How to Transform Content from Boring to Brilliant Featuring Tom Ruwitch

We help consultants, coaches, entrepreneurs, and small business owners build their business, after a long career, as an employed professional, we believe you should be able to do what you love and get paid what you're worth consistently. I'm your host David Shriner-Cahn.

Today. on Smashing The Plateau, I'm speaking with the founder and Chief Story Officer of Story Power Marketing, Tom Ruwitch in today's episode, you'll learn how to transform content from boring to brilliant turn marketing from frustrating to fun and convert results from pitiful to profitable. Stay with us to hear all the details. Do you struggle to take consistent action on things like producing content consistently? How do you feel about your business building progress?

Would you like to be part of a structured, supportive process to help you implement ideas that you know, will help move the needle forward in your business, toward your goals. As a member of the Smashing The Plateau Community, you'll have access to a structured process for growth. You'll also be a member of a community that's built to be a safe, caring place where inclusive, direct, active and empowering conversations are welcome.

Inside the Smashing the Plateau Community, you'll find a range of tools and resources to support you as an entrepreneur, access to experts and answers to your burning questions. If you are committed to getting your consulting, coaching, or small business to grow on your own terms so that you can deliver great results to your ideal clients while supporting the lifestyle you want, and you don't wanna do it alone, apply to become a member of the Smashing the Plateau Community.

Learn more at smashingtheplateau.com. Now let's welcome, Tom Ruwitch. Tom is founder and Chief Story Officer at Story Power Marketing. Coaches, consultants, and other experts hire Tom to power up their stories because most dish out the same blah, blah, blah, content, put prospects to sleep and then feel fed up and, so Tom helps them transform content from boring to brilliant turn marketing from frustrating to fun and convert results from pitiful to profitable.

Bottom line, Tom helps you stand out to captivate prospects and inspire them to buy without pitching and prodding. Tom, welcome to the show. Thanks David. Glad to be here, David Shriner-Cahn: Tom, why did you start Story Power Marketing? I'll tell you a story to answer that question. I used. To run, an email marketing company software to create, deliver track, email, and, started that in 2001, ran that for 19 years and built a marketing agency around it.

Do It For You Marketing Strategy, not just the software, but helping people use the software and what we found with most business people is that when they would struggle with their marketing, they would blame the tool. They would blame the tactic. This funnel didn't work. They might blame the tactician. They might blame the entire medium email doesn't work.

But what we found is that in 99% of the cases where businesses were struggling with their marketing, the struggle really was the result of not having interesting captivating content. And so, while still running market bold, a lot of the consulting work that I began to do was to help our clients power up their stories, to help make the content more creative, to help captivate prospects. Because if you dish out good content, it doesn't matter how great the funnel is.

how powerful the tool may be you're gonna put prospects to sleep. They're gonna tune out. And then marketing and content creation feels like a painful slog. And, so we sold marketable in 2019 and, at the end of 2019, and at the beginning of 2020, I hung my shingle and, started Story Power Marketing. David Shriner-Cahn: Does that mean that you went solo in 2019?

Yeah, we sold the software and the client base to a great company called Benchmark Email and, our software and our clientele merged with Benchmark. I continued to work with clients on consulting and strategic and do it for you. And the core focus became how to power up the content. And yeah, it's me. I have a team of people helping me, but I am the lead consultant, the Chief Story Officer, the, the lone Wolf. David Shriner-Cahn: Why did you decide to do this on your own?

And why did you choose this particular target audience? I'll start with the second part. I chose this particular target audience because in my experience, coaches consultants, other experts, professional service providers, like lawyers and financial advisors and so forth. These are people who monetize their expertise, who know a great deal about whatever it is they know, and who provide a really valuable service.

But when it comes to marketing that service, talking to others about why someone should hire them, they struggle. And they begin to dish out as my bio says that Sam will blah, blah, blah, boring content. So I chose this audience because I think what I do resonates very well with them provides a really valuable service to them. And I like to work with them. The first question I think was why did I choose to go solo?

David Shriner-Cahn: Yeah. Yeah. The, somewhat flip, joking answer, but it also serious is because, how am I gonna put this? I work well solo. I just , I guess that's the easiest way to put it. I have run large companies. I was co-founder of a company where we grew it from two to 85 people in 18 months. And I've worked for corporations at Market Vault at we had, 12 employees for a decent chunk of our time at Market Vault.

And I really enjoy just getting together with my clients, my coaching group, and working with them directly. I have a team of people who support me, so it's not fully a solo enterprise. , but I bring many years of expertise to this and, working alone just seemed to make sense. David Shriner-Cahn: So it fits who you. Yeah, I think that's, , that's a more concise answer than I offered. Yeah. It fits who I am. David Shriner-Cahn: No, I love your answer.

And the reality is I've never met someone who is quote unquote solo, who actually does everything himself or herself. Oh, so true. I know in the work that you do with your clients, that it's about helping them get over the hump, get their business built and operating smoothly and you can't truly run a business by yourself, at least not a business of any reasonable size.

And so in my experience, having run these other companies, understanding how to delegate, understanding what I like to do and what I'm good at and what I should be spending my time on. All of those are things that are very critical, both for the success of the company and its bottom line. And for my sanity, I don't wanna spend my. Doing the stuff that I don't need to do and that I don't like to do.

David Shriner-Cahn: And there's no reason why you should look to humans have become, this may be going too far, but to say the dominant species on the planet but whatever, however you wanna describe it, we've achieved what we've achieved because we collaborate. Yeah, I fully agree. And, we're social creatures where we do better. If we don't fly alone, we do better when we build relationships. And I'm glad you asked that, that question. I'm glad you made that comment.

You're gonna ask me later about the importance of relationships. And so I'll save another bit for, for. Oh, you can go there now if you want. You want me to? Yeah, sure. All right. go ask the question. So let's queue this thing updated. All right. So David Shriner-Cahn: Tom, why are relationships so important? we already started in on that relationships are so important. A because we can't succeed in business.

If we try to just operate completely in a vacuum, separate from human interaction, cooperation. Now in marketing in particular, I always emphasize the idea that marketing is a relationship business. And I think the best way to understand that is just to put, to think about yourself, being on LinkedIn or opening your inbox and getting these robot generated messages. Hello, David. I think that you are doing an outstanding job in your business.

And I would love to have a conversation with you about how I can help you. when you're being spoken to in an automated robotic way, and there's so much business that's being conducted, that's not rooted in the idea of, I am going to make a real and human effort to get to know you, to get, to understand you, to build a relationship with you and my belief, especially for coaches, consultants, and other experts, is that you will succeed in business.

If you stand out as the human being in your space, if you stand out as the person who is establishing relationships with your readers, with your prospects, with your clients, and that's where creative story powered content comes in.

Sure. You may be sending it out in mass via an email engine being via social media, whatever the case may be, but you can do it in a way that drops the veil that shows some personality that shares some of your heart and your humanity and in, so doing opens doors for relationships, people who will reply to your emails, who will converse with you.

And if you can do that with your content and then carry forward conversations, one on one with the people who connect with you, then you're building the relationships that turn into meaningful business. David Shriner-Cahn: So Tom, you're making a really important distinction between, particularly for content that is distributed in bulk, whether it's by email, through social media frankly, a podcast like this is being distributed in bulk.

However, it is being distributed in bulk, but you're making a really clear distinction between something that is not going to tap into the social nature of human beings and something based on story that does tap into that. So I'd love to hear you go a little deeper on. The storytelling piece that really taps into the social nature of humans and is much more likely to, actually make a meaningful connection where the recipient will respond in a genuine way.

Sure, and I'll share a story of some work that we did with a client. This client was an executive coach and the work this executive coach does is with high end company owners, presidents, vice presidents, so forth, and she helps them escape the hamster wheel. And one of the blog posts that she had written before she began working with me was about delegation. Delegation's an important skill. We were talking about it before, you can't work alone.

Being able to delegate, being able to take things off your plate. All of that is great. And so teaching that skill is helpful. The blog post she wrote began something like this. Delegation is one of the most important skills that any business leader can develop when you delegate properly. And then on it goes, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. A lecture impersonal, not feeling like you are connecting with the reader.

And frankly, that same lecture, that same set of information anyone could find by Googling delegation and finding 500 similar blog posts. What we did is we sat down with her and we talked about the work she does with her clients. Tell us about some of the work. Tell us about one of your clients. Tell us about an experience.

And one of the experiences she described is a business owner who had never taken longer than a long weekend vacation in 20 years of running a company never had gone away for more than four days in 20 years. And so the blog post that we ended up helping her produce, it was an email.

And then it went on her blog, had a big picture at the top with a guy sitting on a hammock on a beach, overlooking sunset on a beach, which is exactly where this this business owner went and the headline or the subject line for the post was how a business owner was able to let go and get away. Okay. First thing, that alone, that subject line alone is implying a benefit in a story. I was stuck, unable to let go. I transformed to a state of being able to let go and get away.

How many business owners out there, how many executives out there who are prospects of this coach? Are looking for that. So they're gonna read that email. And then the next thing was a story. I know this business owner and she told the story of how he never went on vacation for more than four days, because when he went away, he was completely stressed out the place would fall apart that he would be worried that. The place was gonna burn down.

People would call him with the smallest things that he thought they should be able to deal with without calling him. But they called him and it made him mad on and on, but then he was able finally to go on vacation, how did he do it? Delegation. And then she led into all of the tips that were in that same blog post she'd written months before that was the boring blah, blah, blah.

Nobody got to the tips and the boring blah, blah, blah piece, because it was boring and she didn't draw them in the story, drew them in what happens in a story like that. Is the person she's trying to reach reads it and thinks, oh, she gets me. This is exactly what I feel. When I go away, I feel like, oh, the place is gonna burn down. I feel stressed. And if the person who reads that story, isn't feeling that it's not her prospect. So the story perfectly.

Reflects and connects her to her prospect. And that's what powerful storytelling is all about. It's not about you sharing your origin story. I was born a poor child in Kentucky and clawed my way out of the holler and blah, blah, blah. Now it's about understanding the before state of your clients, where they want to go and being able to reflect that in a way that you then can say, here's how I can get you. I'm gonna teach you to delegate. That's a powerful business story.

And that's an example of how you, as an expert, a consultant, a coach can demonstrate that whatever it is you sell, however it is you deliver. You can help your prospect take that journey. The journey is what you sell. That's the story, David Shriner-Cahn: Tom. I love that. And thank you for sharing that with a story. What are some of the, particularly for somebody who is an expert, a consultant coach, someone who's solo selling their professional services. What if they're like the person.

You just described who initially was just delivering information in lecture format. If that is what they're used to doing, what are some techniques they can think about? Or maybe just some shifts in the way they might think about their content that may help them. Either start to generate these stories or at least move in the right direction so that their content is it's a little more receptive to the audience. Yeah. So it starts with what we call story discovery.

It starts with really diving deep and understanding what makes your prospects tick? What is their before state? What's keeping them up at. What's frustrating them. What's making them mad. And then on the other side of the bridge, where do they want to go? What are they dreaming of? What do they aspire to? So that journey is from feeling stuck to, letting go and being on the hammock on the beach.

And you know that in the context that we've just discussed it, that may seem natural, but it's amazing how little business people will really dive into that. and if, and when they do dive into any form of story discovery, they do it in an incomplete way. They end up with a glass that's half full half, Half wrong, half, half complete, half incomplete when you do it well, when you really discover what makes your prospects tick, you have the building blocks.

For your stories and, I'll share with you another story to really get it at an important idea. There's a copywriter named Eugene Schwartz no longer around, but he was the most prolific direct response ad writer of the late 20th century and Eugene Schwartz claims that he never suffered from writer's block and I believe him. And when he was asked, why he never suffered from writer's block, his answer was this. We don't write copy. We assemble it.

And what he meant by that is that writing is not some magic art where you sit down in front of a blank notepad or in front of a computer screen and just conjure up some magic. And some creativity writing is a craft an act of assembly.

And if you gather the building blocks in advance, which is what I'm talking about with story discovery, if you do the work of discovering your prospects and really do it, not just half ass it, if you really do it, then the act of creating the emails, the social posts, the websites, the ads is an act of taking those building blocks and just putting them into familiar structures anyone can learn how to do that.

If you understand the system of story discovery and then the structures of how to put those things together, what happens though with so many people, is they dive into email or social because. Oh, you're just, that's what everybody's doing. I have to do email. I have to do social. And then you sit in front of the screen time to write another email and you're sitting there with that blank curse or blinking on the screen and you're thinking once upon a time now, what.

And you're hoping that the muse strikes and it just doesn't have to work that way. It doesn't have to feel like magic. It's not some, this person's creative, I'm not creative. I can't do this. It doesn't have to feel like a painful slack. It's something that you can do systematically. And that's what story discovery is about the process of discovering and gathering the building blocks.

And then content creation is the, is really the act of assembling those building blocks into familiar structures. David Shriner-Cahn: Tom, this is probably a good point to ask you a little bit about how you actually do this with your clients. how do you help them learn how to create these stories? Yeah. And so I've talked about story discovery and I've talked about systems. So I have a variety of different, connection points.

I, I can work with you as a one-on-one consultant and I go into businesses and I'm diving deep with you. I also have a coaching program called the Content Transformation Academy and in both cases, what we do is we teach you the process of story discovery. We teach you how to take those building blocks and put them into a structure, like an email, like a social post, how to redo your website and so forth. And then we teach you how on an ongoing basis.

To draw from those things, those ideas, those topics that you want to touch on with your clients and present them in a more creative and more interesting way than just the blah, blah blah. In the case of the Content Transformation Academy, we do that in the form of. Online course content, weekly coaches meetings, access to me via one-on-one email and the Marco Polo chat app, office hours, that sort of, of structure.

And then the other way to really discover it is to just sign up for my emails that I send on a daily ish basis, Monday through Friday, where, I'm just practicing what I preach. David Shriner-Cahn: Sounds great. Tom, how can people learn more about you and sign up for these daily emails and get access to content that you do have and just learn more. Sure. So the best thing to do is go to storypowermarketing.com, Story Power Marketing is all one word.

And, when you go to that page, there's a button at the top get Tom's emails, or there will be an overlay that'll show up on the page. The first time you visit it, that will enable you to sign up for my emails. That's the best way to get a feel for what I do and how I do it. There's also a, free training on the website. Called three keys to, oh gosh. I'm stumbling over the title of it, but the three keys training, three keys to, create captivating stories or something like, like that.

That's available on the website. That's a seven minute free training and then I'm available on LinkedIn. Look me up Tom Ruwitch there's a LinkedIn link on my website, happy to connect with people and I am happy to speak to anybody who wants to email me at tom@storypowermarketing.com, especially if you're interested in learning more about the content transformation academy or any of the things that we offer. David Shriner-Cahn: Okay, sounds great.

Tom, is there anything I haven't asked you that you wanna mention before we close out? I think that we covered it. I think it was a great conversation. David, I'm grateful for the opportunity. And, is there anything that, that you think you forgot to ask me? David Shriner-Cahn: You know what I think this is probably a good start for many people who, particularly those that struggle with creating content and creating captivating content, which you do create is compelling.

I've seen it and you do practice what you preach. You've shared a few stories. During this episode. yeah. I encourage people to check you out and, and reach out one on one. If they have questions. I think that's great. Thank you, David. I really appreciate it, David Shriner-Cahn: Tom. I wanna thank you so much for joining us today on Smashing The Plateau. My guest has been Founder and Chief Story Officer of Story Power Marketing, Tom Ruwitch thank you again, Tom, for joining us.

Thank you, David. David Shriner-Cahn: When you visit the Smashing The Plateau website smashingtheplateau.com, you find a summary of each episode, along with the links we mentioned on the show on today's episode with Tom Ruwitch we learned how to transform content. From boring to brilliant turn marketing from frustrating to fun and convert results from pitiful to profitable. Do you struggle to take consistent action on things like producing content consistently?

How do you feel about your business building progress? Would you like to be part of a structured, supportive process to help you implement ideas that you know will help you move the needle forward toward your goals? As a member of the Smashing the Plateau Community you'll have access to a structured process for growth.

You'll also be a member of a community that's built to be a safe, caring place where inclusive, direct, active and empowering conversations are welcome inside the Smashing the Plateau Community. You'll find a range of tools and resources to support you as an entrepreneur, access to experts and answers to your burning questions.

If you are committed to getting your consulting, coaching or small business to grow on your own terms so that you can deliver great results to your ideal clients while supporting the lifestyle you want, and you don't want to do it alone, apply to become a member of the Smashing the Plateau Community. Learn more at smashingtheplateau.com, where we have additional resources to help consultants, coaches, and entrepreneurs build their business. After a long career, as an employed professional.

We believe you should be able to do what you love and get paid, what you're worth consistently. I'm David Shriner-Cahn thank you for taking the time to listen to our show. I'll see you on our next episode.