Transformative Storytelling: Guiding Your Narrative with Jeff Bartsch

Jeff Bartsch began his career in Hollywood before founding Story Greenlight, where he coaches CPA firms on how best to present the story of who they are. He joins John Randolph on Episode 40 of CPA Life, part one of a two part episode, to discuss how accounting professionals can differentiate themselves through communication and thought leadership, stressing the power of storytelling. Jeff emphasizes the importance of connecting with others and elevating messages from the ordinary to the extraordinary, highlighting the role of storytelling in creating trust and empathy. He provides insights into how to become an effective thought leader, also touching on the process of mastering skills and conveying messages authentically.

Transcript:

Hey, everybody. Welcome to today’s episode of CPA Life podcast, the podcast that focuses on talking about some of the key issues facing owners, leaders, and service providers in today’s CPA firm space. You know, many times on our show, we talk to firm owners that have been navigating the crazy waters that they’re facing, whether it’s pricing issues, talent shortage, the decisions to to be a niche service provider or a generalist. But today, we’re going to spend time looking at things from a little bit of a different perspective. Today, we’re joined by Jeff Bartsch, who is the founder and thought leadership coach at Story Greenlight. And Jeff’s passion is working with accounting executives and advisors, and showing them how they can set themselves apart in the industry through storytelling, communication, and thought leadership. Jeff, welcome to the show today.

Thank you, John. Looking forward to this.

We’re excited to find out a little bit more about Story Greenlight, about your background, about what’s brought you to this point, about some of the success you’ve had with your clients, some of the challenges you’re seeing in the industry, and really how the whole concept of of being a thought leader in storytelling can elevate not just an individual career, but a whole firm in the trajectory of where they are today, and where they’re going. So before we get into a lot of the nuts and bolts of what you’re doing today, how you’re helping steer some of the leaders in the industry towards better able to sell and tell their stories, why don’t you give us a little bit of your story?

Sure. Well, in the broad strokes of it, if people look me up online, most times they’ll see, oh, well, Jeff, you spent 20 years in Hollywood, so you’re a TV guy. You made lots of TV for ABC and NBC and Universal and Disney and Apple and Netflix. So that’s where you learned all about communication and story. And for many years, I thought that that was it. You know, Hollywood was the thing, and everyone wanted to be us, you know, because Hollywood is really good at thinking that it’s amazing, and the center of the world, and everyone wants to be us, kind of thing. And what I realized was the power behind what Hollywood does comes from something much broader and deeper, and comes from powers that can be taught—from skills that can be taught to anyone who seeks them out.

And, I actually started learning about this as a kid, learning how to play piano. I mean, I know you’re a you’re you’re a huge musician yourself. I started playing by ear, and also, classically, when I was pre-kindergarten and for the next 20 years of my life, I was known as Jeff the Piano Guy.

Oh, wow.

And I gravitated towards classical music at the very beginning, lots of Bach, lots of Mozart, mainly because I could take exactly what the notes were on the page, I could just play the notes on the page exactly as they were written, and everyone said, Jeff, you’re amazing—you’re just such a great piano player! And I thought I was all that. So I got most of my reps in on Sunday mornings, and I did lots of special numbers, lots of operatories, lots of preludes, lots of postludes, all these things, and I did midweek services, all this stuff at church.

And one day, there was a lady, one of the older musicians at church, who came up to me and said, you know, it’s okay to play the notes on the page. You’re doing the best that you can. But when you get older, you need to learn how to play from your soul. And I heard her say that, and I was ten or eleven years old—I was in elementary school—and I just thought that was the stupidest thing I’d ever heard in my life. Everyone was saying, Jeff, you’re amazing, so what does this lady know?

Well, it turns out she was right, but it took me a long time to realize it, because it was only after I started learning after I got the fundamentals of piano playing, of musicianship down, that I was able to elevate what I was doing—to actually bring that music to life that people’s responses started changing. They started saying instead of Jeff, you’re an amazing pianist, they’d say, Jeff, that song was the exact song that I needed to hear today. Thank you for choosing that song.

Yep.

And every once in a while, they would say, Jeff, the way you played today brought me into an encounter with God. Thank you, thank you, thank you so much for what you do. And so that was what kind of smacked me upside the head—had to happen a whole bunch of times until I finally figured out that this is way bigger than me—and I realized that what I was doing was taking this ordinary message and elevating it to the extraordinary. And that’s what I’ve done ever since, throughout my life. I did that with video production in high school, radio in college, film school. And then 20 years in Hollywood, that’s the core. That’s the core of what I’ve been doing my whole life is elevating an ordinary message to be extraordinary and helping other people do it for themselves.

So when you talk about you know, that lady coming up to you and talking to you about playing from your soul, what do you think the difference was that kind of finally clicked for you, whether it’s music or related into storytelling, what do you think was that difference between reading the notes on the page, which is great, versus playing what’s in your heart?

Yeah. Well, I couldn’t have explained this at the time, but what I’ve come to realize is that anything that we put our hands to—anything that requires learning or skill building—it has the fundamentals. You have to start with the fundamentals of anything that you work at. And then once you get that stuff in place, be it playing piano, be it, you know, writing a screenplay, be it examining a cash flow projection, and saying, okay, this is a stack of numbers, but what does this actually mean to the client? How do I communicate that? You know, anything like that, it starts with the fundamentals, but then you have to get so good at the fundamentals that they just disappear, so that you can focus on what truly matters—that upper level of communication

Mhmm.

There was a time when I was in Hollywood at a panel at Warner Bros. Studios, and there was a re-recording mixer. What these guys on staff at Warner’s who sat in a mixing stage with this mixing console that went across the entire stage, just this, hundreds of channels on the thing, a monstrous machine. And he said that the bigger and more impressive the tools, the more important it was to know them like the back of your hand so they can become invisible. So you can focus on making a movie that connects with people’s hearts and minds. And so I really see a parallel with that, with anything we put our hand to: Learning the fundamentals, making the fundamentals disappear, so you can go on to that upper level of communication and human connection.

You know, when you look at what you’re doing now in the accounting space, it really is a new mindset and a new concept. People may have done it, but I don’t think that it was something that people really thought about, how do I create a story around this? How do I relay this data and information in a way that is relative to my customer? And I think for so long, the mindset was, hey, wait a minute, I’m an accountant, or they’re an accountant—they operate from the left side of their brain. How is this going to translate to the person that is a right brain person? And so what brought you to the point of saying, hey, I think there’s some value in what I’m doing over here, and it could relate really well into the accounting space?

Sure. Well, it initially started out by me being in my career in Hollywood, and a few years in, I could see that I was headed towards an income ceiling. I mean, position-wise, I was literally living the dream, but I didn’t want to be boxed in with that income ceiling. So I started learning about online business building. And that transitioned into more teaching and coaching and consulting, which I later realized, I mean, I’ve been teaching and consulting in one form ever since junior high, when I started giving piano lessons back in high school. So, you know, it’s something that just fit within that context for me.

And there was a long, twisting, very, very frustrating journey of me learning that just because I’m good at a thing does not mean I’m automatically good at running a business around said thing. So classic e-myth, classic e-myth concept there: Just because you’re good at communication doesn’t mean you can run a business around communication. But thankfully, after many, many years of banging my head against the walls, I finally made the connection that the core deliverable of powerful communication, especially within the context of storytelling, is human connection and trust.

And so I thought, okay, so what are the areas in business where people really need empathy and trust? And it just became obvious that it’s the people with sophisticated services advising clients that need high levels of trust. And that’s when an accounting firm actually approached me, a firm by the name of Summit Virtual CFO by Anders, and Summit approached me and said, hey, we have a group of in-house experts that we want to develop as public facing thought leaders, but they ain’t ready yet. Can you help us? And I said, yes, I can.

And so I ended up working with Summit for over a year and ended up talking with Jody Grunden, the CEO, at one point, and he and I said, this is working so well. You guys are doing such great stuff. I’m going to be focusing exclusively on communication and thought leadership coaching. And he said, not only is that a fantastic idea, you need to focus exclusively on accounting firms with client advisory services and make sure you use us as a case study. So here we are.

And how long has that been now?

That’s been over the last year.

Okay. So let’s talk a little bit about the whole concept of story. And you and I talked last week, and I was telling you about how many times in my career, I’ve hired accountants. To step away from the accounting world when I would talk to people about looking specifically for an accountant to bring into our recruiting team, they would always ask me, what type of person are you looking for? And I would tell them when you go out to happy hour after a long day at the office, and everybody’s sitting around, and some of you know each other, some of you don’t know each other, but there’s this one person that everybody looks at and goes, “I can’t believe you’re an accountant.” That’s the guy I’m looking for.

Yeah.

And we would hire people. And one of the things that I would tell them is one of the critical skills that you have to be able to master in this business is the art of storytelling. And immediately where their head would go is also I have to lie Like, no. No. I’m not talking about telling fables. We’re talking about being able to paint a picture that somebody sees it, hears it, understands it, and wants to be a part of that.

So when you start talking to people about the concept of story, how do you get them to understand what it is that you’re trying to get them to understand, for lack of a better way to put it?

Well, I will tell you it’s a process. Because you say the word story and almost everyone, their first reaction is oh, yeah, that. Because it feels super familiar, we’ve been told stories our whole lives, and when you think about it, we’re actually “the star,” we’re the hero of our own story, every waking minute of our lives. So we are living out a story every moment that we’re alive, and so if it feels familiar, well, it should because it is. It is very familiar. It is woven within our very existence. So that’s the first element. People say, oh, well, that’s familiar.

Then they say “it doesn’t really matter” because so many people do it badly, which means that must mean it’s not all that important. Because, you know, we’ve all heard people tell stories badly, and just go on and on, and have no point, or it’s all about the person telling it, I mean, and you’re like, dude, just stop. You know, that kind of stuff. And when you get to that point, you also realize that there are other people who do tell stories really well, but that’s just for the “favored few.” That’s for just for the people giving a keynote, or the people on TV, or whatever. And that’s not for everyday people, that’s certainly, that’s just for the people who are born with that talent.

Well, I’m here to tell you: Story, when you really unpack what it is, story is a framework for understanding human interaction for any reason at any time for any purpose ever. And if it sounds like I’m exaggerating on that and you say, really? Is it really that big of a deal? I’m saying yes. And I may be even understating it a bit. Because when you think about what story is, you have to get out of the idea of, oh, well, just people tell stories badly. That is the tactical version of storytelling. I always work with my clients talking about the strategic concept of storytelling, and that’s from the thirty thousand foot view.

Okay.

Where we talk about things like the core definition of what a story is. And this is based on some of the earlier writings from Donald Miller, of building a story brand, and also expanded by me: I say to my clients that a story is where a character wants something, overcomes obstacles to get it, and experiences transformation as a result. And if you need to hit the backup button and re-listen to that three times, please do, because it’s that big of a deal. And I promise if you put that definition up on your wall, and you think about it, It will change the way you interact with everyone.

So say that again.

Yes: A story is where a character wants something, overcomes obstacles to get it, and experiences transformation as a result. And that definition is why it’s possible to have powerful communication happen without even telling a tactical story. You can read a headline. You can say one sentence. So, you and I had a conversation the other day, where you’re talking about a firm owner who cared so much about his people that he didn’t even bill his own time. He was the managing partner of the firm, and yet, he didn’t turn in any billable hours. Everything he was doing was in service to his clients. And within that context, you said, he doesn’t bill his hours. Just that one sentence right there speaks volumes of the strategic level of story about who this character is, who he’s here to serve, how he does it, what’s getting in their way, how he’s helping them get it. It is incredibly powerful, and it doesn’t require tactical storytelling, though having said that, tactical storytelling is one of the most powerful ways to actually put, you know, boots on the ground, put it into place.

So when you’re working with firm owners, firm leaders, leadership within the accounting advisory, accounting space, what are some of the things that you try to get them to understand when we’re talking about how to be a thought leader? How to take the knowledge that you’ve developed over 5, 8, 10, 20 years, and be able to take that from a transactional mindset, to a strategic thought leader that’s valued by their customers and the market?

Right. So right here, We have another term that’s loaded, that people have a lot of misconceptions about, when you say that phrase “thought leader.” And that’s another thing where people say, oh, well, that’s a big exalted thing for the privileged few and, you know, there’s no way I’m going to get on the TED Talk stage. There’s no way I’m going to write a book that’s on the Wall Street [Journal] Bestseller List. And The thing is when you actually go look at the definition of thought leadership, if you look it up online, you will not find one definition. People can’t agree what it is. Because some people say, oh, well, it’s being recognized by your industry as having unique and inspirational ideas. Or it’s having a large following within your industry. Well, who decides what large is? Who decides what is unique? How many people have to recognize you? You know? So those definitions aren’t helpful ultimately.

Which is why I always, when I’m talking with my clients and they say, hey, what? Really? Thought leadership? Me, dude, I’m an accountant. Why thought leadership? When you think of it within the context of “thought leadership is one who influences the thinking of others”—so when you look at thought leadership as influencing the thinking of others, that can take place on a whole different spectrum. It can include the TED Talk. It can include the best selling book. It is also absolutely inclusive of every time an advisor meets with a client. We are influencers every time we seek to advise another person.

So when you think of it in that sense, then you have to go back to that bigger concept of, okay, what’s this story? Who is my client? As the advisor, I am here to help my client get what they want. Who are they? What do they want? What’s getting in their way? How can I come alongside and help them see the change that they want to see in the world? That’s the mental framework that we approach this within the context of thought leadership influencing the thinking of others. I could ramble for a long time, so I’ll just stop there. Any thoughts on that?

Well, you know, when we started talking about thought leadership, one of the things that comes to mind is we are inundated with multiple options in the world that we live in today to gather the information and data that we want to consume. Whether it is the, you know, infinite numbers of 24 hour news channels, you know, whether it’s mainstream media or online media, or somebody that has a podcast, or, you know, a book that we want to read, or if you don’t want to read the book, you can grab the audiobook.

I used to say—my degree is in journalism and marketing—and I used to say that years ago, we had a finite number of microphones, if you will, in the world. And you had to prove that you are worthy of having one of those microphones. Now that microphone is a euphemism. It could have been a typewriter. It could have been a computer. It was a camera, a microphone, whatever it was. But there were a finite number of those that were handed out in the world. Today, in the world that we live in, there is an infinite number of microphones. If you can do it, and speak it, and get it out there, in any way, shape, form, or fashion—it could be, you know, a mom sitting at her house that that hops on Facebook and creates a reel about what she’s doing to lose weight, it could be a business owner that runs a delivery service or lawn service in his local area and hops on Instagram and shoots videos of the the lawns that he takes care of—whatever it is, those people are having an impact, if not on a large scale, they’re probably having an impact on the circle that they interact with constantly. And therefore, in my opinion, they become thought leaders in that circle.

100%. Absolutely.

And while I may see the guy in New Jersey or Las Vegas or Bangladesh, who is talking about lawn care, If I’m interested in lawn care and there’s a guy down the road that’s doing it, I’m probably going to listen to that guy, because he may get what I’m dealing with a little bit more than the person in New Jersey who deals with, you know, 16 feet of snow a year, and I deal with maybe an inch a half. So you know, I think that so many times we get caught up in, like you said, well, that’s not me. I’m probably never going to give a TED Talk.

You don’t have to.

No. No. Not at all. So how do you sit with your clients and begin to get them to understand the framework of hey, let’s take this concept, and let’s put some meat and bones and flesh and legs and arms to this, and start to impact your clients, your community, your firm, the people around you.

Sure. Well, so it depends on who you are, what your goals are, and what your expectations are for all of that as a package. Now there are times when, you know, I might be working with a client, and she’s actually within the accounting context, but at the time, she was saying, I really care about remote work and remote evangelism, you know, evangelizing the idea of remote work. And when she came to me, she said, I’m booked to show up on a podcast, but what do I say? I have all these ideas, and I have these things that I believe, and I see this context within, you know, within my world, which is based around the accounting space, but remotely. And so how do I figure out what to say?

And that’s one of the biggest things in terms of thought leadership is saying, well, if you’re going to be influencing other people’s thinking, then you should probably have something to say, and you need to say it in a compelling way that resonates with your target audience. Which means you need to know what your target audience is. You need to know what you are, you know, how you’re going to show up. So it’s all of these ideas that start by reverse engineering—you have to reverse engineer what is the goal.

So someone who is a solo consultant or a solo advisor, is going to have a different path for this, as opposed to someone who works at a mid-sized firm, and has deep industry expertise, and says, I’m going to go out and speak specifically to those people in this industry based on my knowledge of this world and how it applies to the accounting space, and the marketing team at this firm is going to push this out on their channels specifically towards those target clients. So the answer is it varies, but it all starts on who are you, what do you have to say, who are you saying it to, what are your thoughts on how you want to say it? And then you start building things out from there.

You know, I think so many times where I’ve seen people get caught up in how do I convey this, is I understand I need to go through that process. I understand I need to get it out of my head and on paper so that I can begin to, you know, piece it together, but, you know, gosh, Jeff, how do I do this without sounding scripted? How do I do this without sounding like, you know, either I’ve got a piece of paper in front of me that I’m reading, or I’ve got a bunch of note cards that I’m working from. How do I get to a point or how do I do this in a way that is like we talked about when we started—how do I do this in a way that is more than just reading the music notes on a page and doing this from my heart?

Right. That is where you have to be very clear about who you are, what you care about, what you believe in, and what you bring to the table with your communication. And this applies equally to one-on-one conversations with clients, or if you want to go open up that spectrum to say, okay, we’re going to start pointing this more public facing, and say, yes, I want to start making public appearances in a public thought leader context.

And so the question becomes, you know, as you say, how do I do this without sounding like a robot? Well, robots don’t feel things, and robots don’t care about things, so you need to figure out the things that you care about. You need to have your top talking points figured out ahead of time. And it’s your own version of becoming a mechanic, basically, where if you walk into a mechanic, to say, hey, can you fix my car? The answer is absolutely. I mean, assuming that you’re not driving a Range Rover and all they do is service Toyotas, But, you know, assuming everything’s all good, you can walk into a mechanic and they’ll say, yes, we’ll fix your car. “What tools do you use?” We have a bunch of them. Here are the top ones that we use, but the value comes from knowing what tools to use at what point for what reason, and that comes from experience.

So when people talk about showing up and not wanting to sound like a robot, well, part of that can only be done by putting in the reps. You know, you go to a personal trainer, the personal trainer can’t do your push ups for you. They can’t lift the heavy iron objects on your behalf as that doesn’t help. You know? And so there is that. But then there is also, you know, you can even have cheat sheets depending on your context. Like, at this moment, you and I are recording this conversation on a web based recorder. I have notes on our previous conversation, on things that we’ve talked about. I have notes in a Word doc, right next to me right here. But those are all just prompts.

Yes.

There are prompts based on the fact that as my own personal mechanic with my own set of tools, I’ve been working on this for a while. And so that’s the direction that I get my clients to start moving and to say, hey, you already have deep expertise. That’s the most important thing right there. Then it’s a matter of saying, okay. Here’s skill 1, here’s skill 2, here’s the extra skills to help you show up and show off the expertise that you already have.

As you’re talking about this, there’s a couple of thoughts that I have. There was learning process that was talked about, I think it was in the 60s, I think it came out of NYU with a couple of professors called “The Four Stages of Competence.”

Mmm! Yes.

Unconscious incompetence, conscious incompetence, conscious competence, and unconscious competence. And I think in anything that we’re talking about, especially in a situation like this, even if it is your story, there is a part of going from unconscious incompetence—I don’t know what I don’t know—to a level of conscious incompetence: Okay, now I know what I don’t know.

And dang, there is such a high mountain up ahead of me.

Yeah.

What the heck was I thinking?

In the context of work, I would always tell people that the process of unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence—that it’s not a process, it’s literally an event. You show up to work you work for 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 weeks, and you think that you’ve got everything down. And then literally somewhere in the middle of the night, or at lunch one day, this epiphany hits you of holy crap, I do not know what I’m doing, and they’re going to realize this really quick, and they’re going to fire me.

Yeah.

And I would always tell people, you’re not going to get fired at that point. In fact, now you’re ready to learn. Now you’re ready to start to begin to grasp things because you know what you don’t know, and now we can start molding that and working on getting you to a point of conscious competence: I know what I know, I know what I don’t know. I just have to think about it. It’s a process. The goal is to get you to a point of unconscious competence where it just happens, it just flows. You know, like you’re talking about, you have notes in front of you. I have notes in front of me. They’re prompts, you know, roll the clock back 20 years ago, I probably had a script in front of me. But over time, those things get to a point of being comfortable.

Now you talked about playing from your heart versus playing the notes in front of you. Years ago, when I went into the studio to record a first project that I did, we were singing through one of the songs, over and over and over. And I knew the song, and the producer came into the vocal room, and we’re talking about the way to sing that song, not just sing the words. And he finally said to me, I have a question for you. Do you know the song? And I said, yes I do. He said, do you know it well enough to sing it without the words in front of you? And I said, yes I do. He said, okay. He took the lyric sheet off the stand. And he said, do me a favor—sing the song from your heart. Don’t sing the words on the page.

But that didn’t happen overnight. We had found that song 4, 5, 6 months before. We knew that we wanted to put it on the project, I listened to the demo for 3, 4, 5 months. I sang that song in the car, I sang that song in the shower. I sang that song walking around the house. Ultimately, to get to the point that 6 months later in the studio recording it, there was a comfort level to know that I knew that song. And I think that’s kind of the process that you’re talking about here is getting somebody to take that stuff out of their head, put it on paper. I don’t know what I don’t know to a point of, okay, there is a lot here—I know what I know. I know what I don’t know now.

Thanks for tuning in to part 1 of John Randolph’s conversation with Jeff Bartsch. We’ll pick up part 2 on June 5th. To be sure you don’t miss it, subscribe on your favorite podcasting app, and check CPALifePodcast.com for links and show notes. We’ll see you next time on CPA Life.

Important Links:

Jeff Bartsch on LinkedIn

Story Greenlight

Summit Virtual CFO by Anders

Transformative Storytelling: Guiding Your Narrative with Jeff Bartsch

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