Let's create things that matter. Together.
Today’s guest is Jeff Bartsch who is a visionary storyteller and communication strategist at Story Greenlight. He has over 20 years of experience in the entertainment industry and online business. Jeff has also been a guest on my podcast before, talking about storytelling and making a living out of storytelling.
In our conversation today, we discuss the craft of storytelling from a strategic perspective. “Strategic” storytelling can change our human interactions in our daily lives. Storytelling is what really governs all human interactions whether you’re starting a business, looking for a job, writing outreach emails, or even selling a product or service. We dissect what makes a story bad, and what makes it so powerful that it builds bonds between people. Jeff also shares candidly how understanding the psychology of storytelling revived his business from failure.
No doubt that my conversation with Jeff will unravel the strategies you can use to reinvent the way you interact with people, no matter where you are in your career.
Jeff Bartsch is a visionary storyteller and communication strategist at Story Greenlight. With over 20 years of experience in the entertainment industry and online business, Jeff has helped shape content for clients including ABC, NBC, Universal, Disney, Apple, and many others. Jeff’s commentary has been featured in major publications including Time Magazine, USA Today, and the Associated Press. Through Story Greenlight, Jeff and his team empower business experts and leaders to tell their stories, serve more clients, and expand their impact in the world. He believes that the power of story is within reach of everyone, and that human connection is everything.
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Zack Arnold: I'm here today with Jeff Bartsch who, like me now considers himself a former Film and Television editor. But he's now visionary storyteller, communications strategist, and also the founder of Story Greenlight. You've got over 20 years of experience in the entertainment industry as well as an online business, you've helped to shape content for clients, including ABC, NBC, Universal, Disney, Apple. And that's just the very, very short list. And your commentary has also been featured in major publications, including, but not limited to Time Magazine, USA Today, as well as the Associated Press. But I think the highest distinction of all is that I think you've been on my podcast at least three times now, maybe four. That's a very, very short list of people that have been on the show that many times including way back in the Fitness in Post days. So Jeff, it is a tremendous pleasure to have you back once again.
Jeff Bartsch: Awesome, man. Well, and I will say there's a very, very short list of people for whom I would show up for a podcast interview at the very end of my day, instead of at the beginning of my day. But you know what, I'm now on the East Coast. And now we're back on LA Times. So when Zack Arnold calls up, we make it happen.
Zack Arnold: It's funny, because I had the exact same conversation with Debby. And it was like, How do I have a podcast on a Friday afternoon? I can't imagine a worse dead zone of creativity for me than 2:30pm on a Friday. I'm like, oh, it's Jeff. Nevermind, we'll keep it. So I had the exact same reaction that you did to this. I'm like, how did this end up on my account? Oh, it's Jeff. Nevermind, we'll do it. Yeah, so we're on the same page. So there's a lot that I want to talk about today. My biggest fears there's no way we're gonna get through it in 90 minutes. But I want to talk more about the idea or the vision or the definition of creativity. I want to talk more about story. I want to talk about this concept or idea of identifying as a polymath which I've talked about a lot this year. The idea of what it means to proverbially be very scatterbrained and all over the place, and why can't you just focus on one thing, I feel like you and I very similarly on paper, have a lot of those similar challenges, which I now have learned over the course of the last year are less challenges and more superpowers, especially for the direction that we're going with our economy and with creativity and with AI. But I want to start really, really simply and I would just I would like to get your reaction to the following. The Merriam Webster Dictionary defines creativity as one the ability to create and to the quality of being creative. Seems simple enough. How do you feel about that?
Jeff Bartsch: I feel that's way way over simplified, and not at all helpful.
Zack Arnold: So I want to start here, because a lot of what we're going to talk about is going to be about the creative process, but the creative process of telling our own stories, and you've got like a 10 minute mini TED talk about the definition of creativity and why what's out there just isn't helpful. So just between the two of us, I want to start talking about defining what creativity really is.
Jeff Bartsch: You know, when any when anyone ever talks about this, I always go back to the book, written by Amanda Palmer. If you're not familiar with Amanda Palmer, she wrote a book called How I Learned to how I learned to ask for help something to that effect by app by Amanda Palmer. And she is one of the first people she was the first person ever to cross the seven figure mark on on a public online fundraiser, platform, GoFundMe, or I believe it was this person across seven figures on a GoFundMe campaign. And in her book, she talks about creativity, saying this is like this, this comparison of the idea of life experiences are like dots. And we collect dots. And then we put dots together in unique creative ways. And then we share those connections with others. She says this is the essence of a creative human being collecting the dots, connecting them and sharing them. And that's where my mind always goes when we talk about creativity.
Zack Arnold: And I'm the same way and just for some clarification, and we'll make sure to put a link in the show notes. The book is The Art of Asking How I Learned to Stop Worrying and let people help. And she also also has a TED talk about the art of asking as well. And it's funny, I had no idea you were gonna bring this up. But my definition of creativity is virtually identical. And the simplest version in my favorite version of explaining it is Steve Jobs as quote, creativity is just connecting things. Cool. And the reason that I bring that up and the reason that it's so helpful for me is that as a recovering perfectionist, as somebody that has a lot of imposter syndrome. I've always felt this need that my ideas must be original and creativity is the creation of a brand new idea. And I always felt like there was something wrong with my ability to be creative and string these pieces together. Because I was supposed to be coming up with something new I was supposed to be creating, it's in the Word. Right? Right. It's when I realized that there's very little of anything left to actually be created. And creation comes in the act of connecting things. As soon as I started to understand that I viewed creativity in a completely different way, especially our former lives as editors, because all we do all day long, is take a bunch of random information, and connect it all together in our own unique way to create stories and create emotions. So it's so funny that you're starting from essentially the exact same definition from a totally different angle.
Jeff Bartsch: Yeah, yeah, the art of asking has some incredibly profound ideas about creativity, and how it's what is art? And how do you make your art? And how do you put it out into the world and some pretty countercultural ideas that she has them, they're highly recommended.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, so the reason that I'm starting the conversation about creativity, is we're not necessarily going to talk about the creative process, whether it's as an editor, whether it's as an entrepreneur, or speaker, as a coach, we could probably do 90 minute interviews on each of those alone and do an entire series. The thing that I'm the most interested in is learning how to combine creativity with the ability to understand story structure, and the hero's journey, which you talk a lot about in the story Greenlight program, and taking those two things and applying it to your own narrative in your own story. Because I have found, especially over the last year, so myself included, there has been a pretty massive collective identity crisis about who the hell are we, especially those in creative fields thinking, Wait a second, is a plugin going to replace everything that I do for a living? Is AI going to take it all? And the more we learn how to understand what are our dots? So using kind of your your example from Amanda, what are all the dots that I have? And how do I reconnect them to tell a different story and narrative, so that I can focus on the human intelligence and not worry so much about the artificial intelligence. So I'd like to learn that there are a lot of dots in your story. And we're going to do our best to connect all the most relevant ones. But I actually want to go back to the beginning of the story. And this idea of most of your life you actually identified as a pianist and a musician. So talk to me a little bit about going back to the beginning, where you really learned about how to find the soul of something.
Jeff Bartsch: So well, here's here's the thing, when most people look me up online, they say, Oh, well, Jeff, you're a Hollywood guy, you did all this stuff for all these TV networks. So you're, you're Jeff, the Hollywood guy. And that's where you learned all about storytelling and communication, all that stuff, and you wouldn't be wrong. But the thing is, it's not about that, in terms of that doing. The power behind that started, it literally started 40 years ago, when I was four years old. I'm currently 44 at this recording, and I started taking classical piano training. And I actually got really good at playing classical music. And if people are familiar with classical music, you probably know Bach and Mozart. I loved both of those playing them on the piano, because you could be super, super technical, it was super technical and clean, you didn't have to worry about all that muddy, emotional, messy stuff and interpretation. I mean, you could just play the notes on the page, and you're good. And everyone says, Jeff, you're amazing. So when you I got most of my reps in doing that, as Jeff, the piano guy on Sunday mornings in church, I just gotten rep after rep after rep. And there was one day, an older Musician of the church kind of took me aside and she said, you know, Jeff, it's, it's all well and good to play the notes on the page. But when you get older, you have to learn to play from your soul. And at the time, I was 10 or 11 years old. And I thought, you know, everyone's saying that I'm doing amazing. And I think this lady is full of it. So I just I just ignored her in my polite Elementary School away. And I just kept doing my thing. Okay, old lady, whatever. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And so the thing that happened, though, was as I learned, to take the notes off the page, and actually bring them to life. Over the next years, as I grew in my musicianship, people's responses started to change. And there were people who would say, instead of, oh, Jeff, you're such an amazing pianist. People would say, oh, Jeff, that that song that you picked to play today was exactly the message that I needed to hear. So thank you so much for picking that. Thank you for that song. And every once in a while, there would be someone who said Jeff By the way, with what's happening in my life, the way I've been feeling for me to be here this morning to hear you play what you did. It brought me into an encounter with God. Thank you. Thank you, thank you. And so eventually, I got it into my head, that this is way bigger than just me. And there was something far more powerful than me just pressing keys on a piano. And what I learned since then, is that the thing that brought that music to life, the ideas behind that are the exact same ideas that helped me captivate audiences in high school when I was creating video projects when I was doing video production. Back when it was really still hard to do that, and cell phones literally had not been invented yet.
Zack Arnold: We're old.
Jeff Bartsch: And getting into college and doing radio and then getting out to film school and 20 years in Hollywood. Everything is connected by the same narrative forces. And when we understand the narrative forces at work, we come to find that these forces literally control every human interaction between one human being and another. And when we understand that, we have incredible power, to build human connections in any field, and certainly to change our own stories.
Zack Arnold: A couple of ideas that came to mind as you were saying all this because we're so on the same page. And I'm glad that we started here. There's something that you and I talk about all the time, we use slightly different words, but it's exactly this concept. And it's either the notes underneath the notes are the story underneath the story. And yeah, they exactly Utah, you call it the thing underneath the thing, I want to get to that in a second. But I have what a little bit of a tangent just it's just my own personal curiosity. Right now, as far as your level of competency or expertise in being able to play classical music, that's what I that's a skill that I want to be able to download via the matrix. I've told many people that in another life on my to do list, my bucket list, I want to be a concert level pianist, I want to play Emperor's Beethoven's Fifth Emperor Piano Concerto like on my bucket list, that's a lot of work. That's not an easy piece to play, right. But one of the things that I found interesting in I've dabbled here and there, and I'll spend a year where I'm obsessed with piano, then I drop it for years, then I have kids and you know, life gets in the way. But what I found personally, is that from a technical perspective, I kind of suck. And I also really struggle with reading music. But I was really good at being able to do Beethoven because Beethoven requires so much emotional interpretation. And I struggled a lot more with Bach and Mozart, because I didn't feel them as much. And I'm curious, when you made the transition from Bach and Mozart, and people saying, Oh, you're such a great piano player, too. You made me feel something? Was it still the Bach and the Mozart? Or was it also choices of more emotional pieces that needed more interpretation?
Jeff Bartsch: It was me learning to become more of a human being, instead of a dorky kid who prefer books over people. Now, that didn't really happen. That didn't truly begin to happen until I was in college. But there were glimmers of it in terms of my own personal development in high school, and knowing how to shape how to shape colors and musical colors and phrases and dynamics, and where are you starting? Where are you going to where's the midpoint and all this and what, you know, section A, makes a statement, section B gives a counter statement, and then you're back to section A, but it's different. And how are you going to make this different? Yeah, so all that kind of stuff. That's you. I would put it this way. Anything that we attempt in a creative world will always have its fundamentals. And it's like having your tools in your toolbox, you have to know what the fundamental skills are. But eventually you get to a point where you have to make those tools disappear. I was in a, I was in a panel at one point at Warner Brothers and the RE recording mixer, one of the RE recording mixers on staff at Warner's was giving was talking and he said, you know and this guy every day, he sits in this mixing stage mixing on a sound console that's literally stretches from one side of the mixing stage to the other 200 channels. It's just this monstrous thing. And he says the bigger and more impressive the tools the more important it is to know him to know them like the back of your hand so you can make them disappear. so you can focus on that higher level element that really brings the message and the craft and the art to life. And this applies to anything. So, back to your question. I mean, it to be frank, it's difficult to make people feel things, if you're playing a Bach invention by a man, if you play if you if you pull out Claire de Lune by Debussy, and you really just let the time flow. You can make BA, I'm getting emotional just thinking about it. I mean, that's a whole other discussion, but it's, yeah, it is really easy. It's far easier to bring people along for a journey in that kind of a context.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, and I actually I want to go even deeper into this idea of the thing underneath the thing, and how you said, this applies to everything. We're gonna get into like, what basically you and I are gonna compare who's the bigger polymath because on paper, both of us make absolutely no sense whatsoever. We are so scatterbrained all over the place. And you're working on a Ninja Warrior. I'm working on Cobra Kai, but you've got a coaching program, and I've got a coaching program and you've got a podcast and I've got a podcast. I don't know how I turned it over just now. Well, what I.
Jeff Bartsch: My coaching program, by the way, so
Zack Arnold: Oh, you did? Okay, so we can cross that off of your list. But you're always, you're always looking for what is that next thing, but it always comes back to the same thing, which is the thing underneath the thing, right. So I know that it's not either of our primary areas of focus anymore. But I do want to talk about how both of us really learn how to hone and refine storytelling and get as much emotion as possible out of something, being storytellers, and editors, because again, going to this analogy, if this applies to everything, I don't know, Avid Media Composer that Well, I know what I need to know to make the tool disappear. So I can create emotions. So whenever people ask me on a panel, how do you describe what you do? I say I play Tetris with people's emotions all day long, I get to move around a bunch of colored blocks, and it makes people feel things. I know how to do that. And Abbott decided that I'm pretty kind of sort of useless. And I make sure that I have really good assistant editors, right. And to to use the example of American Ninja Warrior, for example. And by the way for the audience, if you don't know, you, and I don't actually know each other because of American Ninja Warrior, we actually knew each other way before that, it just happens to be a coincidence that you're editing on the show that I decided I was going to be on. So but that's actually not how we connected. But I can I can say unequivocally because I've seen almost every episode, there's such a difference between American Ninja Warrior, and the stories that it's telling versus other shows that are similar to it. And the interesting thing is you've worked on some of those other shows, whether it was the Spartan shows ultimate Beast Master, or whatever it might be the floor is lava. I don't know how many of them you worked on. But there's something different about the storytelling and the emotion. And that to me is an example. That's very overt of what you do bringing out the emotion and finding the thing underneath the thing, rather than I can competently cut together feature packages for the athletes.
Jeff Bartsch: Sure. Yeah, I mean, as far as I'm concerned, I think I have the coolest job on the entire show. Because I get to focus exclusively on telling the stories of these athletes, before they set foot on the course. And I mean, it's literally to and it's literally to the point. I mean, we all of us at the show, and I've been there for I think 10 seasons. Yeah, 10 seasons of 10. It's almost 10 years at this point. And all of us there know, the show, like the back of our hands, we all have our areas of specialty. And so when the producers say, Okay, we definitely need this one, we need this one to land emotionally. We need people to feel things and they say give it to Jeff. I'm one of the you know that. That's that's the stuff that I focus on the most. And so the cool thing about this is, I think one of the reasons that the show is so inherently different is because the entire show itself is a metaphor for life. Because you have physical obstacles, and you have athletes seeking to get across physical obstacles. And you hear over and over the host say, as we always say on the show. So many of these athletes, the obstacles that they've overcome in their own lives are nothing compared to the obstacles on this. Well, the obstacle in this course are nothing compared to the obstacles they've overcome in their own lives. And that is, that is incredibly that's incredibly true. Because the reason people care so much about this is when you see a story about someone who has overcome obstacles in their life, and then they go and they overcome physical obstacles. Every time they finish a physical obstacle, it becomes a message to the viewer saying, they can overcome it. You, whatever you're facing in your life, you can overcome it too. You can do it, you can do it, you can do it, you can do it. And we just pump out that message over and over and over for years and years to millions of people. And it is so cool. It is so cool and such an honor. And it's such a privilege to be part of that.
Zack Arnold: It's the second coolest job. By the way, the coolest is actually getting to run the course, that parts score. I have not run the whole course. But it's funny that that you bring up kind of this idea of it being a metaphor for life. And this idea of I can do it anybody can do it. Even though this clip never aired, you may or may not have seen it but I have a clip of this from the raw footage is basically me in the water after I felt fell saying right to the camera. Trust me. If I can be a ninja, anybody can be a ninja. And that's why I've done it for so many years. Right? So for me, the the the ultimate goal, the one piece of the puzzle that I haven't gotten yet is the featured story. That's what this has always been about it. It hasn't been about, oh, I want to get on the course or I want to get on TV have two shits about any of that division is when I can cross the box off and move on with my life. The featured story knowing it's inspiring other people, because that's the story underneath the story, right? It's not that, hey, I'm an athlete. And I've already I've been told by multiple producers on the show now, where they've reached out and said, dude, like we get like, 90,000 of these a year like your casting tape is arable. Like it's it's the best casting piece we have. So I know I've got the story. And I had one of the producers. I won't say his name. But he literally came up to me and said he's like, Dude, you have to do well, because we all want this to air in like, Oh, no pressure. Thanks. Right. So I've actually I've got producers on the show that are now literally rooting for me. But I actually have to do well enough that it makes it on the show, right? Yeah. But that's why
Jeff Bartsch: Either that or you have either that or you have to get past the first obstacle and be at? Yeah, exactly.
Zack Arnold: Or doesn't have more than Yeah, there has to be something very kitschy or unique or you literally have to make a fool of yourself. Like I have a friend of mine. That's an OCR legend like Spartan racer, he does the 24 hour races. He's known as like one of the world's toughest murderers, he slipped on the first step of the first obstacle and fell in the water his first year that aired, right, I mean, this guy is like, ease as badass as they come first step, like literally one step in got wet. And I'm like I can't even imagine and that aired. But that is not the way that I want to air. But I actually gotten to know him because he and I were shooting on set the same day that we both fell in the first obstacle. And then we shot together the same day, our second season, he made it through the first obstacle, and I didn't. But the point is that for me, it is really about that story underneath the story. Not look, I'm an athlete, it's the the ability to show that anybody can overcome these obstacles in real life. And these are just a metaphor. So that, to me is an example of how there's a difference between I know the story, and I'm creative, and I can put the pieces together and I proficient versus there's a much, much deeper level to you and your ability to bring that emotion out. That has nothing to do with your technical your hard skills. And it's based on advice that you got from some random old lady when you were playing piano in a church. Right?
Jeff Bartsch: That's, you know what? It's, it's, it's interesting to think about that, because that's, that's an example of reverse engineering, strategic storytelling. Because when you look at the moments, the big moments in my life, that was not one of them. That moment was incredibly forgettable. I mean, how many things can I remember from when I was 10? Or 11? In that specifically, what that kind of specificity. I mean, it's kind of maps. And I remember that all. But for some reason, it just stuck in my head. And the reason that it ends up working is because when you when when you're wanting to tell a story, or a specific reason, in a specific context to a specific audience. That's the kind of stuff that you have to know first. This, you have to reverse engineer all that stuff. Because if you start saying if you start from the beginning and saying, I want to inspire people with stories and help them believe in themselves, what stories am I going to tell about from my life, you will drown in your source material, and you will instantly get frustrated and you'll it's not going to work. So, so to that point, that moment is not so much. I wouldn't say that so much of a that's it. It was the beginning of the journey. It
Zack Arnold: It's a dot right? It's one of the dots.
Jeff Bartsch: It is a. So, you know what, can we go a little nerdy here for a second? Let's
Zack Arnold: Let's get really nerdy.
Jeff Bartsch: Okay, so, film school? No, actually not film school, let's just talk about what what people think about stories in general. So most people, they hear the idea of a story and they think, Oh, well, I tell stories all the time. You might even say I'm a professional storyteller. So I've got this, I'm good. But here's the thing, there is a difference between tactical storytelling and strategic storytelling. And most of us, when we think of the idea of telling a story, we think of the tactical boots on the ground, delivering an anecdote. And you know, over the watercooler, talking with people about what we did over the weekend, or whatever. Now, we all know that that can be done poorly, because we see it done poorly all the time. We also know because anyone who's watched a TED talk or anything like that knows that a, a tactical story can be incredibly powerful when it's done well. And when it's done well, it delivers such an effect that it appears to be magical. So number one, it is not magical, it is based on skills and skills can be learned. Now, the thing is, though, when you talk about storytelling, you need to know that the power of all this comes from the big picture strategic view. So in order to unlock that big picture, strategic view of storytelling, you have to zero in and be clear on what a story definition actually is. And the best definition I've ever heard of a story comes from Donald Miller, of building a story brand and one of his earlier books when he was still writing fiction, he wrote the line, a stories where a character wants something and overcomes obstacles to get it. And I added and experienced this transformation as a result. So when you take that idea, a story is where a character wants something overcomes obstacles to get it and experiences transformation as a result. Those elements right there, provide the foundation for any story scheme. Hero's Journey, story brand, seven, save the cat three act structure, all that stuff all the way up to I think, ah, Lawrence of Arabia, was actually built within the context of a 20 seen a sequence, just just forget three act structure, he was thinking about 20 things, all that stuff. It can go out that broad, but it can also be shrunk down to just those three words of character. Well, I want more than just three words, but character, desire, obstacles, transformation. And if you have to do just one word, it's all about that last word change, show change.
Zack Arnold: For anybody that wants to dig way, way deeper into this shameless self promotion, I will send you a link in the show notes to the episode that I did with Chris Vogler, talking about the writer's journey, which is basically the colloquial explanation of Joseph Campbell's hero's journey, which I personally find challenging to get through, whereas the writers journey is just bullet points here. Let me help translate all this and just kind of regular speak amazing conversation with Chris Vogler. Now, random insider baseball, I used to share executive assistants with Donald Miller. Oh, nice. That's actually how I discovered Donald Miller. And he has been a huge influence and a lot of the things I'm doing with the coaching program and the educational materials and building the business and building my team, the first time that I met with my executive assistant to interview him, his zoom names had Donald Miller. I said, I'm sorry, your name is Donald, I thought your thought your name was Carrie. He's like, Oh, no, no, that's my boss. I never heard of him. I looked up Donald Miller afterwards, I'm like, Oh, you gotta be shitting. Me. That's really, and I've totally jumped into in his world and learn so much from him. So that's, you know, random insider baseball. But I want to get back to the story. Because to me, story is such such an important concept here, especially not in the context of being creative, or having creative jobs or even building a creative career. It's understanding how to construct your own story. And I'm glad you brought right and that's really why we're here is that you're in a really unique intersection for me, which is both somebody that understands story, and understand storytelling, but you also have a really complicated personal story and a personal narrative. And to have somebody that can just talk about story. That's one thing as somebody that's a polymath with a really complicated narrative. That's another thing to have somebody that can do both. That's a very unique place to live. And I feel like you live at the epicenter of both of those things. So. Go ahead.
Jeff Bartsch: Well, I will say, I will say one of the things that Donald Miller has done so incredibly well, is take the ideas of store A that can really get unwieldy and have 87 plot points and get really complicated and just end to shrink them down to distill them into things that work for business. Mm hmm. And that has been, that's been one of the things that I've really focused on, on that. I'm within that context. And the thing that I've discovered to your point about polymath is that when you understand that definition of story is where a character wants something overcomes obstacles to get it overcomes obstacles to get it and experiences transformation, as a result, that literally becomes the blueprint for every interaction between every human being in any context ever. And if you think I'm exaggerating, I'm not it is literally, that far reaching. It is how any communication takes place. It is how it is how you can pitch a screenplay, you can pitch a proposal, it's how you can write an email. It's how you can write a headline, it's how you can deliver a speech is how you can have a one on one conversation with people. And you may not even deliver a tactical story at all. But those narrative forces of character, desire, obstacles and transformation govern everything. It is gravity, and it affects everything, whether we know it or not.
Zack Arnold: Yeah and I would I'm I always am cautious of hyperbole. And I don't believe that this is hyperbole, I believe exactly what you're saying. And I felt the same thing, that the more you learn about the structure of story in our need for story, like just as far as human existence is concerned. And again, shameless self promotion. Number two, I have a full conversation about the science of storytelling, and why we're wired for stories with author will store. So we're gonna put that in the show notes as well. But I want to get back to even digging a little bit deeper into understanding strategic storytelling versus tactical storytelling. So the tactical one that makes a whole lot of sense. So I've got the 3x structure, I've got the 5x structure, I've got the, the, you know, 12x, and that we'll have the hero's journey. Here are the tactics here are the pieces, right? So the tactical part, I think that makes a lot of sense. Give me a little bit more idea of what you specifically mean by strategic storytelling and give it if you need to, whether it's your own or other story examples, give me examples. So I'm like, Oh, okay. Now I totally get what strategic storytelling means and how it's so different from tactical storytelling.
Jeff Bartsch: There is a concept called Narrative transportation. If you look up the phrase narrative transportation on Google, you will see recent research within the last 10 years about what happens to the brains of people when they're in fMRI machines. And I don't want to go too far down this, because I'm sure you've already gone over this on the other on other conversations. But the point is, this narrative transportation, engages and pulls people in. When people hear a story, when it's told, Well, when it engages people's attention, it sucks people in and says, what was a time when I've experienced something similar. And when that happens, there are bonds that are built between the two people. So within the strategic storytelling concept, the power of any tactical story comes from the desires and the emotions of the audience. So when we think about in the strategic context, it's all about that story definition. But from the audience's perspective, who are they? What do they want? What's getting in their way? And how can we help them get it? Now, this is something that any screenwriter has to has to think about any creative in the television and film industry has to think about, okay, who's the audience? What did they expect and all that kind of thing, but you got a business. It's equally, it's it applies even more. So. Any kind of marketing that you have to do is all about, who are you talking to? The more specific, you know, who you're talking to, what they want, what's getting in the way, when you say, I know exactly who you are, I know what you want. And I know all the things that are keeping you from getting it. Here's a product or a service that will help you get what they want. And they say, Take my money. This is how business happens. It's the exact same thing. When you're, you know, people in Hollywood like to think that they're all that Hollywood is very good at thinking that Hollywood
Zack Arnold: It's the center of the universe of I am all that. Ask me how I really feel. Sorry, continue. You got away, you're in Cleveland now. You escaped, I'm still here.
Jeff Bartsch: So there's that. The thing is, though, everything that governs storytelling in Hollywood is the exact same thing that governs communication anywhere else, I'm going to keep harping on that like a broken record, because it is all the same thing. So the reason that an audience gets any emotional connection to a tactical story is because it is delivered with their character, their desires, their obstacles in mind. And when they get what they want, either emotionally or psychologically, that's when they pay attention. Or when they say yes, or they keep listening, or they click the Buy button.
Zack Arnold: I love that there's so many things in here that I want to dig into. The first of which is that if there's a portion of the audience is thinking right now, oh, I just do creative work. And I'm not a business. So this no longer applies to me. You're a business of one, whoever's listening, whoever's watching, you are a business of one, you are a salesperson, you do have a product yourself, and you provide a service. So for anybody that's thinking, Oh, this is for business people. In today's day and age where the career ladder no longer exists, you are at the minimum or a business of one. And you have to understand storytelling skills. And what I talk about in my coaching program, when I'm specifically coaching people on career pivots, career transitions, or even just looking for the next gig, or trying to level up the kind of work that they're already doing. I help them realize that you as a creative, you're a storyteller in some way, shape, or form. As an editor, you're taking all the pieces and putting them together as a cinematographer, the way you shape, your frame, and your lighting choices and your lens choices, that's telling a story and creating an emotion. Still, photographers, painters, I could go on and on and on. We're all storytellers with our own mediums. But we don't realize that we have those skills. And when the time comes to tell our own story, God, we suck at telling our own story. And we think it's all about sales. Here's what I'm good at. And here are my qualifications. And I look at the skills and the qualifications list on resumes, and I want to shoot myself in the face. Because none of it is interesting, excellent at communicating, deadline driven. I'm like, nobody cares. Sure, there's a certain level of proficiency that's necessary to break in. But once you get to a certain point where you're established, your competition has nothing to do with those hard skills. It goes back to what we talked about in the beginning. What are the human qualities that you have that separate you from others? How well do you understand the note underneath the note or the thing underneath the thing? And how can you take all of the various dots in your life that seem random to construct that story such that you can tell somebody, I understand your problems, and I can solve them. That to me, as soon as that clicked in place. Everything made so much more sense. But it took a long time for that to click into place. I'm trying to shorten people's learning curves. Because very similar to me, you also have a career that on paper is very circuitous and all over the place. And if we were to look at two Divergent Paths, so maybe not even divergent, but if there were two separate paths, there's the path of I'm going to work as an editor and a craftsperson in Hollywood. And then there's I'm going to become a business person and an entrepreneur. And they're both kind of windy. But the business entrepreneur one is really windy, just like mine. Oh, right. And I. So what, what I want to start doing is I just want to start sharing all of the various dots, we're going to start connecting them, let's just start talking about some of the dots that are on your path. Because outside of I've edited for 10 years or significantly more, but 10 years on Ninja Warrior, if we look at the entrepreneur business side of things, you have so many dots, I don't even know where to start. So let's just start sharing some of the different experiences you've had, because I want to help people understand how do I take all these random experiences and all these random skills and abilities and actually construct a narrative around myself. But for now, I just want to talk about the dots.
Jeff Bartsch: Sure. So within 20 years in LA, about five years in, I had thought that, you know, when I got to, you know, when I got my first assistant editing gig, I was thrilled. I wasn't even getting paid. But I was happy as a clam. I could pay my rent with other stuff, and I was good. Then I got my first assist gig. Got my first full editing gig. And I thought, hey, if I you know, I'm good. This is cool. Oh, but wait, maybe if I get on a network show, then there'll be better. And I know I've heard you tell versions of this. I mean, you go to the next bigger and better thing big next bigger and better thing and you're at thing and you get there. You're gone. Oh, this is the same thing as it's always been. So at some point In five or six years, I realized that unless I wanted to become a producer and or executive or something, or completely change what I was doing, and have no life and hate my life, I was at an income ceiling. And so I want to learn how to bring in extra streams of income. God had mercy if you go to the internet and type in extra streams of income, you don't do that.
Zack Arnold: Oh, what do you get even better if you put in passive income, that can be a whole show in and of itself?
Jeff Bartsch: So what I ended up doing was I ran into a, I ran into a group that said, Okay, well, you just need to get really good at marketing. And I said, Well, I want to learn about business. No, you just need to learn about marketing. Because if you're good at marketing that fixes everything. Well, at that point, I didn't know what I didn't know. So I started hanging out with his group for quite a while I started a business. Believe it or not, are you familiar? Are you familiar with Misha Tenenbaums business, edit, Edit Mentor?
Zack Arnold: Oh, yes, I have Misha and I are actually very close friends. We've worked together a lot. And I've actually had him on the podcast a couple of times, you've you've had more appearances than he had. But I'm very familiar with Misha. Yes.
Jeff Bartsch: So I actually started Edit Mentor. Did you know that?
Zack Arnold: I did not know that.
Jeff Bartsch: I actually started Edit Mentor in 2008 or 2007. And I originally started that as I wanted to give an online have an online platform for giving unedited packages of video and film footage as learning tool.
Zack Arnold: You're talking about Editstock not Edit Mentor, because there are two different you mean, Editstock, that
Jeff Bartsch: Stock? Yeah, no, no, Editmentor. That is what that is what I started. I worked my tail off. And I knew nothing about business. I thought that just because I was trying this because I knew how to edit videos that I could put videos up on the internet and people would automatically buy that is not how it worked. That business tanked it didn't and it just languish there. Misha bought the bought the domain from me.
Zack Arnold: No kidding. I had no idea. That's amazing.
Jeff Bartsch: Yeah. And so and he's doing great things with it. I'm so stoked. So I went from the idea of okay, well, that didn't work. So what can I do? How can I bring value into the world? So I thought, Okay, well, maybe I can teach people who want to do what I do. So I started up my next business called The Power edit. And one of the things that I did was I started doing group coaching. And I did group coaching for young editors and assistant editors who wanted to do what I was doing sitting in the editor chair full time for broadcast TV. And that worked. That actually worked, I was able to sell, I was able to sell some, you want some some rounds of that. The challenge with that was that there was a small target audience for that this small pool to swim I guess
Zack Arnold: I can second that asked me how I know that's a small pool, but continue.
Jeff Bartsch: So then I said, Okay, well, let's broaden the market. And let's talk about creative editing to hobbyists, and amateur editors. And they're in lay the beginning of a great wasteland of years of me banging my head against the wall, where I'm trying to offer something to the world, to people who don't have a problem and don't have the money to pay to get it fixed. If anyone thinks that sounds like a profitable business, it is not. So that I have spent in business, you know, and all the while I was keep I was keeping on with my with my regular broadcast editing stuff. And I was working on this as Plan B. And and all this time, man, if I had just known dude, you have to provide value to people who need it. You have to provide value to people who have a problem, that your value fixes, and that and if you want to make money from it, you need to go to people who have the money to pay you to fix their problem. That is a lot of banging my head against the wall and those couple sentences. I know and I know you're feeling that.
Zack Arnold: Oh, yeah. Oh, no. I've felt that many, many times. And it's a lesson that I've learned myself. And I know the frustration of having an audience that doesn't have the money to solve a problem they don't have. That was essentially what fitness impulse was. There were a few people. You want to talk about a small audience. You thought working with young editors that wanted to become more successful editors is Audience, try the intersection of editors that are interested in fitness. That's a smaller niches it gets, right. But ultimately, there were a lot of people that I was trying to sell a solution to, that didn't see it as a problem, there were a very small group of people that had it as a burning pain, like I need somebody to solve this problem. So that's how I started to build my very small core audience. But realize very quickly, that I'm not going to be able to build an entire enterprise and helping editors or assistant editors bring better health and fitness into their world. But what I learned was that if you remove the word editor, there are millions of people that are working, sedentary lifestyles that are unhealthy, that depend on their creativity for their livelihood, right. So most of the problems that I solve now we just need to find people in different areas that are solving similar problems. But to me, what's so important here is understanding that you're there to solve someone else's problem. That's it's your it's not your journey. They're on the journey. They're the hero when you are the guide. And when it comes to resumes, websites, job interview, prep, all the stuff that I do with my students, it's they always think that it's about them. And I always ask a really dumb question. They bring up the resume, they bring up an outreach, email, whatever it might be. So who is this about? Well, what do you mean, it's my resume? But who's it about what it's about me? Ah, and there's your problem, right? It's not none of it is about you. It's always about the person that has a problem, and they're looking for you to be the solution. And that's where understanding what are all the various dots that I have in my life? Where do they provide the solution to somebody else's problem and connecting all those dots? So I'm curious, I want to go a little bit deeper into this because I didn't realize and I'm assuming that when you were talking about this vast chasm of trying to bring creativity and storytelling to an audience that didn't have a problem. It was at the beginning of Story Greenlight.
Jeff Bartsch: That Story Greenlight started up in that in that stage, Story Greenlight started in 2017, that's when I started the YouTube channel. And at that point, my thought was, if people are familiar with a gentleman by the name of Peter McKinnon, he has, you know, he is a YouTube creator. That's all about photography, and cinematic looking photography. And I saw the stuff that he was doing, I thought, Oh, well, I could do that. I could be the Peter McKinnon for video editing. How hard could it be? Oh, dear. So that's when I started learning about YouTube and how hard it actually is. Because man, it's one thing to be able to cut stuff that that professionals shoot. For professional context, it is another thing entirely to write, and shoot, and, and be on camera, and then and then cut your own stuff. Oh, my word. It's a whole different world. But it was another dot. And what I did, in that context, I was still trying to say, hey, here's how to do you know, I'm, I'm Jeff the Hollywood guy, I can you know, I can help you get super cool editing stuff. And people's people are saying, well, yeah, that's, that's, that's or watch some of your videos, but I'm just figuring stuff out by myself, man, I got YouTube to all the tutorials. And it didn't really, it didn't really start changing into something that could move the needle in a business sense until I started up an agency where I said, Okay, if we go to YouTube creators who are already at 100, or 200 300,000 subscribers, that takes a lot of work to put out the content and to have all the things that go around that. They need a production schedule, they have, they need project management, they need all this stuff. So I set up an agency and I started bringing on a team. I had my first client. And it was actually his idea. Our our first client was his idea. And he had half a million subscribers himself. And we're going to come in and help be producers for his channel. And long story short with that all the clients either fired us or they left, because we were not delivering enough value. And it took all the clients leaving or saying you suck. Because for me to figure that out. And so I went back and I the and at that point, most of the team had decided to move on. So the team left me to and except for my right hand producer gal and she was with me, she was with me for quite quite a number of years. And I had to figure out what's what is going to happen next. What is the value that I bring given my background for people who can actually you that will actually benefit people financially to have this problem solved. And it can To the point where I finally figured out, okay, if the function of storytelling is to build trust is to build connection between people, who are the people in business, who need to develop trust? Okay, then we started thinking, okay, that's where that that's where the wheels started turning. I said, Okay, so what? What if I'm saying we help, we help professional advisors, financial advisors, estate attorneys, I mean, because you're not just going to go to any accountant, or a financial adviser or someone like that and say, here's all my life plans, here's my estate, and he's in know nothing about them. And just unless you actually trust that they're good at what they do, and you feel some sort of connection. And that was the journey that really started taking story greenlight to the place where we are currently, at a place where we help business experts and leaders communicate powerfully in a public way, focusing specifically on podcasts, business podcasts. And that is something that is incredibly powerful. Because with AI taking over the world, businesses as well, and also business marketing, known as b2b marketing, business to business marketing, is also known as boring too boring marketing, overrun with AI generated garbage, and people just don't care. And so when sales leaders say, and when C suite people say, How can we actually stand out? And have people care about what we're doing? And say, Yes, we believe you, we connect with you, we like you, instead of all this AI generated garbage, they say, Okay, let's build a human connection. And that's where long format conversations, like the one we're having right now, are awesome for that. And if you can teach people within a business context to do that, you can teach them to think about communication, and storytelling, just today, I was able to send an email to a client until CC to a whole bunch of people, including the CEO of the company, saying one conversation by this guy based on tools that we've been working on together. One conversation, saved a client from leaving the company and saved you almost $200,000 in future revenue. Now, that is something completely different than saying, Let me teach creative editing to YouTube creators.
Zack Arnold: I didn't even know most of the story. This is fascinating for me right now. I knew that there was a pivot in there. Yeah, I knew that there was some pivoting in there. But I didn't realize how far you would expand it and change the positioning of what you're doing with Story Greenlight. So I can easily turn this into a two or three hour conversation just like talking shop, I'm not gonna go there for now. But what I want to do is I want to give you an example of kind of one of the core ideas that I use in my my career design program. And I want you to apply these lessons to the journey that you just talked about. Because I think that the value going forwards for pretty much everybody in the face of artificial intelligence. And I will not turn this into a TED talk. But the the world as we know it, as far as learning specialization and going through the entire assembly line of education, you learn this one skill and craft, you become an expert in this craft, you do it for 3040 years, and then you retire Those days are over. I think the value is it's in finding the intersection of all of the unique skills and abilities and experience that we have to become a generalist. I firmly believe that when I talked about it almost a year ago, people thought I was a heretic. Now they're like, he might not be wrong, maybe I need to start paying attention. I firmly believe this. And I'm going to give you an example of an exercise and I want you to take the same basic concept to explain how all of the different dots you've connected have now led you to where you are now and it might lead you somewhere else in the future. Here's the simplest version. As a Hollywood film and television editor, I have a high level of expertise. I am not the best in the world by any means. I am not doing maverick in you know, rogue Mission Impossible. And so I'm not at Hamilton right. I'm not Billy Goldenberg winning Oscars. I'm not even winning Emmys, but I have a pretty high level of expertise in doing Hollywood Film and Television and editing, having worked on shows like Cobra Kai and Empire and Burn Notice, cetera, et cetera, right. This is another area where you are a very unique person to have on the show because you know, my entire American Ninja Warrior you've even seen some footage that the rest of the world hasn't as an American Ninja Warrior. I suck. I am not a very good American Ninja Warrior and I trained with literally the best in the sport. I am not a very good American Ninja Warrior.
Jeff Bartsch: I'm going to stop you right there. Just going to point out the fact that There are about maybe 5060 70,000 people who apply every year, something like that. So it's all depending on who you compare yourself to, if you're comparing yourself to Good grief, man, if you compare yourself to Jessie Graff, who has been who I've done many times, because she's my trainer, whom you train with, and she has been on the sides of the trucks and on the billboards, the fact is, what if you compare yourself to her? It's, you know, there's a significant gap. But you know, what, if she compares herself to the current flock of 16 year olds, she is scrambling. So everything is comparison.
Zack Arnold: Of course, and I totally agree with that. And context heavily factors into this. So I'm glad that you brought that up. So that if we go back all my friends, trust me, this is a lifelong lesson that I'm still learning to this day. But if we're looking at this as two very simple Venn diagrams surely have my level of expertise as a Hollywood film and television editor level of expertise as a Ninja Warrior, and for the sake of this conversation, that context are all the people that make it on the show. So if I'm in the Superdome, compared to the other American Ninja Warriors, I suck, and statistically, I have the numbers to prove it. Of the 100 people on set that day, I was like 97 of 100. Right? So if we're looking at those two Venn diagrams, editor, Ninja Warrior, right, very, very different. Intersect those. Tell me one editor that you know that works on my level, that's better than than me at American Ninja Warrior,
Jeff Bartsch: Pretty rarefied.
Zack Arnold: Where those two things intersect, I would venture to guess that it's pretty safe. I'm the best in the planet where those two things intersect. As far as level of expertise as an editor and storyteller, and ability to do American Ninja Warrior as a sport, right, which is why I had mentioned earlier and planted the seed that the producers on the show that go through those 70 or 80,000 reels they're like, this is the best casting video we've ever seen, because it's the intersection of my ninja skills and my editing skills, right. And I believe the future of having a standout as humans against artificial intelligence is understanding where to find those intersections. So having talked about the Venn diagrams, I want you to share and kind of go back and start connecting some of the dots about all of the various experiences, whether work experience, life experiences, the skills and abilities you've learned along the way, that make you one of the best people to teach storytelling to accountants that have to learn how to be podcasters. Because this is how we learn to diversify our specializations.
Jeff Bartsch: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, so the fact that matter is, I'm a verbal processor. And sometimes it takes me a while to just kind of noodle on stuff. So
Zack Arnold: Let's noodle that's why we're here. No, there's no bearing with you. I love this part of the process.
Jeff Bartsch: So I used to think that it was about doing the things I used to, I used to get confused. When I was graduating from high school, I had all these different interests. And I didn't know which one I was supposed to pick because I thought you're supposed to just pick one thing. And so I was into, I was Jeff, the piano guy. I was Jeff, the music, arranger and composer and recording and music production guy. I started doing that in junior high, got to the point where I was able to compose and record the soundtracks for my own video projects that I started doing in high school, I was the one man band in high school in a town of 1000 people where no one else cared about that stuff. I was the only guy there who actually cared about this. So I did it all. I thought that I well, I didn't know where I was going to focus. Then I ended up going, going to Bible college for two years. They didn't have anything with film or TV, but they did have radios. So I did some radio. And I said, after two years, I want to get back into video and TV stuff. So let's just move out to LA. Figure out how to get into the industry. I did. So I think looking at the the overlapping things. I thought that it was about media creation, about performance. But really, it's I don't know if I could really think of a clean Venn diagram off that, other than to realize 40 years later that it's all driven by the same thing. Um, it's constantly, you know, as creatives, we're looking for patterns, we're looking for pattern recognition. I mean, that's the big part of it. And we're saying, Well, this is like that. And this is like that, oh, well, making people care about what I'm playing on the piano, making people care about taking taking your regular song and arranging it and arranging it and recording it in a unique way or is or you're sitting in an edit bay in Hollywood and you're saying okay, this could be a regular or really You know, a basic package talking about this athletes, they talk about ninja since that's what we're doing. And but what if you say okay, well this you have this ninja and she's training with her father. So what if it's not about the girl and just hanging out? It's what if it's about relationship? What if it's about connecting a daughter and, and a father and that kind of thing. So it's all it's all the same thing elevating communication. And that's what I kind of found as an overarching pattern. It's taking something that is ordinary and elevating it to the extraordinary.
Zack Arnold: Hmm. I love that because what what you've done and I want to get more into that the generalization side of things, but the whether or not somebody else has said this, I don't know. But I've done searches for it, and I can't find it. I may end up trademarking it. But we've all heard the term jack of all trades, master of none. Everybody knows that. And there's actually more to that afterwards. But what I've been saying is that, especially with the advent of technology and artificial intelligence, I think we're entering the age of becoming a jack of all trades and a Master of one. And you're a jack of many trades, but you're a master of one, which is that I elevate communication. You it doesn't matter if you're an editor doesn't matter. If you're doing story Greenlight when it didn't work. Now that you're doing Story Greenlight, and it does work, the underlying thing underneath the thing is that you elevate communication.
Jeff Bartsch: And empower others to do that for themselves. Because that question, because teaching is another one, it's a huge dot, I've been teaching piano lessons, the I started teaching piano lessons back in junior high. And, you know, I started doing group coaching in 2015, with the power added. So I mean, that's, that's an ongoing thread too. So it's one thing to be able to do something. But if you can help other people do it for themselves, that's a whole other level of value creation there, too.
Zack Arnold: So if you're thinking to yourself, I need to find a way to create an income stream. Well, I've got to edit Oh, well, there's no editing right work right now, I guess I can't do anything. But if the mindset is, instead, I elevate communication, the possibilities are endless. And the one that you have right now is I help to elevate the communication of these business leaders or these agencies, people that don't understand how to build trust through communication and bring a motion to what they do as accountants or whatever it might be. Right. That's one of the generalized ways in which you've expressed your specialty. So what I love to do now, this is again, where we can just kind of, you know, verbally processes and break it down. I don't need any kind of a clear, succinct answer, I'm just kind of throwing spaghetti against the wall. But if we're gonna take the work that you do right now, not as an editor, but specifically where you're working with these companies to use podcasting as a way to build trust, what do you think are the core fundamental skills that are necessary to be good at your job? Now? Let's break it down to the simplest versions possible to remove all the nuance? What are the core skills of if somebody said, Jeff, I want to do the same thing? What are the core skills that I should work on?
Jeff Bartsch: You need to understand people, you need to have a working knowledge of business, and not necessarily not necessarily. You I mean, here's, here's the thing. It's really easy to say, Oh, well, I have to know everything about everyone that I serve and everything about their world. But the fact is, if you try to learn someone else's weeds that they've spent decades, getting into, you will go crazy. But if you say, these are my weeds, you know if I can get him to get into the weeds and all the details of of my core knowledge of my core specialty, and I can bring those weeds to other people and help them within their own context. That becomes way that that was a huge load off my mind when I was able to figure that out. So be encouraged. If you're in a place where you're thinking, well, I want to be able to take what I've learned and help other people with that switch. If if there's something in your mind that says well, oh, well, I have to know everything. That's a no, no, no, you don't just stay in your own lane and figure out how you can be in your own lane and operate in an excellent way that other people find valuable. You don't have to be other people. Just be you with your with your existing skill sets. So back to your question in terms of what do what do I need to do well, to do this iteration of business coach Cheng, given my creative background, I need to be able to look back at my life and connect those dots and say, what are the connections that matter? How can I apply those connections to this scenario? And that's what creatives do. That's what we do all day long. We look for patterns, and we apply them to this scenario here. So that's typical. A lot of people, you know, if we're, if we're talking about engineers, or scientists, or stuff like that, they, you know, they're, they don't necessarily come from that mental space that creatives do and like, I'm doing I don't I'm, I won't get off in the generalization.
Zack Arnold: By and large, I would say that the, you know, you're not completely off the beaten path with that assertion. I love everything you said, I want to simplify it by five additional levels go forth, really, to really give you and everybody else a sense of what I'm going after. So the simplest version of your role right now you can correct me if I'm wrong, because you're in a space that I'm still learning more about. But essentially, you're an agency that works with companies to help them set up a podcast so they can communicate with your audience and build trust is that kind of a really basic example of what you do?
Jeff Bartsch: I would say, at the moment, I am working as a coach, with thought leaders, either individuals or within the context of a greater company to help them with their public facing presence. A lot of that ends up happening via podcasts or webinars.
Zack Arnold: Okay, so that's the simplest version. Yeah, so I'm just gonna, I'm gonna throw some spaghetti against the wall, you tell me what sticks and what doesn't? It seems to me that in order to do that, let's use podcasting to make this really narrow. You have to know how a podcast works? Because they're going to be like, how do I set up a podcast? What microphone do I get? Do I need a camera? How does it get on Apple? Right? So basics, you got to know how to do a podcast, right? You have to understand something as a coach about how to structure an offer, and how to create that offer such that it's providing value for the customer, right? So that that will be kind of another base layer thing. Like you said, you have to understand people, you have to understand how they can communicate on their podcast so that it can generate trust, and they can eventually build customers. Another core fundamental skill would be, you probably have to know how to speak extemporaneously. Right, just a lot of kind of the basic core assumptions. And what I want to find and what the what what I'm trying to exemplify to you, but more importantly, to everybody listening, is that in most of those categories, no offense, you're just a guy. Yeah. Are you the are you the best in the world at understanding the workflow for creating profitable podcast?
Jeff Bartsch: Heck no.
Zack Arnold: No. You know, enough to help an accountant set up a podcast, but you're not the world's expert on creating a podcast. Right? As far as how to be a b2b agency and a coach to help thought leaders express their message. Are you the biggest name on the planet that helps thought leaders communicate and express their messages? Not yet? Not yet, right? And I love that answer. But now, if we think about your experience as a storyteller, and creating emotions, and specifically understanding the hero's journey and applying it to so much of her work as a creative, if you look at the other people that you're potentially competing against, that are coaches helping these businesses, and these thought leaders communicate their messages through podcasts, how many of them have the depth and complexity of the experience that you do as a creative storyteller?
Jeff Bartsch: It's a pretty exclusive club.
Zack Arnold: It's pretty exclusive. That to me is your asymmetric advantage. That's where nobody else can compete with you and going forwards, there is no more. I'm a specialist and I do this one thing, the more specialized you are, the more screwed you are is artificial intelligence advances, right? But artificial intelligence cannot replace the intersection of all of your different specialties and where you're generalizing them. So for me, and for everybody else out there, it's always about where do I have that asymmetric advantage? Because there's so many things that I do on a daily basis as far as a writer or a podcaster, or a Ninja Warrior, or whatever it might be, right? I'm proficient. I'm okay. Right. One of the areas where I suck still to this day is marketing and lead generation suck at those things, right. But I blame it either, I admit, yeah, not only are they not my favorite, I just I hate them so much that I just have refused to learn how to do them well. And it's one of the reasons that I'm now repositioning and really broadening the brand to help others because I feel like where I have excelled and where the specialty is, is really helping other people understand how they can provide value to others and also how they can make sure they don't sacrifice their sanity in the process. Because as you know where all this started, was, you've deserved to be great at what you do. but a cannot completely cost you your soul. So those are kind of the two areas where I work. And there's so many aspects of that where I'm borderline proficient at it. But again, bringing my storytelling abilities and the ability to create emotion and the ability to take the complex and simplify it. That's the specialization that I can apply just about everywhere. And I really want to impart on people that there is an area that you are probably the world's expert at something, but you have to find what that intersection is. And it seems to me, you're getting pretty close to that now, with the area that you're diving into next.
Jeff Bartsch: I have the closest I'm the closest I've ever been. And let me tell you, I really want to make sure we go here, if you'll permit me, of course, the one of the things that have that continues to blow my mind. When it comes to saying, What is my life doing? Where am I going? How do I choose where my life goes, goes back to this same definition of a story is where a character wants something overcomes obstacles to get it and experiences transformation, as a result. Every element in that state and in that little definition, is a lever. If you pull the lever at the very beginning, everything downstream changes, if you change who you are, or if you decide, I am going to be a different identity. Everything about your story changes. So in my case, I started out as being Jeff the piano guy, you know, all these, you know, these different identities in my life. Start as Jeff the piano guy, go Jeff, video guy, Jeff, the radio guy, Jeff, the film student, Jeff, the TV editor, Jeff, the online business builder, Jeff, the Jeff, the online business builder, wandering in the desert, trying to figure out who the heck he is and what he's doing. But then when you finally get to the point where you're saying, I'm Jeff, I'm a storyteller. I'm a communication strategist. And I empower business experts and leaders to communicate memorably and powerfully, especially on business podcasts, that changes everything about what I want. Oh, and let's say, I am the world's foremost storytelling and business strategy. I'm the world's foremost business strategist, communication strategist. Or, you know, I'm still spitballing this, but, you know,
Zack Arnold: I'm nine years in, and I'm trying to figure this out. So I feel your pain.
Jeff Bartsch: But. Just just even trying that on like, like a, like a, like a coat, try on an identity, and say, I am the best in the world, at this, at this intersection of this thing that makes me uniquely me, and no one else has this. I am literally world class with this. What does that mean? I want? Well start thinking about that, what can get in my way from getting that you have a whole different set of obstacles. And the bigger your future, the bigger the obstacles you're gonna be, you're gonna have to take on. But that's okay, because you're a bigger person, and you can do it.
Zack Arnold: I love it. I think that the the message and this is basically stealing from your own words is that you can change your story, right? It's not a matter of this is the story that I was given. I'm the main character in the story. And it is what it is, you can always change your story. And the the example of where I've used this, where if we look at the just because we've used it multiple times already, and there's such an intersection, I'm gonna go back to the Ninja Warrior story one more time, right? Would have been really easy for me after the first season that I got to compete on the course, to say, Well, I tried. I mean, I failed, and it was really cool three years. But you know, I failed. And I'm now going to give up and I'm gonna move on, right? But I didn't, the thought in my mind was, well, this is just going to make the story that much better. Right, the failure is going to make this a success story that much better next year, when I succeed. And then the second year, I failed again, and it took some time, I assure you, it took time to process that. But I thought to myself, as much as I hate to say it, the story just got even better. But it's now getting a lot harder, and the obstacles are getting bigger. And then this takes are rising, right and the stakes are rising, which makes it a more interesting and compelling. And even for me more inspirational story, right? So you have to keep piling on the adversity. And I'm kind of at the point where I'm like, I'm good with the adversity. I'm ready for the success story, right? You don't get that choice. And then this year, which I've talked very little about, but you know all the machinations of the show, I got the opportunity to test if I wanted to every single day for both testing and shooting of seasons 15 and 16 together, they sent me the entire calendar. They said you can come to any testing session you want because as you know they come Press the number of athletes this year. So I didn't make the cut, which I totally understand why from a business and a casting perspective, I'm like, I want to cast me either, right. But I could have been on any obstacle. I wanted testing anytime at Universal Studios for two seasons in a row, hurt myself on day one of testing. And I missed all of it. And again, I was like, the story, this is the end of the story right? Now, this can't be the end of the story. It just made the story better. But I'm, I'm kind of good with the adversity. Now. I'm ready to I'm ready to move to act three. And I'm still stuck in the right between act two and act three. But again, it's because I know I can change the story that that to me is I'm in the later chapters. Not that the story is over. But it's really hard on a day to day basis to say that, and I bet there are moments with the wandering know, Badland of story Greenlight where it's like, Well, I tried and I failed. This story's over versus Nope, I can change the story. And you just kept working at it.
Jeff Bartsch: Yeah. It's. I mean, it is so easy to compare yourself to other people and say, Oh, well, they're, they're building business. And they, you know, they're doing this and they're, they're making all these, you know, they're making all these advances. And you know, and we all know what's happening with our stuff. But we don't actually know what's happening with a lot of other folks, even the folks who seem to be super, super successful. But I will say, Well, if you look at the hero's journey, there is a reason that the character who is undergoing a transformation has to go through hell. Because if you don't go through hell, the change doesn't matter. And, man, if you're in a place, if you're hearing this, and you're going through hell, to paraphrase Winston Churchill, keep going. Because the best heroes go through hell. And that is what makes them grow. That is what makes them become stronger. And you can keep going, you got this, you can do it, keep going.
Zack Arnold: There's no way that I could have wrapped it up any better than that, that was fantastic. So we've come to the shameless self promotion portion of the program. Anybody that's listening to you that wants to learn more about storytelling wants to learn more about your services, or they just want to connect to you, ah, to ah, meaning human to human, not b2b, or I'm going to use boring, too boring. I've never actually heard that before. But that's pretty brilliant. But human human, somebody wants to learn more about you and your services. And the problems you solve. Where do we send them?
Jeff Bartsch: There is one URL. There's. Among the many years of learning about marketing there, you send people to your own special URL. And it is especially for listeners here at the Optimize Yourself podcast, go to storygreenlight.com/optimize and the reason you should go there is because you can actually find out you can get a link to my podcast, you can get a link to a worksheet that helps you collect some of these elements and help you start building your own power story that you can use in any kind of different situations and have it land in a powerfully emotional resonance with your audience. So that's there. And of course, if you want to connect further and work with me and my team, there's a way to do that there too.
Zack Arnold: I love it. I'm so glad that we did this even though for both of us it was at the tail end of the week, which is the dead zone for any creativity or podcast where we're like, it's Jeff I'll do it. Exactly. I'll do it. So I think some good came from us just you know, sucking it up and pulling up our bootstraps and saying alright, fine, I'll do a podcast. So I can't thank you enough for taking the time to do it especially on a Friday evening. Knowing you've got a family to get to make sure that you tell them that I say hi by the way, so.
Jeff Bartsch: Certainly will do so much appreciation for you and for your friendship over the years. Such a such a privilege to be here.
This episode was edited by Curtis Fritsch, and the show notes were prepared by Debby Germino and published by Glen McNiel.
The original music in the opening and closing of the show is courtesy of Joe Trapanese (who is quite possibly one of the most talented composers on the face of the planet).
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