Most marketers are looking for the perfect formula to scale their business. But what if the “answers” you’re searching for are holding you back?
In today’s rapidly evolving marketing landscape, copying successful formulas and chasing “best practices” has become the norm. Yet these approaches consistently fall short of creating lasting results. Through our work with hundreds of marketers and business owners, we’ve discovered something surprising: your biggest marketing challenges often contain the seeds of your most powerful marketing messages.
Here’s a bold claim from one of our recent Marketing Accelerator Coaching Calls: “The most effective and compelling marketing on the planet will come from your truth, your insight, and your revelation.”
Your truth is your authentic experience – the challenges you’ve faced, the mistakes you’ve made, and your journey in business. It’s not the polished version you think you should present.
Your insights are the deeper understandings you’ve gained along the way – the patterns you’ve noticed that others miss, the solutions you’ve developed through trial and error, and what you’ve learned works (and why).
Your revelations are those “aha moments” that transform how you see things – when you suddenly understand why something isn’t working, or experience a shift in perspective that unlocks new possibilities.
Despite having these valuable internal resources at our disposal, most of us (myself included) have fallen into the trap of imitation. Think about it – how many times have you:
If you’re like most marketers (including me), you’ve tried all of these approaches. And while they might work temporarily, they never seem to create lasting results.
Marketing is a lot like building sand castles… The headline, the funnel, and the strategy that works today may not work tomorrow… Because everything is going to change.
This explains why:
Let’s look at a current example of these sand castles:
In 2021-2022, UGC was the golden ticket. Those “authentic” iPhone-style testimonials were everywhere because they worked. But now? The market has evolved.
What happened?
The new wave is EGC – where actual employees share authentic behind-the-scenes content that:
Companies like Duolingo and Chipotle are crushing it with EGC because it offers something UGC can’t: a perspective from people who live and breathe the brand every day.
The market shifts because customer behavior evolves (remember when people distrusted online shopping?). Platforms change their algorithms (like when Facebook killed organic reach). New technologies emerge (think: AI, voice search, AR). Cultural moments transform preferences (like how sustainability became a key selling point).
This is why copying what worked for someone else rarely works long-term. By the time you implement their strategy, the market has already moved on.
Instead of looking outside for answers, what if you turned your marketing “problems” into your most powerful assets?
I’ll be honest – I spent 15 years looking outside myself, searching for someone to give me “the answer.”
I followed industry gurus, like Russel Brunson, Alex Hormozi, and Gary Vaynerchuk. I attended masterminds, virtual events, personal development intensives, and marketing training. I copied successful campaigns and learned to build funnels, like webinars, VSLs, challenges, lead magnets, summits, and more.
I spent years of my life mistakenly believing that an answer, template, strategy, or best practice would make me a successful marketer. The mistake I was making was that I was looking for someone else’s answer instead of developing the capability to find my own.
Once I figured this out, I knew I wanted to develop a tool to extract my own insights, my own revelations, and find my own answers. And with that, Story Alchemy was born.
My life transformed almost instantaneously. Results that I had been trying to produce for years manifested in weeks. Goals which felt out of reach immediately began to show signs of coming true, and both my life and business have begun to transform in the direction of my dreams in such a significant way, I find myself speechless.
Story Alchemy is a practical process that transforms challenges into your most compelling messages. Instead of copying what works for others, you’ll learn to extract insight and revelation from your own stories, perceptions, and experiences and create authentic messaging that connects with your audience.
And, more than anything else, instead of looking “out there” for an answer, you’ll discover the answer you were looking for was “in here” all along.
Let’s put this into practice with a simple exercise. First, pick one marketing belief that’s holding you back. Most marketers I work with struggle with beliefs like:
Once you’ve identified your belief, let’s dig deeper with these questions:
What evidence do you have that this is true?
Write down specific instances and examples. But be careful – most of what you’ll write will be interpretations rather than evidence. For example, “My last 3 posts only got 5 likes” is evidence, but “Nobody cares about my content” is an interpretation.
What are the plain facts (without interpretation)?
Strip away all emotion and judgment. Look at the raw data:
How could this “problem” be pointing you toward better marketing?
This is where the magic happens. For example:
Here’s a real example: One of my clients said, “My ideal clients can’t afford my services.” But when we dug into the evidence, we discovered something interesting – it wasn’t an affordability issue at all. The real insight was that their marketing attracted price-sensitive customers instead of value-focused ones.
The marketing landscape will keep evolving. UGC becomes EGC. Algorithms change. Customer behaviors shift. But here’s what remains constant: the power of transforming your marketing challenges into authentic insights.
Remember:
Start with one marketing belief that’s holding you back. Work through the questions above. You might be surprised to discover that your biggest marketing challenge is hiding your most powerful message.
Your market isn’t one homogeneous group waiting to hear about your solution—it’s five distinct groups, each requiring a different approach. When you push one solution onto all these groups, you create resistance instead of results. But you can learn how to meet prospects where they’re at so your marketing feels authentic… not manipulative.
Having a great solution isn’t enough when your prospects resist taking action. The problem isn’t your offer or how you explain it—it’s that your prospects haven’t become ready for change. Learn how to bridge the gap between knowing and doing by leading your audience through the transformation they need.
Struggling to create consistent content? The goldmine of stories you need isn’t in some guru’s course—it’s in your everyday experiences. Transform your client interactions, challenges, and breakthroughs into powerful marketing content with the Story Journal™ framework. Learn how to mine your experiences for authentic stories that connect with your audience.