Sell the Mission, Not the Product with Dan Grech

Introduction and the power of telling your story

00:00Bill Gallagher: Have you ever had a week when you're completely slammed, but somehow nothing actually moved? Is this one of those weeks? That's not really a time problem. It's a busyness habit problem. My new book, Busy Is Broken: Do Less, Scale More, is all about growing by doing less, not more. Read or listen to a sample chapter over at busyisbroken.com. That's busyisbroken.com. It's also on Amazon and other booksellers.

00:31Bill Gallagher: Live. At least prerecorded live. I'm live. Hey. Are you any good at telling your story? Are you any good at telling the story of your business? Are you sure? How do you think you're good? Well, if you think you're bad, this is a great show for you. If you think you're good, we might want to check that. We want to up your game, but there's a lot of power in great storytelling.

01:00Bill Gallagher: Hey, everybody. I'm Bill Gallagher, Scaling Coach and host of the Scaling Up Business Podcast, weekly in your ear. 670 episodes or so now, and we love doing it. We bring shows to you every week about growing, scaling your business and people and authors and CEOs and lots of things that would have you up your game around strategy, people, execution, cash. People and strategy are both really central to the things that we want to move with great storytelling, and that is the subject of our show today.

01:35Bill Gallagher: You'll find all our back shows and more—where are we getting this right now? Like, subscribe, do all that, or go to scalingcoach.com where you can also get into our newsletter, come to one of our workshops, join one of my cohorts, all that stuff and more at scalingcoach.com.

01:53Bill Gallagher: All right. Dan Grech. Dan Grech joins me now. He is on already if you're watching the video. I want to go to show Dan. So Dan's a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and an entrepreneur. He's got a business we'll talk about, about developing the story around your brand. He's an author of an upcoming book, Your Business Is Your Story. He's a graduate of Princeton. A lot of great things. We're going to get into all of that and more when we talk about his journalism. Dan, welcome to the show.

02:26Dan Grech: Thank you. It's an honor to be here.

02:28Bill Gallagher: So Dan and I met at a business workshop recently, and we got into talking about the power of storytelling, and I'm very passionate about it. I've had many guests on talking about storytelling in the past and from different angles. And it's a thing that I think is really, really important. So I'm excited to tackle this with somebody who's got such a great background. Before we get into it, you famously told me right in the beginning that you got fired from a Miami NPR affiliate, and then it precipitated a whole change in your life. Tell us your story.

Getting fired from NPR and the origin of BizHack Academy

03:09Dan Grech: Well, first of all, I'll say I'm going to definitely tell a lot of stories today, but I'm also going to kind of go meta, like a magician showing his tricks. And so I'll start by saying people love failure stories. And this is one of my best. And particularly, the failure story involving getting fired publicly and humiliated is particularly appealing to many entrepreneurs because many of us are unemployable and had similar things happen early in our careers. In my case, I was on this incredible trajectory, became one of the youngest news directors of a major market NPR station, won literally hundreds of national awards with my team, and was a complete arrogant prick who deserved to get his ass fired. It came suddenly and unexpectedly and publicly. It was published in the local newspapers. It was published in the trade press. There was an investigative reporter who was looking into why would such an accomplished news director, sort of on the rise, get fired, and they were kind of trying to see if there were financial or sexual improprieties. And the truth of the matter is, no, it was just hubris, arrogance, kind of this misreading of the room, believing that all those awards would shield me.

04:41Dan Grech: And they liked the results. They liked the team. They didn't like the guy leading it. And it was the most difficult moment in my professional career and also one of the most important learnings I've ever had. And it kind of catapulted me onto my entrepreneurial journey because I was this mid-career ex-journalist with no job prospects who needed to reskill. And the way I wanted to reskill was to learn how to do marketing, and I ended up starting a marketing training company to help myself and others like me.

05:11Bill Gallagher: So before we continue on the story and talk about the storytelling and the next story and like on like that, I guess it's really useful to underscore a couple things there. One of them is that by and large, executives and CEOs don't like telling failure stories. It's really uncomfortable. We like to spin everything as like, I'm a total winner and all I do is win, and my biggest weakness is that I care too much and, it's just painful and nauseating how we can't bring any humanity to anything. And I don't know what every listener heard, but they probably all heard moments where they were arrogant or proud or thought about or reminded of things where they failed and thought that somehow they could salvage it or not. Like, I had a huge career thing where I was white hot, super cool, and I was an asshole, and I got fired for being an asshole. And I mean, there was like a little business pretense for the firing, but really it was about that I was a jerk. And I humiliated somebody who eventually became my boss. And I get—oh, look. I was young, and I was full of myself. But and like you, I went and I'm like, oh, I need to do something else now. And it's hard. It's really hard.

06:34Dan Grech: And what I want to point out there, we're going to—I'm going to keep kind of like doing this, like, meta thing where we're—yeah, it's going to be a little annoying for you, Bill, but hopefully useful for the audience. I'm going to, like, observe what's happening here. So my core belief is in authenticity creates bonds of liking and trust that drive business results. So I am telling that very well-rehearsed story in a way that hopefully feels fresh and authentic with a very specific goal of making you like and trust me. Not just you, but your audience. And one of the signals that a story is working is when they come back to you with their own story. And one of the cool things about, quote, the firing story is so many of us have a story like that. Mine is really heightened. It was, like, published in newspapers that this happened to me, which makes it, I think, all the more, like, relatable and appealing. But I love that you shared that, and thank you for it. And that's, like, the gift. Like, the exchange is sort of the sharing of stories. That's kind of an age-old thing that we do. And ultimately, my core thesis is business is human to human. And so stories help create that.

07:54Bill Gallagher: A lot of times, we'll mash back on top of it. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Let's go back to my story. I don't want to hear your story. And we don't realize that person just connected on something with us, right? And when I answer back, I'm wanting to create relatability and connection and, like, a common bond there with something. But I think, before we get into that, one of the—we didn't cover so much, but let's just distinguish for a minute, on the fly, the difference between storytelling and talking about things. There's something different, like storytelling somehow connects you to something and other people can describe things for you and leave you cold. And somehow—

08:45Bill Gallagher: A description is not storytelling. So we didn't prepare for it so much, but what would you say is the distinction between the two?

Distinguishing storytelling from describing things

08:56Dan Grech: I call this story for the sake of story, which is like ornament, and then storytelling that is strategic, which has a specific business outcome in mind. And that's the huge difference. The way that you get away from story as ornament and turn story into strategy is through what I call the parable moral framework, which actually comes straight out of religion and sermons. But it was taught to me by Ira Glass of This American Life, one of the fathers of NPR storytelling. The idea is that you tell the story and then explain what it means. And the problem is a lot of times we tell stories without either explaining what it means or even sometimes fully understanding what it means. And so that's how you make that shift.

09:53Bill Gallagher: There's a couple other things that I noticed for me. When people are talking about things, describing things, there's no temporality. It's just data points. It's like talking from bullets. There's no emotional connection. So there's not an arc. There's descriptions. There is no emotion, no feeling with it. There's no openness, no generosity, no sharing. It's just reporting on and describing things in a fairly cold fashion. And I think we're a lot devoid of and uncomfortable with emotion culturally and even more maybe in business that those things come out. So people start and they tell you about their business and they describe things and they don't say, you know, they don't tell you the story like, okay. I got fired from my thing and I started this thing and it led to this and then morphed in this way and now I am. Like, there's not an arc in time. There's not a—there's no emotion. There's no sharing. There's no openness with the descriptive…

11:00Dan Grech: I see what you're saying. Yeah. People in that situation are reciting resume bullet points and talking surface level, and they're not connecting story to values. Core values that have been there since they were a kid. And so the exercises that we do in my consulting are really about connecting you up to those values, and that has two really important and interlocking outcomes. The first is you start to internalize the value that your business is providing. In other words, it's not like you trying to prove something to the world. It's you doing something because it's essential to who you are. That's what it means to go from externalizing to internalizing your value. And then the other is embodying your purpose. So when you talk about your resume, you're almost like talking about someone else. But when you talk about your larger purpose that comes from this really deep place in your history and your influences, you're able to embody that in a way that solves all of the problems that you just described, which is essentially just staying at the surface.

12:18Bill Gallagher: You know, the other thing that you mentioned, I think is interesting is in business storytelling, there's a—like, I could tell a story that's pretty emotional and powerful and just leave you and you're just like a whole world of feelings and thoughts and things like that. And if I'm intentional and take the strategic thing and I throw a question out and I say, when was the last time you called your mom? Or I don't know, whatever it is. I mentioned that because my mom called me this morning. I couldn't take her call. I'll be feeling guilty until I call her back later today. But I think there's that. You flip it to them. And then the other one you talked about is you tell them—you tell the story and then you tell the moral story. You know, I noticed something about my relationship with women after I saw that thing with my mom. Boom. Now I'm like, oh, I've translated. I've internalized. I've now reflected on. I told you the story of what happened with me and my mom, and then I told you the thing. Now I'm mapping it, and then I turn to you and I go, when's the last time you had a—or what do you notice about that? And then, like, that's a very powerful storytelling turned into a whole thing.

13:38Dan Grech: Yeah. I call what you're describing the—there's a technique that's called the magnetic question. I think of stories as being like a magnet that attract your ideal stakeholder, your ideal customer, your ideal employee, your ideal partner, and also repel and help you figure out when to say no. And the magnetic question is ideally a single phrase that you can use at a networking event to immediately identify if the person you're talking to is your ideal client profile. So I'll just give you the example for my business, which is, is there a purpose to your business beyond profit? Is there a purpose to your business beyond profit? And when I ask a business owner that, there's three possible answers. One is yes. Of course. And then I ask, what is it? And they tell me. And then I ask, how good are you at telling that story to all your important stakeholders? Inevitably, they're like, I'm not good at that. And then I say that's what I do for a living. I help businesses with that. The other answer is no. I don't have a purpose beyond profit. Usually, I'll say, are you sure? And then if they say, no. I really don't. It's just about making money. I say, awesome. You know, I work with companies where it's about more than making money. So if you ever bump into somebody who's looking for that kind of thing, I can help them and move on as quickly as possible. And then the third is I'm not sure. And that's a great answer because I said, well, that's what I help businesses get clear on. What is their purpose beyond profit? So, like, literally within two to three questions, I've established already what my value prop is in a way that feels very non-salesy.

The magnetic question that identifies ideal clients

15:25Bill Gallagher: You know, it's interesting. I think in selling and fundraising and partnering and that kind of thing, telling the origin story of your business or you're joining the business or the moment that you got excited about a thing beyond making money is a really interesting thing. Like, you get in touch with something that really connects with people. And then they start to see why you even care. I had a guy. I helped him grow his business some years ago and eventually sold it. And he's like, I don't really know. Do we have a purpose or not? Like, look, I bought this business, and I intend to grow it and sell it. And I did it because I thought it would make money. And I'm like, yeah. But there's a reason why this one and why you've stuck with it and what you're proud about here. And he's like, yeah. I'm not really sure that this is gonna pay off, but I'll indulge you. Right? Like so, like, okay. Let's see what happens. So I was working with this team. Right? When I do it, it's not usually with the individual. It's usually with a group of you. Sometimes with an individual, but often with the team. So I sent the team out to walk in pairs as I like to do with a lot of interesting questions. And I sent them out walking, and I said, like, what are the moments that you actually care about? Like, what are the moments where you were proud or where you told somebody about your business you were proud of what you did? What were you talking about there?

17:00Bill Gallagher: And they came back with a bunch of words, as I have people often do, and they put their little phrases and words and statements on sticky notes, and we put them on the wall, and then we move things around. And then after a couple minutes of moving around, what emerged was: we keep the world working. And when those words emerged from our moving around pieces of paper on the wall, there was like a little gasp in the room. There was, oh, that's beautiful. Right? And it's interesting that some of the people, this is a staffing agency, some of the people resonated with the idea of keeping employees employed so that they could feed their families, and other people resonated with keeping the business going that needed employees to keep going. Didn't matter. It worked for either person. They ended up putting it on the back of t-shirts that they wore around the office every day for years. Could still be that way today. I love that.

We keep the world working: finding purpose beyond profit

18:01Dan Grech: I want to talk about that gasp for a second. What is happening when they gasp is recognition, sometimes for the first time, of why they're doing what they're doing and why it matters. And I've had that experience at this point hundreds of times, that pause, that intake of breath, that gasp, and it is so powerful, not just as an emotional experience where you get that clarity and conviction, but actually as the foundation, the strategic foundation for building a business. And I think it's a beautiful description of what I really genuinely feel I was put on this earth to do, which is help people get to that gasp moment and then build a business from it.

18:54Bill Gallagher: Realise something they care about.

19:01Dan Grech: And then see it so sharply and clearly. And there's this great phrase called a blinding flash of the obvious. Like, these gasps are best when they're super obvious yet have never been stated out loud before. And Tom Peters has built a whole, basically, consulting practice around the blinding flashes of the obvious that we somehow don't see. And that's where coaches come in, is it's very, very hard to see it. But when someone holds up the mirror, suddenly things become clearer.

19:43Bill Gallagher: Tom Peters wrote the book In Search of Excellence. He's been on this show a number of times in the past. He's a lovely human, and he would connect business practices to common sense humanity kinds of things.

20:00Dan Grech: I love that. And then I did want to just do a quick call out. You were doing a version of an exercise that I call Peaks and Valleys, and you were focusing on the peaks. Right? What are the moments when you felt most empowered and ennobled and excited by the work? And what were the words that came to mind? What were those moments? But there's also the valley moments when you felt the most depressed, the most disconnected, the most like you wanted to walk away, and what were the values that were being violated in those moments. And those combinations of peaks and valleys can be incredibly clarifying when it comes to what are the company's core values and what is its larger purpose.

20:48Bill Gallagher: Yeah. I think the contrast of that, we do that often, especially with early stage companies. When we're looking at company values, company purpose, we look at both the things that you loved and were inspired by and are proud of, but we also look at the things that turn you off. The contrast, or the opposite of whatever that is, is something that you care about. Right? The moments that created a crisis for you that were upsetting to you. Right? Like, oh, I can't be with that.

21:20Dan Grech: Yeah. And I wanted to go back to something that sort of happened quickly when I was first telling that firing story, because it's like another really key tactical move that really unlocks all of this. Like, you don't want to present yourself as the hero of this story. Right? You don't want to make this narcissistic and all about you. Well, I do always want to make it… I mean, that's honestly, in our heads, we're always the heroes. Right? But as Donald Miller talks about, your customer is the hero, or whoever you're talking to is the hero, and you're the guide, the mentor. So how do you talk about yourself but in a way that isn't narcissistic or ego-serving? And the way is through what I call the Story of Me to Story of Us shift. This is an idea borrowed from a great thinker named Marshall Ganz. And so when I was talking about my firing, I was really talking about a problem. I was a mid-career ex-journalist who needed to learn marketing quickly to become employable. And so the way that I solved that problem for me was I built a course, a crash course in digital marketing. And then I realised, or I basically created a curriculum for myself that was a crash course in digital marketing, then I realised, well, there are a lot of other mid-career professionals and business owners that need to learn marketing quickly too. It's been the blocker for their business. So I started a company that was dedicated to solve that problem that I had first, but that so many others have, which is how to use marketing to grow their business. Right? And it was a little bit botched, but the idea is that Story of Me, from fired journalist, hyper-specific, really detailed, rooted in my personal experience, to what became kind of like a corporate mission. Right? Which is to make sure that the seven years that I spent struggling to figure out marketing, we compressed that journey into seven weeks. And the reason why is so that you and your business can thrive.

23:46Bill Gallagher: You know, it's really funny. So I've taught digital marketing at the college level, university level, and I have background in marketing, many millions of dollar companies. And I feel today like so staggeringly ineffective at it.

24:12Dan Grech: I call it the M Word. The M Word.

24:15Bill Gallagher: And I look around and I understand some of the basic ideas, but I feel so ineffective today at reaching people with things that I know would make a difference in developing lead flow. This is a terrible thing to say on my show and that kind of thing, because you'd think it would be just floods of stuff. I look, I'm successful on one level, but on another level, it's so humbling how… and I'm not a bad storyteller.

24:45Dan Grech: No, it's, you know, I call it the M Word because marketing is so frustrating to me and to so many businesses. I would say it's probably one of the sources of most frustration in business owners, and very few of us are marketers. I particularly appreciate this because I came to marketing in my forties. And though I've learned a few things, I've come to more or less recognise how little I really know, especially when it comes to the evolving technical aspects of it, which moves so quickly. And so the only response that I know to that, Bill, is to kind of root back into the thing that never changes, which is story and authentic connection. There's this beautiful line from Patti Digh saying the shortest distance between two people is a story.

Peaks and valleys reveal your core values

25:39Bill Gallagher: That's a lovely line. Lovely. Poetic.

25:45Dan Grech: Yeah. And so, you know, the more we move into performance-based marketing where we track every customer journey to AI-based marketing where the bots are doing the talking for us…

25:58Dan Grech: Intelligent automation, where we're setting it and forgetting it. The more the world of consumers and others want that human connection.

26:12Bill Gallagher: Yeah. The thing that I'm struck by this year—this is not in any way a New Year's resolve thing to share—but what I'm struck by this year is that the world that I play in is noisy and filled with big names with big budgets doing things. And the less generic I am, the better. The more personal flavor, unique, specific that I attract and repel people, probably the better for me. I've spent a good half of this year focusing more and more on what do I actually care about, what aspects of business growth, what version of business growth, what style of business growth, what kind of leadership is interesting to me, and letting more of the flavor come out.

27:07Dan Grech: Yeah. You know, one of my biggest frustrations in business is the phrase unique value proposition. Because so many of the businesses we run are really, I call it, a flavor of a me-too business. And, man, the competitive set—they're deeper pocketed, they're more established, they're bigger brands. How do you compete in a scenario like that? And I really only have one answer to that, which is exactly what you described, which is lean into what makes you you. Lean into that unique flavor that makes Bill Gallagher a delicious flavor of ice cream. You know, lean into your personal history and what you're sparky about and what you care most about, what I say is why you do what you do and why it matters. And the more you lean into that and the more you embody that in everything you do and say across all of your relationships, if nothing else, you carve a very unique and memorable and meaningful path, and you attract your ideal people to you.

28:20Bill Gallagher: Yeah. Yeah. I've got to trust and believe that. I think I've spent a lot of time thinking like, oh, I need to do more. I'm behind on certain things and feeling less than or inadequate. And that leads to overly desperate, thirsty behavior, which is never attractive, and thrashy, sort of high effort, not flowing, powerful, but effortful kinds of things. And that always is drag. And yet when you share your story and talk about this, it resonates. It connects differently than that brute force stuff.

29:02Dan Grech: Yeah. And I've been spending a lot of time thinking and honestly getting tested by the entrepreneurs that I work with to ask, well, how does getting clear about why you do what you do and why it matters—how does that actually translate to business results? You know, or is this just marketing fluff? And this is my answer, and it's probably an incomplete and imperfect answer, so I'd love you to help me make it better. But I see three really critical business outcomes that the clarity that comes from knowing why you do what you do and why it matters gives you. One is it helps you make more strategic decisions that are aligned with those values. Number two is it attracts people who are drawn to your larger mission. And perhaps most importantly, it shifts you from a more fear-based mindset to one that is more about growth and opportunity and love. And so it operates on three levels. It starts with strategy, like you said at the beginning, people, and then owner mindset.

30:21Bill Gallagher: So say more. What is your—in this case, what does strategy mean?

30:26Dan Grech: Yeah. So strategy is more or less how do you avoid the revenue chase and how do you know what to say no to. It becomes a strategic filter.

30:39Bill Gallagher: And then the people is about who you work with and who you sell to and who you buy from and that kind of thing? And who you partner with and how you interact with the community? Yeah. All those stakeholders.

30:53Dan Grech: So your customers, your team, and your partners, whether they're suppliers or business partners.

30:58Bill Gallagher: What's the owner mindset?

31:01Dan Grech: So the owner mindset is about shifting from fear-based to more growth-based or love-based decision making. So instead of being driven by fear, you're driven by purpose. And what that shift in mindset does is it helps you show up better as a leader. And it helps you really believe in the value you're providing. And that helps you on sales calls close deals. It helps you on investor calls articulate what you're doing and make them believe that you can actually accomplish it. It helps you with hiring people who are values-aligned. Like, just having that present in all of your conversations—what I call the light energy versus the dark energy of fear—makes a huge difference.

31:57Bill Gallagher: So let's play with that for a second. I love to talk just frankly and openly about things that I'm grappling with or that clients are grappling with. Right? But it's easier to talk about myself than—I don't always have permission to share client struggles. So I have been realizing my business is changing, needs to change now. And the way that I did business through 2019 got dislocated massively in 2020. And then actually, in responding, 2020, 2021, 2022 was way up because the crisis was clear on what to do. And then things got muddled as investment and the kinds of companies that I work with and the focus on growth and world economies and politics and all kinds of stuff. It's gotten really muddled. And it's become clear that it's time for my business to shift and evolve again, except I don't know. And then for a long time, for a lot of this year—or even actually more the beginning of the year—I felt helpless and fearful. Like, I don't know what to do. I just need to do something different. The way that we worked with people—not the specific work, the results, that all continues a bit—but how we reach people, how we engage people, how we connect, a lot of that was unsustainable. The amount of travel that I do, the frenetic nature. Anyway, it was all just feeling broken, and I couldn't figure out what to do. And then I started to notice and realize that I've already won at my life. Like, the things that I actually wanted—the accomplishments, the business growth, the money. I mean, I don't have that much money, but I have enough. Like, I have what I need. Right? So I've helped a lot more people afford private jets than I have. But I don't really want a private jet. I'm a private pilot, but I like to fly unusual things, not purposeful things for fun. And so, I had the kids that I wanted, the family that I wanted. I have the spouse that I wanted, the marriage that I wanted. I have a family that—like, you know, I have fun. I have play in my life. I have all these things. And I just realized, like, when I think about at the end of my life, what do I want said about me? Right? After I'm dead and gone, my family gathers, what do I want them to be able to say? I'm like, oh, I already have that. Right? And if I really have the family, the life, the things that I want, and I could retire tomorrow, why am I working?

34:51Dan Grech: Mhmm.

34:55Bill Gallagher: Well, I'm working because I'm busy, because I have energy, because I'd be bored. I'm working because I love the work that I do. I love what I see with people. I love the kind of work that I do.

35:09Bill Gallagher: It's such a turn on. So yes, it needs to evolve. Now the modalities, engagements, the way that we work really needs to evolve, and there's an opportunity there. But the shift then is that it's an opportunity for creativity. There's opportunity to look and think and design something new in the space of—and not to hang on to exactly the way that it's been. So, you know, I started writing a book. I committed to a PhD program. I started playing with things, and I just got a lot looser. So that'll probably continue to evolve for the next year.

35:51Dan Grech: So let me, first of all, wow. And thank you. And on behalf of your audience, thank you. You know, the authenticity of that was really moving. And just to put some ideas or frameworks behind what you're saying, this sort of feeling of being helpless and fearful, I call that dark energy. Dark energy can be very motivating. Gets you up off your ass. It probably helped you start your company. It probably has helped you through the hardest times, but it also is not sustainable. It's what leads to burnout. And so while you want to recognize and acknowledge the power of dark energy, you don't want to be a slave to it. And Gina Wickman and Rob Dube in their beautiful book Shine talk a lot about this kind of trauma-based fuel that leaves people often at the top of the mountains feeling empty.

36:47Dan Grech: But then the other thing that I want to actually lean into more is what I call the light energy of 'I love the work that I do.' And then I wanted to lean into even more a phrase that popped for me that I want to dig in a little, if you'll let me, which is 'It provides me an opportunity to be creative.' And I'm wondering, can you think of a moment in your childhood when you were creative? What's, like, just one that pops to mind before you turned 18, before you graduated from high school, ideally?

37:27Bill Gallagher: Yeah. So it was about fifth grade maybe, right? So I'm 10 years old, roughly. I had a teacher that I just didn't love her or her classes. I felt it was unfun, a drag, and like that. Right? And I came home and I said something to my dad, maybe my dad and my mom, but probably just my dad, complaining about this teacher in this class. My dad said to me, 'Well, why don't you offer to teach a class?' And I wish I could go back and watch the replay of that to see it clearly and not just from the memory that has evolved. But it turns out to be a really important moment in my life. Right? I didn't think about it that much at the time, but I said, 'Okay.' And I cheekily went to the teacher and said, 'I'd like to teach a class.' And I don't remember if I thought about how I was gonna do it first and then propose that or if I just said that or whatever. But I offered, or asked if I could teach a class. The teacher said, 'Okay.' And I designed a class around whatever the subject is—long lost to me—but using a comic book, a comic book that we all know as kids, as the vehicle and the metaphor, the whatever for the class. And it was awesome. And the kids loved it. Right? And it was a great experience.

39:04Bill Gallagher: And I got out of it, like, one, I have a skill or I can stand in front of the room. I can construct and design a lesson. It didn't ever occur to me that I'd be a kind of teacher later in life, not for one second. But the idea that I could design and construct things and that I could be persuasive and communicate and all that, like, anchored deeply. Right? And led to many things that I did not see. Right? So, you know, I started a small newspaper later. I taught various things. I went into management leadership. I was on the radio. All of those things are kind of things that rippled out of that moment. Right? Very creative and enjoyable. I remember it to this day.

Teaching a class in fifth grade and childhood creative sparks

39:58Dan Grech: Love that. So first of all, you know, when you tell a story like this, I'm just, like, popping with the metaphorical power of it. So, like, in many ways, that teacher is your business at the start of 2025. Like, a total freaking drag. You know? And you just lost the juice. And then this move was not just to be creative, which was creating a comic book, which is super creative, but then sharing it. And I know for a fact, you know, like, the newspaper you created, that's a creative act that you shared. Like, it's creative plus sharing, to me, become the core values and the answer to that malaise and to that question, which is 'What do I do next?' Like, I'm a man who's at the top of one hill, and I feel a little empty. So what's the next hill? And the next hill is going to be found in the act of creativity that you share, without a doubt, and that is rooted in that 10-year-old boy and that experience that was partly instinctual and partly inspired by your dad's example.

41:22Bill Gallagher: Yeah. It's funny. Like, I remember a lot of time as a kid and later in life being like, 'Oh, I'm not gonna be like my dad.' Right? So my dad was a college professor and author and a speaker, things like that. What the hell am I if not like him? I spent a lot of my life being, 'Oh, I am not gonna be like him.' And then, of course, a few months ago, a friend of mine was working on a program, and she said, 'Oh, this might be perfect for you.' And it's a new PhD program for a university. And it wasn't even on my radar. But, like, she said it, and then I was like, you know, I did that thing where the dog turns its head. And I sat on it for a couple days and then it built and then built, and I'm like, 'Oh, I'm gonna do that.' And not for any good reason other than that was like a next interesting hill to do. And then I thought, 'God, my dad would be proud.'

42:31Dan Grech: That's not a good reason, dude. Right? Like, the language we use matters so much. For the most important reason. And by the way, you flipped the narrative. I don't know what your deal is with your dad. I don't know anything about it, but obviously there is a little bit of hard and tough love involved in that. But, man, you are honoring him with your work, and it is no accident that the decisions that you're making when you feel a little lost align with, but are a personally flavored version of, the same work he did. You know, you are a multigenerational inheritor of his legacy. And I applaud you for that, and I applaud you for the authenticity and the willingness to share that. And this is the work that I do and that animates me, and this is not psychobabble. This is not fluff. This is not therapy. This is about you have a strategic decision to make, Bill, about what the next phase of your business is gonna be, and you have choices. Choices that you earned your way to through white-knuckling growth during really difficult times. And sometimes it's when you're at a moment of plenty when the choice is hardest to make. And that's when I feel you go back in time.

43:45Dan Grech: You plumb the narratives of your past, you look at the examples that are so important to you, and you then forge a growth strategy that is most closely aligned with that. That's the strategic filter that I see you already almost instinctively applying. And my job is just to take the unconscious and make it conscious. And suddenly, the clarity that you feel—I just held up a mirror to what you were saying. But do you feel, like, a little clearer on what you're up to?

Honoring your father's legacy while avoiding his mistakes

44:21Bill Gallagher: Well, when if I try to pull out the experience of it and examine it and then think about our audience, my clients, that kind of thing, it occurs for me that just a massive amount of our motivations, our reasons, our patterns all start very early childhood. And so our parents, mom, dad, our siblings, key people in our lives, a teacher too, some things like that, are really, really formative. So, you know, there's a whole chapter of my life and career that my mom had an influence on. And then as I think about this one, my dad has a much bigger influence on it. And then the complicated nature of it, right? So for each of us, there's a reason. You know, I had a guy who was like he was really motivated around a particular number to sell his business. And we could've got, like, a hundred times more for his business if we did a little more work on it. But he hit his number related to his relationship with his dad, and he was, like, good and done. You know? Like, that was great, right? So there is something about these patterns that matters to us. And there's no, like, arbitrary right answer or better, you know, whatever. Like, I don't want Elon Musk's life, you know, to just pick a very maybe the higher level of entrepreneur today and certainly in the top couple. So, but some people are, like, driven to be the best of the best of the best, to have the biggest thing, to build themselves a castle, to buy another jet, or things like that. And each of it, it's like a deeply personal thing, right? So I think about, like, the whole world of my dad. It's a complicated relationship. But I think each of us, it's a complicated relationship. Think about your mom and your dad. Think about your siblings and why you do what you do today, right? My dad was this enormously charismatic, brilliant, accomplished linguist entrepreneur. He was a college professor, and he could use passable in about fifteen, seventeen languages. Amazing. And then there's also some tragedy and some dysfunction in his life. And although I didn't know it growing up, but he was bipolar. And he had a life of huge adventure and lived places and had things and didn't have things. And at one point, we lived in a van traveling around Europe, but that was such a gift of an experience, right? And then he declined. The alcoholism. And as his finances declined and his life declined, he took his own life in 2008, right? So maybe your family isn't so dramatic, but all of those things, the good and the bad and the love and the pain, it's all there for all of us. And it for sure drives what I do. You know? For sure, the way that I coach and the opportunity to contribute and what I admired in him that I modeled today and, you know, all of those kinds of things, those patterns are all there. The way that we do it, we play them again and again. And if we play them well with self-awareness, it does seem like great. Like, you know, to be able to tell that, tap into that is useful, not available to everyone, right?

48:02Dan Grech: Wow. You know, and how powerful is it to say, I know my dad would be proud of me?

48:09Bill Gallagher: Yeah. Yeah. For sure.

48:14Dan Grech: Yeah. You know, the pain and the promise of our youth become the blueprint and the fuel for our adult life. And I feel like when we made the choice to start our own business, to be a founder, to be an entrepreneur, whether we realized it or not, we were also, you know, putting ourselves in a space where we need to grapple with this. This is not an accident, the business that we started. It never is. And the more you know yourself and you understand with clarity why you do what you do and why it matters, the more powerful and effective a business owner you become.

49:03Bill Gallagher: So let's distill out. You had some great takeaways, some framework, things like that for our listeners. What are the practical things? You talked about telling the story and then telling the moral of the story. You talked about asking the question. So maybe just recap a little bit of that for us before we—

49:26Dan Grech: And then I, you know, I kind of had a question for you if you're okay with it. And I'll preview it, but I'll tell you the summary to give yourself a little time to think about the answer, which is, you know, now that we've said out loud what was there all along, which is that your father's influence has guided a lot of your most important strategic decisions and is there in a very present way as you kind of are at this pivot point in your business, I'd be just interested in hearing if there's any clarity strategically you have for 2026 for the go forward. If that's provided maybe some answers to some of the questions. Because we're in, like, strategy planning for next year season. And so I just wanted to sort of have you, as we kind of go to wrapping up, just reflect on—because that's my big thing—is getting clearer and recognizing what you're actually up to creates business growth. So I'm really curious how you're gonna translate that for 2026. Do you wanna answer that now, or do you want me to give the wrap up?

50:35Bill Gallagher: Well, I could—if you gave the wrap up and I was thinking about that, I wouldn't hear anything that you said.

50:47Dan Grech: That's fair. And I, you know, I have a feeling you might know the answer or at least have the first draft of an answer that might, you know, get revised after the call, after the meeting.

50:56Bill Gallagher: I have the parts. So part of me is like, oh, I love in a model I wanna do, not repeat him, but my version of whatever I got from him that I can use. Like, what he did in the way he did it was him. And then there are certain things that I inherited, learned, and can use, right? But not in the same way that he did. So what is it that I can draw from, be inspired by, and use? And what is it that I wanna be careful about? Like, where did he trip himself up? Where did the addictions? Where did the bad business? Where did the neuroses get in the way of him being effective and how to learn from both the good and the bad? That's what immediately comes to mind as I think about and I design how I'm gonna use things in the year ahead, right? What to lean—I, you know, so much of my year, I have my calendar for the next year downstairs, and I've started mapping out. I have things booked all the way through December now. Like, a ton of it is already kinda mapped out. And then some of it's we don't know exactly where it's falling, but we kinda know what some of the other middle months look like. But so there's a lot. But the way that it goes down—

52:14Bill Gallagher: And then what I walk away from are all still on the table, right? So I think it's useful to think about that now, to think about the good and the bad of him, the totality of what he had to share, because he wouldn't want me just to do everything he did. He would want me to avoid his mistakes, right?

52:39Dan Grech: I love the phrase 'what to walk away from.' And I think, if nothing else, use his story, the good and the bad, as a strategic filter for what to say no to in 2025. I have to look at that calendar with your father and ask, is this, you know, what is motivating my desire to do this? Is it more fear-based or more legacy, love-based? And that might provide some clarity.

53:11Bill Gallagher: Yeah, like what doors will I walk through, right? What will I walk away from? What will I allow to change? There's two big things that are already on my mind. I'm not gonna share what they are just yet, but I kind of know a couple things. It's like, oh, it's time for that one to change or to end.

53:29Dan Grech: The number one strategic filter in all of business is what will make me money. And that's why I asked the question, do you have a purpose beyond profit? Because what I'm trying to do is center at least I think it's purpose and profit. So I want there to be two strategic filters. One is, will this make me money? And is this fulfilling my larger purpose, right? And if you use both those filters, I think we'll create more meaningful business that does better.

53:59Bill Gallagher: That is a really good reminder because I am reliable at filling my day, like filling my calendar. I'm really good at being busy, not being idle. If I'm accidentally idle, I get uncomfortable like many people. And so I'm good at doing that, and I'm good at producing impact about, like, having, you know, I'm good at creating some value in the world. I'm not always good at getting paid as much. Like I see other people who, on some subjective level, I might judge and think, oh, I'm having a bigger impact than they are, and they are making more money than I am. And so sometimes that's a humbling thing to look at their world and go, wait a minute, I'm doing more. Like, how do I make more from this? So there is something to the smartness around, but that does also expose that my main driver hasn't been money. Like, some people, the game, well, like a guy like Warren Buffett, like the abstract game of making money there is of interest to him. It represents certain things, but I've not been that guy.

55:15Dan Grech: Yeah, and this just gives you, frankly, a more authentic filter to ask, should I do this or not? Otherwise, you're kind of guessing, right? We're kind of going by instinct, and now you have intention behind it. So let's, first of all, thank you again. And let's talk about three big high-level points and then three more tactical points as takeaway. So the first is we started this whole conversation with a very, basically, the worst moment of my professional life, getting fired. And we made the point that failure stories are very powerful to build fast connection between you and whoever you're talking to, whether they're a sales prospect, prospective business partner, or a podcast host and his audience. The second is just one of the most vivid and moving examples I've ever experienced of childhood influence, the good and the bad, the dark and the light, and how that is the secret, sometimes unspoken, animating force behind our lives. That's just like the central thesis. And then how to then acknowledge that, recognize that, and then use that as a strategic filter for growth.

Three frameworks and three tactics for strategic storytelling

56:36Dan Grech: And then the third, which is sort of like overall, the telling of true and authentic stories. This is not mythologizing, right? For those of you who are listening, there were a few tears shed during this call. That authenticity builds trust, which is the foundation of business. People, when you share authentically and they share authentically back to you and they feel heard and seen and listened to, they like you and they trust you and they ultimately want to do business with you. So that's like the big framework. And then the three tactical sort of strategies that we talked about was, tell your story then tell what it means. And so that's like the parable moral. You know, it comes straight out of the Bible and other religious studies, but it's really a universal storytelling technique. I was taught it by Ira Glass from NPR. And the idea is that you tell a story that has a purpose behind it, that has a lesson embedded in it. And that lesson, of course, is to help support the growth of your business when it's in a business context.

57:45Dan Grech: And then the second, which is related, is this shift from story of me to story of us. You know, this kind of addresses the concerns of sounding like you're too full of yourself, you're too narcissistic, that you're putting yourself at the center of this story when really you're just the mentor and the guide and the customer is the hero. This also addresses the scalability question, right, which is so central to your audience, which is how do you scale up if you're telling your founder story so much? And that's the shift from story of me to story of us, and that's where you, in that 'what it means,' you're talking about what it means to the specific audience you're talking to, right? And, you know, my favorite example of this, and you know it's a complicated example, but it's, I think, at least it used to be a really good one, which is the founder of Starbucks, Howard Schultz, would talk about this really searing experience he had as a young man when his father, who is a cloth diaper delivery man, fell on ice, broke his hip, and was immediately fired, and he fell into severe poverty in New York. And that searing experience of poverty influenced the way he built Starbucks, which for many years, until after he left its leadership, really took care of its people. And he said, how do I build a company that has a conscience? And it also sort of shows some of the risks when you have next-gen leadership and a company sort of loses its thread and puts profit above people.

59:22Dan Grech: But that story, the story of a shift, right, where you connect, like, some very specific experience of your dad breaking his hip in New York to the whole guiding thesis for a Fortune 500 company. And then the third, that's what you need to do every time you tell your story, is don't let yourself lose the discipline of remembering who you're talking to and how what you're saying connects to their experience and how you're solving problems that they have. And then the final one is let your audience finish the story. And this has two meanings in this case. Like, first of all, how many times during this conversation did I share something and then you shared something else? That is exactly the kind of dynamic you want of this almost like swapping of authentic stories. But also, you know, when you, this kind of builds on the idea of the story of us, when you place your customer, let's say, or your audience, the person you're talking to, at the center of the story, when you recenter the story around the story of us and how what happened to you is now sort of being transformed to serve them.

1:00:33Dan Grech: Then give them the opportunity to connect the dots to their pain points, to their opportunities. And it's actually that mental work that they're doing while they listen to you that actually is where the sale happens, because the second they see themselves in your story of us, they're sold.

1:00:52Bill Gallagher: Yep. Yep.

1:00:57Bill Gallagher: Those are good elements to pull in. I think telling your story, telling it well, there is practice involved. There is intentionality. There's thoughtfulness into how you—I mean, look, you could tell a powerful story and just tell it for the entertaining factor. Go be on The Moth or something, you know, and enjoy the storytelling. But then you can also use it for purpose. Tap into something to drive that emotional connection, the feeling, the passion around why you do what you do and what problems you solve and who you love to help and all. And then all of these things sharpen it so much more. If you want to know more about Dan and his work, thestorydrivenbusiness.com is Dan's website. Thestorydrivenbusiness.com. There it is on the screen if you're watching on video. And of course, it'll be in the show notes—not that hard to remember. Thestorydrivenbusiness.com is the place to go. It's been a pleasure, Dan. I will see you again soon at one of our upcoming workshops.

1:02:05Bill Gallagher: If you'd like to join, I have a weekly cohort, and you can get on and join my weekly conversation about growing your business. That's a private group of companies that work together. We're about to start a monthly one around evolving your leadership style to be about less effort, less busyness, and more flow. So that'll be a monthly one that'll start up. We, of course, do workshops every month, and then we have other kinds of private coaching, that kind of thing, that can help you. So if we can help you, go to scalingcoach.com. That's for us. Storydrivenbusiness.com and scalingcoach.com—those are the two websites to check out. Thanks to Dan. Thanks to Wanda and Anna for getting our show produced. Thanks to my friend and mentor Verne Harnish, who created the whole Scaling Up framework at the core of our business. Thanks to you all for watching, for listening. Keep scaling.

1:02:55Bill Gallagher: Thanks for listening today. One last thing. If anything in this episode hit home, my book digs into it further. Busy Is Broken: Do Less, Scale More. It's all about how to stop drowning in work and build a business and a team that scales without you. Available right now with content samples at busyisbroken.com. Go grab it. Be less busy.