"A Story Needs a Job To Do" - Michelle Warner, Business Designer - How Stories Happen #2
Our guest for this episode is rarely online. But when she is, she’s telling small stories with big meaning.
Meet Michelle Warner—she’s a business strategist and consultant who architects business models and marketing strategies for clients who sell high-priced services. She also hosts the podcast Sequence Over Strategy—an idea that represents her entire platform’s differentiated premise, and one the story she brings to us today reflects.
Michelle has founded multi-million dollar startups, raised capital the traditional way, and generally followed “the blueprint” for business growth before burning out and finding a new path forward. She is an independent consultant and educator who doesn’t need to rely on social media for growth.
What I admire about Michelle is that she’s designed her life and work in a certain way—she’s intentional, genuine, and carefully curates anything she elects to spend time on. These characteristics are reflected in her life, in her work, and in the way she tells stories.
In this episode, we dissect one of her signature stories she recently sent to her newsletter. It was well-received, but the ending needs work, and she recognizes there are some structural problems with the story. We work on that together to turn this into a signature story she can take with her everywhere, and we identify the job this story does for her audience and her business.
You’ll get a deep look at the small changes that you can make to a story to communicate with greater impact.
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Episode Resources:
⚫ Listen to Michelle’s podcast: https://www.themichellewarner.com/blog/sos001
⚫ Check out Michelle’s website: https://www.themichellewarner.com/
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🟢 Created in partnership with Share Your Genius: https://shareyourgenius.com/
🟢 Cover art designed by Blake Ink: https://www.blakeink.com/
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Episode Transcript
This has been generated by AI and may contain errors.
Jay Acunzo [00:00:03]:
This is How Stories Happen, where experts, entrepreneurs, creators, and communicators dissect a single story piece by piece. We hear how they found it and developed it, how it might improve, and how they're using it to build their businesses and leave their legacies. This is a show about resonance, not reach. It's about making what matters to our careers, companies, and communities. Because when our work matters more, we need to hustle for attention less. I'm Jay Acunzo.
Michelle Warner [00:00:41]:
You're asking all the good questions. Oh, my God, you're gonna panic me. It's much more natural to just look at silly things that are going on in my life to draw a story out of that. It checked all the boxes but one, a very significant one. The house faces north, and I've been throwing a good old tantrum about it. And then the last two paragraphs, I don't know where I'm going or how to end it. So it's telling me a little bit of a structure change is needed. It's gonna be a hard habit to break, but I'm up for it.
Michelle Warner [00:01:10]:
That is such a better way to go about it. I love that. I'm gonna start that immediately. This is what I wanted to hear.
Jay Acunzo [00:01:19]:
When you create content online today, it's easy to feel stuck on the hamster wheel churning out endless stuff. Your stress goes up, your volume goes up, but your results, eh, they don't. And then you have Michelle Warner. Michelle is barely on social media. She's very choosy in what she publishes, and instead she competes on the power of her stories, not the volume of her content. And she does that primarily by telling small stories with big meaning. Pulled from her everyday life, Michelle earns a living as a business strategist and consultant who works with entrepreneurs that sell high priced services. She helps her clients design their business models and their marketing strategies.
Jay Acunzo [00:02:00]:
In her career, she's done the venture scale startup thing, and she's now an independent consultant. She's from Chicago and is now living in the mountains of Colorado. Everywhere she goes, she carefully designs her life and her work her way. I love her approach to building her business and the way she thinks about storytelling. And today you'll get a really deep look at the really tiny changes that you can make to a story to communicate with greater impact and get off the hamster wheel together, we take a story that she shared on her newsletter and treat it like a draft. We really chop it up and rearrange it together, and we try to build it into a signature story she can take with her everywhere. She shows up. Alright, lets freeze some hamsters.
Michelle Warner [00:02:43]:
I'm Michelle Warner, a business designer and strategist and I help entrepreneurs who sell high ticket services, design better business models and marketing plans.
Jay Acunzo [00:02:52]:
What is your creative practice like? What are you routinely creating and shipping out into the world?
Michelle Warner [00:02:57]:
I guess my newsletter and my podcast.
Jay Acunzo [00:03:00]:
How often?
Michelle Warner [00:03:01]:
Every other weekish it changes and I'm on that newsletter.
Jay Acunzo [00:03:04]:
It's excellent by the way.
Michelle Warner [00:03:05]:
Thank you.
Jay Acunzo [00:03:06]:
You're welcome. And you have a new podcast.
Michelle Warner [00:03:08]:
I have a new podcast? Yeah, it's going to go live I think next week.
Jay Acunzo [00:03:12]:
What's the premise of the show?
Michelle Warner [00:03:13]:
Oh my God, you're going to panic me. Sequence over strategy.
Jay Acunzo [00:03:17]:
Yeah. Okay, so I love this premise that you press a lot of your work through this one premise. It's like the lens through which you see your content, your client work, all of the things. Can you just explain sequence over strategy to people that may be unfamiliar with the idea?
Michelle Warner [00:03:31]:
Yeah. To me it means two different things. It means number one, doing things in the correct order is more important than doing them well. And it also means that the things that you do need to be in fundamental alignment and if they're not, then they're also not going to work really well.
Jay Acunzo [00:03:45]:
Right? I'll give you an example from my business because you and I have talked about this before. If I am selling, which I do things that are higher priced, higher ticket, I don't need a huge volume or huge throughput of clients to have a wonderful year. Why in the world would I prioritize traffic based marketing tactics when I should be thinking more about the relationships that I have? Or even like when it's all about content, showing up in small masterminds to give talks instead of huge audiences full of people who mostly can't either can't afford me or won't need me. This is a paradigm shift for a lot of marketers to think about like well, I have a relationship type offer, I should have a relationship type marketing. And I think we're all pretty colored by like mass media, social media, traffic, followers, endless grabbing at fame.
Jay Acunzo [00:04:49]:
So I like to talk about your teachings when it applies to marketing when it applies to content, as essentially, there's a very big difference between a big audience and a valuable audience. And most people can very easily define what a big audience means, but have no preconception and really need one of what a valuable audience means to them and their business.
Michelle Warner [00:05:10]:
Exactly. And that means sequence to strategy for me, because the first question is all about what is the best first question to ask, and nobody's asking that first question of what is a valuable audience to me. So then it doesn't even matter in what order you do things if you're not even doing the right thing. So that's where the sequence over strategy comes in. At that level is, let's make the right decisions and ask the best questions first.
Jay Acunzo [00:05:31]:
In my teachings, it's, hey, stop creating so much content before you have a premise to inform it. That's sequence over strategy. The first step, the first thing, the first need you have takes priority over what are all the moves I need to make in some pristine playbook. Yep, you're writing your newsletter, you're hosting this podcast coming up, anything else that forms your creative practice. Are you appearing in other podcasts? Are you guest blogging? Are you giving talks? What else are you doing?
Michelle Warner [00:05:56]:
Yeah, I'm appearing on a lot of other podcasts. I'm doing a lot of teaching. Talks is a big word. I think a lot of workshops and guest teaching is more what I'm doing. I'm not on stages. Giving a deck based talk, if you will, makes sense.
Jay Acunzo [00:06:09]:
And yet you're bringing those stories that I feel like I've seen you iron out through your writing, I'm assuming, into those workshops, into those small group discussions.
Michelle Warner [00:06:16]:
Yeah, 100%.
Jay Acunzo [00:06:17]:
Is there a kind of story that you like to tell? You know, I would describe, especially when I started telling business stories, I was very colored by a history as a sports journalist. I was very much in love with the saccharine stories, feature pieces, human interest pieces of athletes. And I would say that that kind of bumps up against the edge of being too saccharine, too sentimental without going over the edge. That's a kind of story that I really love. Is there a kind of story you love to tell?
Michelle Warner [00:06:45]:
It's interesting you bring that up, because I also have a background not in athletic journalism, but in athletic principal. So I am very drawn and very influenced by the stories that I see play out in front of me. When I was working in those worlds, there are points where I'm telling very human interest athletic stories from my career and athletes careers . That I worked with, and I use those a lot in business, actually. But I would say that right now I am much more drawn to very casual, almost self deprecating, like the things that happen in my everyday life. It's much more natural to me to just look at silly things that are going on in my life and being able to draw a story out of that.
Jay Acunzo [00:07:24]:
And in the story that we talk about later, it feels like that relates. That's of a piece. And I'd also say that you having this clear premise in your mind is like the lens through which you see all these moments that you're experiencing that other people might say that's not worth telling, even if it's interesting to me, or they just don't even notice it as a potential story thread to pull or a source of teaching or metaphor. And yet you do. And I like to think of this as if you have your subconscious working on the problem at all times. Then you could just go about your day and not be thinking about work, and something goes off in your mind is like, aha. I don't know if that's a thing, but I'm going to save it somewhere and maybe pull that thread later. I think really effective storytellers have that habit that they've ironed out over years of their lives.
Jay Acunzo [00:08:02]:
So I don't know if that connects back to the way you operate, but that's what I'm always going through as I move about my day 100%.
Michelle Warner [00:08:07]:
I also think I have an unfair advantage there because it is so easy to do things out of sequence or to not stop and ask the right question, that I am constantly catching myself in my normal life, breaking my own rules. And so it's easy to notice that and to make fun of myself when I'm at the grocery store without a list and I'm screwing things up and I know I'm going to have to go back. All of those everyday moments, I'm just like, oh, this is what I tell people to not do all day long.
Jay Acunzo [00:08:32]:
How much of an organized system do you have for catching these little moments that you notice at the grocery store, or making morning coffee, or walking your dog on the beach during the winter months, as I know you love to do? How systematized is this sort of intake of yours.
Michelle Warner [00:08:59]:
There's a dumping ground in notion. That's what I use for project management. So I have a page where I just dump a note that will remind me what happened. And if I'm out and about, I will give myself a two second voice note. I don't try to form the story, but it goes into a voice note on my phone so I can manage to get it into notion when I get back.
Jay Acunzo [00:09:16]:
There's a sequence over strategy thing I've noticed here, which I think you'll love. There's a ton of people that I've encountered. I'm very fortunate now to be of the stage in my career where people think I have some kind of secret and I just do not like, Jay, you must know how not to make a mess when you make stuff. And I'm like, no, I just maybe move through the mess more confidently and more joyfully or can direct it a little bit better. It's always a mess whenever I make anything. And I think people start with the idea phase and they're like, so you have some super regimented tagging system? And I'm like, no, I have one page in notion that I like save. I basically pull the thread as much as inspiration lets me in that moment and vomit words. So it's like a six, seven, 8910 sentence paragraph that becomes the idea that I save for later.
Jay Acunzo [00:10:03]:
And then occasionally I'm like you, where I can't type anything, I'm walking or driving, and I'll send myself a text or a voice note and that's it. Maybe instead of ironing out the perfect idea capture and collating system for you, you should put yourself on a deadline and tell a bunch of stories for I don't know how many months. And then let's revisit whether or not idea capture an organization is a problem for you. Like sequence over strategy, this feels like one of those things that people want the perfect system and they actually don't save a bunch of ideas or learn how to spot them in the first place.
Michelle Warner [00:10:33]:
100%. I have encountered so many templates and great planning tools for content. I've even tried a couple of them and immediately forgotten that they exist. Or when I tried to write off of them, it was a complete disaster. So yeah, I just need a little prompt and it reminds me of something and off I go.
Jay Acunzo [00:10:53]:
So let's get into the story that you brought for us today. I believe you said the story is something you've used before public, like, it's already been published, but you want to improve it. Just set this up for us. What kind of story or where have you used this before?
Michelle Warner [00:11:06]:
Well, it came from my notion database, and so it has been used as an email before and on the fly email, kind of how I described the creative process. I needed an idea, saw it in the notion database, and it probably went from idea to draft email in less than 30 minutes and was sent out. Resonated really well. And now, as I'm looking at it and looking for some more core stories, I thought, ooh, that one resonated really well. It could probably use some more massaging that it did not get in the 30 minutes it went from idea to email.
Jay Acunzo [00:11:37]:
Oh, interesting. So from the idea list to an actual email, you sent it out to your newsletter, and then you said you wanted to turn it into possibly a core story. Is that one of those stories you take with you in your guest appearances, in your teachings? Like, when do you say core story? What do you mean exactly?
Michelle Warner [00:11:52]:
So, as you know how the way I market, I break it into three stages. Awareness, engagement, sales. And that awareness moment is how I meet people. And those have what I call core stories in them the most resonant, the ones that people understand the most, because I can use them over and over and over again because I'm always meeting people when I'm in that awareness stage of marketing.
Jay Acunzo [00:12:10]:
So your awareness is, I need to go and show up where there are densities of my prospective clients and create what you call a trust transfer, which is this podcaster. Their audience trusts them. Now they trust me a little bit more because they spent an hour with me instead of seeing me post a bunch on social media, which is very fleeting.
Jay Acunzo [00:13:06]:
So in the awareness stage, when you're out kind of meeting and handshaking your audience, you're saying you're bringing these core stories with you to show up in the strongest possible way.
Michelle Warner [00:13:16]:
Correct. I want to have three or four of those stories that I can match with the audience and I know I can repeat them because I'm going to these places, I'm meeting new people each and every time, whereas my weekly, every other weekly newsletter is more of an engagement once people know me. And so there's a different level of loyalty already there. I'm not going to repeat stories from them. They're just going to get something new all the time.
Jay Acunzo [00:15:07]:
I love that. Okay, so the title that I'm seeing here for the story, because I'm going to watch you read it, is so's story. I don't want you to explain what that means. Let's leave that open for now for our audience. So s o s story. Michelle, whenever you're ready, please take us through the story. And then we'll dissect it together.
Michelle Warner [00:15:24]:
If you've been here for a minute, you know that I bought a new house over the winter. It checked all the boxes I was looking for, and it taken me two plus years to find. I live in a small town. I was looking for something very specific. Check that. It checked all the boxes but one. A very significant one. The house faces north.
Michelle Warner [00:15:40]:
This may not seem like a big deal to some of you, but I'm guessing some of my fellow northern climate friends are nodding their heads knowingly. Because when your house faces north, your front yard, your sidewalk, the entryway, all of it, it's shaded most of the day, which means the snow melts weeks later than your neighbors across the street. And even a little dusting of snow or frost can turn into ice. That's still around two weeks later. It was not in my plans to buy a north facing house, but when I found the perfect location and structure, I took the trade off and did it anyway. Which brings me to the spring, when I'm all kinds of annoyed because I want color in front of my house. It was a long winter. I want daffodils.
Michelle Warner [00:16:16]:
I want tulips, and most of all, I want a beautiful spring blooming tree. A crab apple, a redbud, a dogwood. I do not care, as long as it's colorful. What do I have instead? Some ground cover, greenery, and a maple tree. And I've been throwing a good old tantrum about it. But here's the thing. The colorful blooming tree of my dreams isn't in alignment with what I have. If I give into the tantrum and plant one, you know what? I'll get a pretty picture on a leaflet from the nursery showing me the blooms that my tree will never produce because its location is not in alignment with it blooming.
Michelle Warner [00:16:49]:
So sure, I can buy the tree. I can pick the surface level thing that I want, but that doesn't mean it's going to bloom. Why am I telling you this? Because you're probably all doing some of this version in your business. You're probably plucking shiny strategies and outcomes out of the blue and hoping they'll bloom. But if you haven't taken the time to figure out if they're in alignment or what steps you need to take to get them into alignment, they're not going to work. Here's a version I hear from folks all the time. They want to sell a high priced, service based offer, but they don't want to go out and build the relationships required to find those customers. They'd prefer to post random content on social media instead, in the hope someone stumbles across it.
Michelle Warner [00:17:26]:
The vast majority of businesses buying premium priced, service based offers aren't buying them because they saw you post something on LinkedIn. Yes, of course there'll be an occasional needle in a haystack. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about what happens the other 98% of the time. They're buying those services because there was a relationship in place that played a role in facilitating the introduction or the sales conversation, or something else along the way. So if you want to sell high priced services, but you don't want to do the uncomfortable work of building the right relationships to support those sales, you're doing the equivalent of planting a blooming tree in a north facing yard. Sure, you can do it, but the results are probably going to fall well short of your expectations. There are so many other places I see misalignments and things being done out of order in business.
Michelle Warner [00:18:09]:
I see you taking months to launch a website or a podcast without understanding what job you want it to do for you and then wondering why you're not getting in results from your sparkling new thing. I see you making your product better and more advanced, but still marketing to an audience of beginners and then wondering why they don't buy. I see you jumping on any podcast that invites you instead of doing the work of reaching out to the podcast that your audience listens to and then wondering why you aren't finding your people. Notice something here. None of these situations have anything to do with the quality of your work or your ability to execute. They all have to do with the order in which you're doing things. I can be the best tree planter in the entire world, import the best soil from wherever they have the best soil, water that thing with precision, and the tree of my dreams still isn't going to perform. Before you worry about that execution, you have to make sure you're doing things in the proper order.
Michelle Warner [00:18:58]:
And the first step of that order is always to know whether what you're thinking of doing is in alignment with your reality. Something I call sequence over strategy.
Jay Acunzo [00:19:07]:
Awesome. Thank you. How did that feel?
Michelle Warner [00:19:09]:
I haven't read out loud on commands in a while, so it's a little different.
Jay Acunzo [00:19:13]:
Yeah, let's phrase it as opportunity that this show is providing people, which is like, oh, I'm getting better at like taking something written or something. I speak out loud on a stage to lots of people and finding a way to translate it to this medium. So you're welcome for the practice, I guess, is what I'm saying.
Michelle Warner [00:19:28]:
Well, I appreciate it. It took a lot for me to not go and already try to edit this down into a perfect story that I would put into my training. I thought, I'm just going to leave it as an email and we'll go through the process.
Jay Acunzo [00:19:39]:
Yes. So I thank you for that. This is the version that showed up in your inbox. Were there immediate things that as you were reading it, you're like, change, kill, rearrange. What was going on in your head? I find that especially the material I'm most familiar with, there is a second voice that begins to emerge where I'm no longer focused on the content or the talk track. I'm now focused on the performance of it, so to speak. I'll be on a stage or on a podcast doing something that I'm familiar with at a high level. And then there's a secondary voice that's like, ooh, maybe try this, or hey, that person made a noise react, or something like that.
Jay Acunzo [00:20:11]:
I don't know if this is a real phenomenon. I have not looked into the science of it, but only when I am performing a story in some medium do I have two internal narrators. So anyways, did you have a second one up here? And if so, what was she saying?
Michelle Warner [00:20:25]:
Well, what was going on? Number one was it just felt long and it didn't feel like the words I would use as I was talking felt like the words I would use as I was writing. And the examples is like, oh, those could be stronger. Listen, you could tell it was written in half hour.
Jay Acunzo [00:20:44]:
I want to play a quick game that we're going to play on the show moving forward. I'm liking it so far, called first last favorite. I'll introduce that in a second and then I want to talk through the improvements we could make that are a little more ad hoc or that you maybe were thinking about when you brought this story up in the first place, but just to frame it. So, first, last, favorite. There are these related phenomena called the primacy and recency effects which state or suggest anyway that memories are shaped by the first and most recent or latest moment with someone or something. So if you want your story to convey something both overtly, like what you're trying to say to people, but also implicitly like how they feel about you, then you should over invest in really strong start, really strong close. And those tend to be two areas that are really difficult for a lot of people when they write or speak. And then.
Jay Acunzo [00:21:35]:
So we'll do first, we'll do last, and then we'll each share what we thought was our personal favorite bit of the story. So I just wanted to hear your take on first. So, as a quick reminder, if you've been here for a minute, you know that I bought a new house over the winter. It checked all the boxes I was looking for and had taken me two plus years to find. I live in a small town and was looking for something very specific. Check that. It checked all the boxes, but one. A very significant one.
Jay Acunzo [00:22:00]:
The house faces north. Why open that way? Or what do you notice about that open.
Michelle Warner [00:22:06]:
You know, I opened that way because it was a really big deal for me. I highly doubt it hits anybody else in the gut the way it hits me in the gut, because I had sworn for ten years I would never buy a north facing house.
Jay Acunzo:
Yeah, I think something I saw that was great and something I think it could improve on. the thing that was great was through the metaphor, you're hitting the first two beats of a story built to resonate. I think stories have a certain structure to it. We know about storytelling structures.
There's a structure I like to use that I'll talk about a lot on the show, but the first two sections are alignment and agitation. So align, First, you want to acknowledge, like, this is what you're going through. This is who you are. This is what you want. This is what you're going through. Then agitate. But what gets in the way is this.
And that matters because of these reasons. And it's just like, hey, I'm, I know you. I know what you're going through. Audience, client, peers. And I also know this. Is the problem that you're struggling with. And oh, by the way, that's the problem, you know, I'm implying that I'm going to help you solve. So you kind of do that metaphorically.
I wonder if you could just drop a line. Cause then you go on to talk more about the house and planting your garden. And it's a little while before you talk about. My business and that's why I read you so I wonder if you just open the door to that Using like a more plain language line earlier in the metaphor so it could sound something like it checked all the boxes, but one a very significant one and That is the same miss I experienced the same big miss in my home buying process that we all tend to experience in developing our businesses as entrepreneurs And then you go back to the house metaphor.
So you're not like spelling it out for them. And even that line itself that I just said, that might not be it, but you're just opening the door to being like, and Hey, pay attention. Cause later on, I'm going to reveal this part of it is super important. And that buys you some, some time and permission to continue to elongate the metaphor.
So I think that's like something you can sort of move up.
Michelle Warner [00:23:35]:
Tease the business earlier a little bit.
Jay Acunzo [00:23:38]:
A little bit. And like I said, it's hard to pull off. Cause you can go way too dramatic with it way too soon, right, to be like. And this little thing I experienced that has no bearing on your business. Is the most transformative part of working with me for yours. Right. It takes a little bit of practice to nail it. So I don't know what the line is, but I think earlier on you could have tied it to the work that you do or their business. And just to bring this point home, I wrote down this line here that you use.
Jay Acunzo [00:24:08]:
You say, why am I telling you this? And I feel like that's a sign that you didn't implicitly address it already. They should know. They should be one step ahead of you. Like almost previewing in their mind, oh, I know where this is going. And when you land it, they're like, yes, so satisfying. And so if you have to say, why am I telling you this? It exposes you a little bit. It's a sign that maybe you haven't constructed it to really go with them on the journey that they're on. You're just more about you than you are about them.
Michelle Warner [00:24:37]:
I'm laughing because why am I telling you? This is in 90% of my emails? So it's telling me a little bit of a structure change is needed.
Jay Acunzo [00:24:45]:
Yeah.
Michelle Warner [00:24:46]:
Let me ask you this. Remember when I was saying that I always laugh at myself and catch me myself in these moments, right. Would it be less dramatic but still open that door to not force an ongoing sentence, but the same way I say, why am I telling you this in 90% of my emails? What if I'm saying, and yet again, I found myself not following my own rules that I know you're not following too. That's awkward.
Jay Acunzo [00:25:12]:
But something along those lines, like, inescapably, I needed this truth about building high ticket service offers. As an entrepreneur, I needed it in this version of my life. Again, that's mealy mouthed. I use this analogy a lot where I could give you a flat bit of advice, which is very forgettable. I could say. Studies show that people are afraid not of the task in front of them, but of the unknown. So stop agonizing, stop doing all the research, stop outsourcing it or skipping it, and just try the thing once. So I'm basically like the Nike slogan. I'm saying, just do it. Anybody could say it that way, right? Or I could say it like this. I could go, I have an espresso machine in my kitchen. And for years I was afraid to make it, which is embarrassing because I'm italian and I would ask my wife, I would follow espresso influencers. I almost took a course that cost hundreds of dollars to make great espresso at home.
Jay Acunzo [00:26:13]:
But today I make espresso every day. And the only thing that changed was I made it one time. And I realized, oh, I wasted a lot of time agonizing over the research. I wasted a lot of time outsourcing it, following the influencers, thinking about the book or the course or the YouTube tutorial. I wasn't afraid of the thing itself. I was just afraid of trying something new. I was afraid of the unknown. So kind of like, I got quicker in that example to the language they would use to describe whatever new thing they're facing, whatever risk or innovative attempt to their work or change in their life they're facing.
Jay Acunzo [00:26:51]:
They're going to relate to my espresso story because I'm starting more quickly to use kind of like plain language to describe my scenario. Like, I arrived at the emotional stakes, less what happened, more how it made me feel or what it made me realize. So that's what I would front load a little bit more. You do get to it, but I would actually move it up and it would be preceding this moment of, so why am I telling you this? So you don't need to say that phrase there.
Michelle Warner [00:27:17]:
It's gonna be a hard habit to break, but I'm up for it.
Jay Acunzo [00:27:20]:
Yeah, you know, and then you can see a situation where I would tell you the espresso story in three parts. Like this happened. So that's all the stuff about me not making espresso, and then now I make it daily. Which made me realize, like, Oh, I wasted a lot of time, and maybe this is the thing I should have realized sooner.
That's where people start to really connect with you, because it's the emotional stakes made clear. And then you teach. And you can pivot from this happened, to which made me realize. To say something like, and that's the thing about trying new things. If what we're afraid of isn't the task, it's the unknown.
Don't do all the agonizing research. Don't outsource it. Don't wait, move quicker to make the unknown known, try the thing once. Right. And then you could teach more after that. So I would say that your story here is really strong on this happened. There's a lot of detail about what you went through.
It kind of doesn't move up, which made me realize. Soon enough where I can go, Oh, okay. I, this is really, really relatable. So I would move that up earlier. What did you realize, even if you just hint at it, so you buy that attention. So people go, Oh, I'm still paying attention to the house buying metaphor.
Cause I know something's coming. So I would move up. Which made me realize what was your realization from this seemingly irrelevant thing to make it relevant to entrepreneurs, and then you do a really good job with the, that's the thing about, even though you don't use that phrase, you, you do pivot to lots of good moments of insights and teaching.
So, so again, this happened, which made me realize. That's the thing about the topic I teach, the insight I have today. And I would move up what you realized as a result of this story sooner so people get on board with, okay, this will either soon or already has connected in my brain to the business problems I want Michelle to help me solve.
So anyways, this is exactly the kind of story I was hoping you would bring to the show when I prompted you for it and you delivered. So thank you for that.
Michelle Warner [00:27:59]:
I'm well aware. I'm self aware enough to understand that. Yeah.
Jay Acunzo [00:28:07]:
So that's the first part I want to go to the last part. So again, primacy and recency. The last part of this, they all have to do with the order in which you're doing things. I can be the best tree planter in the entire world. Import the best soil from, and this is such a Michelle statement from wherever they have the best soil. And it played for comedy, which was great. So import the best soil from. However that happens, I could water the thing with precision.
Jay Acunzo [00:28:30]:
And the tree of my dreams still isn't going to perform. Because before you worry about execution, you have to make sure you're doing things in the proper order. And the first step of that order is always to know whether what you're thinking of doing is in alignment with your reality. It's something I call sequence over strategy. So talk to me about what strikes you about that ending, good or bad.
Michelle Warner [00:28:50]:
Well, I will fess up here that I did a little editing on this one. This original email did end in a pitch.
Jay Acunzo [00:28:56]:
How dare you.
Michelle Warner [00:28:57]:
I know, I know. So after the in alignment with your reality, it went into a pitch. I added, it's something I call sequence over strategy. I'm aware that's not how you should end it. I don't know how to end it, though. So I do think that the beginning of the end is kind of funny. It is totally me. You can tell me it doesn't work if it doesn't, but that is about as me as this email gets.
Michelle Warner [00:29:18]:
And then the last two paragraphs. I don't know where I'm going or how to end it.
Jay Acunzo [00:29:23]:
Let's back up a step, because the lead into this does inform it. You were doing that sort of agitate period where you were mentioning symptoms like, I see you taking months to launch a website or a podcast without understanding what job it'll do for you. I see you making your product better and more advanced, but still marketing to an audience of beginners and then wondering why they don't buy you kind of list down there. More in the list. The icus are like, I acknowledge there's an illness here, and here are the symptoms. And that's a huge way to not just get on the same page as people, but add useful or almost generous tension, if I can phrase it that way, because you're going to use that tension to slingshot them towards a solution, a shift in their thinking that is more likely to stick because you contrasted it with this tension. And I think the key, the crux of this is none of these situations have anything to do with the quality of your work or your ability to execute. I think that's like a little rock you have to loosen in their brain for this piece to work.
Jay Acunzo [00:30:22]:
So take that for what it's worth, that, to me, was the biggest takeaway. But at the end, you reveal another takeaway, which is like, think sequence over strategy. We know that the order in which you do things does matter. I mean, it's an obvious point when you point it out, we're not actually executing on it. And the reason we should isn't because it sounds nice, because it's so nice and so secure, seemingly to go find the blueprint, to go find the playbook, to latch onto the trend, to do all this stuff that you critique quite well. Michelle, it's so much easier to do that than get on board with what our brains embrace is more logical. Sequence over strategy. And the reason, the barrier, the rock, you gotta unstick for the rest of their stone wall to crumble and therefore their objections to fall away, is that line there.
Jay Acunzo [00:31:09]:
None of these have anything to do with the quality of your work or your ability to execute. And I'm tying this back to my world. I'm like, unthinkable. My previous show I thought was super high quality, but over time, I realized I'm dragging this along as dead weight because it's not serving the business I actually have doing a lot of SaaS industry focused marketing activities that either look like I was a SaaS company or I would communicate with SaaS marketers no longer served my business. I could do those at a high level. I'm pretty confident people said nice things. But to your point, it's not about the quality of what you were doing, Jay. It's not about your competency, it's about your sequence.
Jay Acunzo [00:31:49]:
Right. And so the house analogy comes back in full force there, right? It's like the house I occupy faces north. It's that the business I built for myself or aspire to faces in this direction, and we're just north not seeing it. So I think that's how you end is you revisit or bring down that hidden point towards the bottom. Instead of reintroducing or even just introducing for the first time the phrase sequence over strategy, you want to make sure that they leave with their main objection, or in this case, an objection, because they're on their newsletter. So you're probably knocking down a bunch over time with that objection, like, loosened from their brains.
Michelle Warner [00:32:24]:
That makes sense. And also, the context in which this would be shared is usually a little bit of an icebreaker at the beginning of a workshop or a training. And so if you agitate it that way, then the next line is almost. So let's talk about exactly how to do that and then launching into the training curriculum.
Jay Acunzo [00:32:41]:
I like to call them superstories. Like, I have a few, say more than six, less than ten. I define these super stories as I am familiar enough or have developed enough of the details of the story that I can tell it long, I can tell it short, I can tell it medium, and I can branch off of wherever I decide to land to arrive at a different insight as needed by the moment I'm in or the audience I'm speaking to. So this is one of those super stories, because you could tell this in a very short form, like quick comparison, almost like straight ahead metaphor, right? I live in this house. Here's a situation. Think of the tree. Now, let's quickly talk to you about your business and how this analogy applies over there. Or you could bring this back.
Jay Acunzo [00:33:24]:
If you do a workshop, you could always be referencing the metaphor of the house and the tree because you have all the elements, right. You have, like, the business I am in the house. I am in the direction your business is heading, the direction my house is pointing. There's like a way to massage this at every turn for different audiences, different insights, or different purposes, depending on where you want to use it. It's a slam dunk to use it as a little open in a workshop or an answer on a podcast, but you could choose to play it forward, and as you do, you'll probably find more details to include. Omit, agitate all that good stuff. So to me, just earmark this one, because if you can nail the ending here, as you point out, I feel like there's just a lot of staying power in different places.
Michelle Warner [00:34:02]:
I agree, and that is encouraging to hear the different ways that you can use it, because that does unlock my brain, too, if you end it with that story of none of these situations have anything to do with the quality of your work or your ability to execute and then just getting into what exactly that means and having people have the ability to laugh at themselves over this as well, is something I want. And I think if you're playing on that note, that makes that doable rather than getting dramatic about it again, totally.
Jay Acunzo [00:34:31]:
Even again, the emotional stakes being clear, because that's where people connect. The notion early on that the house checked all the boxes except for one, and that was the most important one, right? How stories happen as a podcast could check all the boxes for me and my business, right? But the most important one is for the use case for this show is, does this map to the career I want to build? Does this map to the business I want. So, like, it's vivid because you describe the checkboxes of the house and you want them thinking about the first checkbox. And then you can decide, do I need to take that further in my storytelling? Is the checkbox part as crystal clear, as high stakes as it needs to be, or did I rush past it right, so that's another way you can start to play with it, is like, what is the thing that they need to take away from this? Or where are the emotional stakes? The word is isolate. Did I isolate that moment? And you can do that verbally if it's written. You can do it visually if it's written too. But you can do it verbally by, like, describing it, describing how you feel about it, all that stuff. You don't need to overly perform it or punch people in the face with it.
Jay Acunzo [00:35:34]:
You can just present it tactfully and well. So anyways, first, last. I think we did right by the last bit. I think we know how to improve it. What's your favorite part of this piece?
Michelle Warner [00:35:45]:
The parts where I can kind of laugh about it. I mean, I do throw a tantrum that I can't have a tree in my front yard or the part about the best soil from wherever they have that. Like, I laugh out loud when I write that. So I enjoy sharing kind of ridiculous moments. And like I said, how I call myself and my own stuff, I actually.
Jay Acunzo [00:36:05]:
Have the same favorite as you do. I did smirk while you were telling it, and I also was tying it back to not only my business, but also the way I like to tell stories is, can I give a wink and a nod to the audience that although I'm describing, say, soil, I'm really describing not the best soil, but the best microphone or camera. I don't know how you would execute it, but I could see a scenario where I'd be like. And then I did all this research trying to find the best soil.
Jay Acunzo [00:36:52]:
And did you know there's like, all these different types of soil, like this brand and this brand, and I would make one of those brands sound like, say, blue Yeti, one of the popular mic brands. I'd be like blue Yeti soil or. That's a bad version. But, like, did you know there's all these ingredients in this? And one of the ingredients would sound like XLR cable. Wait, hold on. What? I would do it in a very tongue in cheek way because that's my style. It's like bad dad jokes, meats, parenthetical asides constantly. So I love that moment because it was good already, but there's so much you could do with it wherever you bring it.
Jay Acunzo [00:37:23]:
So we have the same favorite. I love that.
Michelle Warner [00:37:25]:
Yeah, it's a good point. Because when I read that, I'm also kind of mentally rolling my eyes at some of the things I hear. Probably similar to you. I start hearing about people posting on LinkedIn 14 times a day and wondering why that doesn't work.
Jay Acunzo [00:37:37]:
And, yeah, were there things that you brought it to the show to work out specifically? I do have a few bullets I want to move through, but is there anything already on your mind is like, this isn't working or this area doesn't feel right?
Michelle Warner [00:37:49]:
No, I was looking for this overall approach because I know how I wing out a story, and I have never studied the structure of it or anything. So this is what I wanted to.
Jay Acunzo [00:37:59]:
Hear when you talk about the 98%, the vast majority of businesses who buy premium priced, service based offers. So, like, an example would be buying from you or me to hire either of us as a consultant for your business. Those. Our clients aren't buying from you or me, Michelle, because they saw you post something on LinkedIn. And the aside here. Yes, there will be an occasional needle in a haystack. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about what happens the other 98% of the time.
Jay Acunzo [00:38:27]:
You took a step in the right direction. I kind of wanted to see you run further. And here's what I mean by that. You've, I think, pinpointed a real objection, which is. I'm thinking about two or three leads that I was talking to to consult with me or to hire me to speak. Who did say that I love following you on LinkedIn. So now I'm more prone to running headlong at that. And I wonder if there's another way to frame this or a way to just spend a little more time on this beat.
Jay Acunzo [00:39:34]:
Because simply saying the other 98% of the time, it's not. That may not be enough. Now, it may not be enough because it's just a mention of a stat which doesn't move people, or it might not be enough because they're going. But you yourself are admitting, Michelle, I don't need a ton of people. I just need a few, because I sell for a high price what I do. So it's actually enough that I'm doing. So, like, show me that it's wasteful or bring it back to the analogy of the house in some way, and you could have gone a little bit further there. So given that feedback, like, what's on your mind? Or how might we go about that?
Michelle Warner [00:40:10]:
I think it's very fair feedback. That line came from some very real objections in two directions that I get, and I will admit, frustrate me a lot. Number one is that people will say, I don't think it's out of malice, but they want to have that gotcha moment when I am explaining that traffic based marketing doesn't work and that they're wasting time on LinkedIn. They want to say, but, oh, four months ago, I got one person, and I'm thinking, okay, congratulations, there's a needle in the haystack. But that didn't fill your business, did it? Or I get folks who say, well, we did a cold calling effort, and out of 60 phone calls, one person converted. So it worked. And I want to say there's nothing about that that worked, because I bet you want those 60 hours back that you spent on sales calls to get one conversion.
Jay Acunzo [00:40:54]:
And I am here to tell you that the math, although it seems like it worked for you, does contain a lot of waste, which you freely acknowledge because 60 hours to close one. And I'm saying there's a way to be more efficient about that. Right. What I just basically asked you was, so what are you trying to say here? And you're like, here's what I'm trying to say it's based on these two interactions. So my response to that is cool. So say that.
Michelle Warner [00:41:16]:
So say that.
Jay Acunzo [00:41:17]:
It's so hard to do when we're like bumping up against the trees in the forest that I'm able to just see the whole forest. Right. This is why you and I both believe in coaching and collaboration with friends and these kinds of vehicles. Right. You have two really prime examples for, like, in this case, here's the problem. And in this other related case, here's another problem. So in conclusion, yes, we're getting some business coming through this, but it's incredibly wasteful, it's inefficient, maybe it's expensive. And more to the point of the way you help your entrepreneur clients, Michelle, you don't end up building something sustainable and repeatable and calm even.
Jay Acunzo [00:41:53]:
You kind of trap yourself on this hamster wheel and you're not able to be very proactive in building your business. So, like, that is me kind of editorializing that whatever two or three line section as like potentially trying to solve their objections, but just leading to more in a way that doesn't take you too far afield from the points you're trying to make.
Michelle Warner [00:42:14]:
No, this is fantastic because the aha I just had is that I throw in that little caveat so that I don't get the emails of people who are never going to believe me, right. And are never going to engage with me. And so I'm just trying to say, I'm just trying to dismiss them. But what you're making me realize is that my best clients are reading that and do need it explained to them because it is a very real objection. So it's worth taking that moment instead of just rolling my eyes and trying to dismiss folks who just kind of want to have the gotcha moment and are not ready to believe it yet.
Jay Acunzo [00:42:49]:
I immediately laughed or did what I could only describe as a guffaw. Let's use that. I laughed immediately because I couldn't hold back when you said, I wrote that so that I didn't get these responses. I do that all the time and it's a subtle switch and you can get really snarky on a dark day and do it poorly. But I've almost started hunting those, making them the characters in my story. But one of the first, if not the first episode of the show features my friend Andrew Davis as the guest. Wonderful keynote speaker. I've seen him give a talk where he just lays out a beautiful point with storytelling and insights and a visual framework and he comes to this nice, rounded edge, where he concludes with a memorable phrase, and then he pauses, and he goes, but I know someone in the back is thinking.
Jay Acunzo [00:43:34]:
And he plays up the analogy, and he makes a voice out of it, like. And he's like, all right, Peter, come with me now. It's like you can hunt those and add those objections to amplify the person in your mind who's kind of like an amalgam of voices you've actually heard, but also help the people that you're very for. See? Oh, this person is very for me because I, too, dislike those objections or those people. Right. There's ways to make a character out of it, is what I'm trying to say.
Michelle Warner [00:44:04]:
That is such a better way to go about it. I love that. I'm going to start that immediately.
Jay Acunzo [00:44:09]:
Yeah. When you think about this point you're making, I always think about these two types of stories. There's like, a lead story, which is like, hey, let me propose a change, and let me show you what this looks like. It's not a case study. It's not like, here's what they went through, and then they purchased from me. And now life is good. It has stakes. There's uncertainty to it.
Jay Acunzo [00:44:28]:
There's a protagonist, and you want to see what happens next. But the lead story is meant to say, here's Michelle, and she went through what you're going through and then went further and embraced this change. I'm here to propose, and let me show you what this looks like, and maybe extract plain language insights we can learn from Michelle on the back end. And that prompts you to go, oh, I get what you're saying. Now please proceed to teach me how to do it like Michelle did it. Right. That's a lead story. It's illustrative, end to end.
Jay Acunzo [00:44:55]:
Then you have supporting stories which, you know, you get certain objections that you have to address, or there are certain questions you always get when you're interviewed or when you talk to a prospect, or even like, you have a methodology and you're trying to teach the pieces of it, and it's good to have those stories in your bag. Where does the house bit sit for you? Is this meant to, like, open my eyes to something foundational you teach, or is this something more specific and just as valuable but a little bit more narrow?
Michelle Warner [00:45:22]:
That is a really good question, because I could easily make the argument in both directions.
Jay Acunzo [00:45:27]:
And that's why I asked that question, because I could see it kind of getting caught in the middle. It kind of introduces the premise sequence over strategy just as a whole, through a moment in your own life, and it kind of addresses what I truly think is the power statement. I'll read it the way you wrote it because you'll say it better than I did. None of these situations have anything to do with the quality of your work or your ability to execute. You're just not seeing it. That's the big, big piece that gets you on the train that you're driving. So I could see this going in both ways, too. Not saying it has to be one or the other, but I'm curious, after spending time with me, like, where do you think this might fit in your arsenal?
Michelle Warner [00:46:05]:
In many ways, if you understand none of these situations have anything to do with the quality of your work or your ability to execute. That is very foundational in what I need you to understand if you're going to get on board with my work, because that's actually the point of sequence over strategy. And at the same time, there's something in me that is wondering if there is a more foundational or lead story to explain these two branches of sequence over strategy. Number one, it's asking the right questions and making the right decisions first and then doing things in the right order. Since it has those two branches, it's a little tricky. So this is a very round the bend way of saying, I am not sure. Yeah, and I think it's pointing out to me that now that I understand that structure of stories, I need to kind of grapple with those two branches of what sequence over strategy really means and figure that out.
Jay Acunzo [00:46:52]:
There's no one right way. This is totally from the outside looking in. So take this with a block of salt. Having gone through this experience with you, what I'm thinking about is, how do I use this story better? Meaning, go back, revise it, amplify the right details, trim all the good stuff you would do to make it more potent for this purpose. How do I use it to knock down, or at least start the conversation around all these objections? For me, dropping current behavior and starting to be open to your key message. It's almost like a story for the skeptics or a story for the starters, where what you're saying is there is something that is already in motion. Now, it might be within your control because you're an entrepreneur, but the train has left the station and you've been building this type of business for years. So even then, it's a little bit out of your hands.
Jay Acunzo [00:47:39]:
Or maybe you work in house or maybe you have key stakeholders. Maybe you're not able to, in the metaphor, basically, like, pull up your house by the foundation and drive it to a new location and position it facing east. Right? There's this sort of, like, the main beginning point of the metaphor is you're doing this thing, you're in this place, it's pretty fixed, and it's posing. This could be a problem, could just be a fact, and we're not facing it head on. Your house is facing north. You sell high ticket premium services or aspire to. That's the first thing you got to know. And like you say later, you could be the best planter of trees, builder of things, whatever.
Jay Acunzo [00:48:19]:
The thing is, right, in the metaphor version or the business version, it doesn't matter, because this is the house you're building, and the details of that need to start you down the path towards better decisions. And I think this point that I'm making, I'm even more confident in that, because what we covered earlier, you can tell it short, you can tell it long, you can do a lot with it, which means it can probably come with you everywhere you go. And, like, if I ask you, Michelle, what's the importance of sequence over strategy? You could give me the one line answer and be like, for example, I bought a house. Blah, blah, blah, beep, beep, beep. Right? It just has this recurring compounding value for your business to bring this with you. So I think it's not an illustrative story. I do think it's something narrow. And that narrowness is objecting because I'm good at the other stuff.
Jay Acunzo [00:49:07]:
Not cause I know the other stuff, not cause it's easy or it's easy to find the playbooks. You're almost, like, speaking to me honestly. Before I met you, Michelle, I was like, well, I'm doing all these things, and I'm pretty good at it. And you're like, yeah, but your house is facing north, man.
Michelle Warner [00:49:23]:
That's what I'm realizing. That's the most important piece is what are the fixed pieces of the story? I talk about that a lot. I'm like, what are the stakes that have been put in the ground? And if we're not going to change those stakes that are put in the ground, then we have to design around it, and we have to make decisions around those stakes. You're exactly right.
Jay Acunzo [00:49:44]:
So sum this up for me. You came in feeling one way about the story. What have you realized about storytelling? Since?
Michelle Warner [00:49:52]:
I have realized that a story needs a job to do, I'm going to call myself on all my things again. A story needs to have a job to do, so I have to figure out what job I want this story to do. And then a story has structure which I knew but did not know how to create. And I'm also going to give myself credit that I think that there are elements that I am good at in telling a story in terms of bringing in some random kind of flippant moments.
Jay Acunzo [00:50:20]:
It's very similar to, I feel like some people jump out of a plane when they have the parachute, and the parachute is a story structure, and they're like, I just want to land safely on the ground. And then over time, you start to be able to jump out of that plane and wait longer before you pull the chute and do all sorts of air somersaults and cool moves and target where you're trying to land and then make it interesting on the way down. Right. I think that's where you're at with this story, is you have all the basics here, almost like the safety behaviors of a storyteller. And you're also very seasoned storyteller. So I know you know, several moves to add to this, and now it's about picking where you wanna land and being able to do interesting things en route to that.
Michelle Warner [00:50:58]:
That makes a ton of sense. I think that there was a lot of gut instinct structure involved and not a lot of formal thought. And it's now time to apply the formal thought. Right.
Jay Acunzo [00:51:13]:
What do you wish people who are, like, observing your work and going, oh, Michelle's a great storyteller. What do you wish they knew about what you're going through that would allow them to maybe pursue it with more confidence?
Michelle Warner [00:51:24]:
I think that I have lost all barriers to sharing things that happen, and I don't know if people struggle with that. I know they struggle with it in other formats, but I don't really ever edit any of the personal things that I will bring into my storytelling.
Jay Acunzo [00:51:44]:
What does that give you? What's an advantage in doing that?
Michelle Warner [00:51:48]:
I think I don't overthink that piece of it. I guess it means I don't feel like I have much of a filter when it comes to trying to make it look good or look better than it was. I have no problem sharing kind of disasters or silly things or whatever, and maybe that makes it more real.
Jay Acunzo [00:52:07]:
What I'm hearing is when you're an autobiographical storyteller, it actually matters more that you don't try to clean it up and tell the overly polished success version of this, that your own blunders and questions and happy accidents and frustrating accidents like those things are actually not just the details of what happened to include, but the way you felt about them, like getting closer to the truth is what people actually latch onto.
Michelle Warner [00:52:34]:
I think that is true. I don't get much into this we should be vulnerable conversation because I don't know what that means, but I do think there's a lot of forced vulnerability out there where people are trying to force moments of life to look more vulnerable, to connect. And I just operate without a filter and try to tell things as they were. And I do think that maybe that comes off as more true. That is just how I've always operated. If I try to make it look too clean or think too much about how people are going to respond or think, then it just gets very unreal very quickly.
Jay Acunzo [00:53:19]:
How stories happen was created by me, Jay Acunzo, and it's produced by Share Your Genius cover art by Blake Link. Learn more about these kind and creative humans and how they can help you by checking the links in your show notes. And while you're there, please explore my sponsor link so I can keep the show going and growing. Big thanks to everyone supporting the show as a listener, sponsor or partner. For more ideas and stories from me, visit jayacunzo.com. When you're there, explore my free newsletter, my books, and my consulting for experts and entrepreneurs. I help you develop an original premise for your work and your signature stories and projects to grow your audience because you're smart enough, you're expert enough. But if you feel your ip isn't strong enough, let's chat.
Jay Acunzo [00:54:03]:
Thank you so much for listening. I'm back in two weeks with another episode of the show, but until then, keep making things that matter. When you matter more, you need to hustle for attention less. See ya.