Communicating with Impact Turning Ordinary into Extraordinary with Jeff Bartsch

Episode Overview

Jeff Bartsch is the founder of Story Greenlight, a coaching company dedicated to helping professionals, particularly in the financial and fintech sectors, become confident and compelling communicators. With over 20 years of experience in media, Jeff has worked with some of the biggest names in the industry, including ABC, NBC, Universal, and Netflix. His expertise in video editing and storytelling has shaped his career, but his real passion lies in teaching others how to transform their messaging into something that resonates deeply with their audience. Jeff’s approach focuses on using personal stories and narratives to elevate everyday communication, helping professionals engage clients and build credibility in their respective fields.

Before founding Story Greenlight, Jeff’s background as a musician and his early experience in talk radio gave him a unique perspective on the power of creative expression. He transitioned from his early work in radio and videography to a successful career in television editing, where he learned how to craft engaging stories from raw content. This foundation allowed him to see the deeper layers of communication, understanding that facts alone are not enough to capture an audience’s attention. His work in media reinforced his belief that storytelling is a critical tool for anyone looking to connect, regardless of their industry.

Jeff’s mission with Story Greenlight is to empower professionals, particularly in traditionally technical fields like accounting and fintech, to embrace their role as thought leaders. He believes that even the most data-driven professionals have stories worth telling and that the key to effective communication lies in confidence and clarity. By helping clients uncover their unique narrative and align it with their audience’s needs, Jeff has become a sought-after coach for executives and advisors looking to elevate their personal and professional brands through storytelling.

Episode Transcript

Kevin Rosenqvist: Hey, welcome to Paypod, where we bring you conversations with the trailblazers shaping the future of payments and fintech. My name is Kevin Rosenqvist. Thanks for listening. If you’re here, then chances are you’re in the fintech or financial world. Or maybe you just love the sound of my voice, but I’m going to assume it’s the first one. Communicating your message effectively, whether that’s in a boardroom or on LinkedIn, can be difficult, especially if what you do might not be super sexy to most people. Jeff Bartsch is a master of communication, a fellow podcaster and the founder of Story Greenlight, a coaching company that helps accounting executives and advisors become confident, memorable communicators and thought leaders. He believes that everyone has a story to tell, and he is on a mission to help those in the financial industry tell theirs. If you want to learn how you can communicate your story effectively, then you’re in the right place. Now please welcome Jeff Bartsch.

Jeff Bartsch: So we have similar journeys. You and I.

Kevin Rosenqvist: We both started out as musicians. I grew up on talk radio and did some radio in college. I know you did some radio in college as well. Yes, we’re both podcasters. Yeah, I worked as a videographer in college. I went the writing route, whereas you went the editing route. And of course, I’ve never worked for ABC or Netflix like you did, but, you know, but I’m a creative guy, and and something people say to me a lot is, I wish I had your creativity, and I’m not tooting my own horn, but I’m not. I’m not saying I’m a creative genius. It’s more that not everyone has that innate desire or ability to be creative. Right. And we all have our own talents. Like there’s a great, great friend of mine who will say stuff like, oh, I wish I was as creative as you, but he has a PhD in atmospheric science, you know, and I’m jealous of that. Like, I can’t do that. There’s no way I could even get close to that. So when you’re coaching accounting executives and you’re trying to help them be creative and be thought leaders and all that stuff, do you run into the same thing or are they just feel like they’re trying to fit a square peg in a round hole?

Jeff Bartsch: Well it depends on the goal, because, I mean, the fact of the matter is, accountants as a class are trained to be great at numbers. They’re not trained to be amazing at communication. And so that, you know, that’s the beginning of things. And then you have the other element of, you know, what does the world think of accountants. And, you know, most of the time accountants have historians who say this is what happened last month, last quarter, last year. Here’s the report telling you so. And the business owners say thank you very much. We need these because the government says so. And but we don’t actually understand it. But I have too much ego wrapped up in this to admit that I don’t understand all the numbers. So I will smile and nod, put these into our folder and we’ll move on. And so when you have accountants living in that kind of a world, sometimes they wonder, does anyone ever want to actually listen to what I say? Am I worthy? Am I even allowed to speak unless spoken to? It’s kind of interesting because the more the more you know about the field, the more you know about the world that you’re operating in, the more you start to dig into the deeper layers of what makes all this stuff tick. And this applies to fintech directly. This applies to the supplies to atmospheric science. I mean, you name it, it all. It all builds in under this stuff. So to your question, do accountants ever wonder if they’re not cut out for this or whether they’re or whether they’re trying to be creative or is there what you’re thinking? What’s any specific? I was curious.

Jeff Bartsch: Because I feel like, you know, I feel like when when a lot of times when people who aren’t used to being creative or being communicative or being a thought leader or anything like that, they, they, they, they get a little deer in headlights or feel like they’re not they’re not able to do that. And, you know, I could see that being something that you have to kind of bring out of them in order to make them be able to, to help market themselves.

Kevin Rosenqvist: Yeah. Well, and I think it’s less bringing that out of them as compared to holding up the mirror and saying, hey, this is who you already are and who you already are is pretty damn cool. Here’s why. Here are the reasons why. Tell me more about what happened in this situation when you did this with this client and said, oh, well, I just did that and that and I’m gone. You realize most people don’t know how to do what you just told me, you know? So when you get enough of those kind of conversations going on, all of a sudden people can realize, you know what? This stuff, this stuff really is cool. I mean, one of my one of my friends always says, what’s ordinary to you is amazing to others, and that is always there’s always an element to that.

Kevin Rosenqvist: I think that’s a very more succinct way of saying what I was trying to say, I could have. I should have asked you first, and you could have given me that, uh, trimmed down version. But yeah, that’s basically that’s basically what I’m saying. Yeah. Is or asking is that is that something, you know, do you, you know, how do you you know, I know a lot of people who are terrified to write something, to be on camera, to be on a podcast, you know, you know, how you call it stage fright, whatever you want. But what do they need to do to become comfortable? Is it really just realizing, hey, I am really good at this and this is more interesting than I give it credit for.

Jeff Bartsch: I think they need to come to a place where they realize that they are already the expert, even if they don’t realize it. One of the things that I work with, with my clients who are engaging in public facing communication, for the record, there are not a lot of accounting firms who actually use internal subject matter experts to be public facing mouthpieces for their firm. That’s not the typical mode, but for the people who do, they actually start out by saying, okay, well, what is my background and where did I come from, and why do I do what I do? And when you start digging out those kind of ideas and then you, then you start crafting even just some of these initial stories, get someone to figure out, okay, who are you and why do you do what you do? All of a sudden, you have something very personal that anyone can connect to on a very deep way. And when you speak to who you are and what you know, that is the beginning of incredible things and that and that. That’s where confidence comes from, because you know who you are and where you come from and the value that you are here to deliver to other people. So, you know, if you’ll allow me, there was one specific moment in my in my world that just set the stage for everything that I do. You cool? If I drop a story here.

Kevin Rosenqvist: Drop a story, man. That’s okay.

Jeff Bartsch: So most of my life. Well, if you look me up, you say, Who is Jeff Bartsch? Most people will look me up online and they’ll say, oh, well, you spent 20 years making TV for ABC and NBC and Universal and Netflix and all these guys, which is true. And they’ll say, well, that’s where you learned about communication and you wouldn’t be wrong. But the place where I really learned about what the core of all this is, is I was a kid. I was five years old. Someone gave our family a piano, and I started going up to this piano, and I started plinking out melodies on the piano. And I got to the point where I was really good at playing the piano. I played both by ear and classically trained. My dad was a pastor for most of my life, so most of the reps that I got in with music were on Sunday mornings, and so I got to the point where I could, I could play a piece of Mozart or Bach, which is this really clean, technical, classical piece of music, and you can just play the notes on the page and everyone says, oh, you’re Jeff, you’re such a great piano player. You’re so amazing. And I’d pat myself on the back and think, I’m amazing and I’m all that. Until there was a day when one of the older musicians at our church kind of pulled me aside and she said, Jeff, it’s all well and good to play the notes on the page, but when you get older, you need to learn how to play from your soul. And I was maybe 11, 12 years old. I didn’t know what emotions were. I thought emotions were db. Playing from your soul. What is this? I thought it was the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Yeah.

Kevin Rosenqvist: What is this hippie bullshit? Right.

Jeff Bartsch: Yeah, exactly. And so you get to the point where I just ignored her. I just smiled and nodded, and I kept doing my thing because everyone was telling me I was doing great until I started learning how to actually bring that music to life with the specific techniques of piano and of interpreting music. And when I started learning how to do that, people started reacting different to me. Instead of saying, Jeff, you’re such an amazing piano player, they would say, Jeff, that was the exact song I needed to hear today. Thank you. Thank you so much for playing that song. And every once in a while, every once in a while, someone would say, Jeff, the way you showed up today brought me into encounter with God. And that’s when I started realizing, okay, this is a this there’s something way bigger than me going on, and I gotta figure this out. And that was really the first time when I was realizing that I was taking the notes on the page, and I was taking an ordinary message, and I was I’d learned how to elevate an ordinary message into something extraordinary, and that is actually the value of what I’ve been doing for the last 40 years of my life. I’m 45 now. I started playing piano when I was five. It’s taken me almost that long to figure out all this stuff, but that’s what that’s what we all have the capability of doing no matter the world that we’re in, no matter how boring or dry or technical our world may be, there is always a way to take an ordinary message and elevate it to something higher. And that’s what people connect with.

Kevin Rosenqvist: Yeah, that’s a great story because you took you out of your comfort zone back when you were 11 years old, and now you’re trying to help people get out of their comfort zone. Do you tell? Do you tell everybody your first thing like, you gotta come from the soul? Is that what you tell people right away? No.

Jeff Bartsch: Accountants would kind of just raise their eyebrows and say.

Kevin Rosenqvist: Thank you for your time. You can go now.

Kevin Rosenqvist: Moving on.

Jeff Bartsch: Not so much. I mean, well, but see, all of that has to do with understanding communication in its larger sense. And the number one place I always start with all my clients is, you know, whether they’re going to a public facing message or more likely, they’re talking about how do I show up in front of a client or how do I show up in the boardroom? How do I show up in front of stakeholders in a way that presents my message in the most compelling way? And the number one place that I always start is to consider the definition of what a story actually is, because when you understand this definition, it literally provides a framework for every interaction between any han being for any reason, ever. And if it seems like I’m exaggerating, I promise you I’m not. There is a book that was written by the author Donald Miller, one of his earlier fictional writings, before he started talking about building a storybrand. He and one of his characters said stories where a character wants something and overcomes obstacles to get it. And I expanded that to say the definition of a story is where a character wants something, overcomes obstacles to get it, and experiences transformation as a result.

Jeff Bartsch: And when you take that idea down, I mean, if you remember nothing else from this conversation right here, hit rewind, hit 15 seconds or whatever back and write that down and stick it up on your wall and think about it. Because in that idea you have the idea of identity, desire, obstacles, and change. Those are some of the most primal forces in han existence. And when you and when you apply those ideas in that framework to any communication that you engage in, all of a sudden you start thinking about, okay, well, I have a storyline running in me. Oh, anyone that I talk to has a storyline running in them. I’m part of a business. This business has a storyline of its own. And you say, okay, these are all these different storylines running together, and then you start talking about, okay, well, how are these lining up and or not lining up? How can we get them to all line up together? And that’s where that’s where the journey begins.

Kevin Rosenqvist: So when you.

Kevin Rosenqvist: When you.

Kevin Rosenqvist: Talk about the the story and the and the and you know, the transformation and all that, are you for for that example of someone being in the boardroom, would that be their own transformation, or are they attempting to create a story that helps transform the people in the room, or both?

Jeff Bartsch: Well, as the person in the boardroom, you need to know who you are and what your role is in the bigger story that you find yourself in. Because everyone is always living their own story. But if you are, if you are the adviser, say you are, you know, so say you’re a fintech founder and you’re in front of the VCs or something like that. You need to know who you’re talking to and what they want. So if you’re talking to the VCs, you know what they want. They want a return. They want a return on their funds. And so they you need to know what are the obstacles that they see that you may or may not know about or and if you don’t know about it, you need to find that out. And if they think that you’re the obstacle, well okay. Well then then you need to communicate in light of that and you need to say, okay, how can we know the obstacles in the minds of the audience, and how can we come alongside to help them get what they want?

Kevin Rosenqvist: Okay.

Jeff Bartsch: And aside from the boardroom example you gave, you’re also trying to help people tell their story in marketing and LinkedIn and things like that. How do That’s a different medi. Obviously, it’s a different approach. Is your messaging and the format and the idea still the same?

Kevin Rosenqvist: The frameworks always stand the frame. Frankly, that framework of the character who wants something overcomes obstacles to get it and experiences transformation as a result. It is so upper level. It is a 30,000 -40,000 foot view that it’s easy for it to start feeling a little airy. As in, how do you actually get boots on the ground to actually put this stuff in? It’s great.

Kevin Rosenqvist: Concept, but how do I put it into action.

Jeff Bartsch: Exactly? So the challenge with that is, well, the reassuring part is it’s always the starting point. You always know you have something you can hang your hat on to say, where do I start from? When you go to a different well, say you step out of the boardroom and you step back to your own computer and you’re going to make a post on LinkedIn. Well, you have suddenly changed venues. When you change venues, you have a different group of people there. You have a different set of expectations, you have a different set of cultural norms. And so what might be appropriate for a conversation in the boardroom probably isn’t as appropriate for a post on LinkedIn. You know, and it might seem obvious to say that, but just pointing these things out to say, hey, this is where these examples fall into place given this upper level framework. And so when you say, okay, well, who are the people on LinkedIn? What do they want? And how does that connect with what I want as a creator, as a communicator on LinkedIn? Well, as a communicator on LinkedIn, you are, you know, ideally you want to put a message into the world that says to the specific audience that you’re talking to, hey, we see you. We understand your pain, your challenges. Here’s how we help you get around those challenges so you can get what you want. That’s the driving framework of how we show up on LinkedIn to make to shape our communication there. So if you’re going to a place like LinkedIn and you’re saying we added our revenues are up 15% over last quarter, we’re all excited and someone sees that and says, okay, cool. I mean, good for you. I mean, that’s good for you, especially if you have a financial stake in the company. That’s like, okay, well thumbs up.

Kevin Rosenqvist: But yeah, great. That is not engaging. That’s not interesting. That’s not going to get people’s attention. So what do you what.

Kevin Rosenqvist: Do you do. How do you make that interesting?

Jeff Bartsch: Be more han. And I’m not going to sit here. I’m not going to sit here and say, you know, you need to air all your dirty laundry on social media or things like that, or you need to tell the all the details of your life when you show up on a podcast because you, you know There’s no need for oversharing like in that context. But and I’m also not going to say that it’s easy within the B2B context to communicate in a personal way sometimes, because the bigger the entity that you’re speaking on behalf of, the more difficult it is to become personal.  I was just listening to a podcast or a podcast episode the other day talking about IBM. And what does IBM actually do? They do a lot of stuff. And the bulk of the and the, the truth is the bulk of what they do is in the background of what most of us just take for granted. How on earth do you build them? Do you shape a message for this billion, billion, billion dollar company that’s been around for a century? How do you make a personal message that that resonates on a personal level? Well, that’s hard, and I’m not going to sit here and say that that’s that’s easy. Nor frankly, is that my wheelhouse, because I’m not. That’s not where I focus on. I’m focusing more on individuals representing themselves or representing more medium sized or maybe smaller business.

Jeff Bartsch: But man, if you can even just do something as simple within the B2B context of moving away from facts which you know, anyone who has a phone in their pocket, they have all the facts they could ever want. We’re all drowning in facts. But if in a B2B context, if you’re if you’re creating a message, if you can just do something like switching from facts to we believe things that we believe. Oh, tell me more. And if you can talk about something and also if you can tell a specific story about this is what we believe and this is how it shows up in our company. All of a sudden you have just put meat onto this conceptual bone. I mean, someone can say, well, we were people first. We believe that people, you know, are actually going to back up your one of your recent episodes was talking about a gentleman who’s building a tax software, tax software that and he believes that people deserve that. The general public deserves access to low or no cost tax filing software. Right. Just the fact that he was saying that we believe that everyone deserves to have this. You’re immediately going to connect with some people and you’re immediately going to disconnect with others. But that’s fine. Your message should not be for everyone.

Kevin Rosenqvist: Why do you can’t disconnect? What’s the disconnect part?

Jeff Bartsch: Well, because if someone if someone hears that and says,

Kevin Rosenqvist: What do you mean everyone deserves?

Jeff Bartsch: You know, if someone comes to this, to the conversation with the idea of, well, we deserve what you work for or just any, any kind of just mindset like that. Never mind the idea of well, we work for. We work for TurboTax or Intuit or QuickBooks or whoever. And so, you know, we believe that everyone deserves to have access to really great platforms that do great things for people. And in exchange for that, in exchange for all that value that we give you, uh, we require money in return. Well, I mean, so then that’s going to be different areas of thought, different mindset.

Jeff Bartsch: Sure. Yeah.

Jeff Bartsch: Sure.

Kevin Rosenqvist: So I talked with a lot of PR teams, uh, who are representing the guests that I interviewed for the show. And they help get people booked and expand their public facing presence. You know, that’s one of the things they’re big on. How does that differ from what you do? You’re more about telling their story rather than just getting their face out there.

Jeff Bartsch: The thing that I work with, with my clients, is to help them put their message into the world. A lot of the time, PR firms and again, this is takes on a different character depending on the scope that you’re operating. When you’re a PR firm representing a government or a multi-billion dollar company. A lot of the time you are controlling the message and you are putting message out in one form or another, and entities that people from those entities show up under your strategy. Whereas if you are saying, hey, showing up as an advisor, as a trusted advisor, as an industry thought leader, then you are representing yourself and chances are you’re representing your company too. But that’s, you know, a lot of the times, especially in the technical and financial worlds, people are excellent at what they do. They’re excellent in the weeds of what they know. They just haven’t ever had training. They just haven’t ever had the empowerment to communicate in a clear and compelling way. And that’s what I focus on with my folks.

Kevin Rosenqvist: You talk about elevated communication. What do you mean by that?

Jeff Bartsch: Going beyond what’s on the surface? When you think about the classic picture, uh, uh, ironically, the idea of elevated communication. The first thing that comes to mind is the idea of the iceberg and going under the surface. So it’s the opposite of elevated. It’s going deeper. Communication in this sense. So, you know, the tip of the iceberg is usually the thing that people see. And it’s the only thing sticking out on top of the water. But the true mass of everything is hanging out underneath the surface. And that’s where the true weight of it all lies. And so one of the things that I always work with when it comes to shaping communication in terms of myself or my clients or anyone that I’m working with, any companies that I’m working with is okay. So what do people see on the surface and you know that that’s where things like facts and information and nbers live. But when you start attaching meanings to that, to things deeper below the surface, then you start making references to those things deeper below the surface, to things that people actually care about. As a point of reference, 20 years making TV in Hollywood. If you happen to go downtown Hollywood to the touristy area that all the people in LA avoid as much as they can. So you go to all the touristy areas of of Hollywood and you will walk on the sidewalk. And it’s the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and there are stars on the sidewalk, and it has people’s names on it. So the thing on the surface is it’s a fancy sidewalk with a with a decoration on it. But the thing under the thing Depends on who’s walking on it and what they think, what they feel, what they dream, what they want.

Jeff Bartsch: Because if you’re one of the thousands and thousands of people who come to Los Angeles in search of making it big, they want to make their dreams come true. You walk on that sidewalk. All of a sudden, these stars represent motivation for people who have also achieved their dreams. This is a message you step on that sidewalk and it says you can do it. Think about what’s possible. Think about this person and what he did. Think about this woman, what she accomplished, and all that kind of stuff. Whereas if you’re a completely different person, if you’ve been in LA and you’ve been banging your head against the wall for years and years and years and you’re just feel like you can’t get your break and you can’t pay your bills, and then you walk on that same sidewalk. All of a sudden this sidewalk becomes a representation to you of broken dreams, of dreams unfulfilled. I can’t do it. This is real. This is a lot harder than what I expected. So either way, it’s a sidewalk. But it means very, very powerful things to different people depending on what they care about and what meanings they attach to that. Yeah, we can use that same process in any communication, whether, you know, one of one of my favorite TV shows that I’ve worked with is the show American Ninja Warrior on NBC, and it’s been going for years and years and years. It started out as a super niche show, and they expanded it to a broad family show, which has since spawned an entire industry of ninja gyms that have been spreading up all over the country. We have one in my city now.

Kevin Rosenqvist: Yeah, okay. All over the place.

Kevin Rosenqvist: Yeah, .

Jeff Bartsch: And the thing about that show is it is absolutely filled with things under the thing. Even the obstacle course itself Self is a metaphor for life, where you see, when you see normal people getting on this obstacle course and getting through an obstacle every time they complete an obstacle. It’s this message to the audience saying, hey, she just got through that obstacle. So can you in your life? Yes. Even just something as simple as that. That’s that’s how you elevate communication. We all have the power to do that.

Jeff Bartsch: That makes a lot of sense. Like you think about, okay, here’s this mom of three who, you know, and here she is doing this incredible task. And it can just a normal everyday person and and that that can speak to. Yeah. That makes that makes a lot of sense. That’s a good example the Ninja warrior thing.

Kevin Rosenqvist: And so when you think about the fintech world, if you’re building a piece of software, I hope you’re aware of this. But people do not care about your software. It might be the most amazing collection of code on the face of the planet, but people do not care about another piece of software.

Jeff Bartsch: That’s still another piece of code.

Kevin Rosenqvist: Yeah, exactly. The question is who is your software for and what does it make possible for the people that it’s designed for?

Jeff Bartsch: When you start speaking to that, all of a sudden you’re not talking about just the surface level of this helps you do this helps you accomplish this thing with this, with this piece of software, it means this is what you get to talk about the results of how that can actually make things better for the people who use it, and how they can actually get the change in their life that they’re looking for. That’s how things become elevated. Or go deeper below the surface, depending on which metaphor you’re going with. Yeah, 

Kevin Rosenqvist: I’ve been in I’ve been in marketing for a long time. And you know, these days content marketing is marketing and, you know, talk the gurus and the experts and the general consensus is, yeah, you want to tell a story. You want to you want to form a connection people don’t want to be sold to. They want a real connection. I’m always amazed at when I’m on LinkedIn Particularly LinkedIn, more so than other platforms. How salesy people still are and how many posts are talking about why you know, why they’re the best at what they do rather than forming a connection. How do you retrain people when they’re trying to? If you know, if you see someone’s LinkedIn that you’re working with and you’re like, everything is just about it’s you’re not focusing the reader. You’re not focusing on the customer. You’re just focusing on your company and what the accomplishments are. How do you refocus them?

Jeff Bartsch: You have to go back to that definition, and you have to, and you have to get really clear on who the audience is, what they care about. And hopefully, you know, if you’re bringing a product to market or something like that, hopefully you’ve already been actively engaging in conversations with users or potential users or advisors and to say, okay, what what are the problems keeping you up at night? Listen to what they say and literally use their words. I mean, so a director of tax comes to me and says, Jeff, so we have some tax managers that are on my team and they are responsible for making presentations to the client. But when they do, they just don’t show up in a in a confident way. How on earth can you know and how can I make that happen? And so you have to start thinking about those storylines at work. You have to think about who the audience is. You have to make sure that the people making those presentations have a very clear view of who they are and why they are excellent, why they are experts, all that kind of thing. And then they start speaking in terms of what the client wants, how these nbers do or do not line up with what the client wants and how that tax manager will help them get to where they want. Same thing on LinkedIn. If you know, if you have a presentation that you’re making, if you’re making if you’re if you’re making a post, you need to know what the people want. Talk about what keeps them up at night. Use their actual words that you have been collecting with your own conversations, and talk about how you help people get around them and get and bring change to their businesses and bring change to their lives. All of a sudden it becomes a lot more personal and not just about your company.

Kevin Rosenqvist: How hard is it for industries, for people in industries like accounting and finance and, you know, things that aren’t as sexy? You know what I mean? Like, you know, telling a story. You can get there usually. But how do you grab people, you know? How do you grab people out of the gate?

Jeff Bartsch: It will depend on the industry. But there are always ways. There are always ways to get people’s attention. You can you can start. For instance, you can start by. Well, you can do something as simple as go to ChatGPT and look up best hooks to get people’s attention. Guaranteed you will come up with all kinds of answers of. Here are specific ways for a specific combinations of words that you can use to get people to stop. Once you know, once you apply your content to this framework. So something like speaking to a speaking against an industry norm, you’ve heard it, you know, everyone says this, but here’s what really is happening. Or if you’ve ever wondered whether it has to be this way, I say it’s this way. Here’s why. Doesn’t matter what business you’re in, if you’re coming at things from that kind of a communication standpoint, all of a sudden people who are in your audience and actually care what your world is and say, oh, well, I always thought it was this way too. Well, what do you have to say? Yeah. So, I mean, the question is, are we willing to put in the time and the effort to be more than average in our communication? How much time? How much blood, sweat and tears do we go through? Building a business, building a team, putting a mortgage on the house. Filling up your credit cards to make your product the best thing ever. And then you go talk about the features. It’s like back in the early 2000, when the iPod first came out, everyone was saying, check out our MP3 player. It has this many megabytes on it. Along comes Steve Jobs and says, we know that you hate carrying around a great big binder of CDs and cassettes. How about we give you a thousand songs in your pocket? You know He was a master communicator who knew how to speak to what people wanted. We can’t do any less. Yeah.

Kevin Rosenqvist: The term thought leader has been around for decades. It really took off in the past like ten years or so. And LinkedIn is kind of experiencing a resurgence over the last couple of years. It’s definitely becoming more mainstream. And people seem to be finding value in following those that they consider to be thought leaders. Why do you think people crave that connection with someone who they consider to be a thought leader?

Jeff Bartsch: I think the reason people want that is because we all have our own obstacles, and if we knew how to get around our own obstacles, they wouldn’t be obstacles. They would just be in the rear view mirror. So at some point, we all need help. We all need input, we all need guidance. And so we’re saying, okay, should we listen to. If someone stands up and confidently says all. I have the answer, you know. Well, that that can be attractive. Now the question is, do they do they actually know what they’re talking about, which is a whole other set of questions? I think the bigger question that I always talk to my clients about is, what do you think thought leadership is to begin with? Because I think there are a lot of people, especially if you’re in a place where you’re not where you haven’t been trained to be in a place where you are expected to communicate powerfully and effectively in front of an audience. When you when you bring up the word thought leader, you think, oh, that’s someone standing on a TEDx stage or someone whose book is on the New York Times bestseller list and something like that. What I’ve come to believe is that thought leadership is not actually a thing. It’s actually a continu. It’s a spectr because you can on one end, you do have that huge scale standing on a keynote stage, having the big book, all the things. Then you have the other side of that continu where you have one advisor talking to one client. The client is looking for insight, looking for advice, looking for wise counsel, and the advisor is helping to lead the thinking of the client. That is thought leadership. So I always tell my advisory clients, hey, if you interact with a client, you are already a thought leader. The question is, how well is that? How’s it going for you? You know, so sorry. Let the cat out of the bag. If you work with clients, you are a thought leader.

Jeff Bartsch: So then the question becomes okay, how do I understand the people that I’m leading. Am I being an effective leader. Do I have, do I have the core competencies to do that because that’s another thing. One of the one of the things with my clients with with accounting advisors, for example, they sometimes wonder, do I have what it takes to do this? And I say, you absolutely do, if only by the virtue of the fact that you’re working. You have the letter CPA after your name, you that that means there is no way that you can have those letters trailing after your name, and you don’t have a core competency of, you know, how to do taxes. You you understand the tax code, you understand how finances work. And when you start, when people start realizing that the confidence comes from what they already know and who they already are, all of a sudden when they realize that, oh, okay, they start feeling better about themselves and they start feeling more confident, it starts to grow. That is required for any kind of thought Leadership at any scale, 1 to 1 client conversation, or standing on a keynote stage. Definitely, it all starts with the confidence, but then it goes through that continu.

Kevin Rosenqvist: Yeah, that’s interesting because I think most people, including myself, when I think of thought leadership, I think of it in, you know, LinkedIn followers and I think in Ted talks and keynote speeches, like, just like you said, it’s you don’t think of thought leadership as that one on one conversation. And maybe we should maybe more people need to do that. Maybe we need to think about being a thought leader in a more in a smaller, on a smaller scale first, so that we can be more effective thought leaders on the larger, more public facing scale.

Jeff Bartsch: Well, and who’s to say that the large scale is even necessary? There are a lot of people who say, oh, well, if you have 30,000 followers on LinkedIn, well, that must mean you really know what you’re talking about. Well, maybe most of the time it does, given what LinkedIn is and the crowd that gathers there. But what if you’re in fintech? What if you. What if you’re running a company that specifically serves non-for-profits not for profit entities? And, you know, you have a very specific organization or a very specific piece of software that helps, not for profits. How many people in that world do you think are going to have 30,000 followers on LinkedIn? Not very many by my, you know, just just by my guess. But the fact of the matter is, if you have 500 followers on LinkedIn and they are all executives at not for profit entities, that is all the following you will need potentially.

Jeff Bartsch: We’re not influencer. Yeah. Yeah. You’re not talking about influencers on Instagram. You know, schlepping purses. You’re talking about people. You know it’s a difference. And I think sometimes we do get caught up in that number, you know, what is that number that people have whether it’s likes, follows, you know, comments, engagement, whatever. And so you’re saying more like think about it from a quality of followers versus a quantity of followers.

Jeff Bartsch: I mean, and it can even be yeah, I can point back to one podcast conversation that I had some time ago that turned into a relationship with a company that ended up hiring me for coaching services for almost six figures. And that came from one podcast conversation. And it wasn’t even from any of the listeners. It was from the hosts of the podcast, you know. And so it’s not get your.

Kevin Rosenqvist: Hopes up, Jeff. I’m not getting a six figures after.

Jeff Bartsch: This is not a this is not a pitch, man, I promise, I promise. But I will say it’s not just about it’s not just about numbers. It is. It’s about connection with the right people. And if it’s one person, if it’s ten people, that has the potential to change the world. That should change the world for them or for you or for anyone. With just that, with just what other people? What what might think is an audience that’s too small to care about. Connecting with the right people is actually what matters. No matter the scale.

Kevin Rosenqvist: You also talk a lot about the noise that’s out there. You know, everyone has a platform. Everyone can say whatever they want. Even. Even if we prefer. They didn’t. , with all the misinformation out there, even, you know, hateful rhetoric or clickbait and the broader sense. How can someone without a following or without existing status kind of stand out above that noise? How do you get noticed?

Jeff Bartsch: It begins by knowing who you are and knowing what you offer to the world, then you have to become very clear about who actually needs what you have to offer, because you can have something to offer to the world. And if you go to a crowd that doesn’t care about what you’re offering, you’re not going to cut through. I mean, there is a time early on, you know, in the early days of internet marketing where you could go to a certain room where with marketers in there and say, hey, did you know that you can set up email sequences that they can just trigger automatically and you can just have that go to any person who signs up to your email list, and those marketers are going to look at you and say, yes, we all know this. Tell us something that is actually new and interesting to us. But if you go to if you go to someone who is not in that world. If you go to a trade show, you go to the right place and say, did you know that you could automatically send emails into the future? And they’ll look at you like you’re the magic man dropping in out of the sky? I’ve been in that position. I can say the exact same message in In Space A and people yawn. I can say the exact same thing in space B, and I am the magic man. Dropping in out of the sky. It’s crazy. The only thing that changes is the audience. So when we’re talking about standing out, we have to know who we are, what we offer, who genuinely needs, what we have to offer. Because then when you speak to. I know what’s keeping you from getting what you want. The right people will connect with that. That is how to cut through. When you match your message to the needs and the obstacles and the desire for change in the people that you’re wanting to connect with.

Kevin Rosenqvist: Jeff, I really appreciate you being here and sharing all this stuff with you, with us and with the audience. This was great information. How can people get in touch with you.

Jeff Bartsch: If you are hearing what I’m talking about and you’re saying, okay, this sounds good, can you get a bigger picture for this than the way to do that is actually to go to a URL. It’s specifically for listeners of this podcast. If you go to Story greenlight.com/pay pod, you can find a link to a small group of episodes from my own podcast that take all these ideas, stack them on top of each other. It shows you how they all fit together. That’s the first thing. And in the second case, if you say, okay, this is something that I know I need help with, I want to learn more about this, how to apply these ideas to my world, to my company, to my business. Then I would also invite you to reach out to me. So drop an email to say tell me more. And I would like to offer a consultation, a 60 minute no charge complimentary consultation just for listeners of this podcast. Send an email to hello at Story greenlight.com. You can also reach that at the Story Greenlight. Com slash PayPal to. It’ll fill in more details there.

Kevin Rosenqvist: Awesome. Thank you very much for offering that to our listeners. I really appreciate that. That’s story greenlight.com/paypal or hello at Story greenlight.com. Jeff, thanks so much for being here. I really enjoyed chatting with you.

Jeff Bartsch: Pleasure hanging out Kevin.