Using Story to Grow Your Business with Lyn Graft, founder of Storytelling for Entrepreneurs

Hey guys. You've heard me talk about the importance of storytelling in your brand. Every great story has the opportunity to not only build relationships and connect and build out of authenticity, but also to sell your products. Today on the show, I am so excited to invite Lynn Graft, the founder of Storytelling for Entrepreneurs, to come and share the inside secrets of not only telling your story, but also also mastering the art of video. Lynn is a serial entrepreneur and also a famed video producer. You've seen Lynn's work with south by Southwest, the TV series American Made, and his interviews with literally hundreds of high profile entrepreneurs, from the founders of Zappos to Dell to Starbucks and many, many more. Today, Lynn's going to share you all the lessons he's learned from producing videos and meeting so many high profile entrepreneurs, but learning how they mastered the art of story and how you when marketing your own business. Get ready to meet my friend Lynne Graft of Storytelling for Entrepreneurs. Let's talk about your business strategy and the juicy details of what actually works. From mainstream fashion to fashion on Main street and the entire ecosystem behind it. How do we scale your company and do it with the balance and the happiness that we all seek? Let's hear from those insiders, experts and strategists that actually make it happen. I'm your host, Ashley Alderson from the Boutique Hub and I. I can't wait to chat. Hey guys, welcome back to the podcast. I am so pumped that you're here, Lynn. I'm so happy you're on the show today. Thanks for joining me.

I really appreciate you having me. Just excited to kind of share some of my experiences and, and a lot of mistakes I've made to help your audience not make the same ones.

Oh, man. Well, we're all here for it. I know that everyone today is going to walk away with a page of notes. So everyone just heard your backstory and your bio a little bit. And I have to start with this. You have an incredible list of people that you've worked with. And I'm curious, as you think back, you know, across all the stories you've told, the videos that you've created, which of those stories has really stuck with you the most? Which of those products really or projects really stand out?

Yeah, you know, I've had kind of a unique opportunity to be a producer for 18 years, filming very successful, successful founders, as well as being a founder myself, starting nine companies. So, so many different experiences, but the ones that stick out the most. I'll start with the most impressionable founder I've ever filmed. And that was Howard Schultz, the founder of Starbucks. And it has to do with, you know, I kind of learned my basic teaching principles, my coaching, the structure of how I help people create and tell their story based on him. And it was something that if you've ever met him, he's this tall guy, very attractive, got kind of slick back hair and he just has that, you know, if someone was to found a large global coffee company, it's Albert Schultz. Just he has that aura about him. But I'll tell you the thing that really struck out the most, and this is something that I think any entrepreneur can learn from, is that as I was trying to figure out how to teach people to create their own story and I was reading a bunch of books on it and watching a bunch of videos and just I even took some classes and none of them were really helping because they were designed for people that were writing manuscripts or writing books or they were going to make a Hollywood play, things like that. And they just don't translate well. So the business owner doesn't have a lot of time. Like we all wear so many hats. Look, just help me create a story as simply as possible. And the thing he taught me more than anything else is, and he didn't tell me this, I just watched him do it so well because he had talked about this one experience that he had where he goes back, he flies to Milan, Italy and he's going from a coffee or kitchen appliance conference, walking back to his hotel room and he comes around the corner and he hears and he smells this espresso shot before he sees it, comes around the corner and then he sees these people just having coffee or having espresso and they're yelling Italian names of the, of the drinks and all these things. And he's visually describing it and he's taking you to that place. And to me, the most important thing I learned after all these years is that a story is nothing more than sharing an experience that you have that has a powerful relationship to the business that you now started. If you can hone in on that simple principle, it's going to help you so much in trying to figure out what do I talk about, what do I share, what do I focus on as a business owner? Don't overcomplicate it. Don't worry about some hero or the hero's journey or this seven part structure. It's no, it's just take it back to experience you had, that is relationship to where you're at right now, where you Came from why you did it and how you got there.

Yeah, that's so good. I. It's interesting to hear you say that because I can just like sense that journey that you heard and the power of that story. And it's just all about relationship building, right? That type of connection.

Very much so, yes. Love it. That's made the biggest impression. I talk about him all the time, and he's just an amazing individual as well.

Is there any of those stories that you've told and produced that were the hardest was like, was there an onion that was really hard to peel? What's the toughest one you've had to produce and tell that story of?

Definitely John Mackey, the founder of Whole Foods. He's a local Austinite. I had filmed him before I was doing my television show. I had filmed him for an event here in town for an organization called Conscious Capitalism. And it's about people that are not just profit driven. They're focused on culture and leadership and purpose driven businesses and the stakeholders that are part of the entire ecosystem that you serve. Customers, employees, the communities, all that. And he's wicked smart. He's definitely wicked smart. And he has a really good story. At the same time, you know, he's not that interested. And he's gotten a lot better through media training, being on, you know, a public company. This is a long time ago, so he's gotten a lot better over the years, but he was just like, yeah, I don't have time for this. You know, like, what's your question? Move on. And they weren't these beautiful, eloquent answers like, Howard Schultz was from Starbucks. And here you have the quintessential founder of Whole Foods that created the natural grocery industry for us. The reason we have organic foods accessible is because of Whole Foods. And yet he didn't have that passion and that. That spark and those eyes twinkling that you wanted to capture on camera. It was really, really hard to kind of pull it up at the same time. His story is so good. And the journey of Whole Foods and the evolution of how it came to be is so good. It didn't really matter. We just let him roll, let him talk, and then we edited it afterwards that it worked out anyways. And he's a lot better now. And like, one. One interesting fact that I'll share with you, Ashley, is that one of the reasons he got into organic and Whole Foods and all that, he was kind of a hippie, he's an introvert. And he decided to work at the co op because he wanted as a way to meet girls. It was like. He didn't say it in a funny way, but it was funny. When he said that, I was like, oh, my God, we have Whole Foods because of a guy wanting to meet women because he's an introvert.

Well, you know, it's one of our natural human tendencies, isn't it?

So, yeah.

Man, I just, I can't imagine, you know, from all the stories that you've been able to tell, these interviews and, and also even just your work with south by Southwest and the stories that you've seen there, if you think about, like, the most successful people that you've had proximity to, what do you think are the things that they have in common? What, what's the commonality between all of those stories?

I'll share with you at a high level, 10,000 foot, which is the exact opposite of the answer you want. One thing I discovered is there's not any one way to do anything. It was mind blowing. And so I've been doing this 18 years, filmed over a thousand founders over that time frame, and I was hoping that I would come up with these exact templates, these blueprints that would allow me to do this, this, and this. And what I discovered is that think of all the different people that you know that own businesses and how different they are. You know, some people, they get up at 5 o', clock, they meditate and they work out, and then they do all these things. They do all their emails, everything else. And then you'll meet creatives that sleep till 11, get up, you know, start working at 12, and stay up till 3 in the morning. And they're doing all kinds of unhealthy stuff, but yet they have incredible success. So the one lesson I'll share with every founder I try to impress upon them is there really isn't one solution that fits. All that said, there are some common threads that I'd say that all of them kind of gravitate towards. And that is one of the things I really try to get founders to do, regardless of whatever stage you're at, is to really own and dive into that location, that business, that expertise that you want to be known for, the product you want to sell, the service you want to offer. You have got to own that. Because if you don't, don't expect anybody else to do it. I mean, maybe your mom, your best friend, your significant other, they might be the ones, you know, kind of pushing you forward like this, but at the end of the day, it's up to you. So you really have to pour yourself into it. And the most successful founders, they seem to have this je ne sais quoi of what makes them successful. And I believe it's that belief in self and belief in what they're doing that you cannot argue with. And I call it an emotional truth. Astrid, you know, an example would be I love my mom. There's nothing you can say or do to refute that emotional fact. Can't really prove it in any way. I just know I love my mom. You love what you do. I can tell you love your family. I can tell you love helping other business owners. Because watching your stuff and reading everything and seeing some of these interviews, I can't argue with that no matter what I say, everything. So you have to approach whatever you're doing with that kind of commitment, conviction and passion. And we're not saying cheerleading. This is about belief. That the book I wrote is going to help you. That the Share Snacks product that I make is the best snack that's out there. That watching your videos is going to help you. If you can buy into that, you're halfway there. Literally. You will get further than most people out in the world. So that'd be the number one tip I'd recommend from what I've learned a lot from all these different founders. And the second would be is to find out what works for you as quickly as possible. So going back to the example, there's not one thing that works for everybody, but you need to find out what works for you. If you're an early riser, if you're a late night creative, if you feed off other people, surround yourself with other people. If you're an introvert, you get energy from secluding yourself. I got my little command central here. I love meeting people. But to regen I come back here and I just like breathe, relax, and then I'll go back out. So you need to find the element that's going to fuel you, that's going to give you that momentum and push you forward. And then also when things are going tough and you hit a roadblock, what are things you can do to get back up on that horse? And the last thing I'll leave you, at least I'll leave you with. But I'll recommend that I learned it was from Red McCombs. Red McCombs is the founder of Clear Channel. He was number 247 on the Forbes 400 list when I filmed him, he used it on the Minnesota Vikings Tim Worlds. And he also created the largest communications company in the country at that time. And he was the largest independent car dealer ownership at that time. And he's this big, burly Texan. He grew up in Spur, Texas, and he arrived at the University of Texas campus with 10 cents in his pocket on a bus. And he just was just larger than life type person. He had a big old cowboy hat. I know you like cowboy hats. And he put his boots up on his table when we're talking to him. Just amazing stuff, right? And he says, and my best friend Ingrid, we're filming him for a show for television. And Ingrid asked him, what's your secret? He says, you know, Ingrid, God gave us all equality in the form of, you have 24, 24 hours today. I do. You do. And everybody else on this planet. And what you do in those 24 hours is up to you. How you take advantage of that, how you pour yourself into it, how you leverage that. And I would. I would contend all of these individual founders discover that time is the most precious asset we have, that we're able to control all the time, other than our internal attitude and approach. Yeah. And I think they all kind of master that either through they figure it out or they're forced to, or they have a revelation. It's just those are three things I'd say, man.

Well, Lynn, we can end the podcast right there. So thanks for being here today.

Well done.

If everyone could just hear those three things. Oh, I feel like I'm in an echo chamber at the moment because there are three things our industry has been talking about as we ride these waves of what's happening in retail and E commerce. So this is so spot on for us. This takes me back then to your journey. How did you get started? What was your entrepreneurial spark that first lit inside you that led you down the path you're on today?

There's no question. I was an engineer in my former life, and I decided that wasn't going to be for me because I'm an extrovert. I was working on a manufacturing line when I quit my job, became a ski instructor and moved the mountains and all that. You know, just one of those things my parents like. What? And as I'm. I'm teaching at this resort in Colorado called Keystone in a Basin. And whenever you're teaching skiing, you get an opportunity to spend time on the list with people as you advance up the teaching rinks. And 20 minutes is what you're on. And the people that always had that spark that you referred to were these business Owners. I didn't even know the term entrepreneurship, but I'd ask them what they did. All I owned my business, they're up for, for a day or a week, they just had this, I'm gonna go skiing and I'm gonna go back to work. And they were so excited to get back to work. So I, I chose a university, an MBA program that had a great entrepreneurship program so that I could kind of learn those ranks. And I didn't start a company right out of school, but I worked for a startup. I was employee number seven. First time I ever had a key to the door of wherever I worked. And I got to experience what that energy, that enthusiasm, that passion of carving your own path. And then my best friend approached me and said she wanted to do a business together. And we kind of went on a journey from that perspective. And it was through being surrounded by people that have been successful, such as Michael Dell here in Austin, Red McCombs As I mentioned, in San Antonio, Texas, close by. And then seeing other people like Kendra Scott, another famous jewelry designer person here in Austin, Texas. We've just been fortunate to be surrounded by some amazing individuals. The founder of America Online lives up the street. So you kind of through osmosis contagions, you capture that virus that is entrepreneurship. That just like, man, I don't know what I'm going to do, but I'm going to do something. And I'll share one quick story in terms of how I got started to become a producer. So as I was working through, I had some, some massive failures and some good successes. And I was trying to figure out after I had a liquidity event what I was going to do next. My best friend I was talking about, she comes to me and she goes, I want to do a television show about women entrepreneurs raising capital in Texas in the high tech sector. And I'm like, I didn't know anything about television or video. I'm like, well, I'll help you. And I was. So that's how I kind of got started. And the way that really catapulted it is that so we're trying to figure out how to do this television show. And I knew what she meant because we had just done a high tech company and experienced kind of the real chauvinistic perspective that's in the high tech space because she was the woman CEO in the company that we had just done together. And so I knew what she meant. She wanted to find and inspire other women to do big things. And we got this opportunity to film her mentor. Now, her mentor was Dr. George Kosmetzky, one of the first billionaires in Texas. He started a company called Teledyne. Two PhDs. He had two jets he used to fly to all his companies that he owned was on the board of. Every day, he'd fly to different places. And he mentored Ingrid. And we were doing a legacy video for the University of Texas on Dr. Cosmetic. So while we're filming him now, mind you, she is his mentee mentor. She's the interviewer. She. He's being interviewed, and I'm the producer, director, and I'm. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm just. We got two cameras and some audio, and we're filming all this stuff. This. This, I don't know, 13, 14 years ago. And while we're filming him and he's talking about the legacy he wants to leave behind and some things he wants people to remember him by. And he's in his 80s at the time. He says, you know, Ingrid, to get a perspective on me, why don't you interview some other mentees like you? She's like, yeah, let's do it. Who are they? And one was Michael Dell, a billionaire. And the third was Red McCombs, the billionaire I referenced earlier. So my first paid video project ever. I got to film three billionaires with the most diverse stories you could imagine in terms of their backgrounds, how they got to where they were, what they were doing. It was just inspiring and motivating. I'm like, man, I want to tell everybody about these stories. I want to go film more and that, you know, that's, you know, 18 years later, I'm still filming entrepreneurs.

Hey, it's time to save the date for our next boutique summit. The largest conference for our industry just for boutique owners, E commerce stores of all types and wholesale brands. June 9th and 10th. Coming back to Dallas. We can't wait to see you there. With several speakers, tons of breakout sessions, your very own private trade show. Did I mention swag? Plus, an opportunity to network with retailers with just like you. Ready to scale and grow your business. You guys. We plan the boutique summit on the front end of the market, happening at Dallas Market center. So you can really get the most bang for your buck when you're traveling. Attend the boutique Summit, stay for market, learn as much as you can, buy as much as you can, and get ready to grow and scale your business. June 9th and 10th. Click the show notes to sign up, get the information and save the date right now. So if you Think about like entrepreneurs today. You know, we're fortunate enough here at the Hub to work with so many small business owners from around the world. What are the stories that are most important for small business owners to tell? What, what should they be capturing and sharing with their audience?

Yeah, no doubt the number one story, hands down, like, you gotta have a great founding or origin story. Your founder story is gonna be the one you're asked about the most for as long as you own your company and for years after that. And I always ask founders that I film, what stories do they share the most. And it always goes back to that. Now you've got product stories and brand stories and customer stories, and you got to have those. But the one you want to optimize, you want to have different links of tailored for different audiences. Your founding story, that it articulates how you came up with the idea, why you're doing this, and why you're kind of the best person to do that. I mean, just, you know, you don't over complicate it, keep it super simple, but you want to make it compelling. You want to grab their attention with it. You want to make sure that this is something they're going to remember. So that'd be the number one is the founding story. The second would be probably. And this, there's a, an argument sometimes when I talk to some of my storytelling friends, whatever, But I'd say your customer story. Now, the reason it's not you don't always have a customer story. Sometimes you don't have a customer, you have an idea, yet you know you haven't bought it or has your services, whatever. So it's not always the best one. But you can still have a hypothetical customer story, someone who's using your product or will use your product and how they're going to benefit from. And I call that more of a problem solution. Here's the problem that the market has, here's a solution that I have created to solve that problem, and here's the results that you're going to get from that. So the customer example, the customer story is going to help you articulate how someone loves your product, how they've used your product, how they've recommended it to someone else. And you can talk about it using their emotional responses, because you're expected to be very emotional about your product, very passionate about it, very into it. But when you can say, oh my God, for instance, my Share Snacks company, this is the company I have over here, it's an organic snack, we have a guy that buys six pounds of trail mix a month. It's bananas. And he has flown to Austin to see our kitchen to meet our team. He's our number one guy. Like, we made a specific box just for him. So I can use that example and I don't have to brag or anything. I just give him the facts. Six pounds, that's a lot of fricking trail mix to eat. I can't even eat that much and I own the company. So you want to have those customer stories that demonstrate how compelling your product or service is, the problem that it's solving if you don't just create a hypothetical one. So founding story, customer story, and that kind of, that problem, solution story being the top three.

Yeah, that's so big. I feel like anymore some of the conversations I've been having in our industry, I think people have almost fallen too much in love with the product or the outcome and not as much the process and they forget to share that process and that customer story, you know, externally. And really that's the thing that carries you through when times get tough. So I love that you said that. Tell me, like nitty gritty though. Okay, so I have my founding story, I have my customer story. Specifically, how am I using them, where am I pushing them, how am I leveraging them? Like, give me the checklist of where these stories should all be leveraged.

You bet. With your founding story, it is the one story that can be used for any audience. Whether you're talking to, you're trying to get on a local TV station or a local paper or even a newsletter for your neighborhood. You always want that founding story for the press, for prospective customers. If you're selling at flea markets or farmers markets, even online, people are gonna want to ask you, how did you come up with that idea? Literally, that's. You're gonna be asked that all the time. It's non stop every now. Think of this, Ashley. The great thing about being a business owner is that every time you go out into your community or travel or go to events, someone at some point, multiple times per day are asked, what do you do? So someone has just handed you the mic and you're on your soapbox. You get to talk about whatever it is you want to talk about. And what I prefer to do is have a great sounding story and just whatever it is, I don't care if you're. You're selling watches. In the case of trail mix, I've got different founding stories depending on the audience that I use, depending on what networking event I'm at. So if I know someone who really wants to know kind of the emotional side of it, I said, well, we spent three years working on the recipe, 52 iterations, 900 hours, come up with the exact recipe of these nine components. And then we spent another year sourcing the ingredients. So you want to have different versions of your founding story at all times that you're going to use pretty much anywhere you go. And I would say raising capital, networking events, talking to customers, the press. And the press really loves a great, compelling founding story. I mean, if you look at any of the articles on you, for instance, as I was preparing myself, I'm like, they always go back to the cancer story. It is this powerful. It is something they lead with. Whether you lead with it or not, they lead with it. Usually it's in the headline or the subline or in the first paragraph, because they know that is going to have an emotional connection to the audience. And I'll tell you, Ashley, the secret I've learned the key to great storytelling, the primary thing you're trying to do is make an emotional connection with your audience so they have a reason to care about what you're doing, a reason to continue listening, a reason to share whatever it is that you're talking about with somebody else. So that founding story helps you accomplish all those things. Now, in the case, if you're raising money or maybe like a crowdfunding or friends and family, they're going to want to know a little bit about the product, you know, so you might want to have the product story ready for that. Customer story. Product story can be interchangeable from that perspective. The reason I don't say product story a lot, Ashley, is a lot of people start focusing on features, you know, whatever product is, and like talking about all these things that at the end of the day, no one really cares about. You care about the benefits. So when I say products, everybody thinks features. So that's why I think about more customers, because it goes back to, if you're sharing a customer story, you're going to have more emotional elements that are part of that. So have that customer story ready as well for the press, raising money. And also, those two stories are great for recruiting people. And every. In my snacks company, as well as my video production company, every vendor has heard my founding story. I want them to know why I'm doing what I'm doing, how I'm going to be better than everybody else that's out there, and what is it that I offer that they can share and tell other people about. So it's just super important to kind of own that.

Yeah, it's so good. I would even add to your list. I love all those. But I would add even just the power of Daily Story, you know, a retailer, E commerce business, anyone who's really leveraging social media. You have to build a community first, I think to really build success around your brand. And part of building community is just that relationship like you were talking about. Like if. If I'm selling to a mom with kids. Right. Like someone like myself, I want to know, what was the train wreck that happened in your house last night? What'd you cook for dinner last night? What went right? What went wrong? Like, I want to hear those, like, micro stories about your daily life because it builds trust and relationship. How do you, like, when you're coaching people, talking to people, how do you help people get over the so what factor? You know, so what? Why does someone want to hear about that so what? My story is not unique. So what? I sell products. Just like someone down the street. How do you get them to really see the importance of their story?

You know, the kind of that so look factor is something that I actually, I. I'm a mentor of different accelerators. And I almost always have to use that response when they give me their first pitch or the first version of their story. Like, so What? You and 25 other people out there. I just. Oh, I just heard that pitch yesterday. That's. I see it's on tomorrow. I'm going to see that one again. You're like, got to get over that very quickly. So what I want you to do is kind of use that as an asset. Because, Ashley, we're great critics. You, me, we make a decision on the background. We have the blouse that you're wearing, the jewelry that you're going to have, whatever things in your life, what you're going to watch, what you're going to read. So we've got this great internal critic that really has this ability to help us discern what's interesting and what's not. And you use that internal critic to say, okay, so what I just told you about this. And so you use that critic to help you say, is that interesting? Is it compelling? Is it unique, different? And then what you want to do, as we were talking a little bit earlier prior to the interview, was that when I'm talking to folks and I'm trying to help them make their offering different than everybody else's, that's out there. Yeah. And it has to do with you and your story are unique. Not one single person on this entire planet has the experience you've had, the knowledge you've gained, and the people you've met along the way. Not one person, even if you have a twin, there would not be one person that has that nas. That experience and those set of connections that you have. So what you want to do is you want to embrace all that, because nobody can tell you that. I had a dog who passed away a couple years ago. His name was Fitty G. And I used to always have him. I'd bring up my interviews, you know, it's a bunch of my videos, my social media. He was always there and nobody had that dog like I did. And I would use that because inevitably people love dogs. That's a differentiating factor. He was super cute, so it always had the kind of that cute factor I had an emotional attachment to. So I always was more present when I talked about him. And doing these interviews or when I'm filming, it just kind of brought me things. So what you're looking for to get over that? So what factor is elements in you, your story, your backgrounds, people that you know, the experiences that you've had, the failures you've had, the challenges you faced, kind of those inspirations. Because nobody can tell you when you were like 4 years old. This person did this to me where I saw this video and I wanted to be an outside linebacker for the Pittsburgh Steelers when I grew up because of Jack Lambert, watching him. And people are like, what? You're like five, seven, I don't care. So I played linebacker in high school. So you. Nobody has that particular inspiration or experiences or failures. So you want to use all of that to get over that. So what factor? Because that's going to tell you why you're unique, Ashley. Why you're the only person on the planet that can do this particular business. Because of everything I've done in the past. So if I'm making jewelry or if I'm making clothes or I just talked to a woman, she's making artisan chocolate. That event I was at this morning. And she was doing it because she's helping women in Colombia get fair wage jobs. And she started talking about how she went to Colombia and got to visit these people and understand what these women were going through. Or in the case of Blake Mycosky, he's got this famous story for Tom. So I hope I'm not yapping too much here, Ashley. Oh, you're good. This one great story that I love and this inspired me to kind of do what I'm doing and probably will keep doing for years to come. So Blake Mycosky had just had a massive failure in his startup. He's trying to get a reality TV series. No, it was a reality television network in California. Failed. Mispri. Couldn't get it going. He ended up. And he was on Survivor, I think, years ago, so couldn't raise money. It was a big public favor, was all that. All the newspapers and magazines because it's Hollywood reality television, blah, blah, blah, blah. So he decides to go on down to Argentina and. And vacation with some friends just to get away and figure this out. And while he's there, he met some other friends that were doing a shoe drop, which meant they were taking discarded shoes from the United States to some of the favelas, the really impoverished areas around the city, downtown. And it was just a great opportunity for him to quit worrying about his own troubles and go see these really poor people. And he met this one woman, and this one woman, really poor. Two children. Before they got there, she had decided which of her two children was going to get an education because she only had one pair of shoes. And he was just, like, devastated by that. Yeah. So he goes after that night, he couldn't stop thinking about it. Goes back to his hotel room, starts writing in his journal, God, I want to do something to help these people, help that woman. I don't want to do a nonprofit because I'm always raising money to donate more. But at the same time, I can't take advantage of these people trying to make money from. So it can't be like this 100% capitalistic endeavor. So he comes up with this concept called the one for one model. And the idea was, if we here in the States buy a pair of shoes, an equal pair of shoes would be donated to a third world country. Hence, we're one for one. And that became Tom's Shoes. And no one else in the world has that story about that woman. With those two children, only one of them had the opportunity or only one got an education for that. So what you want to look for, Ashley, is those gems. You want your. These. If you're selling whatever it is, providing a service, find those little stories you talk about, those daily stories. They're happening every single day. Day. If you're selling online, I guarantee you, you're making people smile somewhere. They get that thing in the mail from Amazon and they're opening it up like, oh, my God, look at this. I got this bus. Look Amazing. Got these ears. Look how beautiful. Whatever it is, it. It is. There are so many little stories that brighten people's day, solve problems for them that just change people's lives. And each one of us has, if we're selling anything and our product's any good, you're going to have those stories.

Yeah. That's so powerful. I hope everybody who's listening today, like, really takes that to heart. I love the Tom's story. It's also so near and dear to our industry. But every single boutique owner that's listening today has that power. So, Lynn, I've got to ask you this kind of on that note, something that we try to leverage together as an industry is we came up with an event called Pink Friday. So it's our own spin on Black Friday. It's the Friday before Black Friday, November 17th this year. And really, the mission behind the event is this. I'll tell you the personal side of it. I love Small Business Saturday, but it's like a little bit of a, you know, I don't know, frustration for me that it comes after Black Friday. It's like it's an afterthought. And when I think about small businesses in our country and around the world, I want to shop them first. I want to see people go and support them over the holiday season before they spend their money on Black Friday with Amazon and every other big box retailer. So Pink Friday was really born out of an opportunity for small businesses to tell their story and collaborate with local press, regional press, nationwide press, and for our industry as a whole to really collaborate and to leverage our relationships with one another to tell our stories. So to the retailers who are listening today, what advice would you give them about telling their story specifically on Pink Friday and how to tell that story in conjunction with the local media? How do you leverage those relationships to spread your story even further?

Yep. One big recommendation I have. We all know about the underdog story. The underdog is kind of the. It's an American iconic value proposition. There have been studies that show how powerful the underdog story is. Specifically, I think it's in the Journal of Consumer Research. If you share an underdog story with prospective customer. This is mostly consumers right up their alley. For these boutique retailers, there's 70%, 74% more likely to buy from them and support them than these entities, these conglomerates with all kinds of resources and avenues. So it's a natural gravitation that we have as humans to want to support the underdog. And it has to do with Human nature. You know, we've all faced challenges, we've all faced difficulties in life. And when you hear a small business owner that's, that's created a store online or in person, doesn't matter. They're rooting for them. They want them to succeed. Because if they can succeed, there's hope for ourselves. So you want to kind of support that individual, that store, that person that's kind of like they're kind of slay dragons one by one. It's foot by foot. Every single. Think about this. Every sale matters. Just like we were talking earlier, every story matters. When you're at a big box retailer, what do they look like? It's all about which store is doing the best. You're just a number. You're a transaction. You've got to like. You know, every boutique owner has the opportunity to make an impression on that person that walks to their store, walks on their website. My mother. My mother, when. When I was in junior high, my sister got kicked out of high school for beating up a guy. She was just really tough girl. She had tattooed a heart on her arm with a. With a iron. I mean, she's tough, but she was beautiful, right? So my sister gets kicked out of school, ends up getting her GED and joins the Navy. And during that process, my mom created a store called Wild and Beautiful, based after my sister Wendy. And she had this. Okay, never forget, it was this wooden. Big wooden sign out front. And it had this woman found this badass pose, like this, this gorgeous flowing dress and outfit, just looking killer. That was the Wendy sign that said Wild and Beautiful on there. And every person that came into that story, my mom would tell them about her daughter. Let me tell you 100%, they knew who Wendy was, where she was at. She was in the Navy. She's becoming an underwater welder, why she got kicked out. So it became this opportunity for sharing these little instances and experiences that stories that had happened that were instant were the inspiration for the store, but also why she's there. Why? Because retail can be hard. Sometimes it's lonely. Sometimes nobody comes through the door. But when someone came in through the door, full attention. I'm going to do everything I can to make sure you walk out of here with the best product for her or whatever it is. Or if not, sometimes my mom would say, no. She's like, very upfront, right? She goes, no, you don't look good in that. No, that's not going to work for you. There's a store down the street. They've Got some bigger sizes than we have, you know, because mostly she was carrying zeros through eights. She didn't have 12, 14, 16, some of the bigger sizes. I know way too much about women's clothing. Trust me.

I had no idea this is your background. I'm actually shocked right now.

You've got to keep sharing.

This is great.

I got four sisters. Ashley, Cindy, Lynn, Mindy. Mindy. So that's the youngest one. And so I learned a lot about this, but I didn't know it. But I was around my mom, who was a small business owner as a kid, and I watched her have these little moments of brilliance with every single person. And that's, that's.

You have to think about it.

So. So if you, if you kind of take a step back, if you go shopping for clothes or jewelry or napkins or those towels that hang on, you know, the oven or candles. Right. I got a niece, sells a lot of these things, and she's got a store, different things like that. And I'm always mesmerized about why she does it and all these stuff. And then, then she comes back and she talks about this woman who had problems at her house. She didn't know it, but she was burning traditional candles and those candles were making her sick. Because you're not supposed to born, you're not supposed to sell non soy based candles because they release toxins that are not good for you. She discovered, or helped this woman discover it was the candles that were causing her to feel. Feel good a lot of times. So here she has this great story, helped her sell more candles and help change that woman's life. I guarantee you, the people watching this, if you've got a store, you've got customers in there, you're changing their lives. You want to look for those moments of brilliance to share with them, to inspire them, to help them, to make them feel emotional about the purchase. Because one thing, actually, people don't buy based on their analytical side of their mind. They buy things because of the emotional side of their brain. So that's why you want to make an emotional connection and hence why stories work so well.

Yeah. So powerful, Lynn. That's incredible. So, man, I had no idea about your mom, by the way. Like, that is so ironic that that is your story and your sisters. That is just awesome. So fast forward then, and it's 20 years down the road, Lynn, and you're sitting on the front porch with your family and your nieces and nephews and your friends, and you're looking back on not only your journey as a family and with entrepreneurship in your blood, but the life that you've lived, businesses you've created, the entrepreneurs you've learned from, but more importantly, like just this person that you've been along the way. As people ask you about that journey, what's the thing that you just really want people to remember the most about you, the man that you are, and the life that you lived?

Big question. Big question. Ashley. I think I had a discovery when I was teaching skiing through a girl that I dated. And she always had this incredible perspective and just approach to life. She was just always happy and smiling. Even when she was, like, hurt herself, her arm or we're skiing and she was tired, she would just laugh. And I'm like, how do you do that? How do you always smile and have this great energetic approach to life? And she goes, I don't know. I read this book called Way of the Peaceful Warrior by Jay Melman, and she talks about the secret that she discovered. It was joy. And I tell you, Ashley, one of the things I love about being a video producer is that if I craft something that's inspiring, I'm going to leave a memory and this spark of creativity, this passion to do something more. That's kind of the legacy I want to leave behind, is that always bringing this passion for living that we've been given this opportunity on this earth to find the best in ourselves. And for me, the best in myself is if I can make you laugh, if I can make you smile, if I can keep you up at night because I want to make you go, want to start that business. I mean, I'm doing the good thing whenever I feel about that. And it's so funny. Sometimes it's as simple as being around with your family and, you know, and you're just. You're. You're at Thanksgiving or it's at night, you're around the fire, or you're surround a big table of food and everyone's laughing and you're like, this is why we do what we do. It's not because I made so many sales or I've got my name in the paper. I could care less about that stuff. It's about making the people that you love smile, feel good about life and want to do more. And the people that you commune with, your community, you know, the kind of your friends and the. The people you network with, inspire them to be better, to accomplish big things, to make other people smile. If I can have that ripple effect through anyone that I touch, then I feel like I've lived a good life.

100% worth it. Lynn, tell us where we can learn more. Tell us about the book, the snacks. How can people follow you?

Yep. So the book is on Amazon. Whoops. Over here, this is Start with Story. This is the book that I sell. That this is I kind of put a lot of package my knowledge knowledge in terms of how to create a story from scratch into that. The big thing that I'm really focused on now is an online course I've created which is kind of the book on steroids, which has helped any business owner take go from zero to having a great story in a short period of time. And that's at storytelling for entrepreneurs.com lingraft and that's basically where you can find the course, learn about it more. Those are the two things when it comes to storytelling. I really want to help founders kind of learn how to craft their first story, tell a better story, or create a series of stories that they're going to use for different audiences along that way.

So good. Lynn, thanks so much for being with us today. This is incredible.

Thank you, Ashley. We appreciate it.

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