About Tom Ruwitch: Tom Ruwitch is the Founder of Story Power Marketing, where he helps clients discover the building blocks for prospect-focused stories. In 2001, Tom founded the email marketing software and services company MarketVolt — before most business people had even heard of email marketing. He helps execute marketing campaigns to engage with prospects, convert sales, and maximize customer relationships. He sold MarketVolt in 2019 and founded Story Power Marketing. Today, coaches, authors, and other experts hire Tom to power up their stories because most dish out the same old boring content that turns off prospects, and then they feel frustrated and stuck. So Tom helps them transform content from prospect-repelling to client-attracting, turn marketing from frustrating to fun, and convert results from subpar to superb. Check out the latest episode of our Conversational Selling podcast to learn more about Tom.
In this episode, Nancy and Tom discuss the following:
- The best thing that can happen in your content is for somebody to read it see it or hear it and think.
- Storytelling can be a really important element of the content that you put out.
- The lesson is delegate and she can tell endless anecdotes or build endless stories to deliver that.
- You have to write in your own voice, produce videos in your own voice, and tell stories that are drawn from what you discover about your prospects and your clients, not with AI.
Key Takeaways:
- I do not engage with any company for under three months, ideally six months.
- In the majority of startups and small businesses, all the sales are typically made by the founder or, in small business cases, the president or CEO of the company.
- I had always wanted to do something on my own.
- It’s interesting how you can be fueled by the sales piece and the environment in which you sell.
“And what people need to understand that they need to do with their content is they need to inform and entertain and that’s where storytelling comes in. When you deliver valuable information in a more captivating way, that’s more story powered, more entertaining, you draw people in, you make the content more relatable and you’re more likely to be the one to stand out in your niche.” – TOM
“I would say that listening and empathy are probably the most important qualities because what it’s about is not just tell, tell. This is what I know and I’m going to tell you everything I know. That’s not what it’s about. What it’s about is hearing and watching and empathizing and understanding what is it that my prospects and clients are feeling and how is it that I can transform them from a feeling of, you know, one feeling to another, from a feeling of frustration to relief, from a feeling of fright to courage, from a feeling of stuck to free. It’s almost always about emotional transformation. Even in business-to-consumer products, it’s that way. But certainly, in business to business that it’s almost always an emotional transformation and understanding and paying attention to the feelings of your prospects and clients and using that as the basis to assemble stories is what it’s all about.” – TOM
“There are businesspeople who think that somehow storytelling is not professional, or it’s beneath them, and that: “No, I’m going to write a 1500-word white paper”, or “I must be serious”. And my response is that storytelling in and of itself is not a frivolous activity. There are a lot of frivolous, meaningless silly stories that are being dished out. You know, storytelling is a big buzzword right now in marketing and online. And so, there are a lot of people who just think, oh, I’m going to tell a funny story for stories sake, and that’s going to be great. Well, no, it’s not great unless the prospect or the client can see themselves and unless there is a lesson and meaning in that story. But those who believe that I don’t like stories, or I will be considered something less than professional if I tell stories, I think are missing the point of what a good story can do. As human beings, we are naturally drawn to stories and storytellers. There are all sorts of data to show that when information is delivered via story, we’re much more likely to retain it. We’re much more likely to trust the person who delivered the information. And we’re much more likely to act on the call to action. So, you know, anyone who feels like, oh, it’s beneath me or I don’t like stories, or my audience won’t like stories, when done properly, stories sell.” – TOM
Connect with Tom Ruwitch:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomruwitch/
- Story Power Marketing: https://storypowermarketing.com/
Try Our Proven, 3-Step System, Guaranteeing Accountability and Transparency that Drives RESULTS by clicking on this link: https://oneofakindsales.com/call-center-in-a-box/
Connect with Nancy Calabrese:
- Twitter:https://twitter.com/oneofakindsales
- Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/One-Of-A-Kind-Sales-304978633264832/
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- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ncalabrese/
- Email: leads@oneofakindsales.com
Voiceover: You’re listening to The Conversational Selling Podcast with Nancy Calabrese.
Nancy Calabrese: Hi, it’s Nancy Calabrese, and it’s time again for Conversational selling – the podcast where sales leaders and business experts share what’s going on in sales and marketing today. And it always starts with the human conversation. Today we’re speaking with Tom Ruwitch, a consultant, content marketing expert and founder of Story Power Marketing. Tom is a digital marketing pioneer who founded the email marketing software and services company Market Vault in 2001 before most businesspeople had even heard of email marketing. Today, coaches, consultants, and other experts hire Tom to power up their stories because most dish out the same old boring content that turns off prospects and then they feel frustrated and stuck. So, Tom helps them transform content from boring to brilliant, turn marketing from frustrating to fun and convert results from pitiful to profitable. Welcome to the show, Tom, let’s get started.
Tom Ruwitch: Thank you, Nancy. [1:22]
Nancy Calabrese: Okay, just a question that comes to top of my mind. You state that most people produce boring content. Why is that? And can you give us an example of what that is?
Tom Ruwitch: Sure, sure. So, I think that this is especially true for people who sell their expertise, for people who share their expertise to serve clients, coaches, consultants, professional service providers, those sorts of folks, because the value of what they know is really, really important. So, their tendency and content are to write a blog post or put something on social or here’s what you need to know, the financial service provider. Here’s the difference between a Roth IRA and a traditional IRA, or executive coach who, here are five tips to help you delegate more effectively. It’s valuable information, but information alone is not enough. And what people need to understand that they need to do with their content is they need to inform and entertain and that’s where storytelling comes in. When you deliver valuable information in a way that is more captivating, that’s more story powered, more entertaining, you draw people in, you make the content more relatable and you’re more likely to be the one to stand out in your niche. [2:59]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Okay, well, you know, many businesspeople that I know say they don’t have an interesting story to tell. How do you respond to that?
Tom Ruwitch: Yeah. Yeah, well, the first thing is to challenge them and say, well, get back to that. You do have interesting stories to tell. We’ll work on that. The second thing that I say is let’s not focus on the story of you. Let’s focus first on the story of your prospects and your clients. What makes them tick? Because if you focus first on your prospects and clients, what’s keeping them up at night, what problems are they dealing with, what’s frustrating them, where do they want to be, what do they want to achieve, then the stories that you tell become more relatable. If you can tell stories that reflect on them, then you’ll be able to draw them in. And the best thing that can happen in your content is for somebody to read it or see it or hear it and think, wow, you really get me. [4:03]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Okay, so what I’m hearing you say is that in any kind of communication, you want to incorporate some type of story that relates to their world, is that correct?
Tom Ruwitch: Yeah, I think so. And it’s, you know, I’m not going to suggest that you always, in every piece of content you put out there must tell stories. But storytelling can be a really important element of the content that you put out.
Nancy Calabrese: Okay. Now I’ve also heard you say that storytelling does not have to be so complex. What do you mean by that?
Tom Ruwitch: Well, I think that people approach this, and they think that it’s very, very difficult. They sit in front of a blank screen, and they think once upon a time, now what? They wait for the creative juices to flow and the muse to strike. And it really isn’t an act of creative magic. It’s not as daunting as some people make it seem. It’s a process. I have a framework that I use for finding the stories that I teach. So, it’s called the plan framework. And the first letter is P. What’s the promise that you’re making to your clients, to your prospects? What’s the transformation that you’re hoping to achieve? Then there’s a lesson of some sort. There’s an idea, a tip, and those information only boring blog posts that I talked about before, it’s all lesson without necessarily the promise or the third part of the plan, the anecdote. The anecdote. If you wrap it in a story, there’s going to be a greater level of entertainment, a greater level of captivating of your prospect. And then the fourth N is next step. There always must be a next step or a call to action. And Nancy, if you’d like me to, I could share an example of how that plan framework transformed a boring piece of content for one of my clients into a story powered piece of content. [6:17]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeap, awesome!
Tom Ruwitch: Okay, I mentioned an executive coach earlier, and before she hired me, she had written a blog post all about delegation. I used that example a moment ago. And the blog post went something like this, delegation is one of the most important skills that a business manager or business leader can master to delegate properly. Here are five tips. Tip one, tip two, tip three. Boring. What we did is we talked about the prospect. We focused on the prospect. And out of that conversation came a story of a business owner who had never taken a vacation longer than a long weekend in 20 years of owning his business. And the reason he never took that vacation was because he feared that all heck would break loose if he left. He feared that people would call him while he’s away. And then when he returned, he’d have to mop up messes. He just didn’t trust his team. And she taught him how to delegate. And once she taught him how to delegate, he was able to leave the business with comfort and confidence and spend two weeks on vacation and love every minute of it. And when he returned, his employees were more fired up, more bought in, more empowered than they had been before. And so, the blog post, and it was an email and a blog post, had the subject line, how a stressed-out owner let go and got away. And it had a picture of a business owner, or a person lying on a hammock beach, sunset, she tells the story. I know this business owner who never went on vacation. Then eventually he went on vacation. What changed? He learned how to delegate. And then she goes into the same tips that were in that boring blog post, delegation tips. But now people are reading and paying attention because she shared with them a promise. I’m going to help you let go and get away. She delivered a lesson to let go and get away. You need to learn to delegate, here’s how. She wrapped it in an entertaining and relatable anecdote. And then she included a next step. Call me to have a free consultation. I can show you how to let go and get away. So much better with that plan framework promise lesson anecdote next step than trying to just write a boring old blog post here are five tips to delegate more effectively. [9:02]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, how long does it take people to kind of get that?
Tom Ruwitch: Well, again, it’s a process and a system. So, when clients work with me in my coaching programs and my masterminds or one-on-one consulting, we learn a methodical process to first discover, well, what are the promises that you’re really making? People are prone to talk about the details. I teach you how to delegate versus the promise, I’m going to help you let go, get away, less stress, more relief, those things. So, we go through a process of discovering the promise and figuring out where to go and how to really get down to that in effective ways that go beyond just pulling it from your head. And then we go through the process of defining, well, what are the lessons and the key things that you’re bringing to your audience? In other words, we step through the plan framework. And once you’ve done that, this gets back to the question you asked earlier about this doesn’t have to be so hard. Once you’ve gone through this process of what we call story discovery, you are armed with a collection of ideas that you can go back to over and over and over again. So, this executive coach, for example, she has her plan framework. She knows that the promise is let go, don’t feel stuck in the business, don’t feel like the way the worlds on your shoulders. That’s the promise, the transformation from stuck in your business to able to get away. The lesson is delegate. She can tell endless anecdotes or build endless stories to deliver that. Story number one was about that business owner who went on vacation finally. Story number two that she told was a story of herself being an employee of a boss who didn’t delegate and who was miserable and unhappy and everybody, nobody in the company had morale, high morale and nothing got done because he didn’t learn how to delegate. And when he finally learned how to delegate, so much more got done and he was such a happier business owner. That was a personal experience that she had that she was able to turn into a story. We helped another business coach who teaches the same thing, how to delegate. We actually pulled an anecdote, promise is the same, lesson is the same. We pulled an anecdote from one of her favorite movies, The Devil Wears Prada. [11:52]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Tom Ruwitch: And in that movie, the boss, the magazine owner, is a horrible delegator, and all sorts of bad things happen as a result. I’m sorry?
Nancy Calabrese: Right. It was just horrible, period. I said she was just horrible, period.
Tom Ruwitch: She was horrible, period, right? But once you know the promise and the lesson that you want to deliver, finding anecdotes becomes pretty easy. You can draw them from your slice of life. You can draw them from a client experience. You can draw them from movies or books or literature or the news. We teach our clients and walk them through how to use AI to help find anecdotes that deliver, that can serve as a fable for a given promise and lesson. So that’s the whole thing. You asked how long does it take? Ultimately, it takes some advance work, some planning, some story discovery, and once you’ve gone through the process of story discovery, you have all the building blocks that you need to create and assemble stories. There’s a great quote that I love to use from a guy named Eugene Schwartz. Eugene Schwartz was one of the most prolific and successful copywriters of the mid to late 20th century. And Eugene Schwartz never suffered from writer’s block. And one of the things Eugene Schwartz said is that copy is not written, copy is assembled. And what he meant by that is, you know, I don’t just sit in front of a blank notepad. He was writing copy before he was sitting at a computer. I don’t sit in front of a blank notepad and then just let the juices flow. I gather building blocks and assemble it. And assembling content, assembling stories is what this is all about. It’s so much easier to do than to just sit in front of a blank screen and hope. And it’s so much more effective than pressing the easy button on AI and thinking that you’re going to generate copy that resonates with your prospects. You must do the discovery part yourself, sometimes with the help of AI, but you have to write in your own voice, produce videos in your own voice, and tell stories that are drawn from what you discover about your prospects and your clients. [14:27]
Nancy Calabrese: Huh. I mean, how do you come up with content ideas?
Tom Ruwitch: Well, again, the example that I shared with this business coach, it started by me talking to her, okay, here’s this lesson that you share. Tell me why you teach people to delegate. This could be applied to anybody who’s in the coaching or the consulting business. Why is it so important that somebody understand the difference between a Roth IRA and a traditional IRA. And if you dig into it and approach it with empathy and think, all right, well, what is it that my prospects and clients are feeling? Well, they’re losing sleep at night over this. The business owner is feeling frustrated. It is sick of feeling like he’s stuck in his business. Okay, now we’re getting at the promise, okay? [15:27]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Tom Ruwitch: Once you have the promise and the lesson, the conversation I had with the business coach was, well, give me an example of a person you know who successfully used the lesson that you teach, delegation, to experience that sense of relief and escaping and getting away. Oh, I have a great story, Tom. The story she tells me. Here’s a story of a business owner I worked with. So we can draw
success stories from our clients. We can draw from experiences that we’ve had before. We can draw from things that we’ve read or seen in books or literature or television or movies or whatever the case may be. And sometimes if we frame it properly, we can ask AI to help us come up with some of those ideas for the anecdotes. Sometimes the anecdotes just slap us in the face. We run into something interesting that happened and we say to ourselves, oh you know what? That would make a great story about lesson X and promise Y. [16:39]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow, huh. So, what would you say is the most important skill or quality someone needs to be an effective business storyteller?
Tom Ruwitch: I would say that listening and empathy are probably the most important qualities because what it’s about not just tell, tell. This is what I know and I’m going to tell you everything I know. That’s not what it’s about. What it’s about is hearing and watching and empathizing and understanding what is it that my prospects and clients are feeling and how is it that I can transform them from a feeling of, you know, one feeling to another, from a feeling of frustration to relief, from a feeling of fright to courage, from a feeling of stuck to free. It’s almost always about emotional transformation. Even in business to consumer products, it’s that way. But certainly, in business to business that it’s almost always an emotional transformation and understanding and paying attention to the feelings of your prospects and clients and using that as the basis to assemble stories is what it’s all about. [18:06]
Nancy Calabrese: You know, do you ever come across people, businesspeople, that just don’t want to hear stories? And if so, how do you respond?
Tom Ruwitch: Well, I think that there are businesspeople who think that somehow storytelling is not professional, or it’s beneath them, and that, no, I’m going to write a 1500-word white paper, or I must be serious. And my response is that storytelling in and of itself is not a frivolous activity. There are a lot of frivolous, meaningless silly stories that are being dished out. You know, storytelling is a big buzzword right now in marketing and online. And so, there are a lot of people who just think, oh, I’m going to tell a funny story for stories sake, and that’s going to be great. Well, no, it’s not great unless the prospect or the client can see themselves and unless there is lesson and meaning in that story. But those who believe that I don’t like stories, or I will be considered something less than professional if I tell stories, I think are missing the point of what a good story can do. As human beings, we are naturally drawn to stories and to storytellers. There are all sorts of data to show that when information is delivered via story, we’re much more likely to retain it. We’re much more likely to trust the person who delivered the information. And we’re much more likely to act on the call to action. So, you know, anyone who feels like, oh, it’s beneath me or I don’t like stories, or my audience won’t like stories, when done properly, stories sell. [20:09]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Huh. Hey, who doesn’t like the movies? They’re all stories, right? I can’t believe our time is up. This is really fascinating. Tom, last question. What is the one takeaway you want my audience to have?
Tom Ruwitch: That’s right. Yeah. I think the one takeaway would be to understand that you don’t have to be some kind of creative genius, a unicorn, to produce valuable stories. If you can learn the framework and apply a methodical system to this work, anyone can great captivating profit generating stories.
Nancy Calabrese: I love it. So how can my people find you?
Tom Ruwitch: They can find me on stor On the site you can sign up for email where I practice what I preach and you’ll see what good storytelling is all about. You can connect with me on LinkedIn. I assume you’ll put that in the show notes, Nancy. So you can look for me on LinkedIn. You can get free resources on the website. But yeah, just going to stor or emailing me directly. I’m one of those people, I don’t dole out emails to some virtual assistant who will give you a stock reply. If you email me and tell me that you heard me on Nancy’s podcast, I will absolutely reply. I’ll answer your questions. I’ll be happy to engage with you. And that email, I told you to email me. I didn’t give the address. Tom.
Nancy Calabrese: Awesome. What’s your email? Yeah. Well, I’m going to go ahead and turn it over to you.
Tom Ruwitch: Tom, T-O-M at stor
Nancy Calabrese: All right, guys, you heard it. You heard it from the expert. So let’s up our game, everyone, and do a better job in storytelling. I think what you do, Tom, is fascinating, and I really appreciate you spending time with us today. So until we speak again, good people out there, make sure you start working on that story and reach out to Tom to get his assistance. We’ll see you next time.
