Kyle Gray | Expert Storytelling and Failing Into Growth

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:00:01]: Welcome back to the Weird and Strong podcast. I am your host, Jeremy Grunsteiner, and we have the story master himself, Kyle Gray, on the episode today. And we talk about his path into content marketing and where that started, where that's taken him, and how he uses all the lessons that he's found for himself in telling really powerful stories. So without further ado, let's get weird. Kyle Gray, welcome to the Weird and Strong podcast. Kyle Gray [00:00:29]: Man, I am so excited to be here, Jeremy. Thank you for having me. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:00:34]: Yeah, it's been, as many people have heard or have noticed that we've had a long string of coaches coming through on the podcast, many of whom, Kyle included, that I got to meet in person just about a little over a month ago now. It's crazy to think that's only been a month. Kyle Gray [00:00:51]: Absolutely. It was one of my highlights of my year, getting to hang out probably with a lot of the people on the show that you've already interviewed, getting to meet you, getting to see the mobile podcast studio on Wheels, and just 1000 moments of inspiration in between. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:01:11]: Yeah, it's been super cool. I have a very weird question for you. Are you ready? Kyle Gray [00:01:18]: I'm ready. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:01:19]: Awesome. If you could pick one artist or composer to create the soundtrack for your life so every moment becomes underscored by music, who would you pick? Kyle Gray [00:01:38]: The answer that came to me before you even finished. I think it would be Dave Grohl. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:01:45]: Dave Grohl? Kyle Gray [00:01:46]: Yeah. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:01:50]: Any particular reason why you picked Dave Grohl? Kyle Gray [00:01:55]: Well, maybe I was thinking the question was going to go in a different direction, but just landed on this anyway. But if there is a certain artist or somebody that has created something really cool and yeah, I just admire who he is, how he shows up and what he's created, and he's done just amazing work. While I feel being in a lot of great integrity and yeah, I love his music, I think there's a lot of variety in what he can write. And yeah, the way he strings his lyrics together has always really resonated with me. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:02:34]: Very cool. I know you are a man who appreciates great stories and great storytelling. Does that connection into Dave Grohl as a musician come through for you in your practice or what you do working with stories? Kyle Gray [00:02:52]: Yes. I would say it kind of points back to where some of the original seeds were planted. I've certainly been and felt weird for my whole life. I've had a hard time really expressing or articulating all of my feelings. And when I started playing guitar, it was a fun way to move through emotions and express things. And in my late teens and early twenty s I was certain that the only way I was going to live a happy and fulfilled life was by being a musician. I played in a rock band for a while and we were well known for our antics and strange things that happened and we were okay musicians or we were okay. Our music was kind of good, but yeah, just the weird stuff that would happen at our shows was some of the things that would attract our crowds. Kyle Gray [00:03:50]: And then I was also, for a long time in my early 20s, singer songwriter. I was traveling the world a lot, or a lot of South America, and I would carry my acoustic guitar around with me everywhere and was writing different songs about how I felt. And somewhere around my early twenty s I really wanted to make it work. I applied for a performing arts school in England. I was like, this is the only way. I got an audition but didn't get in. And I can remember just putting a lot of pressure on myself to write great songs instead of just having fun expressing myself, and ended up burning myself out on the craft and put the guitar down for many years and stopped playing music and just expressing that. A couple of years later, through a string of many events, I was graduating college and just got offered a job working as an apprentice for a content marketer or somebody, a startup founder who was growing a startup with content marketing and now wanted to hand off that task to somebody. Kyle Gray [00:05:03]: I was a good writer, I was just finishing a master's degree, so I'd written my way to there. But writing great content for startup founders, for the Internet to attract attention, to inspire people, is much different than just writing words for a professor. But I found something similar in the writing that spoke to me in the same way that music did. And I was really enjoying this. It felt like this, it was a cool outlet and began to grow in that skill and in that talent of writing good articles, capturing somebody's voice, really distilling what the quality of what they want to create is, and making it so that I could create or other people could create in that voice and quality, and started to use this skill. I worked for the startup for a year, helped it grow and ultimately get exit into or get acquired by GoDaddy, a much larger company, and began to insert myself into many different companies and building a freelance copywriting and storytelling consulting business. I worked for a self publishing company and helped them build a content marketing strategy and learned how to write books. And that was really fun too, and a great outlet. Kyle Gray [00:06:33]: And then I also started to see how people were telling stories from the stage and using that as a reliable, predictable way to grow their business. And there was something, again, that reminded me of the performances that I would make when I was younger and being on stage, and I wanted that. It spoke to me so deeply. And so I went to this company who was teaching people how to do this, and I said, I'm going to write for you guys. I want to learn how to do this, and used the value that I could do well and inserted myself into this company and started writing for them. They started growing quickly and started needing people to help facilitate these $10,000 workshops where people would come for a weekend and build a signature talk or prepare themselves to be a great speaker. And since I was doing a lot of the writing and I knew a lot of the process and the teaching, I was one of the first persons they called first people's, whatever that word is. And over the course of a lot of the 20 teens, I was facilitating many of these workshops. Kyle Gray [00:07:49]: AnD it was a transformational experience to see how many people would pay $10,000 for something, how many people could get incredible results for that, how many people might not get great results, but how to do that and how to make that happen. And, yeah, it was so great to see that from somebody who wanted to really start a business, run events like that. And over the course of a few years, built up an agency as well. I had a team of stay at home moms, building sales funnels and emails, and all of these kinds of things. While I was helping this person with their story, I had a really big team built up coming on to right before the pandemic. And then the pandemic hit, and a lot of things changed. A lot of things got uncertain. But one of the things that happened right away is I realized that the team I had built, I was using it to kind of shield myself and not really fully own what I was doing because I was working for other companies. Kyle Gray [00:09:00]: And all of a sudden, a lot of the work I was doing for other people dried up my team. I decided to let them go. I didn't think we were going to be able to sustain the work that we were doing before. And there was problems before the pandemic started. And that left me, once again with just me. And I decided the things that my client loved the best were how I listened and how we crafted stories together. And that was where the best results were coming from. And I decided to just fully own the work that I did and make it the main thing and the only thing that I sell and combined the last ten years of learning about content marketing, copywriting and storytelling for working with hundreds and hundreds of different experts. Kyle Gray [00:09:46]: And yeah, I think it all started from trying to express myself playing guitar. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:09:55]: That's such an amazing, wild Journey, and we'll dive more into some of those pieces of that. I love it so much because the details are a little different, obviously, but it's so similar to my path also of feeling that call of expression through music. And a question that I had that came up at one point during a different podcast as well, of a little more esoteric and philosophical of why do we feel this drive to create art? Do you have an idea around that? Kyle Gray [00:10:41]: I think there's a couple of reasons why we create art. I think there's a different kind of motivation or a skill set for art versus craftsmen. And it's really the practice of seeing your own value or deciphering your own value. The only person that really can make art valuable in the beginning. Other people have to come in later, but you have to see the value in it and stand for it and believe in it. And I think that practice of finding the things that you're excited about and discovering that and uncovering that, I think a lot of it's natural within us. Like, a lot of these creative ideas are wanting to come out. And it's our purpose and role to learn how to refine and craft those and share those gifts in our lives. Kyle Gray [00:11:39]: And through that process of kind of like an oyster making a pearl. Making art allows us to find our own purpose and sense in this world and express ourselves and create something that is a little bit bigger than ourselves, too. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:12:03]: Very cool. I love that distinction that you made between artistry versus craftsmanship, because there's definitely. I know I've confused those in the past as far as what is a true expression, or what is something of expression for expression's sake, versus something that I'm crafting and providing as a value for the world. Yeah, I've known many times of being in bands or groups or things like that, where it becomes all about the business of being in an artistic or creative endeavor, and then everybody starts to feel a lot less fulfilled by the entire experience because we're in that craft stage, or we're too focused on the craft stage and we're missing that experiential stage of expressing ourselves for the sake of simply doing that. Kyle Gray [00:13:01]: Yeah, this is actually something a lot more common than you'd think. And with the band, for example, that's one way that it plays out. And this plays out in the way a lot of founders and business owners conduct their work, that it was like in the beginning, they started a band because they really enjoyed playing and hanging out together, and they created some good stuff. And there was some point where they were like, well, we got to start taking this seriously. And the success that they had created ends up taking so much time and energy to manage that they no longer have the time or space to be what created that success in the first place. And so for a lot of business owners, founders, coaches, this starts to happen somewhere in the six early seven figures when your talent alone can no longer just sustain everything. And so you start to run into these different blocks and problems, and it's this energy that got you here of trying to prove them wrong or this thing that worked so well unless you can learn to let go and build a team and create support. And I'm saying this as much for myself as what I'm learning and how growing and scaling. Kyle Gray [00:14:37]: But you've got to reconnect with that same story or that same vision or that same purpose. You got to see the value in it again. And a lot of times, that's counterintuitive when you're like, hey, this band, this has got to work. We've got to write a really good song. We got to write a banger right now. It never works in the same way that just trying to run a business with that expectation never works. And so doing the counterintuitive work of making room for play, making room for your vision, making room for your creativity, and seeing how that plays out as your role as a visionary or leader is a really beautiful process. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:15:20]: What do you think drives that pull towards that pressure? Because it's such a common theme that comes through of this. We have to achieve this right now. We have to grow, we have to scale. We have to get the next song out. We have to get this, because that seems to be such an easy gear for many of us to find. Kyle Gray [00:15:45]: Yeah, most of us. The people who are listening to this podcast are a special kind of people and who are trying to pursue this. And what's happened is no matter how it happened, doesn't matter how it happened, but to get to where you are listening to this podcast right now, something has had to have happened in your life that's gotten wires crossed in your brain. Good news and bad news. The good news is this is a really powerful energy. A lot of the times that drives us and fires us to get us through those early grind hard stages of just getting established, making the different choices, and we work really hard. And that's the kind of attitude, I think, that you're alluding to. And so for a lot of us, it comes from a story. Kyle Gray [00:16:41]: Believe me, when I've heard hundreds of them, and most of them all boil down to I'm not that good, or I'm afraid that they're going to see that I'm not that good. If I mess this thing up or if I slow down for a second and if this fails, then everybody's going to know and all the people that I love will abandon me. And so we overcompensate, we over grip. We try so hard to avoid that thing, and that's what drives us and it allows us to stay up late and do the things. But there comes a certain point where that's no longer the productive thing and we've got to actually integrate and understand that. And since a lot of the people here have either listened to enlisted coaches are enlisted coaches, we have one of the greatest tool sets to actually hold up a mirror for that kind of work. And it's the story work that we do for the inside, for people's hearts, finding those stories can be golden and powerful. The ones that they're ashamed to tell right now, that you have to draw out of them, might be the ones that inspire them and give them something really important to share from the stage if we know how to translate them even a little bit further than our level one work. Kyle Gray [00:18:07]: But, yeah, I think that's what drives a lot of people and it's also our destiny to learn how to integrate and move past it. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:18:17]: Very cool. Yeah, I appreciate the speaking direct to the audience with that and knowing that there's many people who are in on the game with that. And also for those who aren't in your time, working for that first startup that you got into content marketing with, what was the biggest takeaway from working in that sort of environment? Kyle Gray [00:18:46]: It was incredibly difficult. It was 2014, and joining this startup, I was learning how to work remote. I was learning how to work in a startup. I was living in a different country. I was living in Chiang Mai, Thailand at the time. My boss lived in Australia, and I had never really worked remote before. It was still a fairly new thing. And so working remote was a skill set. Kyle Gray [00:19:17]: Learning how to be in a different job or just learn the skill set of a content marketer was a new adventure. And then being in a place and learning where the restaurants are and how to take care of myself and all the simple things. In Thailand, it took a couple of months to really get things started and I wasn't sure I was going to make it through. In the beginning, I was super thrown into the deep end. It was like I met my boss for one day at this conference in Thailand. Then we went back and there was this email that was just like the list of all these things right up the top. Kyle takes over all the content marketing and I had to figure it out and perform. And luckily, with a few trial and errors and a lot of good feedback, I think one of the biggest things that helped me in that time was I was able to get feedback on my work and my boss was really critical. Kyle Gray [00:20:23]: He didn't have a lot of time and wasn't trying to sugarcoat everything. And so he would look through something, be really critical, and at first it would really hurt a lot of the times, all the things he said about my work. But then over time, I got used to that and got used to being able to be criticized and kind of explore and open that up. And I think that was one of the best things, was being able to receive that and critically look from a different perspective. It's one of the most essential things that I think people who are successful with me can see things from a different perspective in a new way and let go. I find that I don't have any answers for people. I just help you find the right answers that you already have. And most people's problems is they're trying to hold on to ten different answers at the same time and want to express them all, instead of really taking the time to listen and be present and share the one that's going to create the result they want. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:21:27]: Yeah. Kyle Gray [00:21:30]: But those are some of the highlights. To put a bookend on that thought. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:21:35]: Yeah, that's really cool. That ability to receive feedback without it turning into a flashpoint, that's such an important, especially for anybody who does work in something that you're working with clients in a creative avenue. I've worked in tech as well, from engineering, app creation, component and things like that. And the amount of times that it can be very easy to look at the effort that you put into as not being appreciated when somebody doesn't like what's in front of them. And many times it's not necessarily that. Again, it's another story that we tell ourselves. It wasn't depreciated. I was like, is that actually true that they didn't depreciate what was done? It didn't meet what they were looking for. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:22:26]: So if we can move past that, it can change things drastically for us. Kyle Gray [00:22:30]: It brings us back to art and just, it's really about, can you separate your value and the value that you know is within you in this project from the feedback of the work that you've just done? Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:22:45]: Yeah. Because very often it's easy to turn that into the criticism being about you versus the criticism being about whatever was produced. Yeah. So being able to learn that from the startup world, how did you take that into, as you started to work with other companies, did that remain a steadfast skill, a steadfast cornerstone for you, or did that change in some way as you started to grow with other companies and start your own agency and beyond? Kyle Gray [00:23:25]: Both. And I found that. So I used content marketing, what I learned in that startup as my skill set and currency, and then used that to trade up for other skill sets, worked for a self publishing company and learned how to write books while I helped them put a content marketing strategy into play and hire somebody that could do the same thing I did. And then I wrote a few books and kind of grew from that. I used the content marketing skill set at first to insert myself into the company that had people speaking from the stages and created enough value to get invited to learn how to master and facilitate that process myself. And I also used it myself. I've had a blog and a podcast. I've had a podcast for about four years. Kyle Gray [00:24:25]: Before that, I had a blog for a couple of years. And while I like the blogs and I think it's still really good for SEO, and there's part of me that wishes I would have kept up with it more. I wanted to focus more on speaking or getting on other people's podcasts or storytelling. I'm very drawn to relationship development, which was also a skill I learned in there. How do I get somebody's attention, add value and create through the creation of good content together. And so each built on the last. And while they all remained valuable, I wasn't doing as much writing. I started doing more podcast interviews, or I started writing books instead, or writing solo podcasts. Kyle Gray [00:25:11]: And I'm reaching an upper limit problem where it would be really nice to have somebody who could take a long form podcast or one of the things that I've written and splice it into different things. And it just takes a lot of effort to get all of those things created, which is a different skill set than just being able to record the thing. But yeah, some of the things have fallen back, but I've just always been building up and trading up, and it seems like I'm just increasing the value per word ratio. I wanted fewer words at higher value, higher stakes moments. And working with people in those moments is where the trend has been going. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:26:01]: Yeah, that's super cool. I had a moment last week where I started doing a little bit of coaching at a local high school just for a little extra exposure out in the world. Again, they're working remotely can sometimes get to be a lonely world when you're absolutely, you're just by yourself or within your small little enclave. And one of the things I was talking to the head coach about is one of our big challenges is to continually say more with less, especially as we coach, because it allows us to have the bigger impact. Kyle Gray [00:26:38]: What really is happening in there that I think I found very few people can articulate. When you say more with less, it means you're not in your own head. Being the coach with all of your 10,000 solutions that you have to the problem and you want to fix this person and help them, but instead you're really listening to them and understanding their context and being present with them and providing something really valuable to them. There's listening and empathy within there that a great coach can acquire that's different than just a problem solving skill set. And I think that's one of the biggest differences between a coach that can be really successful and somebody that just has a tool set and no clients. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:27:25]: Yeah, it's definitely an area I've personally reflected on in that as well. Of the times where I've felt the need with a client to continually explain, it's like, well, who's actually getting the most out of this right now? Is it me stroking my own ego to show, hey, look at all these things that I've learned. Look at all this stuff I have versus actually working and having the relationship with the person in front of you. Kyle Gray [00:27:55]: Yeah. And the problem is, the weird thing is it feels good to explain word vomit knowledge. Yeah, exactly. It feels good to us and sometimes it even feels good to the other person in the moment. But in the end, it's at best going to be like, inspire applause. Oh, that's impressive. Thank you. Okay, I'm going to go to the bathroom now. Kyle Gray [00:28:18]: Bye. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:28:20]: Or that was really cool. I didn't remember a single lick of anything you just said. Yeah, because look at what people pursue as far as changes to health and wellness is an easy One because that's where I've worked for the last few years. Is that many of us know what foods are better for us and which foods are less nutritious for us, and yet people still consistently choose less nutritious substance. Is it really an information problem at that point? Because we generally know what's better for us and we choose otherwise. And so being able to have the questions and work with the person in front of you, in your work, in helping people with stories and in content marketing, is there a similar correlation to what we would see in health and wellness? Of that they know the information, and yet they're somehow not enacting it or not turning it into action? Kyle Gray [00:29:30]: In some ways, the root cause is the same, or the root problem is the same, which is over focus on yourself and under listening to your audience. Yeah. As far as, like, health and wellness coaches knowing if information was enough, this is really important that you point this out, then we would all have perfect diets and it would be great, but it's clearly not enough. But somehow we still show up and teach and talk with that paradigm a lot of the time, and that's what creates all the effects that we just said. So what do we teach instead? What do we talk about? Let's talk about storytelling in a health and wellness context. What a lot of people don't understand about storytelling is that there are very simple frameworks and structures to stories. And the first place we need to start to really clarify and define those is, what effect do I want to have? There's a couple of effects that we commonly want to have when somebody's listening to us. The first one is we want them to trust us and actually want to internalize the things that we have to teach. Kyle Gray [00:30:49]: Very underrated effect for a lot of people. Like I said, we just want to teach, and so we would tell a certain story that allows that, and we can ask questions and kind of define. And if you know what a story like that needs in a natural way, in a well practiced way, then you can start to listen for those ingredients in the conversations with your clients or with your prospects and start to tell better stories. And instead of having 10,000 ideas, you might get that clue for that one perfect story to tell. Because now you understand what frameworks are at play here or with teaching, because we have so many things we want to teach. Oh, my God. But what do we do? What's the purpose of teaching, especially in the phase before they make a purchase? Because a lot of people just teach the same stuff that we teach our clients, and they're successful. Right? So that's good. Kyle Gray [00:31:52]: I'm going to teach the same stuff, but just teaching how to solving the problem just goes in one ear and out the other. If they have limiting beliefs or paradigms or they see the problem, health and wellness, we'll take it back here. We want to help people with weight loss. If anybody's coming to anybody listening to this podcast for fitness or weight loss, I bet you all the money you've ever made as a coach that they have tried at least ten things before even showing up. You even showed up on their radar. And in the process of trying and failing with those ten things, they have some well established it's my genetics. It's never going to work. I don't have the willpower. Kyle Gray [00:32:37]: It's just not like, yeah, I don't have the time, I don't have the money to eat whatever it is. And whatever it is, if we don't actually address that, then whatever we have to say about, well, the keto diet is so good because you eat sweet potatoes and bacon, nobody cares. And so this is what, when we, when we can start to focus on like, well, what are the limiting beliefs? Which is really interesting because this is what we'd want to talk about on our coaching calls anyway. And how do we transform them? How do we talk about those to open up possibilities instead of just overwhelm people with ideas? It's like, what if instead of just trying to eat better all of the time, you just changed when you eat? What if we practiced intermittent fasting? You wouldn't even have to change your diet. Or what if you just practice chewing your food better? You can actually improve your blood sugar, improve your hormones, improve your digestion by chewing the food you're already making a little bit longer. And all of a sudden now we're addressing the you don't have to change your diet, you don't have to have willpower, you just have to chew your food a little bit longer. And all of a sudden I'm feeling a little bit healthier and I believe just a little bit more. And I want to have a call with Jeremy. Kyle Gray [00:33:57]: Now. That's what we want to do, not just fire hose things. And when we can start to understand that again, it creates a new level of depth to how we interact and communicate with that's. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:34:13]: There have been so many moments in this podcast already where I'm like, Kyle's in my head. He's reading my thoughts on this because these are exactly the things that I've been considering over the past couple of weeks of translating a lot of the things that I've experienced for myself in health and wellness, things I've coached and things that I've experienced personally into helping people who may not be currently serviced or people who are struggling somewhere and haven't been able to come through to that. So I really appreciate your ability, whether it's conscious or not, to be on the same page. Kyle Gray [00:34:56]: That's the core. Like, that's what I promise other people is what you just said, where I feel like this person's in my head. That's the difference between a talk that I create and a TED talk. Somebody who wants to do a TED talk wants to inspire a bunch of people. And that's awesome and perfect. Good for you. But the kind of talk that I create, I want just a very specific kind of person that I've thought through. I know who this is going to happen to, to start to feel that kind of feeling. Kyle Gray [00:35:25]: They're speaking right to me. They're in my head. They've snuck into my room and read my journal at night. That's the kind of effect I want to create that inspires the right kind of movement. TED talks have their place, too, and we'll talk about those, maybe on another podcast. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:35:41]: Sure. Kyle Gray [00:35:41]: But I love that you said that, and thank you for that acknowledgment. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:35:45]: Yeah, absolutely. In learning that, what was the first step for you to learn that skill or to start to cultivate that ability to be able to do this. Kyle Gray [00:36:01]: Thousands of failed sales calls, of bad speeches, of bad podcasts, of figuring it out. I have committed all of the sins that I speak so fervently against, and that's why I can talk about them the way I do, because I know the impacts of them. I have been guilty of using all the expert language of fire, hosing my own prospects with information, of trying to prove myself to be the right person instead of understanding my own value and really being present with my clients in the conversation. And so it's taken just the same thing. There's actually a really great. I'll teach you a specific phrase. So when we're telling an origin story, a story in the beginning, we first tell about a painful moment when we can't take it anymore, and we set out to solve the problem. In the end, we talk about when that problem is resolved in a moment that we can really enjoy. Kyle Gray [00:37:12]: And in between, we say, I had to go through a long process of costly and painful mistakes. And it's true, I had to do a lot of that. And the purpose of that within this story, in this moment. The subtext of it is to say, I've had to do a lot of work to figure this out. And now I've figured out the shortcut. You don't want to do all of this hard work. And so, in the same way that all of us have had to master our skills, we've had to go through a long process of costly and painful mistakes. And it's more important to just illustrate that the process was hard rather than to teach me every single facet about it right now. Kyle Gray [00:37:55]: I know you want to, but it's okay. Not right now. So, yeah, I've had to make these mistakes. I've had to come back to this work time and time again. I've had to pour over my stories and reflect on myself and come back to, who am I really trying to serve here? And it's still something I believe. A lot of these things, understanding who your ideal client is, who your story is, what your messages are, all things very much like yoga. There's never a time where you've done enough yoga to be done with it. Or you can finally do a forward fold and so you can leave, or your back bends are back bendy enough, whatever. Kyle Gray [00:38:37]: It's something you come back to and reflect and learn on. And you're always growing, which is somewhat dissatisfying for a lot of rookies to hear early on because they're like, man, I want to just have the answer, but we got to just keep coming back to it. And that's how we grow and level up. Every time we look back on ourselves, we've been evolving, and that's really what we should be doing as coaches, as leaders, as founders, as visionaries. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:39:05]: Yeah, we've talked about this, various episodes of the podcast of this idea that we gravitate towards this doneness or this achievement. And do we really want to distill business is one thing, but do we really want to distill our lives and the things that bring us fulfillment into simple checkboxes? Or is it being able to continually string those experiences together in a way that is meaningful for us? Because the thing that you've defined as the answer today may not be the answer five years from now. You may look back at that and go, wow, I had that really wrong. But I was so confident in the moment that that was it. That was the answer. Yeah, this is really fun to hear that coming from another person having been a coach, but from a very different skill set than my own, which is super cool in the ways that you are continually showing up in the world. A little side quest here. How does music still play a factor in your creative process? Kyle Gray [00:40:23]: Great question. In some ways, it is a measure of how well I'm taking care of myself and giving myself my own medicine. As everything I've said, as inspiring as it all is, I still have quite a hard time giving myself permission to live the lifestyle part of my lifestyle business and be in my creativity and give my voice and ideas the same respect and reverence that I give my clients. And so the more music that I'm making, I have actually just a bunch of Ableton controllers right here. And I was doing some music production this morning just before. I'm just spending time being creative without necessarily a purpose, but just getting better at music production or getting better at guitar again and getting lost in the process of creativity is a big thing. And then I also have been putting together a really fun and unique creative project that supports my business in kind of a tangential way. But in addition to speaking from the stage, one of the things I've created is a breath, work and dance experience that's been fun to perform in many different venues and formats where for the first 20 minutes, I have people doing Wim Hof breathing. Kyle Gray [00:41:50]: I have these nice Alan Watts quotes. If you could dream any dream you wanted to dream, you would live a lifetime of pleasure at first, but over time, you would want to add more mystery and make it more interesting. And over time, you would add more complexity into where you got until you got to where you are right now. And so they're breathing while this, and I kind of create this illusion of a dream. And then slowly, after the breath work, start prompting them with little bits of movement. We're going to get from the floor to our feet in a whole song. Go as slow as you can. Okay, now just move your hips a little bit. Kyle Gray [00:42:28]: And that's the whole song. Next song. Okay, well, we're definitely awake now. We're definitely not dreaming anymore. And you're waking up to the best day of your life. And on this incredible day, you have got such an appetite. So I want you to go down into the kitchen, and I want you to start making breakfast. But not just any breakfast. Kyle Gray [00:42:49]: I want this to be the sexiest breakfast you've ever made. And then you drop the beat and see how people dance. And so, yeah, it's a mix of kind of these guided visualizations and dance and fun that all becomes something really unique. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:43:05]: That's killer. Also, I want to commend you on your Alan Watson personations. Because. Pretty spot on. That's super cool. How often have you been performing that? Is that something that comes up as it comes up, or is it something that you're working to weave into more regularity? Kyle Gray [00:43:25]: It hasn't happened so much. I've been just moving in a lot of different places, and so I haven't been cultivating that, but I am excited. There's now in Bend, Oregon, there's an ecstatic dance community that I'd like to share that with and a couple of other people. That is fun. Sometimes when I'm speaking at events, I'll offer that as, like, an extra side thing. That's fun. But, yeah, I'd like to make more of a work of it. And right now it's very highly choreographed and figured out, and so I can't add a lot of variety into it yet. Kyle Gray [00:44:04]: So really expanding the depth of what it could look like. To be able to take it in a lot of different directions takes a little bit more work and preparation than just making a playlist. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:44:16]: Yeah, totally. Yeah, I can understand that. Being able to have some things that you could call on more spontaneity in the moment of what is the room saying? What is the vibe? Yeah, I get that. I've performed with backing tracks in various bands and things before, and it's like, if we could just change, just pull something out, it would be great, but, well, we're locked into it, and that's how it is. Yeah, totally. In looking at that, of how you've been cultivating that creative nature and being able to take your own medicine, what's been the biggest lesson in finding that for yourself again? Kyle Gray [00:45:06]: Um, you know, it's been an artist's life for me, and I feel I've actually done relatively well. I've been able to hire teams, invest in myself, invest in events. I've had some really good successes. I've had a lot of failures. And coming back to this, this is just like the core practice and the core measure, especially more and more. The more I learn and grow and progress, the increasingly annoying lesson continues to resurface. Of surrender, of allowing things instead of just trying to make the things happen all of the time. And I'm so good at it, damn it. Kyle Gray [00:46:01]: But allowing and accepting where I am and accepting where that is and loving where I am and loving where this is and making the most of these moments and being creative is what's important right now. And what will attract is what attracts the results, and that's me embodying what I want to lead the people that I work with in taking my own medicine is my degree of my ability to lead. And there's certainly been some times, particularly in this last year, but I think for most people, particularly in the coaching industry, it's been a very challenging year. And yeah, it's been the same for me. And I've had to reflect on the value that I deliver, the programs that I deliver, the boundaries that I hold and how I stand for myself on these calls. And it all adds up. What happens? The playing the guitar, the writing in the journal, the working on my stories and my identity so I can show up with alignment. It all matters and it all adds up. Kyle Gray [00:47:15]: But it's not the same thing as those flashing red light, urgent messages that seem to take up most of our days. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:47:26]: Yeah, I love that, man. Thank you so much for that. As we start to come around the hour mark for our time together of this podcast, anything additional that you would like to share with the audience or any other wisdom that you would like to impart on them? Kyle Gray [00:47:46]: Yeah, give me a sec. There's a couple of ideas percolating. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:47:51]: So I'm good, man. Kyle Gray [00:47:56]: So one of the things that I think is really important for this particular audience is knowing how to utilize the tool set that you have equipped yourself with in lifted. I'm assuming most of the people have listened to this, are at least aware of the program, and if not, check it out. But if you're not aware, a lot of the work that enlisted coaches do is we immerse ourselves or we guide our clients through a process of immersing themselves in their stories, in their feelings, and actually starting to understand how the words that they're saying or thinking are impacting their physiology and to create a state of playfulness with that. And this is such a useful tool when you can have people opening up and sharing their deepest, darkest thoughts with you. They're sharing such treasure for how you can speak and tell stories, the darkest stories that you hear from your clients. You want to ask yourself, when did I feel like this? And you want to tell stories that you have integrated asterisk that resonate with that same emotional feeling so you can attract those same kind of clients and have that texture. They're such a beautiful gift. And the best part about learning the enlifted tool set has been integrating that into how I build speeches and create leaders through the process of building a speech with them. Kyle Gray [00:49:41]: And so that's one nugget and then the second nugget. I think that the best thing for anybody that has an enlisted skill set is. I haven't really just positioned myself as I'm an enlisted coach, and I do story work. I've found creative ways to apply the tools to the work that I already do. And I think that the best and most interesting businesses and programs and success stories have come from those who take something that they know and is unique about them and then melding that skill set in a different way. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:50:17]: Yeah, that's great to hear. And again, like I said before, I feel like Kyle's been speaking directly to me, been reading my journal, been reading all the things that I've been contemplating over and over again over these past couple of months. And so I appreciate for myself the reflection there and also for everybody who's listening. Kyle Gray [00:50:43]: Yeah. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:50:46]: As we're coming to a close on our time together, anything that you want to promote, anything that you want to make the audience aware of that you have going on that they can either take part in or that they can join you with. Kyle Gray [00:51:02]: Yeah. Depending on when this episode is airing, if it happens before the new year, I am opening up the doors to my mastermind. I haven't done a group program in about two years, and I am really excited to open this up at a price point that I feel is very accessible, with a guarantee where anybody that I accept into the program will be guaranteed that they can make back twice what they invest within 90 days of finishing the program. And we're going to work together to build a signature talk to understand those core stories and frameworks, and then the mastermind effect will be, I believe that a lot of magic happens when you can start to get really clear on your story and you're excited about it, and all of a sudden speaking opportunities start to appear. And if we can get a bunch of people together with that magic happening and then point them at each other and sharing these opportunities, a lot of progress and acceleration starts to happen. These stories are learned and mastered both by writing scripts and practicing, which will create a room for that, but by having low and medium and high stakes opportunities that forge you, that give you opportunities to practice, that you can bring back. And that's why I want this group to support each other and help each other in this process. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:52:25]: That's super cool. How can people find out more about this mastermind? If they're interested? Kyle Gray [00:52:31]: Yeah, you can go to thestoryengine co mastermind, and depending on when this airs, there may be some additional bonuses. But also, I would just love to hear from you. My email is Kyle at the Storyengine Co. Or you can find me on Instagram at Hey. As in, like, hey, Kyle Gray. And yeah, would love to connect with anybody that's listened to this. Anyway, whatever your biggest insights are, whatever your biggest takeaways are, whatever stories you feel you have to tell, even if the mastermind is not a great fit. But I'm personally very excited and honored to be able to open this space up and not only be able to facilitate the work that I am so proud of that I've worked for a long time to do, but to allow this group to support and grow together. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:53:27]: Fantastic. Thank you so much for sharing that. I know that there's going to be likely some folks interested in hearing more about that mastermind and also being able to connect through with many of the things that you discussed on this podcast into either themselves as coaches or things that they want to do for themselves. So I appreciate you being here. I appreciate you for being you showing up in the purple fuzzy outfit that you're in robe, I'm not quite sure what that is. Made me want to dash off and put on my walrus pajamas and then join in again. Appreciate you being you and you being here today having this conversation with me. Kyle Gray [00:54:10]: Hey, thank you so much for the courage it takes to create things like this, for going through this artistic process, for holding a space for this group of listeners and creating great content. It's a process I have a lot of respect and admiration for, and you've asked some great questions, and it's really fun to be able to share in this format. So thank you so much for allowing me to share this space with you today. It's been an honor. Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:54:36]: Awesome, man. And with that, folks, as always, stay strong and most importantly, stay weird.