STAND OUT FROM YOUR BUSINESS COMPETITORS With John Livesay

Full video transcript

What is going on, Jarvis Underground everyone, out there? How are you all doing today? Welcome to this super awesome master class that I’m pumped to bring to you today with Zachariah here, and John Livesay is going to be talking to us about storytelling, and some really cool things when it comes to actually using your book and taking yourself and your platform to another level. Zachariah and John, thank you guys so much for coming on today, I’m super pumped for what we’re about to dive into here.

As am I. I’m stoked to have John on with us today, and he — I’ve seen him speak before at Internet Marketing Party here in Austin, and seen some of his other stuff and his books, so it is such an honor to have you on, John. Thanks guys, glad to be here.

So for those of you who don’t know who John is: he’s known as the pitch whisperer. He’s a sales and keynote speaker who shows companies and sales teams how to turn mundane case studies into compelling case stories so they win more new business. From John’s award-winning career at Conde Nast, he shares the lessons he learned that turn sales teams into revenue rock stars. His TEDx talk, “Be the Lifeguard of Your Own Life,” has over 1 million views. John is a guest lecturer on how to leverage the power of storytelling in sales at multiple universities, including the University of Texas at Austin, Pepperdine’s business school, and the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and his book is now required reading for the UT Austin course on entertainment and media studies. John, thanks so much again, man.

All right, let’s jump into the story. Several years ago, when I was selling advertising for Conde Nast at a fashion magazine, Speedo swimsuit company was in my territory, and I went to them and said, “Hey, would you consider advertising this new sportswear line in my fashion magazine?” And they said no, we’re going to advertise it in a fitness magazine. And I said two magic words — for those of you who like to take notes, you might want to write this down — “what if.” When you start a sentence with “what if,” you get people imagining something. It’s a great way to handle a no.

I said, “What if we treated your sportswear like it was high fashion, and you could have a fashion show that we would help you put on, with models wearing the sportswear around a swimming pool at a hotel, and invite Michael Phelps since he’s on your payroll during the Olympics?” They loved the idea. I got the advertising, but more importantly, I got to ask Michael Phelps what makes him so unique and how he stays in his own lane without getting stressed out by the competition — or maybe he doesn’t win a gold medal, and yet he has to shake that off, turn around, and win the next race. That mindset is everything. I said, “Michael, everyone says your feet are like fins and your lung capacity is bigger than the average human, but I’m guessing there’s something else to your success besides that.” He said, “Oh yes, John. When I was very young, my coach said to me, ‘Michael, are you willing to work out on Sundays?’ ‘Yes, coach.’ ‘Great, we just got 52 more workouts in a year.’”

Now the question is for all of you: what are you willing to do that your competition isn’t, to get you to that Olympic level? For people who decide to work with me, I will sit down with you and help you figure out what you can do that your competition is not doing.

One of the other things you can look at is what you’re willing to do that competition hasn’t even thought of doing. Recently I moved to Austin and hired a new cleaning service, and I came back and felt like I was on a cruise ship — they had folded the towels into little swans, done fancy tile folding, and I thought, well, they didn’t have to do that, it was an unexpected luxury. It reminded me of when I worked with Banana Republic, and they wanted to redefine what luxury was, so they let people in their flagship stores in San Francisco and New York come in and charge their phones. Sales went up 15% because people kept charging their phones and waiting, and kept shopping while they waited.

If you’re looking for an edge to stand out against competition — whether you’re a coach, a consultant, a financial advisor, or an author looking to supplement your coaching or speaking — you need help figuring out how you can be like Michael Phelps and do what others aren’t, or like Banana Republic, even as a simple cleaning service, and go above and beyond what people are expecting. I will help you customize something that gets you from being seen as just another coach or financial advisor to being laser-focused for your ideal audience.

I love helping people get this concept of storytelling down. The old way of selling is to push out as much information as possible and hope some of it sticks — that doesn’t work anymore. The new way is to become a storyteller. Literally, the sale is in the tale (t-a-l-e). For those of you who want to become authors and speakers, I know what that dream feels like, and there’s a line of people waiting for you to sign your book. In fact, I had the honor of being interviewed by Larry King a couple of years ago before he passed away — something I never even dreamed of. Many of you may not know who he is, but he was on CNN and did over 60,000 interviews, interviewing presidents and every celebrity you can think of. I never dreamed that when I put out a book, I’d get Larry King to interview me. But it happened. How? That is part of mindset and relationships — your network is your net worth. I have a story of how that happened and how it can happen for you.

I also host a podcast called “The Successful Pitch,” heard in over 60 countries now. It allows me to stay cutting-edge with the thought leaders, authors, and influencers I interview, and I’ll show you how launching a podcast can help create your authority at another level — another way to stand out.

One of my clients is a coach, and he was so happy he sent this video into our group: “Oh my god, I just made $2,500.” He was just starting out, so he wasn’t charging $5,000 or $10,000 yet — he’s since done that. He said, “I just told the story of someone else I helped, the way you taught me, and someone said yes right away.” When you tell stories, you target people’s heartstrings, which gets them to open their purse strings.

One of my clients is named Drew, a financial advisor here in Austin. When you go through my course and quizzes, everybody gets a certificate showing they’ve completed it. Drew told me there’s a lot of people in his industry, many older than him, so I said, let’s figure out your niche. Turns out he loves helping young entrepreneurs between 25 and 45 who either got a lot of funding or sold their company and have money to invest but don’t know where to start. Once we narrowed that niche down, he said, “John, when I get somebody with a million-dollar portfolio who’s only 35, I get a percentage of that managing their portfolio,” and the lifetime value of that customer over the next 30 or 40 years is huge. Helping someone land big-ticket clients like this is one of my passions.

Rose is a coach, and she said, “Gosh, it gets so clunky when I’m talking to somebody about hiring me, and I don’t know what to say.” I taught her how to tell a story so she doesn’t have to feel pushy or talk about all the details of how many modules her program has — she got the three C’s: she was clear, concise, and confident, and she got two clients in one week. I know this works.

Right now, some of you might feel like an ostrich — the concept of writing a book, getting out there, telling your story, or using social media makes you want to bury your head. Others of you might feel like a peacock, wanting to let everybody know you’re still in business. This is a mindset concept — you are the movie director of your own life, you can yell “cut,” you can change the location, change who’s in the movie with you. So many of us fall into a fear mindset about the future and play a horror movie out in our head. You can yell cut. You have the ability to change all that.

The big problem I see is a myth — that in order to get people to buy from you or hire you, they have to know, like, and trust you, in that order. That belief causes a behavior: “You have to know me and my product before you hire me, so let me keep pushing information out, let me send you one more email with more facts.” But people buy emotionally and back it up with logic, so we’re going to reverse the order. Start with trust — it’s a gut thing. In fact, the handshake was originally to show you didn’t have a weapon in your hand. Trust gets transferred: you guys trust Darby and Zachariah, so you showed up. When you build trust through eye contact and social proof, your gut says it’s safe to open this email, safe to have a conversation. Then it goes from the gut to the heart — this is where people are thinking, “Do I like you?” That is where you show empathy. The better you describe that you understand someone’s pain or struggle, the more they think you have their solution. In the case of Darby and Zachariah, they understand the struggle that people who want to write a book have — it takes forever, you get stuck, you get writer’s block — and they’ve come up with an AI tool that fixes all that. Describing the struggle earns trust and likability. The next part is the head: do I think this will work for me? Even if they trust and like you, if they don’t see themselves in the story, they won’t buy. So you show varied stories — like the story of Rose the coach, or Drew the financial advisor — and eventually one of those stories resonates with somebody who was in the same struggle and can now see their life is better.

My promise to you today is that we’re going to get you out of feeling like you’re drowning in a sea of sameness — feeling like just a number or a commodity. What you need is a storytelling lifeguard. Luckily for you, I was a lifeguard in real life, and now I’ve become a storytelling lifeguard that saves sales. If you’re getting great leads from webinars, LinkedIn, ads, or referrals, but you’re not getting people to say yes because you’re not telling stories, we’re going to fix that. A lot of people talk to 10 people but only two sign up — let’s get you to 4 out of 10 or 6 out of 10 without feeling pushy, because when you tell a story, you pull people in and they want to go on the journey with you.

We all know lifeguards save lives — I have a story of when I actually saved a little girl from drowning. What I do now as the pitch whisperer is help you save sales — the money you’re leaving on the table because you’re not telling a story that tugs at heartstrings, when perhaps your competition is. If you don’t know how to tell a story, there’s no logical reason you’d feel confident — you’re going to stumble through it. But when you learn how to do it, things change. If you’re comfortable with left-brain thinking (numbers and facts), and I’m asking you to go to the right brain where imagination and storytelling live, it’s going to feel a little awkward at first, kind of like folding your arms the opposite way from how you normally do. I’m here to help you every step of the way — what I offer isn’t a do-it-yourself program, it’s done with me. When you don’t have an emotional connection, you bore people and they tune out. But when you know exactly how to tell a story, and you’ve got me helping you refine it, you have confidence that the story is going to land.

A lot of people get nervous — “I get butterflies in my stomach” — and I tell people the goal isn’t to get rid of the butterflies, it’s to get them to fly in formation, to get the nervous energy out of your stomach and into the room. Nothing says confidence to me like Lady Gaga singing at the Oscars. One of the exercises I have my clients do is write down their “moments of certainty” — two or three times they knew they nailed something: they got a second date, a job they always wanted, a big sale — and write down the feeling that goes with it. When my clients do this, their confidence goes up, not cockiness, not arrogance — confidence, because they’re remembering what it feels like when they’ve helped someone. That’s how you reduce the negative self-talk, the monkey mind that says “this will never work, I’m not good enough.” We all go through it, and I’ve got a tool to help reduce that noise.

There are three components to increasing your revenue. First, we fix your elevator pitch and turn it into an elevator story where people are intrigued to know more. Next, once you’re in a conversation with somebody who’s past the initial “who are you, do I want to talk to you” stage and they’re interested, we turn boring case studies that have been around forever into case stories. Finally, I give you templates and scripts so you learn how to tell the right story to the right person at the right time, so people don’t just say they’re interested and never take action.

We all need a good elevator pitch, or what I call an elevator story — being able to tell people who you help and what problem you solve in 60 seconds so they remember it. Maybe they don’t need what you’re offering, but they know somebody who does, and if you’ve told them a story, they can remember and repeat it and become your brand ambassadors. You might tell people what you do in a way that’s so dry they think “that’s not for me,” but if you tell it in a story format, someone’s going to act on it. Case stories beat case studies — just telling facts and figures isn’t enough to get people to act.

Here’s an example: Rose was working with women struggling with emotional eating. We crafted a story of a woman named Maria, in her 30s, who had struggled with her weight her whole life, which was affecting her mood and her willingness to see friends. After working with Rose, Maria realized food was a way to dial down stress and anxiety, so instead of another diet that never worked, Rose gave her other tools — pick up the phone, take a walk — to get her mind distracted and rewire the neurons in her brain. After working with Rose, Maria’s weight came off, but more importantly, she was happier and never felt embarrassed to go out in public. She told that story to two other women who signed up on the spot because they saw themselves in it. Rose wasn’t the hero of the story — she was the sherpa who helped those people.

So many people hear “I’m interested, send me some information,” and then never hear from them again — it’s crickets. I’ll help you get people to say, “Not only am I interested, I’m in — this is exactly what I’ve been looking for.”

Some people say, “I’m not sure I have a story.” I say, really, you’ve never made a mistake in your life? Most of us mortals have made mistakes, and here’s the takeaway: when I gave my TEDx talk, the TEDx coach said, “Your mess is your message.” I’ll help you figure out your story — did you just fall into this, or was there passion behind it? When people know your story, they want to know more about you.

A typical case study — black and white, facts and figures — isn’t something people remember. We turn it into a case story with four parts. Going back to the Rose and Maria story: we described the exposition (who, what, where, when — Maria, how old she was, how long she’d struggled), then her problem (not just the weight, but how it affected her emotionally), then Rose’s solution, and then the resolution — what Maria’s life was like after working with Rose for three months. Most people don’t tell good stories, and if they do, they skip the resolution. Imagine if the Wizard of Oz ended with Dorothy in the balloon, the end — but no, there’s a scene where she says “there’s no place like home,” and that resolution is what makes people think “that’s what I want.”

In the case of what Darby and Zachariah do, I want to know what it feels like to have people waiting in line for me to sign my book, to be able to tell people I’m an author — that’s the resolution to the story they tell about the people they’ve helped.

How do people see you? Are you invisible — they’ve never heard of you or your company? It’s like going into a party where nobody turns and looks. We see someone we’re attracted to, but they don’t know we’re in the room — a lot of companies don’t even know you’re around. The next step up is insignificant — in business, maybe you’re a life insurance salesperson talking to someone in their 20s and it’s insignificant to them. Then interesting — in the dating world, “I’m interested to talk to you, I’m not ready to go out with you yet” — in business, “I’m interested, let me think about it,” and you’re stuck in the friend zone because you haven’t given an emotional story that gets them out of their logic mind. I’ll help you get from “I’m interested” to “I’m in.” Then you get to irresistible — in the dating world, you paint a picture, like I did with the Speedo story of a fashion show and Michael Phelps — people you can’t stop thinking about. In business, these are clients who love you already but you could take them for granted, so I work with you to make sure they feel seen, heard, and appreciated, so referrals keep coming without you feeling pushy.

To recap: you get three steps on this road map to becoming an irresistible storyteller, which gives you the emotional connection that causes your revenue to soar. We fix your elevator pitch and turn it into an elevator story, work with you to build case stories people see themselves in, and figure out which story to tell to which person at the right time.

An elevator pitch came about from the idea of telling someone what you do in the length of an elevator ride — let’s turn this into an elevator story instead. There are really five steps to this. First, salespeople, coaches, consultants, and financial advisors struggle to not be seen as a commodity — they’re drowning in a sea of sameness, everyone thinks what they do is like everybody else. I’m known as the pitch whisperer, and I teach them how to tell stories that make them irresistible, and after working with me, their revenue takes off because they’re no longer leaving money on the table. The mistake most people make on an elevator pitch is leading with a title — “I’m a doctor, I’m a lawyer, I’m a coach” — instead of being conversational and intriguing enough that someone says, “That’s interesting, tell me more.”

The program is the Revenue Rockstar Mastery — 10 short lessons designed so you can watch them in 10 minutes a day for 10 days, with a quiz after each one, and a certificate at the end. All the bonuses add up to $4,500 worth of value on the conservative side. If you’re selling something at a $2,500 fee or more, my goal is to get you a couple of clients within the eight-week program so your return on investment is made automatically — closing 6 out of 10 qualified calls instead of 2 out of 10. That’s the promise of working with me. Any questions on how this could work, just click the link and fill in a few questions, and we can have a one-on-one chat to see if it’s a fit.

Question from the chat: is there an email people can reach out to? We’ve had a lot of people sign up through the replay form — I don’t want a bunch of emails in my inbox, I want to have knowledge of what someone’s business is and what they’re currently doing, then they can book time for a conversation with me. That’s better than a bunch of emails from a replay — go to johnlivesay.com/revenuerockstar, fill out the form, book some time, and I can answer your questions on the call.

If there’s no more questions for John — John, thank you so much for speaking to our group at Jarvis Underground. I love what you do and the storytelling piece — we’ve been playing around and integrating storytelling into the AI tool, so this is a crucial piece to that. I love that John came on and was able to speak to you guys, and I hope you reach out to him and potentially work with him. Thanks everybody, thanks Darby, thanks Zachariah.