Chris, Okay, hello everyone, and welcome to this week's episode of relationships rule. Today I'm joined by Chris Jones, a seasoned branding expert, story brand guide, and now author of a new book, from click to client
has a subtitle, but we'll get into that in a minute. So from click to client, Chris has helped powerhouse brands like Nike and Adidas in her early days, I think before, she went out on her own, as I recall, and now dedicates her time to Empowering Entrepreneurs with her signature story selling system. And in this episode, she shares how to replace all your marketing with a single story that sells and how to build a website that works for you. 24/7 so first of all, welcome back to
the show. Chris, thank
you. Janice, I am thrilled to be here today.
Well, first of all, congratulations on your book. I know it was a long time coming and pretty exciting to have that out there. I looked back that we had spoken earlier. You were on my on my podcast back in I think it was May 2023 it was episode 205 we're now up to in the three hundreds, I'm proud to say. So that's kind of cool. And in that episode, we talked about writing compelling copy, which was part of the
website journey and so on. But today, I think we're going to focus on your book, because there's more to it than just writing compelling copy, right?
That's true, yep. So
first of all, what inspired you to write your book now you've been in the industry 20 years. What inspired you to write your book now?
Well, in the last five to seven years, I've really incorporated storytelling into every project that I do. So I really started out in the early days as a visual storyteller, and then realized over time in marketing that the visuals really aren't effective if they're not working with really compelling copy. So now everything I do is based on telling a very compelling story that's actually going to motivate your potential clients to know confidently that you're
the one they want to work with. So I may I've made that transition over time, and now everything I do is really about the story and design is secondary to that, and that's the way that my clients get the greatest results. So the way the book was born is because over the last handful of years, I've really streamlined my process, which is the signature story selling system, and I've been able to work with my clients in a very efficient way, in a very deep, a deep way, and a in a way
that gets them the results that they're really hoping for. But essentially, I honed my process to the point that if you don't have the budget to work with me one on one, I still want you to be able to get the results that my clients get. And so I was able to with a process that I know is proven to work time and
time and time again. I was able to just take all that information in my head and put it into a book, and that way I can help more people, reach more people and and honestly, it was something that I've been wanting to do for a long time, but it all just kind of came together as things do when the timing is right
right and the time is right for sure. Well, at the beginning of your book, you talk about something that, that I talk about when I'm doing LinkedIn training as well, especially with the part that's about, called the about section, which is not really about you, but you have seven seconds to make that first impression, whether it's on that LinkedIn profile or it's on your website, and why you talk about why traditional websites fail and the mistakes that people make
based on the fact that that things are different. Now, can you speak to that to the audience?
Yeah. I mean, one of the biggest mistakes that happen is that, if it's our website or our LinkedIn profile, we automatically and understandably would think, Okay, I've got to write about myself here. It's about me, but really your your messaging. The way you make it compelling and make it engaging and make it interesting is to really talk about your hero, and
your hero is your client. And so it's a very different way. Way of of sharing your message about your business, because you're really making your potential clients the central figure of your story. And you are in the story. You're of. You're the most powerful, strongest character in the story. You are the guide, you are the Mr. Miyagi, or you are the Yoda, right? But your clients are the hero. And so what happens is, all over LinkedIn, I would say 99% of LinkedIn profiles are
doing this, and 99% of websites are doing this. They're the business owner is making themselves the hero of their own story, because they're talking all about themselves. And when you're the hero of your own story, you literally kick your potential clients out of the story. You kick them out of engaging with you. And when you flip the script and you really look at your business with a new lens, a lens where you're the guide and they are the hero. What you're doing is you're
inviting them into a narrative with you. You're inviting them into a story where they play the hero. They're the central character, and you are the strongest character. You are the guide. So it's it's a totally different way to put yourself out there. And for the person who's coming to your website or visiting your LinkedIn profile, it feels good. They don't know why, necessarily, it feels so good. They don't know why they're feeling such a connection with you, but we do.
It's because that's what story does. It cultivates authentic connection. It builds authentic trust, and it allows them to really envision what their life would be like if they decide to work with you, and what their life would be like after they work with you, all the wonderful things that are going to happen for them if they engage with you,
right? And just very simply put, I think if, if we start by writing about how who we serve and how we serve them, or what I'm just generalizing here, or even the pain points that they have that we we come and guide them away from to success. Then they say, Hey, that person's talking my
language. They get me. Maybe I should talk to them, rather than us starting about all about us and our background and our, our, you know, our, our accolades and things like that that doesn't mean anything to anybody until, like it's the expression that I always use right that I don't care about you until you care about me. And so you have to make the reader, the viewer, the listener, feel as though you're caring about them first. Would you agree with that? Oh,
I would totally agree with that. People, people don't actually want to work with the best person they choose to work with, the one they feel the most connected to, right? And the way we cultivate that connection is by showing that they matter to us the most there we we understand their struggles and when we articulate their struggles, and we start our messaging in that way, by showing them that we get them
like, just like you said, they feel seen, they feel heard. They feel not alone in their struggle, but most importantly, they feel like Janice is in my head. She must be. She must be the one that I need to work with. She's clearly the best one to solve this problem, because she understands it so intricate, intricately.
So do you ever come across clients when you're starting to work with them, even though they've come to you because you get them, they feel it, they've they've chosen you because there is a connection of some sort. Now you start to work with them about shifting the way they write about themselves, the
way they position things on their website and so on. Do you ever come across people that fight that because they feel that they're they, I don't know how to say it without, without, like it's so important, they hang on to things that really aren't that important, but they think they are. Does that make
sense? Like, maybe you don't because you've got the right people, but sometimes I find, for me anyway, that if I say something about, you know, like you've got these letters after your name on your on your LinkedIn profile, just, can only use my example. Yeah, you know, there's a zillion. Coaches out there. And yes, I know you've got the recommend or the credentials to be a coach, and I love that. Let's put that here and here and here on your profile, not there where it's
not supposed to be. Sometimes they, you know, you can feel them tense up because that was so hard for them to get or they wanted it so badly. Do you know what I'm saying? Like,
I yeah, I really do know what you're saying. I think that part of my process is really about educating people to think differently about their messaging and so really, by the time we get into the deep work together, they're really aware of what works, what doesn't, and they're ready, you know, they're ready because that time, because they also know, okay, I've had it that way for the last two years, and I haven't gotten one
new Client from my website. So it's not working, and so they, they are typically open and eager to make those shifts and follow my guidance.
Um, yeah. They trust you by that time, by the time you get to that,
yeah, yeah, yeah,
does? Um, does? Does SEO still matter when you're doing those things, when you're doing websites? Is that still important? You know?
I mean, the the online space is so saturated that you could pour 1000s of dollars into SEO every month, and maybe you'd come up on like the fifth page. You know what I mean? It's kind of like a drop in the ocean. So it's, I think, in the earlier days, like you could really, if you had the money, you could really pour gas on the fire and get your SEO to work for you. And I'm not saying that SEO isn't important, I
think it is. But I had a client come to me. He was a mortgage broker, and he was pouring like $2,500 a month into SEO, and he was getting a great amount of traffic to his website like it was totally working. The only problem was the messaging on his homepage was written for bots. You know, it was written for the Google algorithm, and so it was working. But then when people were coming to the website, they were not at all connecting to him, and so he wasn't getting any lead calls. He wasn't
getting people to take that next step. So it's doing the good work of of, you know, being strategic with SEO. But I really, I write for humans. I write for human connection. I'd much rather you have, you know, 50 visitors that come to your website and and identify and connect with you than 1000 visitors who come and don't feel a connection. And so there is a work around to that. I mean, I still really, I'm all about you got to write for humans like we can sniff it out when we can
tell a website has been written for SEO. It feels off. It doesn't feel quite right the way that I implement SEO on my own site. I write everything that people are going to encounter. I write it for humans. I write it for them, and then I have a blog in which I post podcast episodes, articles, just kind of whatever I'm up to. I post on the blog. But I don't have that blog in my upper navigation because I don't necessarily want people to get bogged down with all the information that's in my
blog. I put it, I tuck it, I I don't like hide it, but it's in my footer. And if somebody wanted to find it, they totally could. But nobody wants to read a blog these days. They want to be efficient with their time. They want to get to the heart of the matter. They want to get to the essence of who you are, what you do, can you help them? And what do you want me to do next,
to engage with you? And so when, when we offer our blogs in the upper navigation, or we like we feature that in a big way on our website, what happens is, it might be a well written blog. It might be very interesting, it might be very educational. But when that person, your potential client, is at your website, they're reading your blog, and they're like, Wow, this is good
information. I'm learning a lot. I'm going to come back to this when I have more brain capacity, like right now, have to go make dinner and I You're I'm feeling my brains full for. The day, right? So, yeah, they're like, I'll come back tomorrow when I have some more time. And guess what, they never come back. So you've just information overloaded your potential client into not taking action when they might have if you had not thrown all that information at
them. We really have to be mind readers, don't we, as well as everything else. So how does someone go about uncovering their signature story? You talk about your signature story?
Yeah, well, the first thing that I do is called mine for gold. That's mine for gold. Your story is inside you. It's in your head, it's in your heart. And we dig deep to pull out those golden nuggets and that golden thread that is your story. Your story is not something that's created or invented outside of you. It's already inside of you. And it's my job to kind of clear out the clutter and identify what are the golden nuggets of your story. So can
I just ask for clarification? Then here, because when you say your signature story, I would think like your bio in a sense, right? But you don't mean that, do you this is a is this in reference to putting the the hero first still?
So, yes, heroes first, right? So
in a signature story, for example, Humor me here for if it were me, would it be something that speaks to like you would draw out of me? Stories and things that I have experienced over the years that maybe show that I'm all about relationships, or that these are the things that that, is it things that I help with, or is it things
that, yeah, it's it's not necessarily, like digging up stories from your childhood right background. It's really asking you the questions that I know how to ask to pull that story out of you and those components are your hero, what they're struggling with? Who are you as the guide? What is what is the plan like? What's your process? What do you want them to do next? So we really uncover all those components of story by doing that mining for gold process,
that makes total sense. Then, okay, thank you. Yeah, no, that makes that that's important, though. I think that, you know, people see that that's what you mean by the your signature story store or your signature story telling system, really,
yes, yes, it's, it's, it's really, I want people to think of it as, this is a narrative that you have for your business that doesn't this is not your founder's story. It's not how you kind of got into this industry. It's really a narrative that we craft, a narrative that your potential clients are the hero and you are the strongest character as the guide. So it's a narrative that we craft. That narrative lives on your website. The same narrative lives on your
LinkedIn. That same narrative lives like in a video that you might have. What any all of your marketing, right? Your your signature story, when it's done well, it contains all of those Hero's Journey components. But the reason that we can use one story in all your marketing is because it, it really works like an accordion, right? It it can stretch out, it can go in, it can go middle and it just like an accordion. Your your
signature story never changes. It just depending on where it lives, right in LinkedIn, it's going to be the same story components, but it's going to you have a different word count that you have to work so those are, those are kind of the ways that we do it. So step one is my name for gold process. We pull that story out those raw, rough golden nuggets, and then that's Once that process is is done, your story has really been pulled out from your head and heart. Then I polish up that
gold and I write your story for you. If you're reading the book, I show you how to do it yourself. But this is the way that I work with my clients, and it's the same as in the book. So I write your story for you, I polish up that gold, and then we get on a call together, a 90 minute call, and we refine the story together. So I walk you through your signature story, and the goal of that is to really help you understand the thinking, the strategy behind every word that I've written,
because I believe every word is guilty until proven. And innocence. So less, less is more, but it also the reason the signature story feels so good and it feels so aligned with who you are is because every step of the way we're collaborating, I'm
pulling the story out from within. You on step one. Step two, we're collaborating and refining the story together, so it really allows us to craft a story that feels really authentic to you, as opposed to often as business owners, we'll hire a copywriter, they'll go right in a silo, bring the copy back to us, and we read it, and we're like, Huh? Just kind of
feels off. It just doesn't feel right. I'm going to make a bunch of changes, and then it's like a back and forth change, a THON, and it ends up, you know, being number one, expensive, and number two, time consuming. And number three, you probably could have done it quicker if you just did it yourself.
Yeah. Do you still do you do websites for people too, though, or do you just deal with the copy?
Yes, so step three is really taking your signature story and integrating it onto your website. Lot of my clients have their website in like a Wix or a Squarespace or Kajabi or whatever. I don't care what platform you're in, I'm platform neutral. But whatever platform you're in, it's very easy to copy and paste the story, the words over into whatever builder you're in, and then I work with my clients to make sure that the visual story that they're telling is really in alignment
with the written story that we've so carefully crafted. So they'll send me the link to the page once they've integrated the news story, and then I record a loom video giving feedback on photos, colors, fonts, spacing, flow, all those details, and we usually go back and forth a couple of times just to get it totally dialed in. Because if you're if your story is great, but your visuals are are mediocre or don't look professionally done, people aren't going to take you as
seriously, they're not going to trust you as as much, right? So the visual story is, is as important as the written story.
I You've got a new website since the last time we we met, and it, it feels like it's leveled up. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's cool. Um, the so in your book, you talk a little bit about confidently charging premium prices. How does storytelling support that?
Well, premium prices, really. It comes down to building trust. Number one, we build trust by really showing the hero that we understand their problem, reminding them of what's possible for them in their life. Should they solve this problem, really taking the time to show them that they matter most, and then really people pay for problems based on how badly they want to solve them. So if you solve a really important problem for me, I'll, I'll happily pay for you to do
that. You know, like I have a, I have a seven year old little boy, and he's been having some behavioral challenges, and it's been a couple years now, I've been kind of looking for a guide, you know, I've been looking for someone who can help me parent him in a way that's really Effective for him and for me, and so, you know, like many people, they've tried a lot of
different things. They, you know, I've di wide it, I've taken courses, I've hired coaches, and I'm still, I have still been at this place where I'm like, Okay, this is a really big problem, and I really need to solve it. And I finally found I actually read a book. Again. This is the power of like, what a book can do for your business. I read a book, and it's called Raising lions, and then I went to the author's website, and I booked a call with him, and now I'm working with him, and I have
finally found the person to guide me through this. Now, if he had told me that he charged $10,000 to do this work and to work with me, and. And he could guarantee that he that he was going to turn things around. I would have, I really would have paid it. I mean, that's a lot of money, but honestly, to me, it's, it's so important, yeah, and so yeah, that's worth it to me. He, he didn't charge me that much, but, but I would have paid it. So that's, that's kind of what I'm talking about.
Okay, yeah, and I, I just did an interview with a gentleman who wrote a book called The generosity mindset. His name is John Ray, and he's a wonderful man, and he talks about value and your value, and in the sense of pricing, right, you have to believe in yourself, and then people have to see the value that you bring to the table. So I just wanted to hear what your take on that was,
well, you I love that you brought that up, because you know, charging, what you want to charge, is half the battle. You have to really believe that you deserve that. And I've gone through certain iterations of the work that I do like I charge right now, that the price that I charge is different than what I was charging two years ago. I also added a lot of value to my offer, but I remember the first few calls,
how you're choking. Yeah,
I liken it. I told my partner, I'm like, it's like, I'm doing acrobatics, like I'm throwing in free things and, you know, and like, it's, it's funny, and I don't think there's really any way around that, other than
have to speak it enough times and you start to Yeah, it starts to become more comfortable, for
sure. And I think your website, I found this to be true. My website and my clients websites, it can help. It can help you step into those bigger shoes when you know you're ready. Your website can kind of be like your front your front man, or your your bodyguard. It can put you out there and the way that you you want, or at the rates that you want. And even if, like, for example, I have a hidden page on my website that outlines all the pricing and what I charge and everything,
right? So if you have a page like that that you can pull up during a sales call and the prices right there in writing, you know it's it takes the the pressure
off. Yeah, I've the same. You can sometimes feel them asking, wanting to ask, but they haven't yet. And, and, and so sometimes I might ask them, you know, would you like me to talk about pricing? You know, yes, you know, because they want to, but they don't want to. And then I don't show it to them right away, and then I I say it, I'll give a a range or something, and then I'll say, you know, if you'd like, I could bring up the pricing page or something, you know, but, yeah,
it's interesting. I know we and we have to grow into it, which wherever we are, for sure. Okay, so I'm gonna put you on the spot for a second. I'm sure you have many stories, but can you share a transformation story from one of your clients who's used your system,
who you Yeah, absolutely. I worked with a client named Andrea, and she had a great coaching business. She did, she was an infidelity coach, and what she would do, really interesting and very focused talk about solving a problem. She her program was called no in 90 know if you're
going to stay or go in 90 days. And so she had this beautiful program and and she was, you know, she's a confident person, but she found herself on her sales calls kind of selling, you know, and she didn't like how that felt, and she she didn't, she wasn't stepping into her story on her website and in her real life as the Guide. And so we work together, and we really, you know, mind for gold. We got her story. I polished it up for her and and we got it to a point where, like, it felt really
good. And she came to me because she wanted more clients, you know, she wanted to reach more people. What she didn't realize, and honestly, it wasn't until working with her that I really realized, you know, the gravity and how good this, this little byproduct is of getting clear on your story, is she became so much more confident, and she started when she had the words to communicate what she did, and she knew in her bones how. How powerful it was and how important the work she was
doing. Was she her website started working right? She she started getting a lot more calls booked, but then when she would show up on those calls, she was calm because she knew she didn't have to sell anymore. She was using her signature, signature story in her sales calls like her value, right to show her value. She knew she knew her her value, and really it was less about her talking and more about her asking the right questions
to her clients in the call. So prior to working together, she was closing about 20% of her calls, meaning for every 10 calls she booked, she was getting two clients. After our work together, her her close rate went up to 95% so for every 10 clients. She was getting nine and a half for every 10 calls.
She was getting nine and a half clients. But mostly she just told me, because I talked to her a couple months later and she was like, You cannot put a price tag on this work like it just the confidence that it's allowed her to step into the world in in such a more profound way and impact more people, like people need her help so and now
as your as your book says, from click to client, how to easily create a story driven website that turns visitors In to clients love it, which is so true. Your dream clients visit your website and quietly click away to competitors. I'm looking at the back now. I'm sorry, and what? What would you say is one step that our listeners can take today to start applying the story selling, selling system to their brand.
Well, yeah, the first thank you for sharing that. Janice, the very first and most important thing you can do is just shift the lens in which you look at your business, in which you talk about your business and really get clear on who your hero is, what they're struggling with, and what
they're wanting. And then in all your all the materials that you create for your marketing, be consistent, be congruent, like people don't want to find you on LinkedIn and then go to your website, and it's like a complete disconnect like Troy, that's leaking trust. We don't want to leak trust. We want to build it. And ironically, having a consistent message is less effort. But we somehow, as humans, we think, Oh, that's lazy. We gotta, we gotta be fresh and clever everywhere we
show up. Well, the The more consistent you are, the more you can beat that drum over and over and over, just the more people are going to remember you. They're really going to understand what it is that you do. So the number one thing you can do is really step into this story as the guide and identify your potential clients as the hero. And if you want to do that for free, you can go to my website, Red doorstories.com, and I have a freebie on there called How to write compelling
copy in five minutes. It's just a very short video with a little worksheet on it, and it will get you going. It will forever change the way you talk about your business.
That's great. I'll put that in the show notes. Thank you so much, Chris. Well, this has been a delight. I'm very excited for you with your book and I are we allowed to talk about that? You're writing another one.
It's in the works. Okay, so, yeah, we'll talk
about that when the time comes. But it sounds pretty exciting with what you shared with me. So a huge thank you to you for sharing your wisdom and for showing us that marketing doesn't have to be complicated to be powerful. Your signature story selling system reminds us that the right story told simply and clearly can do the heavy lifting in our business. And if you want my audience, if you want a website that truly converts and messaging that reflects the real
value that you offer. Chris's book is a must read, and you can find it on her website and on Amazon, I'm guessing anywhere that books are sold, and we'll put the link to it in the show notes as well. So thanks for being
here. Thank you, Janice,
thank you, and thank you to my audience. And if you like what you heard, please let us know and check out. I encourage you to check out Chris's book and her website as well, to see a true example of her storytelling system, and remember to stay connected and be remembered. You.