178. How Story Selling Can Attract More Clients with Kris Jones

If you’ve ever felt like your marketing was a never-ending hustle, story selling could be the game-changer you’ve been looking for. In this episode of The Traveling Therapist Podcast, I chat with marketing expert Kris Jones about how one powerful, well-told story can work harder than all your scattered marketing tactics combined. Kris explains how her Signature Story-Selling System helps entrepreneurs (including therapists) connect with ideal clients, stand out online, and build trust without feeling salesy.

We dive into why you can’t outsource your voice, the key differences between your founder’s story and your brand narrative, and how to position yourself as the guide in your client’s journey. If you’ve been searching for a way to market yourself with more ease, authenticity, and impact, this conversation will show you exactly where to start.

In This Episode, We Explore…

• Why you can’t outsource your voice and how to tell your story authentically
• The difference between your founder’s story and your brand narrative
• How to position yourself as the guide in your client’s journey
• Turning your website into your top sales employee with a compelling story
• Using one story across your business to simplify your marketing and free up your time

Connect with Kris:
Website - https://www.reddoordesigns.com/
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/reddoordesign
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/reddoorportland
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/reddoordesigns

Are you ready to take the plunge and become a Traveling Therapist? Whether you want to be a full-time digital nomad or just want the flexibility to bring your practice with you while you travel a couple of times a year, the Portable Practice Method will give you the framework to be protected!
➡️ JOIN NOW: www.portablepracticemethod.com/

Connect with me:

• www.instagram.com/thetravelingtherapist_kym
• www.facebook.com/groups/onlineandtraveling/
• www.thetravelingtherapist.com

The Traveling Therapist Podcast is Sponsored by:

Berries: Say goodbye to the burden of mental health notes with automated note and treatment plan creation! www.heyberries.com/therapists

Alma: Alma is on a mission to simplify access to mental health care by focusing first and foremost on supporting clinicians www.helloalma.com/kym

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:02

I'm Kim Tolson and I'm the traveling therapist. It's my passion to teach therapists how to navigate online private practices and multiple income streams so they can travel the world. I'm a digital nomad with a virtual insurance-based private therapy practice and a multi-six-figure coaching business. In this podcast, I will discuss my journey as a digital nomad. I'll chat with other traveling therapists, and help you navigate the complexities of running an online insurance-based practice. I'm so glad to have you with me on this journey. With ALMA, clinicians get the support they need to focus on what matters most, delivering great mental health care. When you become a member at Alma, you'll get credentialed with major insurance payers in less than 45 days, access to enhanced reimbursement rates, and you can take advantage of HIPAA compliant EHR tools like intake forms, progress notes, and treatment planners. Visit helloalma.com slash Kim to learn more. That's hello.com slash KYM to get started. Really excited to have our guest today. Chris Jones is with us. She's not a therapist, but I mean she probably could relate to a lot of us therapists, especially those of you listening that are super entrepreneurial and maybe trying to build other income streams, digital products, that sort of thing. Chris is a marketing expert and she has a signature system that she's going to tell us about how to help you scale your business if you want to, how to help with your marketing, how to attract more of your ideal customers, even those of you that are therapists, learning how to incorporate your story into attracting your ideal client. Chris is the expert with that. So Chris, welcome. I'm so excited to have you here and hear about your journey and how you got to where you are, and then how you help others do the same thing. So I'd love if you could tell us about yourself.

SPEAKER_00 2:10

Yeah, Kim, thank you for having me. I'm really thrilled to be here. I'm just fascinated by the concept of the traveling therapist and the freedom, the freedom that comes with that, because that's why I love the work that I do. Not only do I get to feel a sense of freedom being self-employed, but I get to help my clients make more money, which allows them to have more freedom being self-employed as well. So I think it is just the ticket to joy and happiness. It's an amazing life. It really is. And it's such an honor to get to help people, you know, get better at it and make more and work less and have more fun. So gosh, where do I begin? I've been doing this work for so many years, over 20 years. I've been in the marketing space. I started out as a visual storyteller, like as a child. That's what I was doing in hindsight. I didn't realize it at the time, but eventually I got into visual storytelling professionally, graphic design, brand design. I got hired by Nike to work in their brand design department. So I got to work along like the best of the best in the industry there. And just learned, I learned and learned and learned so much just being in an environment like that, and honed my skills and then eventually went out on my own, started my own boutique firm, and really leaned into working with entrepreneurs, small business owners, individuals who I just had a heart for those people because I was that person too. And I had done years of work for larger companies like Nike, like Adidas. I work Jeff Bezos was a client of mine at one point. Oh my gosh. I just like that was fun. And that was a wonderful chapter of building credibility and building my resume, really up-leveling my skills. And then I was able to go out and do my own thing and work for the type of people that I really wanted to work with. This was kind of back in the day when all you needed to succeed as a business was to have a website. It didn't matter really what it said. It didn't have to even be designed really well. Like if you had kind of like a kind of pretty website, you were legit and you would get clients. And it was like earlier in the earlier days of the internet. And that's kind of what I focused on is like I leaned into the branding, the logo design, the visual story, and the website. And I would make it look beautiful. But eventually, you know, the landscape online just changed over time. It took a while, but like everybody started to have a website, and things got more crowded, and it was harder to stand out. Like a pretty website was not going to do the heavy lifting anymore for a business. Like you needed to have a clear and compelling message. You needed to really be clear about the problem that you solve, who you solve it for, and the transformation that you provide. So I was having these clients. There was one in particular, her name was Louise, and she was a writer. And so she was gonna write her website and give it to me. And then I was gonna design it for her. And she called me one morning, like the day that her copy was supposed to be delivered to me. And she was she was a wreck. Like she had been up all night. She had essentially been beating her head against the wall, trying to write the copy for her own website, which she knew through and through. Like, and she was a writer. So it was like she was like, this is gonna be super easy. And what she found was the harder that she worked on the writing, the worse it got. She was not having a breakthrough. And I liken this phase because what she was going through trying to write for her own business, I call this the bottle effect because we're so close to our own business that it's like we're trying to read the label of the bottle that can only be read from the outside. And we're trying to read it from the inside. We're just so close to it. And so the harder we work, it doesn't get better. This is why her website copy was getting worse and worse and worse because it wasn't necessarily a writing problem, it was a perspective problem. That's why I do the work that I do. I can come in with fresh eyes, look at you, look at your brilliance, look at your business, and pull out the golden nuggets of your story and weave together the golden thread that is you, that is, you know, unlike all the other competitors. And I think so often in business we look to what our competitors are doing, and then we kind of emulate that, and then everything starts to look and feel the same. So with Elise, she called me, she was devastated. I didn't feel really that equipped to help her. Like I gave her a template, I gave her the names of a couple of copywriters, I told her to interview some of her clients for ideas. She tried all of it, none of it worked. I mean, it was just a it was a mess, and I couldn't help her. And the reason that she couldn't write her own copy and she couldn't hire out somebody to write it for her is because you can't outsource your own voice. When you are the business, you can't outsource your own voice. If you do, it'll come back to you. The writer will go work in a silo, it'll come back to you, and it might be really good copy, but it doesn't feel fully aligned with your voice because you didn't create it. And so there's a disconnect, and then there's this back and forth of editing, revisions, refining, and then by the end, you're out like thousands of dollars, and you've essentially rewritten it yourself, anyways.

SPEAKER_01 8:24

Oh my gosh, I can relate to this so much. I mean, I have hired so many people to try to help me, and I swear every time it's like, no, that's not right. It's off.

SPEAKER_00 8:33

It's off because you you can't outsource your your own voice. And so essentially, you know, it was a moment for me. It was a career-defining moment because I just said, I'm never letting this happen again. I'm going to master the art of not only how to tell a really powerful visual story, but to marry that with a very compelling written narrative. So I essentially went on a quest. I traveled across the country to workshops. I became one of the very first building a story brand guides, which they're now called, we're now called story brand coaches. But I got certified with Donald Miller before that book even came out. I was like, I was on board. And I just lived and breathed story for a long time. And I started applying it to my own business. Of course, I was figuring it out, applying it to my own business. I never took on a project and didn't apply what I learned, the power of a story. I used to kind of start with design, and then the words were kind of an afterthought. Now the story is everything. The story is the foundation, the story is the soil in the ground that everything grows from. And we we begin with the story. So yeah, and it was kind of mind-blowing what happened. Like I had my own website. It was fine. I integrated story into it. And I was having people calling me going, I'm taking the train to Portland. More than one potential client said, I'm taking the train to Portland. I'm road tripping to Portland. I want to come meet you. I want to work with you. We want you to build our website. We want you to tell our story. And so people started traveling to Portland to meet me because they wanted to work with me. My calendar started getting booked out with people. I was able to charge more for the work that I was doing. And it totally shifted everything. But more importantly, I was getting calls from my clients telling me things like Chris, you know, this one client I worked with, Mike, he was on the verge of burnout. He literally was like, I'm either going to shut the doors of my business or I'm going to invest and work with you. And he chose to bet on himself and work with me. And he called me, it was like one of the best moments. He said, I'm charging six times more for the exact same service. Like I was on the verge of burnout. I was about to close my doors, and now I'm charging six times more. And I'm working with people that are excited to pay that amount, that are low maintenance, right? That are that are great clients, the clients that I that he wanted to work with. And then I had another client who hired me to, her name's Andrea. She hired me to do this work with her to craft her signature story and to integrate it in all the way, all the areas that she shows up online.

SPEAKER_01 11:38

Amazing.

SPEAKER_00 11:38

And she, of course, wanted to get more clients, wanted to make more money. But what she shared afterwards, a few months later, she called and she said, What I didn't realize I was buying from you was confidence. I feel now that I have the words to communicate what I do, I show up with such a different energy in the world. And she's like, You can't put a price tag on that. But not only that, she quit selling. Like when you have a compelling story, you don't have to sell yourself. Like it does that work for you. So she would get on her sales calls prior to working together. She would get on for every 10 sales calls she would get on, she'd get two clients. So she had a 20% close rate, essentially. And after she started integrating her story into her calls and it it was aligned with what was on her website, and it was just all congruent, her close rate went up to 95%.

SPEAKER_01 12:39

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00 12:39

So for every 10 calls, yeah, for every 10 calls she got on, she got nine and a half clients.

SPEAKER_01 12:45

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00 12:45

That's amazing. That's incredible. Yeah, yeah, it's so powerful. And what's what I love about it more than anything is that it is working for you 24-7 on your website and anywhere you show up online in your social media, but like I really think of your website as the sun of your marketing universe. No matter what you do out in the world, like you point people back to the website. That's the sun. And then the planets can be like a marketing event or a podcast interview or email marketing, whatever it is, like pick a planet or two and just point everything back to your website and just know that it will be your top sales employee. So you don't have to figure out how to fill your client load, how to fill your calendar with paying clients. That's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 13:37

So I'm thinking about therapists, right? With therapists, you know, in grad school, I mean it's shifting, but we learn no self-disclosure. Don't talk about yourself at all. It's not appropriate if you're a therapist, that sort of thing. But over the years, you know, now therapists are becoming more savvy with social media. They are sharing their stories on social media and talking more about, you know, like I was here and now I'm here, and that's how I learned to do this. And we're getting a lot more public about our stories. So I'm just curious, like, what advice would you have for like maybe a therapist that's trying to just attract their ideal client to their therapy practice? And then maybe even like an entrepreneurial therapist to use their story and maybe selling digital products that might relate to their niche or that sort of thing. Do you have advice around your story selling model that could help a listening therapist like learn how to use their self more, even though we've kind of got this like taboo around it in our lives? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:32

Yeah. Well, there are two kinds of stories that we tell. One is like a business narrative, which your brand story. Those are the stories that I really love because those are the stories that will make you more money. The other type of story is called the founder's story. And that's really about you, your life, your background, how how you struggled with that problem and how you overcame it. And, you know, it could be anything about your history. That's a different kind of story. It can be a nice story to write or to have, but it's not the story that's going to get you more clients. So I really focus on this brand narrative. And think about the last time you went to a movie theater and the lights dimmed and the story began. The story always begins with a hero that has a problem they don't know how to solve. When a story begins in this way, our brains cannot help but fully engage. So, of course, we want to apply that same story flow to our business because it captures our attention in the way nothing else can in this day. You sit there in that movie, you don't get up halfway through to get popcorn or look at your phone, even. Nothing has the power to capture our attention in that way. So that's why we apply story to our business. And whether it's a book you've read, a movie you've gone to, it doesn't matter. Stories follow the same flow. They always follow the same flow. They always begin with a hero that has a problem they don't know how to solve. Then the guide comes into the story about a third of the way through and gives them a plan. And the thing that's most important to know here is that your clients are the hero of your story. You are the guide in the story. You're the guide, you're the yoda, you're the Mr. Miyagi, whichever. There's a guide in every story. A guide enters in about a third of the way through. Doesn't mean, you know, you're the strongest as the guide, you're the strongest character in the story. But the hero is really the central character in the story. And this narrative allows your potential clients to imagine themselves working with you because they can see how you're both really important characters. So the guide comes in a third of the way through, gives their hero a plan that calls them to action. We want our heroes to take action. That's how we know our marketing is working. People are taking that next step. And then we pull them through the story and keep them fully engaged with stakes. And that just means success is possible, failure is possible too, but we're gonna help you avoid failure. So our brains really like to know that you're gonna help me avoid failure. That feels really good for our brains. I'm sure you know that as a therapist. So that's really the flow of every story that's ever told. And that's the type of story that's going to build your business.

SPEAKER_01 17:48

Yeah, yeah. I totally agree with you. And a lot of times, you know, therapists are coming to me for private coaching or something, but like, I can't get clients at all. And really, one of the first things I want to do is look at their directory profile listing. You know, how are you approaching? Are you like saying, oh, I've got, you know, five master's degrees and I specialize in blah, blah, blah. And they're missing the transformation completely. So I can totally relate to what you're saying instead of approaching it like, you know, who is this person I'm trying to help, and how am I going to help them transform into who they want to be with my unique method, whatever that is, that my therapeutic approach or my storytelling method, like you've got, you know, that kind of thing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:27

Yeah. People don't actually want to work with the best. They don't want to work with the person that has the most credentials or is positioning themselves as the best of the best. Not that that's a bad thing, but people don't work with the best. They work with the one they feel the most connected with. And so does your messaging cultivate a connection? Is your message on your profile and all the different places that you show up online as a therapist? Is it centered around the hero? With the words that you're using, are they feeling seen? Are they feeling heard? Are they feeling not alone in their struggle? And are they feeling like you're the obvious choice to help them overcome that struggle and really experience success and avoid failure? So the transformation is really key. But in addition to that, the beauty of story is that it cultivates a real connection between two people. Just like when you'd sit down, if you were to meet somebody for a first 10-minute coffee date, you wouldn't sit down and launch into all the accolades and all the degrees that you have. You just wouldn't do that. You would sit down and connect and you'd say, What's going on for you? And so often we we get excited about what we do. We want to talk about it. And we're like, of course, it's my website or this is my profile. Of course, I should talk about myself. But really, we want to do it at the right time. First, we need to really create that connection. And that's the power of story. And then there is a certain point in the story where it is important to build some authority and show that you know what you're doing, but you don't want to jump the gun or do it too prematurely, or you just you totally it's off-putting, honestly. Yes. They're gonna click off your click off the page and keep looking for somebody else.

SPEAKER_01 20:23

Totally. And you know, you said Mr. Miyagi, it's got it, it just like clicked in my head. Remember when like Daniel's son first saw him like do like a like a karate kick and it was like, oh, he is the expert, you know, like that kind of thing, where he beat up the bad guys or something. It's so true. That's when you bring in the expertise, like you don't have to prove that in the beginning, you have to build the report, yeah. So, okay, let's let's say like a therapist is listening right now and they're like, I have no idea how to even begin to do this to connect with a potential person visiting my website for the first time. Is there any like trick or hack or something that you could give to to say, like, this is where we look or this is where we find that capture point or something like that?

SPEAKER_00 21:04

I don't know what you call it, but I mean I think the biggest thing is to shift your mindset around your hero, your clients really need to be the central character in your story. And when a therapist is the hero of their own story, this is a big mistake. The hero is actually the weakest character in the story because we don't know if they're gonna succeed or fail. We don't know, right? They have yet to figure that out. So when you're the hero of your own story, number one, you're the weakest character in the story. Number two, there's only room for one hero in every story. And so when you're the hero, you kick your potential client out of the story. They can't even enter in. And so they'll come to your website or they'll come to your profile online and just keep scrolling or keep that there's like you've kicked them out of the story, they can't imagine themselves engaging with you. The first First thing I would do is start to shift the lens at which you look at your business and the lens at which you talk about your business and start positioning yourself as the guide and really think about your clients as the hero of your story. And the tangible thing that you can do is go to my website, reddoorstories.com. I have a freebie. It's under the resources section. It's called How to Write Compelling Copy in Five Minutes Flat. It's a five-minute video. I hold your hand through the process of really tangibly changing that lens and getting those ideas out of your head onto paper and organizing them in a way that flows with stories. So you can get the basic foundation of your story dialed in just through that freebie on my website. Oh, I'm gonna go do that later today.

SPEAKER_01 22:57

It's really cool. Yeah. So then what is the process like working with you? Let's say they they get that initial, you know, basis down with the freebie. What is the process with you? Somebody that's like an expert in this, I'm just curious to hear about it, how it yeah, all flows.

SPEAKER_00 23:12

Yeah. I'm so glad you asked because we touched earlier on that challenge of you can't outsource your own copy because it doesn't feel like you. So how do we overcome that? So the reality is your story is not invented or created, it is inside you. It's inside your head, it's inside your heart. So, number one job for me is to pull that story out of you. And I know the questions to ask in order to get that information. And basically, this phase is called the mining for gold process. We mine for the gold inside your head and your heart. And I pull it out. The golden nuggets, they're rough, they're a little dirty. I polish them up, I shine them up, I craft your narrative for you. But because it's come from you, it already feels in alignment with your voice. Then I craft your narrative, I craft your signature story, and we initially tackle the website. So, how's the story gonna live on your website? And then we collaborate. So we have a 90-minute collaboration call and we go through every aspect of your story, and I help you understand the strategy and the thinking behind everything that I've written. I believe every word is guilty until proven innocent. So I really we go through, I help you understand the strategy, but it's also a chance for us to refine and tweak together. So we just double ensure that it's super aligned with your voice. So that's how we overcome that problem. And then we have your signature story, and you can apply that to your website. And we also, that's when me and my team get together and we basically create versions of your story that are gonna live in different areas of your business. So your therapist profile on psychology today, every touch point that you show up online needs to be congruent and consistent with the story that's on your website. So I craft your one-liner, I craft a video script for you. It's really important if you want to stand out as a therapist to have a video introducing yourself on the page and stepping into the story as the guide. So I write your video script. The reason that you really only need one story for your entire business is because number one, you want to tell the same story everywhere so you have a consistent message. People need to read things eight times in order to commit it to memory. So the more consistent you can be, the more memorable you're gonna become. The other thing about story is that your signature story works a lot like an accordion. So there's shorter versions of it. Like when someone says, What do you do? How do you answer that question? That's gonna be a shorter version of your story, longer version is gonna be like your website, middle version might be a video script that I write for you. So it really does like it's consistent, but it can stretch and expand and condense. Love that. Yeah. Yeah. So after we craft your signature story for your website, then we create the various versions, the shorter versions and the video script for you. So you basically have everything you need. I deliver it in what I call as the brand copy Bible. So you have one document that has your story. The only story you're ever going to need to tell for your business is there in the different versions of it. And then at that point, you just start getting more clients. So that's that's the property. It's mine for magically, yeah. Mine for gold, refine your story, design your website, and sign more clients.

SPEAKER_01 27:00

I love that. And I would imagine when you have this version of your story, it helps guide social media and that sort of thing. You could tell little parts of the story in different ways consistently over time.

SPEAKER_00 27:10

Yeah. In the brand copy bible, I have templates and training for social media. So I have an approach to social media that I call the Freedom 15. It allows you to have the 15 posts every therapist needs in order to turn your Instagram grid into a really powerful sales page. I haven't posted on Instagram in almost two years because the page is there, it's working for me just like my website is. And it's, you know, people are coming to me through that, but it gets you off the hamster wheel. Gosh, that is like true freedom.

SPEAKER_01 27:44

When you said that, I was like, oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00 27:46

Yeah, that's pretty great. And then there's also a short training there and a template that allows you to use story on your sales calls. So we're just making sure that there aren't any broken links from the time they find you online to the time that you know they become a client. We need to shore up that entire process, and that's what we do. That's so smart.

SPEAKER_01 28:10

Because I mean, a lot of therapists, like I said, we're entrepreneurial, we have products and that sort of stuff. But definitely that initial consultation call, even with a therapy client, is super important to kind of close the deal, you know. Totally. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:23

It is. And you mentioned something about having like alternate revenue streams and how would that work? You need one story for your whole business. And within that story, you're going to present your suite of offerings. And it might include therapy, it might include one-on-one therapy or group therapy, it might include a course. But because it's all created by you, there's always like a golden thread that ties them all together. And then we work together to really tidy up your suite of offerings. And you can have digital products within there. You can have group, you can have one-on-one, whatever it is. I always work with my clients to kind of present their suite of offerings in a way that really feels good and allows the hero to make a choice.

SPEAKER_01 29:13

Yes. Oh my gosh. So how do people find you? We kind of mentioned some places already, but how do people find you? How do they work with you if they want to? If they're listening.

SPEAKER_00 29:21

Yeah. The number one thing you should do is go to my website, reddoorstories.com, and click on the blue button in the upper right hand corner. I offer a free money-making messaging call where we will get on a call, we'll look at the story that you're telling, we'll identify the areas that you need to shore up, the holes in your boat, and we'll talk about your business, what you're struggling with. And I offered those calls for free. And if you're interested, then we talk about what it would look like to work together. So that would be number number one, book a call with me. I'd love to meet you. I'd love to talk with you. Um, number two, check out the resources page. There are a couple different options in there, but the main one I would encourage you to go through if you're more of a DIYer or you're just wanting to kind of delve deeper into this work. It's the compelling copy, how to write compelling copy in five minutes flat. So sign up for that. Amazing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:24

Thank you so much for taking the time today. Thank you so much for listening to the Traveling Therapist Podcast. For show notes, links, and downloads, head over to thetraveling therapist.com where you'll be able to learn more about my journey, the courses I've created for you, and other exciting resources to make your dreams become a reality. If you've enjoyed this episode, please share with your traveling therapist friends. Subscribe to the podcast, and if you love this episode, please leave a review.