Shownotes
- The Irreplaceable Value of Personal Experience: Dan argues that while AI can mimic data and routine tasks, it cannot replicate the richness of personal anecdotes and lived experiences. These human elements are critical in crafting compelling and relatable stories.
- Shift from Data-Driven to Story-Driven: Sara highlights the need for industries deeply rooted in data to incorporate storytelling into their communication strategies. Personal stories engender unique value and engagement that cannot be achieved by data alone.
- Human Connection Through Storytelling: We explore how storytelling is a timeless tool for building connections. Personal stories, like Larry's red hat anecdote, create a sense of shared experience and authenticity that resonates with audiences.
- Branding and Trust through Founding Stories: Dan emphasizes the power of founding stories and core values in establishing brand trust. These narratives not only distinguish a business from competitors but also foster loyalty and emotional connections with customers.
- AI’s Role in Enhancing Storytelling: Dan shares insights on using AI for research and routine tasks while leaving the storytelling and deep analytical work to humans. He introduces the concept of a virtual biographer service, which Biz Hack plans to launch to assist businesses in crafting personalized stories.
Transcripts
What is happening, everybody? I'm Larry Roberts.
Sara Lohse [:And I'm Sara Lohse. And this is Branded, your comprehensive guide to creative branding.
Larry Roberts [:And on this very insightful episode of the podcast, you're going to notice that I'm not in my studio. I, I look much less attractive than I normally do. Normally I'm, I'm definitely a 10.
Sara Lohse [:I'm glowing.
Larry Roberts [:I'm about a six. But just bear with us. And we're going to, we have an amazing guest though, that's going to make up for my lack of presence. Our guest today, his name is Dan Gretsch. He's the founder and CEO of Biz Hack Academy, which is on a mission to train 1 million underserved businesses to grow 10 times faster using AI powered marketing and storytelling. Now, when I read this bio, I was like, oh my gosh, how did this cat end up on our podcast? He's a Pulitzer Prize winning former NPR and PBS journalist. That's insane. Dan transitioned into entrepreneurship and education, drawing from a family legacy of teaching and coaching.
Larry Roberts [:Here's another one. I'm like, you're on Branded. He's testified before Congress advocating for small business growth in the digital age and has led marketing efforts for major companies helping startups achieve rapid growth, including a company called OfferCraft, which grew from pre revenue to 2.5 million in just two years.
Sara Lohse [:And now he's unbranded. So he's clearly bit like this is the peak of his career.
Larry Roberts [:He's an overachiever, obviously. You know, he's like, I gotta round out my career, I've got to be unbranded. So Dan, welcome here, man. We really appreciate you taking the time to join us.
Dan Grech [:Yeah, it's a pleasure to be here, Sara. Larry, excited to, to have this conversation.
Larry Roberts [:So when we were talking in the green room before, we were really talking about brand storytelling. And that's something that Sara and I, we, we talk about quite a bit. And honestly, Sara talks about it a lot more than I do because, I mean, that's really her specialty is, is brand storytelling. I'm just good at storytelling. When I get in trouble, I make up a story to get me out of trouble. And most of the time it works. Sometimes not so much. But anyways, so Dan, talk to us a little bit about how storytelling has helped you achieve where you're at in your career and everything you've done up to this point.
Dan Grech [:Okay, let's talk about it on a personal level. I mean, on a personal level it's, you know, been a passion of mine since, since High school. I was a junior in high school in Philadelphia where I grew up. And like so many of us, one of my electives was journalism. So I stuck in a journalism class and one of the very first stories I did was about this. Well, anyway, I was like a middle class guy in a pretty wealthy neighborhood and I like like lined soccer fields and referee games and sold blow pops to make money. And so I had a little bit of money kind of in my pockets. And ironically they called me the richest poor person they knew.
Dan Grech [:These were all like sons of doctors and lawyers, but they had no spending money. So I would always be the one like treating at McDonald's when we went and so forth. Anyway, one day I go to gym class and I notice that there's several $20 bills missing from my wallet. And I worked so hard. I really earned those one quarter at a time selling blow pop. So I noticed that the money was missing. It was all like fives, ones and tens, but three twenties were missing. And then it happened again.
Dan Grech [:And then I started asking around and I noticed a lot of my friends that had the same thing happen to them. You know, the difference being that they had so much money oftentimes that they didn't even notice. And so I actually did a school wide survey. I said maybe there's like something going on here. And more than a quarter of the school had had money stolen from them in this way. So I published an article about this and a week later the head of campus security no longer showed up at work. Oh, and I was hooked, man. On journalistic storytelling.
Dan Grech [:I'm like, oh my God, like I'll never forget, like everybody, you know, including the administration, reading my front page article, the headline was read this quickly before it gets stolen.
Sara Lohse [:I love it.
Larry Roberts [:Oh nice.
Dan Grech [:And so I've been just hooked on journalism and storytelling. 15 year career, as you mentioned, in journalism, master's degree in storytelling. And then like so many journalists, lost my job, had to reinvent. And I reinvented first as a PR person, then as a marketer, then as a marketing trainer because I love to teach what I'm trying to learn and then as a business owner training other marketers. And that's really where the origins of Bizhack Academy. And for many, many years I felt like I lived in the non story planet. Like this part of my brain was just dormant. And then over time I came to realize, oh my God, storytelling is actually the most powerful differentiator, the most powerful tool for business growth, the most powerful for creating human to human connections.
Dan Grech [:Which is at the core of all business.
Sara Lohse [:Yep.
Dan Grech [:And I'm like, dang. So the last couple years have been what I call this integration or the synthesis of what felt like these two very different careers in journalistic storytelling and business growth.
Sara Lohse [:See, I just found out that there's a master's degree in storytelling, and when we get off this call, I'm looking into that.
Dan Grech [:Yeah. It's called an MFA in Creative Writing. And if you focus on nonfiction, then it's more about structure and story. You can also learn about it in fiction. I love nonfiction storytelling. I struggle to come up with stuff, but I love researching and interviewing and gathering the pieces and then learning how to put it together.
Sara Lohse [:Yeah. I had said my whole life because I've always been a writer. And everyone through college professors would just tell me, okay, you have to just go be a writer. And I always said no, because I'm like, I'm not going to be an author. I don't. I'm not good at making up stories.
Dan Grech [:Yeah.
Sara Lohse [:And I kind of forgot that there's the option to just tell my own. And so that's what, like, my book is my stories. And I did the thing I said I never would do.
Dan Grech [:That's amazing. Well, Sara, let me. I. Let's nerd it out for a quick sec. I'm going to tell you. I'm going to summarize my MFA in 30 seconds. Okay. So most MFA programs are a bunch of people sitting around in a circle who aren't good writers critiquing each other and trying to kind of one up each other in front of the instructor.
Dan Grech [:That's, like the structure of most MFA programs. But there's. And. And. And writing in general is like a skill you just practice and get better at, like, riding a bike. And then now with AI, you know, it's become faster and easier to draft things and then revise them. So what actually does an MFA offer that is of value? In my opinion, it's studying the bone structure of stories. Like.
Dan Grech [:Like human beings, there's an infinite variety of us. Skin color, eye color, you know, what we wear, so how we dress ourselves up. But the bone structure is the same. And that's true with story as well. Whether it's a movie or a short video or a social media post or a. A novel. And so that's what I learned. And the study of story structure really was kicked off by Aristotle.
Dan Grech [:And then in modern times, you have, like, two giant titans. Joseph Campbell and the Hero's Journey. And for those of you who know Donald Miller and the story brand methodology. That's just kind of a slight re. Cooking of the Joseph Campbell hero's journey for writing a website. And then the other is Carl Jung, who talked about archetypes, and that's really more about, like, the different characters. And Donald Miller also referenced that when he talks about the hero and the mentor, the hero and the guide. That's straight out of Carl Jung.
Sara Lohse [:I think I learned about Carl Jung in my psychology classes.
Dan Grech [:100%. He's mostly known as a psychologist. Yeah, but dude, story is psychology. I mean, I know. It's just. It's the same thing. It's all about persuasion. It's about connection.
Dan Grech [:It's about helping people frame, you know, framing. And so. So, yeah, it's no surprise that one of the great, you know, I mean, Joseph Campbell was a mythologist. He. He was essentially an anthropologist who studied mythology across culture and realize they are all telling the same. A version of the same story. So that's what I did as I studied those dudes. And then I applied their best practices and lessons to all of my communications and all of my teaching.
Sara Lohse [:I love that. Yeah, I. So I have a bachelor's in advertising and a bachelor's in psychology, and my background is in the marketing world. And people will say, like, well, those degrees have nothing to do with each other. Why would you have them? And then I just give them a minute, and they. It kind of just hits them like, oh, okay. Psychology means that you can figure out how to sell things to anybody. And so then the advertising makes sense.
Dan Grech [:You look at Russell Brunson, Alex Hermosi, they're just like, leveraging psychology and how to create desire and to build a sense of value. A perception of value.
Sara Lohse [:Yeah. So, Larry, how's it going over there?
Larry Roberts [:Yeah, I'm just hanging out. Y'all were doing your degree measuring contest and. And seeing who's smart.
Sara Lohse [:Oh, he won. He wins.
Larry Roberts [:And I'm just here hanging out.
Sara Lohse [:He. He wins.
Larry Roberts [:So I'm curious, though, in all honesty, I'm curious, Dan. How do you see. And we're just going to kind of go beyond the.
Dan Grech [:The.
Larry Roberts [:The philosophy of storytelling here and kind of bring it up to 2025. How. How do you see AI integrating into the storytelling process and. And what sort of impact are you seeing on AI when compared to traditional storytelling methods and using AI to maybe overcome some of the shortcomings that certain authors may have and using AI to still reach their audience?
Dan Grech [:You know, one of the big lessons from Donald Miller is it's all about them, it's all about your client. And so I just want to just quickly address to your audience, like, why they should even care about how AI helps with storytelling. And here's the bottom line. Most small businesses are what I call me too businesses, which means that they are essentially indistinguishable from their competition. Right. And the three main factors you use to distinguish yourself, which is offering a lower price, having a more innovative product or doing better customer service, all of those, everybody claims them, nobody really has them. And it's very, very hard to actually market that as a real difference. And so in the end, for most small businesses, I truly believe that the only unique value proposition they have, the only differentiator they have is the owner, is the founding story, is the core values, is the reason they do what they do and why it matters.
Dan Grech [:So that's, that's why storytelling should matter because it'll, you'll grow faster. Much.
Larry Roberts [:Let me, let me jump in there then. And I firmly believe that storytelling is an absolute critical role into growing a personal brand and your personal business. But how do you make people care about your story? You know, in my experience, obviously, you know, we've only been using AI now for about two and a half years. Not even that long really, just a little over two years in a content creation perspective. Anyways, I was using AI before AI was cool as a business intelligence analyst. But we're seeing it now create a ton of different content. Sara mentioned my latest book. I, I did write all but one chapter with ChatGPT and I did use the analogy of the Red hat as a, as a branding moniker of sort throughout each of the chapters.
Larry Roberts [:And I would challenge anybody to determine that it was written with AI based on the way that it sounds. But how do you get people to care? Because I, I can sit here and, and not to be confrontational by any means. And I sound confrontational just because this isn't my voice. I'm, I barely have a but. But I can make AI sound pretty doggone human. Human. And so how do you make people care about your stories? As a business owner, as a personal brand, as an up and coming thought leader, why would anybody care?
Dan Grech [:So they do care. You care who you do business with and you need to like and trust them. So it's not that they don't care. It's more about how do you execute against telling your story in a way that doesn't feel self promotional, that doesn't feel indulgent. Here's the bottom line, Luke Skywalker is the hero of the story. Your client, your customer, your prospect is the hero of the story. But when Luke needed to learn to become a Jedi Knight, did he just hire some random dude off the street? No, he hired another Jedi to teach him. And if Obi Wan or Yoda were not Jedi, he would not have hired them.
Dan Grech [:So you need to establish your bona fides. You need to develop a relationship in order to do business or to get hired by, or to hire or to partner with anyone. And the fastest and best way to do that is through values driven, purpose based storytelling, talking about why you do what you do, why it matters, why you're really dedicated to this, yada, yada. And so people do care a lot. And then the other thing, I'll say, and we'll talk about AI as more of a strategic tool in a second, but I want to talk about AI for a second in this era of inauthenticity. So we know on social media that authenticity is what really matters and counts. And so we're getting to this really weird space where we can have a simulacra, a robot essentially seeming authentic and mimicking our voice and our parroting our, you know, our, our conversation. I think we're going to be quickly moving to a place of desperation for authentic human connection.
Dan Grech [:And if another way to think about this, so, so it's your only differentiator or unique value proposition from a marketing perspective is the owner and the values and the company and culture that she or he has built. But in addition to that, people are going to get really thirsty for just interacting with another human being. I mean, it's, it's gonna get harder and harder to tell what's a robot online versus what's given. But if there is a, you know, you know, and so I think that there's going to become a higher premium on that and people are going to be willing to pay more for it. So there's going to be like, in my opinion, a race to the bottom where AI driven and intelligent automated companies that can do things really cheaply can, you know, will cut undercut prices. And then on the top end of the spectrum, for those who are willing to pay for a human being, there's going to be a premium paid.
Sara Lohse [:I was just going to say, I think that's the kind of the foundation of why podcasting and video is king right now. Because you watch a video and it's like, that is a person. You can tell someone's talking. That is a person. I mean, now they have like AI hosted podcasts.
Larry Roberts [:I mean, you don't have a script, you just have a conversation. You have real humanity here. And you know, what I was going to say too is we already saw this with like automated customer service operations. I mean, how many times do people get on the phone? This is before AI was even a thing. I mean, it was a thing, but not from a public facing thing. You're just like, please God, give me a human, human person. Operator, operator, operator. You already wanted that.
Larry Roberts [:And now that we have this AI revolution that's taking place, people are overlooking the frustrations we already had because they're making these automated systems more human. But they're obviously not. So I, I 100 agree, Dan, by.
Dan Grech [:The way, the people who are overlooking this are the business owners.
Larry Roberts [:Oh, 100, you know, it's not the customers.
Dan Grech [:The customers are getting more and more thirsty. It's complicated, right? No, Google Notebook LM right, upload some documents, get an incredibly realistic sounding podcast. And it must, it forces, you know, you, Sara and Larry and me, Dan, to ask ourselves, like, what are we providing? Right, that's authentic and real and that can't be reproduced by Google Notebook lm And I have two answers that I've come up with on this and I'd love to share them with you. So, and I'm probably missing some stuff. This is like work in progress. So Sara, jump in and tell me what I'm forgetting. But when I think about like what AI is really doing, generative AI, especially for us creatives, us brand marketers, us writers, is asking what is distinctly human versus what can be replicated by a machine. And it's like we're negotiating that line every day.
Dan Grech [:And the better the machines get, the more we have to define down who we are or what we are. Here's what I don't think any AI could ever replicate. And it's what's in my noggin. And there's two things in my noggin that I think are completely unaided. And number one is lived experiences, anecdotes, stories from my life. You know, when I was younger, my mom did this or you know, when I was starting my work, this happened, you know, that kind of like anecdote. And then the second thing is insights that come from lived experience and just years of doing something, you know, that 10,000 hours idea expertise, you can have a simulacrum of expertise, but there is no, you know, it's like when you hire that technician to come in your house at Handyman and they have years of doing something and they just intuit, right, something that is not written in any manual that no robot could understand, but that yet, you know, they understand that, that. So insights and anecdotes, I believe, are really the only things that, you know, a thought leader can contribute uniquely.
Dan Grech [:And so when you're writing a speech, right, think about what are the anecdotes, what are the insights that are special that you want to incorporate and then have AI help with everything else. You know, the research, the data, the thanking people for being there, you know, the boilerplate, all the text that you know, makes up a speech. But like it's those moments of where of storytelling and analysis that I think are unique to a human being with, with years of experience and expertise and, and that's where I would lean in as a thought leader and as a brander.
Sara Lohse [:When I talk about storytelling, you talk about it from like a business owner. I often talk about it as personal brand, as thought and thought leadership. And I'm often talking to people that are in very like data driven industries. And it's really a mindset shift that I have to help them make with just kind of telling them that the data can be Googled and the data, all that information that you're offering, it's out there. Like there is no lack of information right now. We are in that information age. Google or ChatGPT can come up with anything we want it to. The only thing that you can't Google is your story.
Larry Roberts [:That's what I was going to with chapter three. You mentioned that I wrote chapter three of my latest book and chapter three is really the story of why I wear a red hat and chat. GPT doesn't know that. Notebook. Notebook. LM doesn't know that story. It's my own personal lived experience that led me to branding myself with the red hat. So of course I had to write that I had to share that story.
Larry Roberts [:And that's something that AI can never do. So I mean, that in itself is a prime example of exactly what you were talking about there, Dan.
Sara Lohse [:Yeah, and you asked before, like, how do you get people to care about your story? And I mean, storytelling has been in like civilization since the beginning. And like with cave paintings, like those were stories before we had written language. And all people are looking for is human connection. So it's not that you have to make them care about your story, but if you talk about something that they can connect to, that they can relate to inherently, they're going to care about that story. So it's not really like, how do I make someone care about my story? It's how do I tell a story that people care about?
Dan Grech [:Exactly.
Larry Roberts [:And I phrased the question incorrectly when I was saying that because that was the point that I was trying to make. How do we connect to people on a storytelling level? Why does someone care about my story? How do I tell that story in a way that ignites a flame in them as well and allows them to relate back to the examples or the experiences that I've shared with them?
Dan Grech [:And, and let me, let me put a really fine point on this so that if there's anyone who doubts this, I doubt they'd be listening to this podcast if they doubted this as a truth. But let's do it. Number one, the biggest companies in the history of the world, Apple, Google, Amazon, you know, Tesla, we know their founding stories and the, and the stories of their CEOs intimately. We read books about them, we study them. They have huge PR company, they have huge, you know, communications efforts, and a lot of time is spent by these founders telling their personal story. And this best practice that comes from the biggest companies in the world. You see this all the way down at the micro business. You know, you go into the restaurant, it's an Italian restaurant, third generation ownership.
Dan Grech [:You're greeted at the door by the grandson, right? The menu has Grandma Nona's recipes. And there's a picture, a grainy picture from some town in Italy, you know, of the immigrant, you know, the family immigrating to the United States, starting this restaurant. There's a paragraph on their menu, right, that talks about the values and the history of this place. And then there's, you know, Chipotle, right, and Subway, which are also great, but they don't have that human connection. And so every small business, in my opinion, should have a version of the Grandma Nona story. Even if, like, you're an IT services provider, an msp, because every, you know, those look very similar. They're a technology company. Either you're a webmaster or they're overseeing your IT infrastructure.
Dan Grech [:But ultimately, like, you know, they need to trust that you're going to be there when things break, right? Like, you're primarily a safety net and a risk avoider in a way to help the CTO of a company avoid getting embarrassed when things break down, because you only notice it when it doesn't work. And so that CTO needs to trust that, that msp, that, that IT services company is going to be there when they need them. And that's About a human bond and a human connection. And so I work, I am the fractional cmo. I'm basically the head of marketing for an msp. And the owner of the company has been around for 35 years. And he has an amazing philosophy of customer service. But he tells this story that I think is just a killer about.
Dan Grech [:When he was in college, he used to be a payphone specialist. This is back when you had like these coin operated payphones and there were two payphones.
Larry Roberts [:Yeah, exactly. I remember those. I, I do remember those.
Sara Lohse [:I think I used one one time in my life. Yeah, it was like right before they died.
Dan Grech [:Yeah, I mean, it was, it was why quarters were invented. That's what a pay phone is. So he would literally go door to door to restaurants and sell them on the idea that instead of leasing the payphone from the phone company, they could essentially buy the pay phone and then keep the quarters. And that was his job, is he was like basically selling payphones door to door. And that was, believe it or not, the beginning of the communications, unified communications, VoIP arm of his IT company. So there's this great picture of his old business card. CEO's name, payphone specialist. And so what I love is he was like a champion of the little guy, helping them save money, fighting against Ma Bell, you know, giving that, getting money back in their pocket, helping them, you know, have a better IT experience.
Dan Grech [:And, and, and he's just done that for his whole life. And so when you hear that, you're like, okay, yeah, this guy's got my back, he shares my values, he's in it for me, and I'm gonna hire him instead of the identical looking MSP or 30 MSPs. When I Google and they all list, I.
Sara Lohse [:Okay, I have a question. Well, I have two questions for you first. And these are like more opiniony. How do you feel about, like, because storytelling, everyone kind of knows it's a thing now, but I don't think a lot of people do it. Right. Yeah, everyone kind of falls. And we've talked about this several times, everyone kind of falls back onto their childhood trauma story, even though a lot of the times it has nothing to do with the message they're trying to get across. Like, like when you watch American Idol and every single contestant has a childhood trauma story so that you remember them.
Sara Lohse [:Yes, but why do I need to know about that? Just to hear. To know that you're a good singer. Is. Are you kind of in the mindset of like, we don't need to, like, only lean on those trauma stories or do you think that the trauma stories are good foundation?
Dan Grech [:Yeah, the latter. It's a necessary but not sufficient component of your business story. So there are three parts of a business story and the, what I call the origin story, which you're calling the trauma story, is one of the three and it's an absolutely essential pillar because we are all imprinted by what happened to us as children. And believe it or not, whether you realize it or not, we are living out things that were like seated in us in our childhood, throughout the rest of our lives. And almost always businesses that we found or thought leadership focuses that we have relate to things that happen to us as kids. Now, I'd say about 50% of the businesses owners that I talked to have trauma stories that were their origin story. And the other 50% are stories of love, like positive examples from their parents and so forth. But the other two elements that are missing and that need you need to round out is number, number two is the founding story, the startup story.
Dan Grech [:So why did you start your business? What problem were you trying to solve? What were the specific circumstances? What were your initial thoughts about what you were actually trying to do? And then the last piece is the core purpose. Why does what you do matter in the world? And all three of these are needed. So the first one is needed because it really establishes that you're doing this for a deeper reason than just to make money. Right. And that this is something that's been true of you pretty much forever. And, and people really connect with those founding, those origin stories. But then the founding story is really much more about like what problem in the world you were trying to solve with your company. And obviously it evolves from there.
Dan Grech [:But like that initial entrepreneurial spark, that 0 to 1, that thing that gets you to do get off your bum and take this huge risk and, and run at something people love understanding. And then the last is like, well, why does all this matter? Like, yeah, why, why does having a great family owned restaurant matter? Why does having a trusted IT services company matter? Right. And I have yet to really find a small business that doesn't have a core purpose that's compelling. And I do find that a lot of times companies forget to tell that story. But when you have those three, you have this like really rounded picture. And then the last thing I'll say is, you do not want to talk about this more than is absolutely necessary. So I don't think this should really be more than about 10% of your overall communications. But don't Skip it.
Sara Lohse [:I do love that you said, like, some of them it like, it is that like trauma story, but some of them, it's like the positive. And a lot of people, when I'm talking to them about like starting to tell their story, they'll tell me that they don't have one. And I think it's because when we talk about our story, we automatically kind of associate it with some like, big traumatic event when it doesn't have to be. And I think that's like kind of what I've been seeing so much and why it's been getting honestly a little bit frustrating is that if you don't have that, you just don't even start telling a story because you think that like having a story about like, I had great parents and this is what they instilled in me. Like, it doesn't seem like it matters as much.
Dan Grech [:Yeah, I'll give you like a real life example of this. So I'm working right now with the incredible visionary CEO of a psychotherapy practice. She has, I think six locations, 100 psychotherapists. And so, and we read all of her bio stuff and none of what I'm about to tell you is anywhere on any of her printed materials. So I said like, well, why, why did you want to be a psychotherapist? Why did you want to be a business owner? Why did you want to create a practice with other psychotherapists? And she began talking about where she grew up in this tiny town called Vestigial Virgin in New York, like crazy, like the tiniest small town. And it was like everything you could imagine of a upstate New York small town. Like everybody knew everybody. And you know, there were community potlucks and, and you know, they walked, they played in the street until it got dark.
Dan Grech [:Like exactly what you imagine. And she just saw the power and beauty of a community. And then her parents, her dad was this brilliant self taught person and her mom was actually a business owner, an entrepreneur who started her own travel agency and grew it to be pretty large. And so all of that fits into and aligns with the desire to create a community of psychotherapists helping others combat loneliness. Right. Which is really at the essence of what they do. And then the modeling on her mom as a kind of pioneering female entrepreneur. Now I then asked her for like a story, an anecdote from her childhood, and she came up blank.
Dan Grech [:And so I said, homework, think about. And so we're interviewing her again tomorrow and my goal is to see if we can't get like a vivid story from her childhood when she found herself creating community. Right? And what I bet is going to happen is she joined, she was like the president of some club and she organized a group, right. Or her mom did this or that. And it's gonna, she'll, she'll find an anecdote. And then once you have that anecdote, it's like a precision instrument. You deploy that, that anecdote as a way to create connection and highlight these themes and values. So, so you want to have like, you want to identify what is the example.
Dan Grech [:In this case, it's a story of love that she's passing forward, and it's a multi generational one. But now we need to just like search for like an anecdote from her childhood that she can then use in sales settings. Like an example that you hear a lot from entrepreneurs is, you know, like I told you, I sold blow pops for a quarter. It's funny, a lot of entrepreneurs sell candy because that's like, they recognize that.
Larry Roberts [:That'S how you get started. Yeah. One of the first things, I mean, I just sold blow.
Sara Lohse [:But aside, I was, I was waiting for that.
Larry Roberts [:Yeah.
Sara Lohse [:Of course, as soon as he said blow pops, I'm just like, take away the pot.
Dan Grech [:The best business owners are drug dealers. We know that. We know that from the wire for sure.
Sara Lohse [:I actually, when I worked at a restaurant, so I asked the managers if they would hire like ex cons. And it's like, well, depends what they, what they were in for. Like, if it's a drug dealer, absolutely, bring them in. They're going to sell so much. Okay, but second question. And I have asked this several times to people who are work in pr, and you are a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist. And if you don't know what this is, I give up. Because I'm convinced I'm just crazy because no one has ever heard of this term.
Larry Roberts [:I'm convinced you're crazy too.
Sara Lohse [:I know. Do you know what a nut graph is?
Dan Grech [:Oh, yeah.
Larry Roberts [:Oh, good.
Sara Lohse [:Oh, thank you.
Larry Roberts [:It does not exist. It's not a real thing.
Sara Lohse [:It does. And every single person, even like people in pr, when I say, like, do you know what a nut graph is? Because if anytime I mentioned they're like, what are you talking about?
Larry Roberts [:No, not a real.
Sara Lohse [:Okay, thank you.
Dan Grech [:Journalists.
Sara Lohse [:Some of them even were journalists. And like I said, I think I had to Google it on an episode because I'm like, guys, this exists, I promise. And no one had ever heard of it.
Dan Grech [:All right, I think we need to Define the term.
Sara Lohse [:So it's a nut graph is the entire article in a nutshell. It's the first paragraph of an article so that if you don't read past it, you at least understand what it was about. In a nutshell. Nut graph. Nutshell paragraph. No one has heard of it.
Dan Grech [:Dude, it's a total shot.
Larry Roberts [:Did she nail it? I mean, is that accurate?
Dan Grech [:She completely nailed it. I'll give you a nut graph. You know, in one of the most important conversations in the history of storytelling, comma, Larry, Sara, and Dan discussed the profound impact of telling your personal story on growing your business. Bam. Now, you could start with, like, a little bit of a soft lead. Like an anecdotally, you could say, you know, Dan Gretsch got up and had a cup of coffee and then walked downstairs into his studio and began to speak on the most extraordinary podcast he's ever been on, Branded. And then, you know, in a conversation that will change the world forever, they talked about how storytelling could drive business growth. Bam.
Sara Lohse [:So, yeah, by the way, one last.
Dan Grech [:One last quick thing.
Sara Lohse [:Yeah.
Dan Grech [:The pyramid, right?
Sara Lohse [:They talk about the inverted pyramid.
Dan Grech [:This goes directly to the inverted pyramid, which is the style of, like, the Associated Press. And the nut graph is the entire article in one paragraph, and then you kind of unwind all the data and the information in the rest of it. That's what the entire paragraph is. And the nut graph is at the top.
Sara Lohse [:The way. The way you said it actually made me realize something, too, that, like, I don't know how it took me this long to figure it out. So, Larry, this is for you.
Larry Roberts [:Okay.
Sara Lohse [:When we are. When we're working with a podcast that we're going to launch with our client, and we're writing their podcast description, and we need to get that unique listening proposition in that first paragraph. That's because we're writing the nut graph. We have, like, the first paragraph is usually all someone's going to read. So we have to get the unique listening proposition shoved in there.
Dan Grech [:Yeah. Let me talk to Red Hat. Red Hat. This is just the hook, man. Just the hook. It's like, what do you.
Larry Roberts [:I. I get it. I get.
Dan Grech [:What do you read that hooks you in, that says, this is worth continuing?
Larry Roberts [:I'm just not mature enough to use that term. It's just not something I. I just. I can't do it. It's just not. It's not in my vocabulary.
Dan Grech [:You're the nut host.
Larry Roberts [:I am the nut host. Wow. And with that, Dan, this has been an amazing conversation, but we do have to wrap it up, man. Honestly, I, I really appreciate you taking the time to join us this morning. I love everything that you brought to the table and really appreciate the insight and of course, driving home the fact that the nut graph sums everything up. So it exists. Yes, it does exist. So, Dan, real quick, give us a nut graph on how folks can find you, connect with you and learn more about you.
Dan Grech [:And, you know, I hate having, like, questions hanging over, so I just wanted to quickly address the question from earlier about how AI can help with all this and the bottom line, the bottom line is I'll give you a couple quick tips. Number one, everybody has a voice, right? And a voice is the tone and style of communications. And if you don't have a. If you don't know what your written voice is, just record your a transcript of you speaking and then ask ChatGPT to describe the voice. Right. Everybody speaks in a certain tone and style, right?
Larry Roberts [:Yep.
Dan Grech [:Once you've established what is your brand voice, what is your. Your tone of voice, then you can train a custom GPT and you can Google how to do that in ChatGPT and then everything that you write from there on can have that brand voice, that is. And then when it comes to telling your personal story, a lot of people, what, they don't mind telling their story. People love telling their story, but they mind writing it up. So get someone you love to interview you about why you do what you do and why it matters. Take that transcript and then invite ChatGPT in your brand voice to then write it up. And we actually are creating at Biz Hack, and this goes to the other question, which is self promotion, which is we're creating a virtual biographer that we're going to be releasing as a product next year that's trained in how to interview you about your.
Larry Roberts [:That's amazing. I love that.
Dan Grech [:Yeah. About your startup story, about your origin story, and about your core purpose and then it will write them up for you. This is a. Something that we currently sell as a service where we. I do the interviewing. We have a professional writer. It's a $2,500 product and we're going to be releasing it next year. Leveraging AI to help people get their story down at, you know, a tiny fraction of the cost.
Dan Grech [:We really want to reach that million business owners. And so if you want to reach us, go to bizhack.com b I z h-a c-k.com. you can also find us on social media at Bizhack Academy. We have a YouTube channel at Bizhack Academy where you'll see just a ton of videos talking about this. And then you can also find us on social media where we're constantly giving tips on AI and storytelling.
Larry Roberts [:I love that. That's amazing. I love the fact that you're doing the AI Driven biographer. I think that's really, really cool. That's something very similar to what I do. I help people write their books with AI in their brand voice. So that's one of the product offerings that I bring to the as well. So for anybody listening, if you need help writing those custom GPTs, reach out to Old Lair.
Larry Roberts [:I'm more than happy to help. But Dan, I love it, man. Thank you so very much for joining us. Hey everybody, if you got some value and you know, typically this is what I say, but I know you got some value out of this episode. There was a ton of value from the time we hit record to the time we're wrapping this thing up. Dan really brought it to us and we really, really appreciate that. So if you did find some value, do us a favor, hit that subscribe button so we can continue to bring you these amazing episodes. Episodes and these just unbelievable Pulitzer Prize winning guests.
Larry Roberts [:That's insane. So, Dan, thank you once again. We love you, appreciate you. And we'll see you on the next episode of Branded.
