Tell me about your vision.
Well, I mean, our vision is to tell stories that make the world a better place.
And part of that vision, at a tactical level, is to work with 1,000 story partners to help
tell their stories well and multiply their impact, their impact, their influence, and
their income in that process.
And at first glance, 1,000 doesn't seem like a lot until you realize the people we're working
with are themselves reaching a lot of people.
And so we see story builders kind of as a catalyst, as a force multiplier, if you will.
If we work with 1,000 people and multiply their impact, I did the math once.
I mean, just one of the people we work with has a reach of...
His goal is to reach 100 million weekly, right?
And so you do the math on that.
You're reaching a whole lot of people, touching a lot of lives.
And we do it through story because we believe every story matters.
I love that.
In fact, I'm gonna praise some of what I see on your website because we have some overlap
and that overlap is worth noting.
Those of you listening in, when Bill talks about telling stories, I think it's very important.
One, I love your quote here.
I know it's simple.
I know people can downplay the value and importance of it, but the world needs to hear what you
have to say.
I couldn't agree more.
There's so many people out there who don't have the environment or perhaps the courage
or the support to be able to share their stories.
And you're talking about the stories that really blessed people.
I saw a picture of Lewis Howes on here.
Sure.
Here he is.
Lewis Howes, who I was fortunate enough to be part of the team that ran his YouTube ads
for his webinar.
And Michael Hyatt.
We also got to run YouTube ads for what he's up to, what he was up to.
This was six years ago.
These brands that it looks like, I take it you've worked with these individuals in these
companies?
Yeah, that's a few of them.
Yeah, we've, yeah, some really great people.
And we've worked with all kinds of names and high profile, John Maxwell, Kevin Harrington,
all these different folks.
That's all cool.
But at the same time, as I said, every story matter.
Of course.
We don't look at it as, oh, Lewis is better than somebody else's story.
No.
In fact, I would argue- But it validates and creates a very important
reality, Bill.
And I've got to say that for the audience.
I love the humility that you express.
I love the reality that you realize that there's no better.
We are all equals on this earth.
And at the same time, it wouldn't, it's not because Lewis Howes, trust me, I've worked
with some leaders who have hundreds of thousands, have breached the million mark, and I will
never work with them again.
They weren't the type of leader that was aligned with the way I view the world from an ethics
standpoint.
On the contrary, John Maxwell and what he's up to, getting behind the scenes on Lewis
and calling Brittany his assistant and saying, he has to fix this ad, or it's going to destroy
his reputation.
Not because he was doing anything unethical or illegal, but because his opening line was,
hey, you're watching this because you're an entrepreneur.
But no, it was an interruptive ad.
So people were going to say, no, I'm not watching this because I'm an entrepreneur.
I'm watching it because you're getting in the way of what I want to watch.
And she's like, Lewis is sick.
But as soon as, you know, he can't record that.
But as soon as I gave that context, she's like, okay, he's on it.
We'll get it done right now.
So I'm referring to leaders and I picked those ones out specifically because I've seen them
walk the talk.
There's a way to go about telling your story.
So I'd love to know a little bit more about your vision regarding that.
How do you help everybody share the story that they have, but also I so in on a story
that does build hope and that does bring goodness to the world?
Right.
Yeah, I would suggest that some of those bigger names that we talked about that are those
kind of leaders, what has helped, what has shaped their path is that they have been intentional
about their story.
They've been intentional about what story they're telling, what story they want to tell,
how they're telling it.
And it's always a delight to work with people like that who have this story awareness.
We have something we call our storytelling structure that we use for creating any kind
of content as a five step process that kind of guides us.
That's kind of the science behind it, right?
Creating good stories is both an art and a science and that's kind of some of the science
behind it.
It's just based on thousands of years of storytelling experience as humans.
We pulled that together.
So we use that in a lot of ways to come alongside people and it always begins with an ideation
session, right?
We call it a story strategy.
How do you get your strategy together?
What you want your story to be includes who you are really and being authentic to that,
but who your audience is, right?
And trying to bring those together and then walking through that process, figuring out
what do they want?
How do I present it the way they want?
How do I talk about me?
How do I talk about the solutions that I offer, the guidance I offer and then what action
do I want them to take?
Like through that whole structure is how you really begin to shape a lot of that and just
being candid and honest about it, right?
Because sometimes we do meet people.
We talk to her like, Hey, your message isn't for us.
It's not a right fit for us or a great idea, but you need to go away and do some work on
it and come back later when you're at a stage when we could actually be of service to you.
Yes, that's awesome.
I'm grateful for that vetting process.
It can feel in the world that there's not a lot of vetting that goes on when it comes
to exchange of services.
But if that's the case that you're facing and evaluating, I'm talking to you as listeners,
if you're facing that reality, then it's on you to do more vetting and to figure out where
can I go or how do I check references and figure out who I want to work with?
Because there are lots of people out there like Bill who are willing to turn down contracts
if it's not a good fit.
And that's a really healthy, important reality.
Does it make you bad?
Does it make your story bad?
Does it make you not valuable to the market?
It just means that you finally met somebody who's not just willing to take your money,
just take the money.
So I would love to dive in to one more aspect with you.
We got a little bit of time.
So while you're doing that, let me just add to that.
What we're really talking about is alignment.
It doesn't matter what service you're doing, what you're trying to accomplish.
You need people to partner with who are in alignment with you.
It doesn't matter, they may be the most highly skilled.
If the chemistry isn't there, if you're not on the same page in terms of the outlook and
the message, all that, ultimately you're going to have friction and it's going to destroy
itself.
It's going to fall apart as you go forward.
And so my suggestion for people, don't just get the most qualified credentialed people,
though you want that, but don't make your decision based on that.
You actually have to connect with the people in terms of their character, their chemistry,
then you can get to competence and talk about that.
You got to be in alignment, especially with projects that your story, they're so personal,
whether you're creating a book or a digital course or workshop or whatever you're doing.
You got to have people who are on the same page who align with where you're trying to
go.
Love it.
Tribal leadership highlights that to tremendous capacity.
The idea of alignment and how they actually juxtaposition it with harmony and how there's
a difference between the two and how alignment, paraphrasing, but represents, we don't do
the same things or think the exact same way, but we still coexist with an essence of harmony.
But it's based on a shared reality that can be argued.
And again, they do a great job of, that's one of those sections of that book that I'm
really looking forward to go back to.
And I saw them emulate that in the book where they decided to stall the publication of their
book, because they proved their hypothesis wrong.
And I didn't realize it until really late in the experience that it was a very hard
decision to make, I'm sure from a budget and a strategic standpoint to pivot and I guess
resolve the reality that they foresaw.
So how did you get started, Bill, with story builders or storytelling?
You mentioned thousands of years of storytelling.
I mean, you've obviously a little bit of a history buff with that, but how did you get
started with helping people tell their stories?
Well I had always loved stories and storytelling.
As a young kid, I was the one who was reading the cereal box five times every morning, just
sucking up any word I could over breakfast.
And so I always loved stories.
I majored in English and history.
What are the stories?
How do you tell them?
And then life happened.
And I met a wonderful woman.
We got married, kids started coming, had to pay the bills.
I got involved in education.
And so I was doing something that, you know, Stephen Pressfield talks about a shadow calling.
I was doing something that was close, but not quite what I was really wired to do.
And so helped start a school up in Ohio, led that for a dozen years.
And then, but this felt this stirring within that I was supposed to be doing more, especially
around writing and telling stories.
And so eventually I stepped away from that school and stepped out into the unknown.
We had six kids, one a year with no income as we engaged that.
But I've never worked harder in my life, dove in, became a student of story.
And just unpacking all that, began writing.
And over the next few years began writing books, helping people bring those books to
life and learning how that's done.
And really seeing a need, a need for people who had, hey, I like that you showed on our
website that who had a message the world needs to hear, but they, they weren't, they didn't
have the skillset to say it well, or they didn't know how to say it well.
Or maybe their, their skillset was as a speaker, not a writer, or they're trying to put all
pieces and parts together.
And they had so many pieces and parts and ideas that they just, you know, what I call
a creativity conundrum, right?
You get so many ideas that you're paralyzed and can't do any of them in that place.
And so, you know, having that kind of, seeing that need began to coalesce this team of story
builders who wanted to help bring these stories to life in a way that is high trust relationships.
And so that's really where we focused.
And that's how Storybuilders came to be.
It actually started with a book.
This book right here, in fact, by the name of Hugh Hewitt.
Way back in 2003, I picked up this book and read it and it changed the trajectory of my
life caused me to lean into seeing things actually led to a relationship with Hugh,
which led to an opportunity to create a book, which would be any image at all.
It all started with a book.
And so it's not surprising that I spent a lot of time with books and all things books
related, helping tell those stories, because that's really how the story began in the first
place.
Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes continue to move forward.
This is going to get more and more fun, we'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show.
And thank you for giving us your time and attention.
Have an excellent time building out your vision and becoming a Vision Pro yourself.