This transcript is auto-generated and may contain spelling and grammatical errors.
Tyler Jorgenson (00:01.428)
Welcome out to biz ninja entrepreneur radio. I am your host Tyler Jorgensen and we’re here with another amazing guest and I love it when the universe brings people across like back together. So Kyle and I had crossed paths years ago and we’re recently reintroduced through a mutual connection. And I’m super grateful that we were because we get to learn from Kyle today, about the power of having a story and about what he’s doing with the story engine.
and he’s got some amazing insights on being able to be a visionary and what that means and how important that is. And so I’m super excited to have a conversation with Kyle today. Welcome out to the show, Kyle Gray.
Kyle Gray (00:41.401)
Tyler, I am so honored to be here as a podcaster myself. just, you’ve created something incredible. This is a platform. This is a community. This is a family and a real labor of love. And for you to share this time and these people with me is a real honor. And I hope that we can create something that’s truly valuable for you and your people today.
Tyler Jorgenson (01:04.802)
Awesome, I’m confident we will, because you always bring the goods. Kyle, what’s one thing that when people were introducing you at the beginning of a podcast or a beginning of something that if you were the most, if you were gonna just brag about yourself the most, right, which really lean into that alpha energy, what is something that people would brag about you?
Kyle Gray (01:26.963)
Many people would say that I help them navigate the deep forest of their minds, all of their experience, all of their ideas, all of their stories, and quickly, easily, and funnily. I know that’s not a real word, but create and align these stories, these messages, these ideas into signature talks that get dramatically better results, two to three times.
better results when you’re speaking on stages, on podcasts. And we usually make your talks shorter and easier to memorize, more natural and more fun, which creates a lot of better results for them in their business. get to live better lives. They get to spend more time with their family. They get to be more creative. They get to push the limits of their business instead of constantly managing and putting out all of the fires.
that inevitably come up as we start to grow and scale businesses.
Tyler Jorgenson (02:28.792)
We are gonna dig way deeper into that because that is amazing, amazing stuff. Let’s zoom backwards first. When was the moment in your life you first realized you were an entrepreneur?
Kyle Gray (02:41.557)
that’s an interesting one. And I don’t know if there was a single moment, but this does bring to mind a singular moment that would define my entrepreneurship for a long time. And it’s not exactly one you would expect, but, I, remember being 20 years old and hiking on, the trail to Machu Picchu. I was doing a five day track.
And I can remember being really quiet, unsullied during this time, even though I was going to one of the most incredible places in the world. And I was really going through a lot of pain at that time because just a few weeks before this, um, two of my closest friends had died. One had committed suicide and one died from kind of a freak health accident. And, uh, during this time I, uh,
was having a tough time knowing what to believe in. And I made a couple of choices that would define what, how I would approach business and my life and my work for many years to come. I didn’t want to believe in anything outside of me. wanted to believe in my ability to work hard, my grit, my achievement, my intellect. And I also in that same time discounted the things that made me who I was, my
spirituality, my vision, my creativity, my playfulness. And, I can remember this or this would define who I was for a long time. And I think we, a lot of us get our wires crossed in one way or another going onto this road to entrepreneurship. And early on in the, in the, my career, this was really helpful. I would work hard. would grind hard. would do long hours. would research. I, would build.
And I would create things that would create the foundation for a lot of success. Somewhere nearly a decade after this moment, I can remember myself walking down another road, an icy road in Salt Lake city. And, I was walking from my home to a coffee shop where I was going to start my work for the day. And I was in a similar amount of pain that I was before, but it was pain that I created this time.
Kyle Gray (04:58.423)
I was in a business, I had an agency, had a team members all over North America and the UK that were building high converting landing pages and sales pages and emails and all these things. And my business became kind of a nightmare for me. I was constantly putting out fires. My clients hated my team and my team hated my clients and all the problems were just falling back onto me. And my only strategy for this was I’ll work harder.
I’ll get up and I’ll speak more and I’ll make more money to throw money at the problems.
And somewhere along this walk, I realize there’s a connection between this, that this just trying to work hard, grind harder was no longer a strategy that was going to get me any farther that I had hit a certain ceiling. And I decided in that moment to really start to understand who I was again, instead of just what I did or what I could do.
And this was when I started incorporating more of my story. And I realized that my story that I would use on podcasts like this or on stages or on webinars and how I related to that story was not only impacting what was happening in my sales, but it was impacting the choices that I would make in how I would spend my time and how I would strategize and how I would think. And actually the process of clarifying.
these important moments of leaning into something that was scary, which is sharing who I am, not just what I did or the results that I got from my clients. Because I think a lot of us to get to where we are, we have this addiction to what we do rather. And it’s almost a little bit afraid, which implies this deficiency in who we are. And so we always want to show off our best and strongest parts.
Kyle Gray (06:58.531)
But really as I started to share who I was, what my vision was, I related to myself differently and clients started leaning in and coming to work with me and appreciating the real value in who I was as a person. Of course, I still had all the talents and all of the skills, but things started to open up in new ways and a new spirituality emerged from that and connecting with something bigger than me.
while also accepting who I was and then leading with that in my life, in my business and in my messaging.
Tyler Jorgenson (07:37.762)
So the interesting thing, know, entrepreneurs are usually ones they can see different opportunities in the world. They go after and they can create solutions where other people see problems and obstacles. A lot of what you just described seemed like all of those things internally, like almost as if you can’t solve the external problems if you don’t face the internal problems. How big is that correlation for you between the self and what you can go and create?
Kyle Gray (08:08.331)
Almost everyone comes to me mostly without recognizing this at this exact turning point. So we are creative. do solve problems and we’re great at solving these externally around the world. And there’s this glass ceiling that I’ve noticed over time. It’s usually in the mid six figures or low seven figures where being a hard working person
is no longer an adequate strategy to solving the problems that come up. And so we have teams that are bigger, we have problems that are bigger, we can’t outwork them anymore. But it was something that we’ve doubled down on and built into what we’re doing. And we’ve become somewhat addicted to this. And the process of managing all of the success we’ve created, which usually is managing team members,
building things, putting out fires, which are hardworking addiction absolutely loves. And we find ourselves not being the visionary. And if you’re listening to this, or if you’re an entrepreneur, you’re a visionary. And that means your job is to be in the uncertain in the unknown and to create the spaciousness for that. And if we’re just putting out fires and managing busy. is usually doing things that we’re good at or maybe even great at.
or possibly terrible at because it’s a comfortable known thing. And they, people come to me in this state and they don’t have time to write a talk. So we work together to write a talk quickly. And then through this process of asking them about what their ideal clients problems are and how do we shift their beliefs? A lot of times we uncover stories.
that they wouldn’t naturally come up with because of this addiction to what we do versus who we are. And as we start to articulate stories that show who we are as a person, we start to relate to ourselves differently. The stories that we would normally think, I would never want to share this from the stage become, I’m really excited. And we infuse a new level of purpose and mastery into what we’re doing. And we see how we spend our time differently. If we can perform better on a stage,
Kyle Gray (10:29.773)
then all of a sudden the creative time that we spent together is much more valuable and much higher leverage. And it becomes a little bit easier to say no to the constant buzzing of urgent things that need to be done. And so this slowly allows us to get back into the creative, the expansive, the visionary space that, and be more comfortable in the uncertain, in the discomfort and pushing the frontiers.
of our work.
Tyler Jorgenson (11:01.654)
Yeah, it’s interesting how so many entrepreneurs, are hard workers in general, right? They’ll often outwork their employed friends, right? Or even their team. But so much of what they really need to do and what they really need to do is the soft skills, right? The things where they can create and see opportunity and see solutions. How do you, like, what’s your suggestion to someone who’s just super stuck in that?
They’re buried in administrative tasks. They’re buried in doing work, but they need to step back into their true self. How do you help them and guide them there?
Kyle Gray (11:41.655)
Well, it’s, it’s like kind of a secret. What, what we’ve just said here, people don’t come to me to, to relate to themselves differently. They want to make more money from the stage and then this stuff kind of secretly happens underneath it. So what we would do is, yeah, we need to create stories that really work. A lot of the people that I work with, they’re not new to speaking. They’re not new to content creation.
But for one reason or well, for a couple of reasons, their contents usually performing their speaking’s usually performing at about a C minus level. And these same problems that I’ve been describing show up in how we think about our talks and how we strategize our talks. Because we want to prove who we are because we feel deficient, we want to teach as much as possible. And instead what I, how I help people work is instead of teaching as much as possible in one idea in 10 minutes.
We just give them the simplest possible thing to shift our audience’s perspective and open their mind up to new possibilities. Your audience doesn’t need to know everything that goes into solving the problem that you solve, which is difficult and counterintuitive for us because we’ve spent so much time solving problems and we want to talk about it. And it’s exciting for us. It feels good for us. And so we can be on stage and feel like we’re on fire, but we’re putting our audience to sleep.
And so I just put a little bit of friction into thinking what’s the simplest way that we can phrase this to open them up to new possibilities. And this allows people to go from trying to cram as much information on in their mind onto their slides to actually being present in the teaching point, present with their audience. And the same thing with a story that we would use to open up our talks instead of a story where we are the hero and we are doing, and we are trying to prove ourselves.
As the authority, we use our moments and infuse clients language into them, not to show how amazing we are, but to say, Hey, I understand exactly what you’re going through, which shifts how we relate to this. And when we can start to feel the power of our own stories is really when we start to relate to these things differently. And we start to practice this and apply this. when we see better results.
Kyle Gray (14:03.725)
That’s when we can start to actually move the levers on, wow, I’m really working too much. And if I just spent more time getting on more stages or using this talk, then my business would be growing a lot more. So maybe I should stop putting out all these fires or I should, I should start holding better boundaries with my team. And a lot of the times you have all of the team you need, you’ve just been training them to ask you questions, to come to you with these things.
because you haven’t been able to hold the boundaries because you haven’t been valuing your visionary time as much as you could.
Tyler Jorgenson (14:42.414)
That’s powerful. I know that that’s definitely happened to me in the past is as I’ve built companies where sometimes you inadvertently train the people to come to you instead of double checking SOPs or solving problems on their own. And every time you reinforce it, that becomes the new process. I also think it’s really fascinating. said most entrepreneurs, if they’re speaking or something, they’re speaking at a C minus level. I find that really unique because so many entrepreneurs in school
We’re C students to the point where even, like one of the bestselling shirts that we do for rich dad company is, a students work for C students. Right. And so they are by nature, they’re just going to, they’re getting, they’re getting by those types of tasks and focusing back to other things. But when they re what you’re saying is, man, if you would, if you realize how to get an a, a result, right. From the same work you’re doing or from the same, from that same talk.
Kyle Gray (15:22.489)
Hmm.
Tyler Jorgenson (15:40.546)
the output’s better. And then that now as an entrepreneur is like, well, I care about output, right? I may not care about just like a grade or something like that, but I do care about the results. so, you know, finding unique ways to help people shift and do that, make that transformation. What is usually the, in your business, like what are some big changes that you’ve made recently? What are you seeing shift in the marketplace and how are you staying current?
Kyle Gray (16:09.665)
Absolutely. I’m sure almost everybody’s answers to this question has been a guest on your show in the last little while has been incorporating artificial intelligence, which has been a really interesting process for me. I’ve, I’ve experimented with this on several different levels in several different ways and
I’ve created custom AIs that understand my processes for creating stories from how I ask questions to how I draw it out, to how I shape clients’ language onto your moments. And I’ve given them away sometimes. And I can remember a few hours into releasing my first AI out into the world and getting an email from somebody saying,
I learned to tell a better story and teach better. And I’ve already made two new sales in the last two hours. And I was like, no, I just killed my job. but leaning into it more, I’ve also used it more with what I do and what I think I do differently to get the results than almost anybody else is I interview you. draw out the story and the moments and I help shape it in my own mind.
and then I tell you your story as if I am you. So you get to experience what it feels like to have your story. This is somewhat confronting for some people because you’re no longer in control. You don’t get to control all of the little details and the things that are important to you. And this is exactly what you need to get out of your own way because you relate to your stories and your ideas inappropriately.
Tyler Jorgenson (17:50.958)
Hmm.
Kyle Gray (17:51.009)
Because we, we overvalue certain things that we want to teach and we undervalue certain things about who we are and having somebody emphasize and strategize things differently allows you to feel it first. And then we can talk about the technique, which is what I really enjoy doing. And now as I am telling you your story, I usually use my phone and I will speak into my custom GPT.
And so it understands the techniques that I’m doing because I’ve uploaded my books. I’ve uploaded hundreds of talks. I’ve uploaded descriptions of every single technique that’s present. And for each conversation, I can take, you know, a real depth of client data, of case studies, of whatever else you bring to the table and AI can consider a much broader context and weave in depth of language and things. So instead of having.
kind of like what I would produce for you is an idea that’s maybe 80 % good that you need to tune up and build your truth in. And now with the help of AI, I have a nicely clearly written script that’s stage ready and good. You still need to take time to adopt this story and this idea. You need to practice it and move through these ideas in a new way that you haven’t been used to before.
But it gets you a lot further and a lot closer to being stage ready than, than before. so with these tools, what would take me, I have a VIP day where I write somebody’s talk in a single day with them. And what used to take five or six hours of us working very diligently and focused now can take three hours and sometimes even less. And I still get a little bit insecure because.
It looks so easy and it’s so dazzling and I’m like, it looks easy and it is kind of easy now, but it’s been built on the shoulders of giants. And I just hope that my, people understand everything that goes into making it look like a magic trick.
Tyler Jorgenson (20:03.382)
I think the right people do. think, I think a lot of people that are really involved in AI know the difference between lazy use and highly programmed customized use. Like, you know, garbage in garbage out has never felt more real than what I’m experiencing with AI. If you don’t, and confirmation bias and all these other things that if you’re not asking the right qualifiers or if you’ve trained it, you know, trained your chat GPT to respond favorably to you over and over.
It’s amazing how different to people’s, AIs can give them different results, but that’s a whole other tangent for sure. I think, I really like what you were talking about, how we tell it, we interact with our story inappropriately. I’ve never heard it worded that way. And it it’s true because we live in a, you know, we’re designed to keep ourselves safe. Right? So we, we hide, we dodge sometimes if when we approach shame or when we approach fear or when we approach things that make us feel unsafe. And so we tend to.
Kyle Gray (20:37.785)
definitely.
Tyler Jorgenson (21:02.04)
tell a diminished version of our story, we think that it’s a safer version, but it’s weak and it’s actually gonna have less impact. And it sounds like that’s what you do is help extract the authentic story. What kind of a reaction do people have when you tell that story to them? Do you ever have people just shut down and say, I don’t wanna share it, like I’m done. Is it too much for some people to face that reality?
Kyle Gray (21:28.491)
So there’s a couple of different things involved in this. And I’ll share a story about one of these experiences. A lot of people will be moved to tears hearing their own story. It’s very vulnerable in some ways. There are a few people that are uncomfortable with this. And a lot of times there’s a certain life cycle of stories. There are stories that are too soon. And this means you haven’t done the emotional work to
Tyler Jorgenson (21:55.031)
Mm-hmm.
Kyle Gray (21:57.785)
really integrate this story. And there’s a lot of emotional power to these. But it’s kind of like getting on a horse that is really strong, but hasn’t been trained before. And you’re like riding for a little bit. And then all of a sudden, a stick breaks. And you’re running through the forest at light speed wondering why in the world did I get on this horse? And I’ve seen this happen in the case of speakers before. There are stories that are too old. And these are stories that you’ve told time and time and time again, but they don’t have any emotional pull on you anymore.
And even if they’re true, they feel inauthentic because they’re, they’re not conjuring the right emotions. And so we want to find the ones that are in the sweet spot, right in the middle. But let me give you an example of what this was like. Um, I had a health and wellness expert, um, on one of these story creation calls with me. And, uh, these emotions that you are in, in, in, to it, in, in,
That’s not a real name, but so Donna gets on a call with me she says, Kyle, I’m stressed out. And I’m like, what’s, what’s going on? We’re, trying to create a story. she’s like, well, I want to, you know, I’ve been working with women with hormone problems for a long time and I’ve been getting a lot of success with them. And I was like, that doesn’t sound like a problem. What’s the problem? And she’s like, well, I want to work with children with ADHD and their parents.
but I’m having trouble focusing on these two different audiences. I’m not sure what to do. And I just discovered not too long ago that I have ADHD and now I’m in my fifties and I’ve been looking back at decades of dopamine driven decisions that have led my life every which way. And I keep thinking to myself, if my parents had only known they could have done something.
This is not the right attitude to create a good story. And so we have to kind of do some jujitsu here or maybe Aikido. say, Debbie, do you want to play a game or Donna? She says, yes. I want you to write down what you just said. If my parents had only known they could have done something. She writes it down. I have her read it out loud, take a breath, read it out loud, take a breath, read it out loud. And I ask her to
Kyle Gray (24:18.573)
Tell me where she feels these words in her body and how it feels. She points it out. She says, not very good. I’m like, perfect. That means we’re on the right track. I have her change one word. If I had only known, I could have done something. Read, breathe, read, breathe, read, breathe. We identify where it is in the body. We see how it feels a little bit better. Okay. We’re on the right track. I know now I can do something.
Tyler Jorgenson (24:34.606)
you
Kyle Gray (24:47.105)
Read, breathe, read, breathe. We’re getting closer. And I ask her, you know, what’s, what’s one of the biggest reasons why a parent with a child with ADHD wouldn’t want to talk to somebody like you? She knows it right away. Well, they don’t want to open up this can of worms with a diagnosis because that’s going to cause all of this kind of work. So you know what? They would just rather ignore the problem. And I say, Donna, what does that lead to?
It leads to decades of dopamine driven decisions that have led your life every which way. And she looks back and in that moment we realize that we write the sentence one more time. I know now, and that’s why my message is so important. I asked her to tell me a story about a moment where she sees somebody in her family suffering with these symptoms and she immediately recognizes it. her grandson.
is bouncing off of the walls in this one moment. And the boy’s father is shouting at him, trying to calm him down. And they both end up frustrated and exasperated and sad. They don’t understand each other. And she looks at her grandson and she knows what’s going on. And she recognizes it in him. And she wonders if he’s ever going to get what he needs. Cause she starts to look back on the decades of dopamine driven decisions that have led her life every which way. And she thinks to herself,
My parents had only known they could have done something. The most disempowered phrase at the beginning of our call becomes a laser targeted objection overcoming statement. And we can’t get there through the normal marketing. I’m all awesome. Everything’s good kind of way. There’s this process of, of.
pattern breaks and pattern switching. She was relating to her stories inappropriately. And these perspective shifts, which are very difficult to do on your own, can lead to she changed how she related to herself. We created rocket fuel from what was once a burden.
Kyle Gray (27:03.479)
before it even got onto stages, but of course it started performing really well when we had that targeted message for the right people. And that’s, that’s what the experience is like.
Tyler Jorgenson (27:15.49)
I think that’s really powerful how it wasn’t necessarily a change of the words. It wasn’t a change of the story. was the proper positioning, the right part in the right place, but the right energy. It’s not rewriting a story. It’s just telling it in a healthier way or in the more strategic way, what’s really honestly more authentic. And I just thought was really, that’s a powerful example. I love it.
Kyle, as we get close to the end here and as the show starts to wrap up, you started the show talking about that hike to Machu Picchu and about some of the grief that carried with that. And I think sometimes business, we lose focus that business is about creating the life that we want. What’s one item on your personal bucket list you’re gonna accomplish in the next 12 months?
Kyle Gray (28:08.997)
I would love to get back to making music and maybe even making a fully recorded album, in those early teenage days or late teenage days. I was playing a bunch of music. was playing in bands and I think it’s one of the reasons why speaking on stages was so attractive to me. And as I’ve been able to create more success and more spaciousness,
I’ve been able to invest in being my own patron and creating music in the way that I want. And there’s still this game of, know that I am enough. know that my business systems are enough. My relationships are enough that I can count on myself to grow and be successful sufficiently that I can spend a Monday morning writing music instead of doing business. Maybe not every day, but making the space for that.
And also understanding that even though it may not be as clear of a link to ROI as doing email outreach or texting, following up with all of my possible prospects ever, that there is an intangible but very valuable ROI to this. And it brings to and informs everything else that I do. And by giving myself permission,
to live the lifestyle that I set out to create in my business, my business grows.
Tyler Jorgenson (29:40.718)
I love it. Thank you so much for sharing all of this with us. If you are interested in what Kyle does, please go check out thestoryengine.co. You can also find them on Instagram at HeyKyleGrey. But to all my business ninjas, wherever you’re listening, watching, or tuning in, it’s your turn to go out and do something.
