The Power of Storytelling in Digital Marketing: Building Your Brand with Purposeful Stories

[00:00:01] Storytelling. It's one of the oldest ways that we connect as people, but are you using it the right way in your marketing? In this episode, I sit down with strategic storytelling expert, Kathy Goodwin, to break down how to tell stories that move people and grow your business. You'll learn why not all stories are created equal, how to avoid the biggest storytelling mistakes, and how to make your audience the hero. So make sure you stay tuned to the end of this next episode of The Digital Marketing Coach with Neal Schaffer.

[00:00:30] The Digital Marketing Coach Podcast.

[00:01:02] Neal Schaffer is your digital marketing coach, helping you grow your business with digital-first marketing, one episode at a time. This is your digital marketing coach, and this is Neal Schaffer.

[00:01:21] Hey everybody, this is Neal Schaffer, your digital marketing coach, and welcome to my podcast, episode number 411. You know, in today's digital world where AI can literally write a blog post in seconds and content is anywhere and everywhere, the one thing that still sets you apart, whether it is your personal brand or your corporate marketing, is your ability to tell a great story. And not just any story, but your personal brand or your corporate marketing is your ability to tell a great story.

[00:01:49] A strategic one that you'll learn a strategic one that you'll learn a lot more about in this episode. It's why I'm excited to bring on Kathy Goodwin, a true expert in the field of strategic storytelling. Kathy has built her brand around helping entrepreneurs and small business owners tell stories that connect, convert, and grow their business.

[00:02:10] In this episode, we're going to dig into why storytelling is more than just a buzzword, how it can shape your brand, and why it's so important that your customer, not you, is the hero of the story. So if you're ready to stop telling stories that fall flat and start sharing ones that truly move your audience, well, this episode is for you. So without further ado, here is my interview with Kathy Goodwin.

[00:02:35] You're listening to Your Digital Marketing Coach. This is Neil Schaefer. Hey, everybody. This is Neil Schaefer. Welcome to another live stream edition of the Your Digital Marketing Coach podcast. You know, there's a lot of evergreen concepts that we talk about in marketing, digital marketing. One of them we're going to go deep on today, and that is storytelling.

[00:03:01] Now, storytelling can mean a lot of different things to a lot of people, but one thing is for sure. In this age of AI and generative AI, it is more important than ever that we do things as marketers, as entrepreneurs, as content creators, that AI can't necessarily do. So while everybody else is leaning more and more into AI content creation, we lean more and more into the human side, the emotional side.

[00:03:27] And there's nothing more than that than storytelling. It's something that I talk about briefly in Digital Threads. I am not the expert on the subject, but guess what? Today we have the expert on the subject. Someone who not only has written books, but her whole brand is strategic storytelling. So I'm really excited to learn together with you today, and I'm going to bring on Kathy Goodwin. Kathy, welcome to the show. Oh, well, thank you for having me. It's fun to talk about storytelling.

[00:03:57] I am so excited to get into the topic. But before we do, Kathy, we were not born storytellers. We were born listening to stories, obviously. And before we started to hit record, you mentioned that you've done improv and a lot of different things. But how did you get into doing what you do today with storytelling? What's your story? Oh, what's my story? As you said, my name is Kathy Goodwin, and I am a copywriter, strategist, and a storyteller.

[00:04:22] And my recent book you mentioned is Your Mess is Not Your Message, a guide to branding for solopreneurs and for other people as well. Here's how it started. I was a marketing professor for 20 some odd years, and then I was a copywriter online. I still am a copywriter online. And when I worked with my copywriting clients, I discovered that solopreneurs were getting really bad advice for branding and marketing.

[00:04:52] I mean, as a college professor, I said, look at the big brands. Look at Budweiser. Look at Coca-Cola. Those are really, really good brands. But if you're online, especially an online presence, you're on your own, you cannot do that. But branding plays a different role in your marketing. People come to you in a different way to buy. And so I said, well, how are we going to brand if you are a small business?

[00:05:20] And some people said their coach said, oh, don't worry about branding. Don't do it. Some of them spent three months figuring out their colors and their type fonts, and then they ran out of money. I mean, so I got into it by realizing that people had to have their own marketing, their own branding strategy, and they tell different kinds of stories. I mean, if you look at Budweiser, they have the cute little puppies, and every Super Bowl, they have the puppies. I love the puppies.

[00:05:48] But you can't do that if you're a solopreneur. You have to tell different kinds of stories, and you have to sell yourself without sounding like you're bragging or boasting. You have to use stories to sell yourself and to brand yourself. And there are both dangers in doing that, and there are a lot of advantages in doing that. Kathy, that was amazing.

[00:06:13] I think we're kindred souls because I could not agree more that all the advice is replicated on big brands. But we have solopreneurs listening. We also have small business owners. Just small businesses cannot replicate that. When you talked about Budweiser, I immediately thought of the Christmas commercials that Budweiser does or they've done over the years. I'm curious, Kathy, what type of marketing did you teach, and where did you teach it? Oh, I've taught in several places. I was in Georgia State. I was at University of Alaska.

[00:06:40] I visited the University of Florida, and I visited Penn State campus. And I taught in Canada for five years. I was at a university there because they had exciting inducements, lots of travel money. So I went to Canada, Winnipeg, Canada, the University of Manitoba for five years. And I taught all kinds of marketing, but I specialized in consumer behavior, where you use psychology to understand marketing.

[00:07:10] And my doctoral dissertation was on complaint behavior. And I am very well known for complaining about everything. And I encourage people to complain the right way. So it was really consumer behavior. But I got into other things. I have a paper on metaphors, which relates to storytelling and a lot of other things as well. Yeah, my daughter is a psychology major for that very reason, very interested in marketing. And I couldn't agree more. That's really fascinating.

[00:07:38] So I'm assuming, and I also teach, I teach like executive education at a few universities. And there's a lack of marketing majors, a lack of marketing curriculums. I am assuming, Kathy, I'm curious. Is there a university anywhere in the world that has a course on storytelling? Oh, there are. There are a lot of them. There are now, okay. Yeah, Stanford has Jennifer Ocker, whose father taught at Berkeley. I went to Berkeley for my PhD in California and her father taught there.

[00:08:06] She has actually a book on New World. She studied storytelling. There are all kinds of universities that have courses. And not always in the business school. A lot of times they're off in the English department. But I know some of them do have them. They're starting to go after I got out of university environment. A lot of them do have courses on storytelling. And we always talked about mentors, yeah. Yeah, that's really fascinating. And we just got this great content.

[00:08:34] But Coca-Cola or those big brands don't have a soul. We do. And I think this is a great lead in, as well as the fact that storytelling is being taught in English, not in business school. Of, you know, the difference between, like, you know, when we think about stories, we think about, you know, the bedside, bedtime story, the campfire story. I hate that. But there's also a business story. So can you, Kathy, give us a little introduction? I think that's going to get to the heart of the topic. Of what is the difference in a business story and this traditional type of story that we

[00:09:04] have in our minds? Yeah, well, I hate that. I have a podcast and I open every podcast with, we do not tell bedtime stories. We do not tell campfire stories. We talk, we tell business stories. And I think they're very different. I actually saw a magazine article saying business at bedtime. And they were talking about how businesses tell bedtime stories. Well, a bedtime story is supposed to put you to sleep. We do not want our audience to go to sleep, do we? I mean, I want my audience awake and alert.

[00:09:33] So a business story has a purpose. When you're telling a bedtime, I won't go into bedtime stories. There are no rules for that that I know of. Or when you're telling a campfire story or you meet a friend and you're having coffee or a beer and you're telling a story, you don't care. There are no rules. You're just being friends and you're connecting. But when you're in business, especially if you're a small business and you have an online presence, every minute counts.

[00:09:59] And you cannot afford to tell stories just to entertain and amuse people. Every story has a purpose. And what I've been doing is aligning. I talk about this in the book. Every story aligns with a marketing purpose, a marketing activity. So we have stories for branding. We have stories to introduce yourself. We have special stories that really are designed to sell. We have stories that emphasize your expertise.

[00:10:28] We have all those kinds of stories. So what I would encourage you to do as you're listening to this is think about why you're telling that story. Because a lot of times I ask people, why are you telling that story? And they say, well, I feel I need to tell that story. OK, hire a therapist. Do not, you know, don't make your audience listen or tell your best friend. Don't do that. A business story is not cathartic.

[00:10:57] It's not something that makes you feel better. It's something that helps your marketing. I mean, I just say with marketing, you can use stories for leadership, for other types of business activity. But your story has a purpose. And you have to think about why you're telling that story. If you're giving this talk, what do you want your story to accomplish? I mean, you're wasting time if you're just saying, oh, I want to get their attention. No, no, no. You don't want to do that. You want to have a purpose that relates to your marketing.

[00:11:27] And I'm very strict. In fact, my book is called Your Mess Is Not Your Message because a lot of business owners are told, some of them pay a lot of money for this advice. They're told to tell a story about their own mistakes or their own vulnerability or where they struggle. Well, what if you haven't struggled? What if you have a happy life and you didn't run out of money and you didn't wake up at three o'clock in the morning worrying about things? None of this really matters.

[00:11:56] What matters is how you relate to your market and what you're doing as a marketer. That was fantastic, Kathy. And I think that a lot of marketers, entrepreneurs and business owners, they sort of get that storytelling is powerful. And therefore, they think, well, if I tell a story, it's going to be good. And we see these in speeches starting off with that long story, like where are the violins? We see it often on the LinkedIn selfie with, I should have done this check. And it doesn't really resonate.

[00:12:25] But more importantly, what you are talking about is an objective, a business or in this case, marketing objective behind every story. So I'm really curious, once we have these stories and I am one of the people, and I talk about this in a class on personal branding that I teach, of having a story bank, right? But you can always tell, I know a lot of speakers have these. They have like a little database. It could just be like in their notes app on their phone, but just things so that they remember

[00:12:52] various things that have happened to them that they might be able to bring into other speeches or content, what have you. So let's say we have a great idea for a story. How do we apply a story to a marketing objective? You mentioned that we can use stories for all sorts of different objectives, including leadership, what have you. But from a marketing perspective, can you give an example of how you apply a story or you craft a story so that it aligns perfectly with that business objective?

[00:13:18] Well, I would encourage you first to start with what is your marketing objective? Not with the story, but what is the objective of your marketing? So let's say you want to, well, build a relationship with clients or let them know who you are. Then you would tell a story about how you interacted with a client and how that worked out for them and for you. Or let's say if you want to sell something, then you would tell a story that makes the

[00:13:47] listener say, I want what they're having. That is what a selling story does. A selling story makes you excited to be the hero, to get what the hero has and go on their journey. And there's an overlap, of course, but I would say start with the objective. If you want to brand, then the brand will be a story that is an illustration of what you do and how you do it and the environment. I want to caution you.

[00:14:15] If you tell a branding story, a lot of people will tell a story that is self-deprecating, that is vulnerable and sad, and people remember your stories forever. So you are going to be branded. I know a coach, I won't go into the details, but who she is, but she tells a story of using her last dollar to go listen to somebody she wanted to work with.

[00:14:42] She tells a story about using her last dime to go get a certain outfit in a store. And the problem is that's all I remember when I think of that coach. And I don't think it's helping her. I don't think it's true. I don't see, she can say, oh, I maxed out my credit cards to do this and I maxed them out to do that. Well, you can keep maxing out your credit cards. I mean, someone's going to take them away from you. You can't do that.

[00:15:10] So you have to tell a story and realize everything you tell, people are going to remember. I mean, I also know a guy, I think he was a copywriter too, and I've mercifully forgotten his name. But he told a story about going to a dark place and how miserable he was and how he was going through deep depression. That's all I remember about him. I don't know what else he, as you said, I think he was a copywriter. I don't know.

[00:15:35] But you want to be aware that if you tell a story, people are going to remember that story. And so don't tell a story and say, oops, well, forget that. It's not going to work. So I would say, start with the, so like if you have an objective, what is your objective? And then find a story that will build that objective. I have had clients, one client I remember vividly, she was very upset because she bought that and tell a story.

[00:16:02] And I said, I don't think you want to share that, that people cannot relate. It's not even related to what you offer. Or let's do this. And she was very upset because what she wanted me to do is teach her how to tell a bad story or a story that was completely not going to help her business. And I did not want to do that. I wanted to help people tell stories that will help their business. So if you're, say, a life coach, then yeah, it might be relevant to tell a story about how

[00:16:31] I do know a life coach who tells a story about being on the street as a child and working out of it. Although when you're very, very successful, it's not relevant anymore. You may have a better story. But if you're an accountant or a psychologist or a financial planner or a money coach, you don't want to tell a story about how you used to be on the streets and you were suffering.

[00:16:55] I mean, I don't want to know if my accountant ever went bankrupt or had mental illness problems. I do not want to know that. I just want to know if he has been in trouble with the IRS. Specifically, will he keep me away from the IRS? That's all I care about. I don't want to know his life story. I don't even know about my account where he went to school or if he's married or any of that. It's not relevant. But so you can tell a story about how you work with a client.

[00:17:25] And those are usually your best stories to tell a case study. And I sometimes focus on that, to how you can tell a story about working with a client in great detail. Or let me give you an example of a memorable story. I was at a networking event years and years ago. And we were all going around and saying, oh, I do this. I do that. And this was a woman who was a money coach. And she said, I had a client who was broke when she came. And she really, really wanted to buy a house.

[00:17:55] And so I helped her save. And she went into some more detail, of course. And I helped her do this. I helped her do that. And she closed on her first house last week. And every single person in that room wanted to talk to her. It was that because we did not know anything about her. We did not care. All we know is she helped the client close on the house, reach her dream. In her case, that was a house.

[00:18:22] For someone else, it might be a vacation or even just a savings account. But they helped her do that. So you can be very, very effective with a story that does not have you in it. And that is the message I want to leave people, is you don't have to bring yourself into every story except as a guide, as a helper. You can really tell a story about working with a client in a business setting. And that will be, in some cases, extremely powerful.

[00:18:49] If you have a story that shows how you work with someone or where you help them overcome a problem, that's really effective. Yeah, this is fantastic advice, Kathy. And I think we see this a lot in marketing. I'm sure we've seen it over the years. That there's somebody who sells an equation. Just do this. And I think that I see this. Everybody who speaks on stage always seems to start out with a story.

[00:19:13] And as you said, the story is always about them and about how they overcame something. I mean, it draws you in. But yes, that's what you're going to remember about that person more than what's more important is how does that align with their business? So I see you're going there. So, you know, Kathy, if you let's like put me up right as an example. So if you're going to work with me and say, you know, Neil, you need to create a strategic story. And I want to push, let's say my fractional CMO business.

[00:19:41] I'm assuming you would say if you were to go on stage or go to a networking meeting, start with a story where my customer is the hero and basically how I help them, but making their emotions. Yeah. And you know, Kathy, it's funny. We talk about human psychology because the power of user generated content is very similar because it's not about you. It's other people talking about you. Now, when you're giving the story, you can't have another person's voice, but you can't have another person's story in your story. Right. And I think that's what you're getting out here.

[00:20:11] Yeah. And you're exactly right. You would tell a story about how you work with a client, make the client a hero, not you. Yeah. Awesome. So this has been really great advice. I'm curious though, you know, my advice in social media marketing, even on a platform like LinkedIn is you have, you have professional content, which is aligned with, with business objectives, but you also have personal content because you also want to create an emotional connection with people. And I think we've, we've seen the growth of this, even on professional sites like LinkedIn.

[00:20:37] And I'm not talking about telling some, you know, corny story type of thing, but I'm curious, is there a time, like I just suggested for personal stories and how do we fit that into this, you know, strategic storytelling framework that you've written books on? Well, I'm so glad you asked because that lets me talk about my new book, because I say there are five archetypes, five, you might call them personas or styles of selling their containers for your brand.

[00:21:04] Some of them like the educator archetype, you don't need anything personal. I interviewed someone on my own podcast who was an educator archetype and I'd followed him for years and years. His message was, and this is what the educator archetype is all about really, what this does is says, I have knowledge to share. If you apply my knowledge correctly, you will be very successful. So the educator just gives knowledge.

[00:21:33] And I had followed this guy for years. I don't know if he was married or if he was single. I don't know anything about his personal life. In fact, I told him that on the air that we don't even know if he has a personal life because that's how he markets. He markets solely with knowledge. Now, another type of is what we call the role model. And I have examples of those in my own podcast. And I talk about that in the book. The role model says, if I can do it, you can do it.

[00:22:02] I'm just like you. My struggles are like your struggles. So we have people who are extremely successful with being role model archetypes. And they do tell a lot of personal stories. If you market that way, you bring yourself in. Now, I'm an educator archetype. And there are actually five. I can talk about the others. These are two. But I'm an educator myself. And I have found when I give out personal information, it usually backfires.

[00:22:32] For instance, I told people, I live in a big city. And you must know big cities. We take buses. So we take public transit if we're in big cities. And we call Ubers, but we take buses. So I would give an anecdote about taking the number 57 bus. And people would write in and say, are you too poor to have a car? You know? I'd be in Los Angeles, yeah. Yeah, yeah, right. And in the Midwest, most people, a lot of you love cars. And so I'd explain my very small apartment.

[00:23:02] In Philadelphia, having an apartment strategically located is, and I have a top floor. I have a view. Those are important in Philadelphia. If I were in the Midwest, actually, I started when I was living in New Mexico, I started the business. And I did talk about living in a little house and having a dog in the countryside. But this is Philadelphia. And people do not like it. And when I tell a story about myself in my newsletter or my podcast, I lose people right and left.

[00:23:32] They don't want that from me. They don't want to hear about me. And well, another thing to consider, and I am convinced is that this is true. If you are a role model archetype and you talk about yourself, you have to tell certain types of stories and lead a certain type of life. I know someone, I won't say who they are, actually made up a whole family so she could talk about them. But if you're single and like me, I'm single. I'm urban. I have a cat. I used to have a dog, but I have a cat.

[00:24:01] People are not interested. They could care less about my cat. They want to hear about working in the garden. They want to hear about husband and children. People love stories about how your kids drove you nuts. If you don't have kids, I know someone who does make up kids and she talks about them. But if you don't make them up, then, you know, I can't, you know, I can just, and there's only so much people want to hear about your cat. I'm absolutely certain of that.

[00:24:30] So if you don't want to share stories or you either have to make up stories or I don't know, I guess if I look really hard, I might find stories to share. Then you don't have to. But that's the beauty of the storytelling. If you do it strategically, you don't need to have a family. You don't need to talk about your family life. And some people don't want to. I mean, some people have really, really bad family life and really bad personal life. And I don't think you should.

[00:25:00] I mean, if you are seriously depressed and seeing a therapist and taking all kinds of meds, there are very, very few circumstances where you should share that. Yeah.

[00:25:39] Especially because we know our context, like the example of taking a bus in Philadelphia. When I'm in, I travel frequently to Japan. It's public transportation all the time. I don't even take taxis there. But yeah, it does. For those other people, it's like, are you kidding me? So especially in such a divided nation that we are here in the United States, it's very easy to misconstrue things. So that's really excellent advice, Kathy. I want to, you know, I don't normally do this when I record my solo podcast. I don't have the opportunity to do this, but I thought this was a really great question that

[00:26:09] wanted to get your take on because I also wanted to give my own take. And this happened while we had the microphone issue, which is we hear a lot about building your branding as the foundation of your solopreneur business, but that can be exhausting sometimes. Any advice to draw the line? So I know that you're talking about storytelling, but storytelling is a component of personal branding. I'm curious as to how you would separate the two so that it is not exhausting to be building

[00:26:35] your personal branding as a solopreneur, which obviously would include strategic storytelling. Yeah. I don't see why it's exhausting. I would be curious to know why, you know, why she finds it exhausting. What I have found is that you brand yourself just by what you do. In fact, I know a very successful entrepreneur who has what I call an invisible branding strategy. She does not have a slogan. I don't think she's chosen colors.

[00:27:02] I don't think she has a story that I think would be a good story for her personal branding, but, you know, I don't think she thinks about it. She certainly doesn't follow the archetypes, although she is a role model, but she never planned it. I mean, she doesn't know. She didn't, you know, this framework didn't exist, you know, a few years ago. And you don't have to consciously brand yourself, but you're the words you use. The stories you tell are going to brand you.

[00:27:29] For example, we were talking about educators and the kind of stories you tell as an educator are stories that illustrate your knowledge. So you might tell a story of what I call a concept story. And actually, you can work your personal brand in, as you mentioned, in some ways. I know a very successful educator. I think he's heading out of business, but he's been very successful.

[00:27:52] And he has a story of an analogy of how hiring someone to build up, started out by hiring someone to hang pictures or paint a wall here or do nail something there. And he worked his way up to building a deck for the person. And he uses that as an example of a funnel, a marketing funnel. So there's a bit of his personal life. I mean, you know that he's capable of hiring someone to build a deck, which is a very good personal example. It shows he's not poor.

[00:28:22] You know, he lives in the kind of house with a deck. And those are the kinds of stories you tell. But what I would say is you can save a lot of energy if you know your archetype and you know what kind of stories to tell. So an example like his is really explaining the concept of a funnel. That's a very good story for an educator. Role model, as I said, I know several of those might say, well, I worked in the garden.

[00:28:47] And working in the garden reminds me you have to pull the weeds in your business or whatever they say. And there are some really, really good personal stories. If you can use a personal story to illustrate a concept and you're an educator, you can do that. If you are, there's another brand called, well, archetype, not really, full brand, an article called the Passion and Advocate. Mostly lawyers. There are a few non-lawyers. But the Passion and Advocate says, I will go to the ends of the earth for you.

[00:29:17] I will do everything beyond what I'm supposed to do. Lawyers can get away with it because they know how to stop. If you make that promise, you can get into a lot of trouble. So I say do not brand that way. But I do know some lawyers who really do brand and they will tell stories of how all their stories, every single story they tell is about how they helped someone get out of a mess. Every story. I had a client who was an immigration lawyer and he had a great story about how he helped

[00:29:45] a client who was legally in the US before we had the current status. But he helped him. He was arrested illegally and how he traveled to another state. He went through all night to get there and how he negotiated with the warden and he did all this stuff to help the client. And that was a great, great story. But it tells you not about the client's personal life, but about what he does. And he does work and he was actually, he's motivated to help people.

[00:30:14] He himself was the son of immigrants and he talks about that a lot because that is directly relevant. In fact, I would get back to your origin story. It's one of the things when you're talking about purpose, someone says, well, how did you get started? And you notice when you asked me, I just told a story that related to what I did, that this was not working. And I found out why. When you tell an origin story, an origin story has the purpose of either showing that you're

[00:30:41] capable of what you're doing or showing that you're passionate about what you do. Those are the only two things in an origin story. I hear so many stories of people who say, oh, when I was six, I was, I practiced, I wrote little things out when I was six and I did this when I was eight. And now look what I'm doing. Nobody cares. Well, maybe some people do. I don't care. What they want to know, if they ask, why did you get started?

[00:31:08] They want to know something that relates to them. And actually, I would not spend a lot of time on that. Usually people ask you that when they're really looking. There is really another question behind that. Yeah, that's great advice. You know, and Mariana has some follow-up comments here that I'm going to put on the screen. But I think there's two things that I got out of today is that the storytelling should be strategic and meet the business objective. And I would respond to what Mariana said by saying, hey, the personal branding should be a natural extension of you.

[00:31:38] And if it's not a natural extension of you, then you're doing something wrong. You should be focused on your business. Marketing is an aspect of it, but it's not the only thing, right? But I also got this extra context from Mariana that, you know, I don't like to be the story's hero, but rather the storyteller. That is the second bit of advice I got from you today. First being be a strategic storyteller. The other one is try not to become the hero of every story because as Mariana was saying in today's, you know, hyper-narcistic, you don't want to be seen as that person that's always talking about themselves and what have you.

[00:32:07] So, you know, it sounds like she's a perfect, you know, reader for your book to figure out her archive and then nail in and do not become, you don't have to be the center of the story every time. And actually you shouldn't. But I don't know her archetype, right? But I'm sure you'd agree with that, right, Kathy? Yeah, absolutely. I think, in fact, the hero, there's a famous book, I think, not The Hero's Journey. Donald Miller, right? Storytelling. Yeah, Donald Miller. Yeah, that's true. And what is he, the hero? And he's right.

[00:32:35] The hero is the client and you are the guide. And actually I have a booklet about that where the workbook on that, where there's the hero and the guide. And you also have storytellers. I mean, not dumb. You also have cheerleaders and villains in your story, if you want. But the hero is really the customer, the client. And all the, you know, your story should be showing that you understand where they're coming from. So people say, well, what about my About page? Do I keep saying I, I, I?

[00:33:04] No, you don't, unless you want to. But what you do is you talk about how you help the customer, the client, because people are looking to see what the hero is like. Ideally, especially if it's a story to sell, they want to identify with the hero of your story. So I, when I tell a story about a client, I make it the hero be the person I, you know, I would like to reach. And I put in emotions that I think they have, but it's really more about the client.

[00:33:33] It's not, you know, you're helping them. You can talk about your actions and how you help them, but ultimately it's them. Because even if you help them, they have to help you help them. They have to cooperate in almost all services. And, you know, I have that, you know, talk about that, that you, they have to be part of the action. You, you're not, I guess I would summarize that you are not a fairy godmother. I have a whole thing about how I hate the Cinderella story as a business story. I mean, it's a great story. It's their movies about this.

[00:34:02] I like the story itself, but you are not the hero of the fairy godmother. In fact, I, I have in my book, I talk about how you would tell the story from the godmother's perspective. She's the, the guide and how she would, you know, and she, and she, and she, she'd be competing with other godmothers to, to help Cinderella. So if you remember the story, the guide mother is, you know, just a supporter. We don't know anything about her. If you think about it, we don't really, we don't know her history.

[00:34:29] So she, you know, but you are not a fairy godmother, most likely. I love that advice. We're not just talking about storytelling on stage or in a social media post, even in your web copy on your about me page. So, so Kathy, this has been fantastic. Thank you so much for sharing your, your just wealth of, of expertise and experience and, and great ideas. Where can people go if they want to find out more about you, your podcast, your books, where can we send people? Kathygoodwin.com. Very easy.

[00:34:57] Just Kathygoodwin, one word.com. It's spelled, you got it spelled right. And on my website, you will find all about me, my services. I have a link to my podcast and I have my newest book up there. I have a book, an earlier book, which is grow your business one story at a time, which you can also read. And I would say my newest book, I'm going to get that up there. It's called your message, not your message. It is available. It's free.

[00:35:24] If you're a Kindle unlimited subscriber, you can, I, I'm making it that way. And, um, you can get everything in the podcast is strategic storytelling. Show. So you can find me there. Awesome. Thank you so much. And yes, if you go to the thumbnail image of this, whether it's the podcast or the live stream, you will see a picture of the book. Hey, thank you both for the greatest. Hey, Mariana, really a pleasure. I'm sure, uh, Kathy would agree a pleasure serving you today. I want to thank you so much again, Kathy.

[00:35:52] And I wish everyone the best of luck. If you need help with your strategic storytelling, you now know. Who your guide is. So I hope you'll reach out to Kathy and Kathy. Thanks again. And everybody have a great rest of your day. Thank you. It's been a pleasure doing this. All right. I hope you enjoyed that interview. You know, branding, storytelling, content, AI, LinkedIn, TikTok video. There's so many elements. Well, so many threads or digital threads that go into a digital marketing strategy, which

[00:36:21] is why I like to really collect a group of experts that are out there that already have been there and done that, have taught others, have implemented, have tested, and come to this interview ready to share their knowledge. And I think Kathy was a great example of that. If you are still new here, I hope that you'll hit that subscribe button. Every other episode is an interview with an expert and the other half are solo episodes with yours truly, Neil Schaefer.

[00:36:49] Well, that's it for another exciting episode of the Your Digital Marketing Coach podcast. This is your digital marketing coach, Neil Schaefer, signing off. You've been listening to Your Digital Marketing Coach. Questions, comments, requests, links, go to podcast.neilschafer.com. Get the show notes to this and 200-plus podcast episodes at neilschafer.com to tap into the 400-plus blog posts that Neil has published to support your business.

[00:37:19] While you're there, check out Neil's Digital First Group Coaching Membership Community. If you or your business needs a little helping hand, see you next time on Your Digital Marketing Coach.