsibility really starts to kick in. So why not live your life as an adventure from day one and take all those things that you learn in a young age and compile them and make them into an experience for someone else? That way you can kind of give back what you’ve learned to educate other people so they can have the same experiences because we travel, right? And a lot of times you’re traveling, you’re looking around and you’re like, on a cruise ship, and you’re like, Everybody on this damn cruise ship is my grandparent right on the point, right?

You go somewhere like you’re talking about Belize, and you look around and it’s like 50% of the flight to be my grandparents because they’re the ones that have lived a life long enough to have the capital, the resources to kind of pay for it. We have to figure out how to do that at a younger age, so we can be 25, 30 years old on a plane right there next to the old guys saying, hey, I’ve done what you’ve done in half the time. Maybe I can help your kids or your grandkids experience with your experience now at a younger age.

Yeah. I totally agree with that. I mean, when I was 26, I just was like, I’m going to London. I did that. Went to South Africa for World Cup, went to Hong Kong, went to Japan. Yeah. Traveling. It also opens up your eyes to see more of what’s going on in the world. Because I think in the US, we tend to be very US centric. And when you travel, you also meet random people from other countries, too. We hung out with some Lithuanians one night in London, and it was a blast.

And it was like, these are people from halfway around the world. We don’t know each other, but we’re connecting. We’re sharing stories. We’re getting to know one another and we’re having a good time. It’s like the same thing happened in Hong Kong and in Japan, like, we met people who were, like, really cool. You know, it’s like, there’s so much more outside of the US, although we have a lot, right. And so that’s why it’s like a lot of people just travel within the US, like, you want mountains, you go to the mountains, you want beach, you go to the beach.

I mean, we have all this great stuff and really great cities and whatnot. But there’s so much more outside of of our country and getting out and experiencing that and seeing how people are, how they think, how they view the world, I think expands your perspective. So I definitely agree with what you’re saying. Don’t wait to travel till you’re too old to go out all night partying in London. It’s I think it changes you when you travel.

I think it definitely does to your point that you made earlier about traveling to space Elon and all these other guys, like Jeff BaseThey Ve done the traveling, and now they’re trying to travel to other planets. So you still got people that are, like, in a state, and they’ve been in that state for their entire life. So, I mean, think about it. By the time you catch up to trying to travel the world, we’re going to Mars and then from Mars, Saturn. Right. So you can kind of have to kind of figure out, where are you on the spectrum.

But you’re so behind the curve. And to your point, like, you may meet somebody in Germany, that’s from Japan, but eventually you’re gonna meet somebody in Mars. That’s from Saturn. So you have to figure out how to kind of expand a little bit more for sure.

Oh, man, when you said Mars, all I could think was Dave Chappelle, Mars bitches. M-A-R-S. Those are one of the funniest kits.

Are a well, if you had any other questions, this is the times. Not then it may.

Yeah. Dude, I could keep going on this. So you leave it open. So tell me about your writing process, because I just was like, I need to write 100 words a day. Right. And I did that for about a week, and I burned myself out. And then I had to take two days off because I could only squeeze out, like, 50 words, and then I got back on it and was good. So what is your writing process like, how long does it take for you to write a book?

So in the beginning, it took me six to nine months. Nowadays, I could essentially write a book per week if I choose to. But obviously, I got other things going on. So I stage my books out, stretch them out a little bit. So my process is like, to your point, writing 500 words a day. I can’t do that. And again, I think physically, writing something takes away so much time. So what I’ve learned to do is capture content. So podcasting, right? Creating videos. Youtube. So part of my podcasting is I’m interviewing individual people.

We’re having this great conversation. This conversation may spark something in my mind, like talking about Mars, talking about inter seller that I may create a video on that. Right. Or I may take a topic about branding, and I may create a video on that branding. But what I’ve done is before I create this content, I go in and I just create bullet lists. Okay. What am I going to cover? I’m going to cover these three core things about branding or brand strategy or about storytelling. And then what of my quick takeaways?

That’s good takeaway? That’s a good take away. That’s a good takeaway. And then after that’s, like, what’s the call to action? What do I want the reader to do? And I’ll do that for all of these particular sections, they become my chapters. Then I record a video, launch it on YouTube.

Again.

You create three or four different videos, 5610 videos, and transcribe those videos, take my bulleted list and compile them together. And now I have my chapter outlines. And I have my core body of content from my own first voice. And then what I can do is take that. And before I clean it up, give it to a ghost writer and say, okay, look, I’ve written out about five0 words. Here’s the topics. Here’s my tonality. Here’s my voice. Here’s my key takeaways. Here’s my call of actions. I need you to fluff it up a little bit.

I need you to kind of do a little bit research. Take an article section from over here. Find me some data from some resource over here. Pull those sources together, and I want this five0 words and now become 150 words. Then I’ll take that 150 words, and I’ll give it to someone to edit. And then that’s a book.

Wow.

So.

Okay. So you’ve you simplified the process or you set up a process that you can follow. But by using the ghost rider, it’s helping you augment. Right. So you’re not spending all the time doing that stuff. Okay. That makes sense. Yeah. Like, I wrote out the topics I wanted to talk about in notepad kind of thing. And then I came back and I said, okay, what are the subtopics to these main topics? And I was like, I was trying to get three to five in each one of those.

And then I and then I sat down with that and looked at that and said, okay, I need to write about this today. And you need to talk about all these different things. But yeah, I mean, the 1000 a hundred words. That was like, somebody going, yeah, I think I could bench £200, 250 or whatever. And you bring it down and push it back up once and you’re like, that was really hard. And then you do it again and you’re, like, not quite getting it there.

It’s like, kind of need to work up to that. So yeah, that’s. Yeah.

So if you’re creating video content or your creating audio content, I mean, the 1500 words, you can easily do that in a few minutes. Right? You can kind of talk to the audience, talk to your clientele, testimonial whatever it is. Just talk. And then again, you’re giving value ad. Just think about the formula of the value add. The formula is my topic. My take away any action topic. Takeaway action. As long as you stick to those three. Whoever’s going to receive that content in a book format for you, they’re going to get value from it.

So that’s my current formula to where I’m writing essentially all my books moving forward. And my first books when I first started, I was kind of like, I want to talk about these 1000 topics, and I’m going to convince them into this one book. And I oh, okay. That’s not gonna happen. How do I take one book and create a series? So then I created a formula for creating series. And then I was like, okay, now I got these series of books. What’s the next step?

Then?

I had to kind of go back in and revise. It was like I had to make sure that every single chapter I have a key. Takeaway every single chapter. I need to have some kind of call of action. And then the extra cherries on top is a quote or testimonial something that visual people kind of look at it and be like, okay, Steve Jobs said that that’s cool. That’s interesting. And they can hold on to that thing. And you put those pieces of puzzles together. Then it becomes very transparent how you can step and repeat creating content or creating books forever.

Yeah. I actually structured mine a little bit differently, but I like the way you did yours because I’m a movie fanatic. I structured it in three acts, and so it’s like, the science. Right. So here’s the proof. And then from there it was like, you go through the proof.

Okay.

Here’s what’s happening. Then I go through and say, how do you tell a good story? I break it all down, give lots of examples to show how you can tell a story and a tagline. You can tell a story in an email all those different ways. And here’s the right recipe. Right here’s the components you need. You need the eggs, you need the flour, you need the butter, you need the sugar, you need the salt. And then the third act. That’s where all the actionable stuff is.

Now here’s how you apply this. And I talk about how to write an email, how to do branding, how to do all these different things. And then I actually added a bonus section, which was like, six or seven chapters that are related, but not they’re adjacent or parallel to, like, I talked about, like, mindset stuff, because if you’re running a startup, you’re going to be dealing with mindset stuff or a small business or you’re an entrepreneur. I talk about vision. I talk about all those other things that while the book is not directly about those, I thought it was important, but that’s why I called it bonus chapters and something else that I did.

I think that you’ll get a kick out of and probably the audience will, too, because I’m such a movie fanatic. I love soundtracks to movies. And being a former rave DJ, I just like music in general. So every chapter has a song that goes with it. And there’s a Spotify playlist and a YouTube playlist so you can listen to music while you read the book. And that each chapter either what they’re saying in the song relates to what I’m talking about in the chapter, or it captures the feel of that chapter.

The first chapter is called The Anti Boring ass introduction, because I hate freaking introductions where the authors are just sitting there fluffing their nuts for what seems like a thousand words. And I’m like, just get to the fucking point, dude. And so that chapter I used welcome to the Jungle by Guns and Roses, and it just kind of kicks off from there. And the music is all over the place. I mean, I got 80 shop, I got hip hop, I got French musicians, Australian musicians. I got all this music.

And so I tried to create more of an experience with it. Yeah.

I definitely love that concept. I mean, to your point, I mean, you’re not just telling the story on the literary side. You’re also communicating through the music side. So anyone that actually reads and listen to music at the same time, you’re already filling in that void for them before they even have to ask for it. So definitely it’s a good, solid concept. I mean, it’s something that if anyone’s listening, you’re writing a book right now, you probably want to start creating some play list to go along with your chapters.

It’s a great idea because I mean, I wish I could put the music in the book, but then I’d have royalty issue, but your codes in a book, right?

I mean, obviously you could say, hey, scan this to go here, and then once they get to Spotify, wherever that you send them to, then they could deal with that on that side.

Yeah. I set the links in the book so you should be able to just click on it and then have it open up. Although I don’t know. Yeah. Like, I don’t know how to or you can just search it. Right? Like, you can search how to hack humans on Spotify right now and you’ll find the playlist. So anyway, just a different, different perspective on how I put things together versus how you put things together. But I like the idea of actually putting the actionable thing in each chapter, not leaving it to the final third.

I think that makes a lot of sense. Yeah.

And it took me a while to figure that out, because again, OK, somebody’s gonna read this book and they’re gonna read the entire book. The I started reading more and more books. I listened to or or audio books, and I started realizing that Tim, as people, we jump around. So if they jump from chapter two to chapter seven and back to chapter four, and then I have the end of the book all this Q and A stuff, and then, like, Anthill miss the items that I want them to really cover.

So splitting it up with smaller bites and giving them smaller steps on the no matter what chapter they get into, then they’ll have access to that. But to your point, what you’re talking. But with those links, I think those links are definitely cool, because in my books, what I use is QR codes. Like I’ll take QR codes and I’ll use them for everything. If I’m talking about a particular product, I’m going to have a QR code in there for you. If you have music, I would say when you get to your physical book to put those QR codes in there and make them trackable so you can kind of say, okay, I have a book.

I have ten songs, and I’m scanning it with a QR code. Then you can kind of say, okay, you know what? This one song song on chapter five. I’ve had 1010 thousand downloads more than anyone else. Then you kind of take that song and kind of utilize that song a little bit more because obviously your audience is more communicated with that one particular item versus a song.

Yeah, I didn’t. Actually, none of my songs are in the playlist because I’m still working on on my EP to get it on Spotify. It’ll be up there at the end of the year, but I don’t have any of my stuff, but but that I like that point because I’m always trying to figure out how to improve. And so that’s a great tip. I really appreciate that.

Cool. Well, I definitely appreciate. I mean, I think you and I, we could probably were much like we could probably sit here and talk for another 5 hours and end up being like a Joe Rogan episode right into it. But I definitely appreciate you coming on the show that I mean, it was definitely well worth having you. And I look forward to reading your book and seeing what else you come up with in the years to come.

Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. And I had a lot of fun, so thank you for having me.

It was great. Essay Grant Over and out.