August 6, 2025 • 31 mins
"Confusion is the number one enemy of every business."
Connect with Wes Gay
Wes on https://www.linkedin.com/in/wesgay
Wes on https://www.instagram.com/wesgay
Connect with Jody
About Jody - https://jodymaberry.com/about-jody-maberry/
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/sugarjmaberry
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jodymaberry/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/sugarjmaberry/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/jodymaberry
Notable Moments:
00:01:24 – Why confusion is the #1 enemy of business
00:04:36 – Example of how to introduce yourself with a problem-first approach
00:06:02 – Why Wes keeps his website extremely simple and intentional
00:10:09 – What a framework actually is and why it matters
00:12:21 – Using identity-based compliments to uncover your strengths
00:14:52 – How to use AI and testing to build your first framework
00:18:52 – Your framework is just a vehicle to deliver results
00:22:08 – Real examples of effective frameworks Wes uses
00:25:07 – “Thin to win”: Why less is more in your framework
00:27:14 – The Tim Ferriss example of hyper-specific focus
00:30:24 – Creating a framework that becomes what you’re known for
Wes Gay helps brands find the right words to grow their business, and in this episode, he explains how to transform your expertise into a powerful framework. From identifying your strengths to testing your ideas, Wes shares how clarity can become your most valuable asset. If you're a solopreneur, a retiring executive, or someone seeking to clarify your message, this conversation will show you how to turn what you know into a business that works.
Read the blog for more from this episode.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Foreign
Mayberry show this episode, I want to introduce
you to Wes Gay. Now, you'll find out a lot about Wes.
I think a good way to sum up Wes, though, is he
helps brands find the right words so they can make more
money. If there ever was a clear introduction to
(00:23):
a guest, I would say that's it. Wes. How are you doing,
Jody? I'm good. Thanks for having me. Well, I'm. I'm glad I.
I've got you on the show. That very clear introduction, you
know, I took that directly off your website because I was looking
you up, doing research. Even though I already knew you, I wanted to make
sure I knew more going into this. And I read that
(00:45):
statement on your website, and I said, my goodness, that is clear.
You open web Wes's website, you know exactly what he's going to do for
you. Yeah, well, I'm in the business of clarity. What I typically do is I
help brands get the right words in their marketing, messaging, and sales. And so I
figure if I can't do it for myself, nobody's going to want to hire me
to do it for them. Yeah, well, that's right on. And let's
(01:07):
talk about that for a moment. Okay. Being in the business
of clarity, and I know based on what you
post on social media, what's on your website, I've
gathered that you think clarity is
one of the biggest problems of most businesses. Yeah.
So I've worked with a few hundred companies, organizations,
(01:28):
nonprofit, local, global, you know, regional, national,
small, large, whatever. And confusion is the number one
enemy of every business. It can be confusion in your offer. People
don't know what you're actually selling. Confusion in how to use your product.
One of the things I deal with a lot is confusion among a leadership team
as to what the company does. I cannot tell you how many companies I've been
(01:51):
in where I'll. I'll do day sessions a lot day workshops. And I'll start the
day I say, hey, everybody. Write down in two to three sentences what this company
does. If I have 10 people in the room, it'll sound like 10 different
companies. And if the leadership team is confused
downstream, everybody's confused. No wonder the sales team all says something different.
Marketing believes something different, operations. And so when we start to fight
(02:12):
confusion or place confusion with clarity, what we're doing is we're saying, hey, we're actually
narrowing our focus. We're getting really focused in on who we are as a company,
who we need to sell to, and what we actually sell
to them, as opposed to all of the things we could do. We put
constraints on it. We put kind of guardrails and say, this is where our attention
goes. We're going to interject clarity and we're going to fight with everything
(02:34):
we've got to keep things clear. Because confusion creeps in so
easily. This reminds me, Lee
Cockrell and I twice a year do an event called the Creating Magic
Mastermind. And in the beginning of one of them, someone
stood up to during the introductions just to say who he
was, what he did, and he explained what he did. And when he
(02:56):
sat down, Lee Cockrell said, what does that mean?
And I thought, oh, no, that is not what you want to hear. I think
you'd rather give your introduction and have someone say
tell me more rather than what does that mean? So when it comes
to talking about what we do, how can we approach
it to cross the line from what does that mean? To tell me more?
(03:19):
Start with a problem. You know, our brains are wired to
pay attention to problems. We scan our environment for problems. I live in Atlanta,
Georgia. When I go on the interstate, I am scanning the eight lane highways
for potential problems that are going to get in my way. Our brains are
wired that way. When we read, when we hear a problem on the news,
when we watch a movie, right? If, when we know what the
(03:41):
problem of the film is, we lean in and pay attention until it's resolved.
In fact, I watched, we watched a movie. My wife and I watched a movie
the other day. And literally when the main problem of the
movie was over, within 60 seconds, the credits were rolling.
And so if you want to get people to pay attention, think about the problem
you solve for your audience. So for example, let's say you go to an event
(04:02):
and you meet somebody and I go, hey, how are you? They go, hey, my
name's Jamie. Hey Jamie, what do you do? I'm an at home chef.
Okay. And it's like, all right. Or you go, you know how it is more,
it's more likely to say, well, I'm an atom chef. My dad was
a cook, my mom was a cook, and I grew up cooking around my grandmother
and I really love her. And my logo was blue because my grandmother used a
(04:23):
blue apron. And I really value my grandmother. And I base all of our
recipes on her inspiration. And you're like, bro, I'm out.
Like, I don't know what you're talking about. As opposed to, I meet a different
at home chef at the same event. Hey, my name's Josh. Hey, Josh, what do
you do you know how most families are really busy and they have a hard
time cooking healthy meals so that they can sit at the dinner table
(04:44):
together most nights a week? I'm immediately going to go, well, that's us.
I'm an at home chef who will create a meal plan for you.
Come to your house and prepare the meals ahead of time. So all you have
to do is heat them up in the oven and then sit down at the
table and enjoy dinner with your family. And I'm going, hey, how do you do?
Tell me more about that. Right? Because the second one started with a problem.
(05:05):
He's hooked me by solving a problem that I
have or maybe somebody I know has, and my brain now
connects that person as a solution to a problem.
I can definitely see that if you start that way, what
Wes just said, I think people are going to say, tell me more. No
one's going to say, what does that mean? Because it's right there. All right,
(05:27):
one other thing, Wes. I looked at your website.
In fact, I'm looking at it right now. And one of the things that stands
out to me is how simple it is, how
little there is there compared to other
websites that I go to. You've really gone for
simple and clear rather than trying to
(05:49):
force a lot of stuff onto your website. Now, I assume
that's intentional, not because you didn't have time to put everything
you could think of on your website. Tell us why your website
is the way it is. So marketing in general is
nothing more than sales at scale. And a website is really a sales
rep. And so if you want to have an effective website or any effective marketing
(06:12):
channel, you got to think, if this was a sales rep,
what would a good sales rep do? We've all been in sales
conversations with good sales reps and, and bad ones. A
couple of years ago, my wife and I, my mother in law was watching our
kids and we, my wife and I run into marines and for whatever reason, I
guess we hit the age where on a Saturday afternoon we go to a vacuum
(06:32):
store. So we went to the vacuum store and we thought we need a new
one. My wife's grandparents used to always use Oreck
vacuums like her granddad. That's what he always bought. He was very particular
about those things. Went to the Oreck store, right? That guy could
have told us anything and everything possible about Oreck vacuums. What
he did really well because we walked out of there with two. Somehow I don't
(06:54):
know how that happened. Still not really sure what he did. Really well,
is he focused that entire conversation specifically on selling
to us? So he started by asking questions and then once he got a feel
for the fact we have young kids, we have a dog who sheds like it's
his job, we need something that's light because we've got stairs, you know,
because a couple of two story house, all that stuff he could recommend
(07:16):
and keep the conversation really focused. For me, I know who I'm
trying to, who I, I fit best with, what I sell, who I work with.
And so for like a website, I think how do I keep it really clear
and focused on that person? Too often, particularly for those
listening who are the solopreneurs or thinking about maybe retiring from a late,
you're kind of late career professional retiring and starting your own
(07:36):
consulting practice. Solopreneur, solo firm, whatever. Most of the
ones that I've worked with that are even friends of mine, the reason they struggle
is because they go too broad. They try to serve everybody, which means they actually
serve nobody. The counterintuitive reality is the
more focused we keep it, the easier it is to sell and the more
likely we are to attract the kinds of people that we're best suited to work
(07:58):
with. Yeah, very good. And when you go to Wes's
website, that's what you'll see. If it does not appeal to you right
away, that just means Wes wasn't writing for you.
He did not have you in mind when he built the website. Am I right
on that? You're right. We always talk about marketing attracting the right people. But
it we say marketing is magnetic. Magnets attract and they repel.
(08:20):
And that's fine because I realized like I have friends, other
agencies that I talked to a friend of mine yesterday who owns an agency, they
do a thing much better than I could ever do in a
lifetime. I'm not even going to try to do it. So like if you want
what they sell, I'm not your guy. And then you're not going to, you're. No,
I'm not going to be your guy. Which is fine because it just wastes everybody's
time because we've all bought things that were just not right for us.
(08:43):
And so when you're investing your money to help with your business, you got to
invest your money with the kinds of people that you know are going to get
a return on your investment and the right fit for you. So yeah, it's all
focused on the kinds of people that I know I can serve really well. There's
one reason in particular I asked you to come on the show,
Wes. And so I'll backfill this a little bit.
Wes and I were just talking not long ago, and he asked
(09:06):
me a question with a particular word in it that said,
you know what? There's never been an episode of the Jody
Mayberry show, I don't think, where the word framework was
used. And that question. I was talking about the work that I
do with retired executives, and Wes said, I think
it was just simply, oh, you help them build frameworks for what
(09:29):
they do. I said, well, kind of, but let's talk about that. And
instead of just us talking, let's talk about that on the
podcast, because this could be very useful. Let me set you up
for something, Wes. Let's just say you've had
a good career, lot of experience, you've learned things,
you. You've been a good leader, you've accumulated experience.
(09:51):
Maybe nobody else has. How do you now take that?
Well, let me back up. I don't want to, because I want people to say,
tell me more, not what. What does that mean? First, when
you ask, do you create frameworks for that? What do you even mean
by a framework? What is a framework? A framework is a
process that people can follow to achieve some kind of an outcome
(10:14):
or transformation. So it can be building blocks, it can
be points, but it's something that you can take
somebody through, and most of the time, they're going to get the intended
results. For example, you and I both know Donald Miller and the storybrand
framework. And the Story Brand framework is a storytelling formula that
has been around for a very long time. It's been repackaged and rearranged
(10:36):
for commercial, you know, like businesses and marketing and sales, et cetera.
It's a framework, and it's seven elements. And you t. You, you start at the
beginning, you walk all the way through the seven things, and it helps you create
clear messaging for your business. That's a framework. I've seen other
frameworks. There's a guy, there's a company in Nashville, Tennessee, that helps people build
personal brands, and they have personal brand frameworks. It's a repeatable process
(10:57):
that are going to help people get some kind of result or transformation.
All right, great explanation. Now, if I am
a former executive as an example, and I have all
this experience, how can you use past
experience to build a framework? Big question.
So I'm going to have a long answer to a short question here. The starting
(11:19):
point that I've seen a lot of people have when they go out on their
own transitioning out of corporate into their own is they try to
rush to a framework first without deciding how to focus. So we want to say,
what kind of framework do we want to build or what kind of process do
we want to have? And the way I look at that is, if I'm a
retiring executive, I'm going to look at my career and say, when I
had wins in my career that I was directly involved with, what
(11:43):
were the habits, what were the decisions, what was the
mentality, what was the my thinking process
that consistently showed up in those moments? So that way you can
clarify what makes you unique, what makes your thought process unique, what makes your approach
clear? Sometimes it's you intuitively have. Other times it's something that you
just learn over the years. One of the things I learned early, early, early in
(12:05):
my career when I was in a. I was working in nonprofits where I started
my own consulting firm, I noticed, and this
helps a lot of people in this space, I noticed how people complimented
me. And what I mean by that is I noticed that there were two
ways people would compliment me at work. One was the result of the thing I
did. Hey, that was a great X, right? So it's the
(12:27):
outcome. The other one that I would get complimented on, I
noticed occasionally was more like an identity affirmation.
You're great at X. And so when I did the
things that I was naturally good at and had a natural strength
towards and had repeated success at, most of the time when people would
comment just to affirm or just be gracious, it was a, you are,
(12:50):
you are a good. It was an identity thing. So one of the ways is
to think about what are those identity affirmations you've had over your career, the things
that you're maybe more naturally been to. And the reason we have to start with
these kinds of questions, we have to narrow in what
we're trying to create. A lot of people want to start their own thing. And
they. You say, well, who do you serve everybody with a pulse?
(13:11):
Okay, that's. And Disney doesn't even serve everybody with a pulse. They're a
multinational global juggernaut. At some point we go, if you're
going to start a business to have a framework behind it, let's look at your
expertise that you've got repeated experience in that you can
guide people into and through. So that's where I'd start is say,
what have you had past successes? Where are the things that you can speak confidently
(13:33):
on because you've got the results to back it up? That are going to say,
hey, if you follow this path, you know, in some ways, you remember P90X from
20 years ago, something that was basically a framework. Six days
a week, here's the pattern. And if you follow the pattern, you'll get the result.
If you endure this torture for 12 weeks, you know, you
might get abs, too. But, like, that was a framework. So you look, executives say,
(13:54):
okay, how to build a framework? I'm going to start with, where have I had
repeated successes? What are the decisions or the habits or the
approaches that I have that, okay, I can start to plot out.
That can be a path I can take people through. They're going to get some.
They could get similar results. All right, this is good. This
reminds me, one time, this was actually
(14:16):
someone high up at a police department, and he was thinking about leaving
and doing something on his own. And he knew the work that I did. And
he said, what's the key? Like, what do I need to do if
I'm going to leave, go out on my own, or even if I want to
be a chief of department? I said, the first step, write it all down.
And he said, what is it? And I said, I don't know. That's up to
(14:37):
you. You know what you're good at, you know what your department is good at,
you know the processes. But I don't think you can focus
in on what it is you're really good at until
you start to write it all down and capture all of it.
So explain how I have answers to
this, but this episode's about you, not me. Explain how
(15:00):
you go from starting to write it all down, that
portion, when I always like to call that the freestyle, because you're just
taking it all and you're just throwing it all out there. How do you go
from. I'm going to write down everything I can think of. My
wins, my losses, my supervisors,
the big stories, all of that. How do you go from that to a
(15:22):
framework? What are you looking for in all of that?
I'm starting to look for patterns, right? So I'm going to look
for what are the patterns, what are the
commonalities, those kinds of things from a tactical standpoint, quite
honestly, in terms of how to do it, you could do a voice note on
your iPhone or your phone, or just stream of consciousness, record yourself.
(15:43):
And then I would consider uploading that to a chat
GPT and say you are an expert instructional
designer, which is the kind of person who helps, you know, create curriculum, trainings,
workshops, et cetera. Your goal is to Help me identify a potential framework for
my area of expertise. You will analyze a transcript of my
thoughts on where I think, what I think this framework is and then ask me,
(16:04):
quite interview me to get everything you need to help me clarify a potential
framework. That's where I'd start these days, last year
or so is I go there just to have a thought partner to help me
untangle it. Too often when we try to do these things for ourselves, we're
inside the bottle trying to read the label. So we need somebody else, even
AI, Chad, gbt, Claude, whatever to help us see a different
(16:26):
perspective. That's a great starting point. What it will then do
is probably eventually over 15, 20, 30 minutes,
analyze it to the point where you go, that feels pretty good. So you've got
a draft, now the next thing you need to do is test it. Some people
think, oh, I've, I've got a draft framework. Like it's it. We're not getting forehead
tattoos, right? We're, we're putting words on documents and
(16:48):
on slides and testing stuff. So if I'm a retiring executive,
let's say from Disney, like Lee Cockrell, who I have been a fan of for
many years, and he's deciding he's going to have a operations
framework for how to lead an operation, not how to do operations, how to
lead an operations team successfully because he's done it, or hospitality
operations to be more specific to what his background is. So before he ever
(17:11):
writes a book on it or tries to go out and selling a branded framework
on it, test it, try to do a keynote, make a presentation
about it, write about it on LinkedIn, maybe put some articles on a
website, brainstorm around it, test it over a period of time. There
was one myself, there was a new framework I started working on last year
within a cross stick and kind of a process. And I tried it several times,
(17:33):
I taught it a few times, I used it with clients. But I never said
it was a framework. I just kind of said, hey, here's a process. And every
time I would go back and iterate a little bit, should make some changes. It's
always in, is in draft mode now. I've tested it for the last six or
eight months, I feel much better about it. And I'm to the point where I
can confidently say this is a framework. And so now I can use that
(17:53):
as another framework in my business to help my clients, I can talk about, I
can teach, et cetera. So you start to untangle all the things of your
experience, think about your Wins your successes, your track record. Start to look for
commonalities. AI is a great tool for this. And then see what it comes
up with. Create content around it. Maybe a presentation you give at an event
somewhere. LinkedIn is a great way to test it, that kind of stuff.
(18:16):
And then just you're in the test and measure mode for a little while until
it just. It'll start to feel right. Not only for you, but it
feels. It's something that paying clients, potential clients can understand
really quickly. And then they're going to go, oh, we need that. It's ultimately
not about the framework itself. It's about the framework being a
vehicle do the results that potential clients want.
(18:37):
So if we're saying, okay, what is that clear path? Like, I'm sure in your
park ranger days, the players you worked there were clear
trails that were much easier than other trails to get to the same
destination. We're looking for the clearest, straightest line to get
people results. And so we test it and then we say,
okay, this is what it is. And then now we can start building collateral around
(18:57):
it. Maybe a keynote presentation, a consulting package, a training
workshop, a coaching program, some product that people
can buy where they can start to understand and implement the framework in their own
lives and business. Yeah, and that's good. And mentioning
trails, I'm sure you've seen this on
campuses at a park where a park
(19:19):
designer has put together a trail saying, this is where
we want you to go. But social trails pop up
where people say, well, this is actually where I want to go,
and so I'm going to go this way instead. And I think it's a
good illustration that we quite often, without testing like
Wes is talking about, that's where we put in sidewalks on a
(19:41):
campus. But then socially, people will just start
cutting from here to there. I see it on campuses
probably even more than parks, because in parks, trees get in the way, things like
that. But campuses, you can have a sidewalk, and there will always
be places where you will see the social trails where they cut
across. That might have been a good idea to put a sidewalk there, but
(20:04):
didn't fit into the design. So I think that's what you get with the
testing that Wes is talking about. You think, okay, this is a
great framework as I've developed it, but as you see people use it
as you talk about it and get questions, use it as in a
presentation. I think as people ask questions,
you'll start to understand as what I referenced as the social
(20:26):
trail before I put the sidewalk here. Let's actually see where people
walk. Absolutely. Especially I think the some.
I'm. I'm also saying this in the context of people who may be kind of
late career professionals considering exiting their careers, retiring,
they still feel like they've got 20 or 30 years left to work in some
capacity. And they want to take their decades of experience and expertise
(20:47):
and translate that into the kind of the. The second career, sort of the second
act, so to speak. And when I think about that, I think part of the
challenge becomes when you've never worked for yourself and you're now having to define
all of the rules yourself, it is a different world. That's
scary. And so my encouragement always is. They think then I have to
go do all these things because I've got all these experiences. I've done all this
(21:07):
stuff with my career. It's like just pick one or two, you know, like Jimmy
Buffett became a billionaire off of Margaritaville. He had one hit
that like became flip flops in restaurants, in senior
retirement communities and hotels, and all these things
from one song that he said he claims he wrote in five minutes or 10
minutes. You don't need a ton of stuff. If you have one clear
(21:29):
framework, a process that you can take people through, that's a clear
path that you have iterated. And it may be something you iterate over a long
time, but you can sell that now. I can sell a process.
For example, one of mine is helping people figure out who their actual
ideal customer is. I've got a framework around that. I've got a
process around that. And almost every time,
(21:50):
occasionally there's outliers, but the norm is we're going to get
tremendous clarity on who companies need to actually be
targeting for marketing and sales. And so that's a framework and I can get
consistent results from that framework. And it's taken me a year at
least of intentional, consistent effort to refine it.
I was going to ask for an example of a framework, so I'm glad that
(22:11):
you gave one. And what Wes mentioned on it only
takes one hit. Like Margaritaville. One of my favorite
business books is QBQ by John Miller, and
He wrote that 15 years ago and he is still going
strong on that one message because it was
a hit, just like Margaritaville, that it is something
(22:34):
everybody needs, organizations need it, people need it. And he's
still going strong on that one. There's been no reason for
John Miller to say, okay, QBQ had a nice run, let's find the
next hit. I just saw him speak earlier this Year. And
he spoke on qbq 15 years after he wrote the book.
Think about how many people have used seven habits of Highly Effective People over the
(22:57):
last. When did that come out? In the 80s, 90s? I mean it's three or
four decades. Decades, yeah. Whatever the number is, it's decades.
Like it's a cornerstone book that is 7 Habits 7.
It's potent. You could consider it a framework. And what are the
elements of a. Of a framework? Is there something that has
to be in place for it to be a framework? You said it.
(23:19):
It can produce the same results when it's used. But are
there elements of a framework? There are. I think one element is
obviously it's a clear path that's going to take you to help people get
consistent results. That's one big element. Another element is
I'm going to try to make sure this makes sense. As a guy who's been
talking about clarity for the last 20 minutes, I want you to make sure it's
clear. Another element of a framework is it needs to include
(23:42):
everything you need, but not all the things you need. So in
other words, I need the. We need to get down to the critical
elements. I was listening to a podcast series last year on.
It's from Michael Lewis, the author of Blindside
Liars Poker. All those books he was interviewing a prosecutor and a prosecutor
talked about that idea. And when you're preparing for a trial, they have this phrase
(24:04):
called thin to win. In other words, you need all the evidence
you need to convict and nothing else. Like don't introduce
anything else that could be a distraction, a deviation, could open the
door for reasonable doubt. In other words, there's a thin line between
what you need to convict and what could cause reasonable doubt or a mistrial or
something else. And so in some ways it's that thin to win. What are the
(24:25):
things that people absolutely need and nothing else?
One of the challenges for career, you know, like retiring professionals,
executives particularly, they have an ocean of knowledge
and the challenge becomes they want to share that entire ocean and
share all of the things. And here's my 42 point system and my
107 part checklist. Nobody's going to buy that, nobody's going to do
(24:47):
it. We have to distill it down to the critical elements
that can, when people follow those things, it will give us the
clear, consistent, repeatable process. So it's too many people want to boil the ocean.
We're just trying to boil a pot of new for noodles, you know, so those
are a couple things. It's a clear path, but it also has exactly what they
need and nothing else. That's good. Have you happened to see
(25:09):
the Move? It's a bit of an older movie now, Enemies at the Gate with
Jude Law. I haven't seen that one. It is about a
sniper in World War II named
Vasily Zaitsev. The interesting thing about it. So
World War II would be the ocean, the
30, 40 year career. That's all of World War II.
(25:31):
Well, this author wrote a book called the Enemies at the Gate that was very
specifically about battles in Russia. There's
one paragraph in that book about Vasily
Zaitsev. The movie was made about that one paragraph.
And I think that goes along well with what you're saying. There's
all of World War II, there's the book just about
(25:53):
certain battles in Russia and then the movie about that one
paragraph. You couldn't make a movie about World War
II. You probably couldn't make a good movie
about the battles in Russia, but you could make a very good movie
about the one sniper and the work that he did around these
certain battles. And I like that one. To show how
(26:15):
broad it is. And then once you get that
focused, you can create a movie about this one
person and his story. Yeah. One of the hardest things that
businesses of all sizes have to do is they have to make decisions
on how are we going to focus of all the things we could do, of
all the people we think we could reach, who are the best people that
(26:38):
we're most likely to reach? Again, in the context of a
solopreneur building their business, consulting, business coaching, business,
potentially retiring executive, all of your expertise, how
does the expertise also match with a very specific set of
people who are most likely to pay money for this? At the end
of the day, it's got to come back to we got to make money somehow.
(26:59):
Tim Ferriss obviously with him in four hour work week. 18
years ago, that book sent him into the stratosphere. Millions of copies. It
was consistently a top ten book highlighted on Kindle for a decade. Four Hour
Body, Four Hour Chef. Tim Ferriss show like all the things come out of that
book. I remember in an interview years ago for the 10th anniversary of the book,
he said the first draft was terrible as most first drafts of a book are
(27:20):
rejected by 26 of 27 publishers. When he rewrote the next
future drafts, he rewrote the next big draft with the
idea of he had two good friends of his that were
both struggling in different ways. One guy was a business owner working Crazy
hours and just could not keep up with the business. And it was
burning them out and it was just exhausting. And Tim felt bad for his friend.
(27:43):
That was in this case. He just felt really bad for him, as we all
would with a friend in that space. The other one was a guy who was
an employee who was working a lot of hours on this verge of burnout marriage,
was stressed out. I mean, he just could not get ahead in his job. And
Tim said, if how do I take my experience and package it
in a way that if only these two friends of mine read it
and their lives are better for it, I'm good with it. So he
(28:06):
focused on two very specific men that he knew built everything around
that. And then it has. That book has impacted millions of people
for our audience. And today the question becomes of your
expertise and the visual framework you can build. Who are the kinds of
people that that framework is best suited for that are also likely to hire
you to help them go through it? Again, we're
(28:29):
building companies here. We're building businesses. So a framework
for the right kinds of people. The more we focus in and
the more we get specific. We've mentioned Disney, obviously, because of
Lee and other people you know and worked with over years. I worked for a
nonprofit in Orlando 15 years ago, and not long after I started, we
had our board meeting at Bay Hill Country Club there in Orlando, Arnold
(28:52):
Palmer's place as a non golfer, I was still like, this place is outrageous. This
is incredible. I wish I played golf. I'd play here today. We had dinner one
night with our board, and our president invited several people he knew in
Orlando. One of the guys at our table was a former imagineer,
and he was of that first wave of imagineers in the late 90s, early 2000s,
who went and started like architectural consulting firms after they left being
(29:13):
imagineers. And so we're all fascinated by the project he did at Disney,
the project he had done in his post Disney career, et cetera. And he started
walking us through the process for how they would kind of the imaginary way, how
they build stuff. He said, for example, there was some project he was working on
for a client of his architectural design firm in Southern
California. And he said part of our design plan was this
(29:34):
water feature of some sort. He said, but when we're building it, designing it,
we have to consider all the factors. Physics,
plumbing, city codes, county ordinances. We have to consider all
of the factors that you could possibly think of. He said, in some at Disney,
things, you don't even think About. You don't even know about certain things you have
to consider. But the more we consider all those factors, the clearer it becomes
(29:57):
on how we get to the end game. It's the same thing here. Now, the
difference is we're just the ones in charge of our businesses. So we have to
put in the mental effort to say, how do we create as much context as
possible? Let's get real specific on who we're trying to we think we can serve.
What outcome do we know we can consistently help people get and then based
on our expertise and experience, what is a consistent, clear path that
(30:18):
will help people get to that result? That becomes our framework. We test
it, we try it out, we tweak it, we edit it. And then over time,
that becomes a thing we're known for. Wes, I think this is a great spot
to end on. I've got so many more questions and I know other people
do as well because you're so good at laying this
out. It's funny how much clarity you have when you talk about this,
(30:40):
Wes. But if. If we want to follow up with you, just see
what you're up to, keep up with what you're doing. Where can we find out
more? Yeah, you can follow me on all social media. LinkedIn,
Instagram, Facebook. I'm wesgay on all those. You can also check out my website,
Westgate.com and I will say if you go to Westgate.com
JMS for Jody Mabry show. I have a resource
(31:02):
for you specifically on how to start and work into a
consulting business. That's what I've done over many years. I know a lot of people
are in that space, consulting, coaching, et cetera. So I have a free guide there
to help you figure out how to clarify who your audience is and then clarify
what your offer is. All right, thank you so much, Wes. This
was a wonderful conversation. Thanks for having me. And thank you for
(31:23):
listening to the Jody Mayberry Show.
Well, here's cactus. It's sugar. J.
Foreign
Mayberry show this episode, I want to introduce
you to Wes Gay. Now, you'll find out a lot about Wes.
I think a good way to sum up Wes, though, is he
helps brands find the right words so they can make more
money. If there ever was a clear introduction to
(00:23):
a guest, I would say that's it. Wes. How are you doing,
Jody? I'm good. Thanks for having me. Well, I'm. I'm glad I.
I've got you on the show. That very clear introduction, you
know, I took that directly off your website because I was looking
you up, doing research. Even though I already knew you, I wanted to make
sure I knew more going into this. And I read that
(00:45):
statement on your website, and I said, my goodness, that is clear.
You open web Wes's website, you know exactly what he's going to do for
you. Yeah, well, I'm in the business of clarity. What I typically do is I
help brands get the right words in their marketing, messaging, and sales. And so I
figure if I can't do it for myself, nobody's going to want to hire me
to do it for them. Yeah, well, that's right on. And let's
(01:07):
talk about that for a moment. Okay. Being in the business
of clarity, and I know based on what you
post on social media, what's on your website, I've
gathered that you think clarity is
one of the biggest problems of most businesses. Yeah.
So I've worked with a few hundred companies, organizations,
(01:28):
nonprofit, local, global, you know, regional, national,
small, large, whatever. And confusion is the number one
enemy of every business. It can be confusion in your offer. People
don't know what you're actually selling. Confusion in how to use your product.
One of the things I deal with a lot is confusion among a leadership team
as to what the company does. I cannot tell you how many companies I've been
(01:51):
in where I'll. I'll do day sessions a lot day workshops. And I'll start the
day I say, hey, everybody. Write down in two to three sentences what this company
does. If I have 10 people in the room, it'll sound like 10 different
companies. And if the leadership team is confused
downstream, everybody's confused. No wonder the sales team all says something different.
Marketing believes something different, operations. And so when we start to fight
(02:12):
confusion or place confusion with clarity, what we're doing is we're saying, hey, we're actually
narrowing our focus. We're getting really focused in on who we are as a company,
who we need to sell to, and what we actually sell
to them, as opposed to all of the things we could do. We put
constraints on it. We put kind of guardrails and say, this is where our attention
goes. We're going to interject clarity and we're going to fight with everything
(02:34):
we've got to keep things clear. Because confusion creeps in so
easily. This reminds me, Lee
Cockrell and I twice a year do an event called the Creating Magic
Mastermind. And in the beginning of one of them, someone
stood up to during the introductions just to say who he
was, what he did, and he explained what he did. And when he
(02:56):
sat down, Lee Cockrell said, what does that mean?
And I thought, oh, no, that is not what you want to hear. I think
you'd rather give your introduction and have someone say
tell me more rather than what does that mean? So when it comes
to talking about what we do, how can we approach
it to cross the line from what does that mean? To tell me more?
(03:19):
Start with a problem. You know, our brains are wired to
pay attention to problems. We scan our environment for problems. I live in Atlanta,
Georgia. When I go on the interstate, I am scanning the eight lane highways
for potential problems that are going to get in my way. Our brains are
wired that way. When we read, when we hear a problem on the news,
when we watch a movie, right? If, when we know what the
(03:41):
problem of the film is, we lean in and pay attention until it's resolved.
In fact, I watched, we watched a movie. My wife and I watched a movie
the other day. And literally when the main problem of the
movie was over, within 60 seconds, the credits were rolling.
And so if you want to get people to pay attention, think about the problem
you solve for your audience. So for example, let's say you go to an event
(04:02):
and you meet somebody and I go, hey, how are you? They go, hey, my
name's Jamie. Hey Jamie, what do you do? I'm an at home chef.
Okay. And it's like, all right. Or you go, you know how it is more,
it's more likely to say, well, I'm an atom chef. My dad was
a cook, my mom was a cook, and I grew up cooking around my grandmother
and I really love her. And my logo was blue because my grandmother used a
(04:23):
blue apron. And I really value my grandmother. And I base all of our
recipes on her inspiration. And you're like, bro, I'm out.
Like, I don't know what you're talking about. As opposed to, I meet a different
at home chef at the same event. Hey, my name's Josh. Hey, Josh, what do
you do you know how most families are really busy and they have a hard
time cooking healthy meals so that they can sit at the dinner table
(04:44):
together most nights a week? I'm immediately going to go, well, that's us.
I'm an at home chef who will create a meal plan for you.
Come to your house and prepare the meals ahead of time. So all you have
to do is heat them up in the oven and then sit down at the
table and enjoy dinner with your family. And I'm going, hey, how do you do?
Tell me more about that. Right? Because the second one started with a problem.
(05:05):
He's hooked me by solving a problem that I
have or maybe somebody I know has, and my brain now
connects that person as a solution to a problem.
I can definitely see that if you start that way, what
Wes just said, I think people are going to say, tell me more. No
one's going to say, what does that mean? Because it's right there. All right,
(05:27):
one other thing, Wes. I looked at your website.
In fact, I'm looking at it right now. And one of the things that stands
out to me is how simple it is, how
little there is there compared to other
websites that I go to. You've really gone for
simple and clear rather than trying to
(05:49):
force a lot of stuff onto your website. Now, I assume
that's intentional, not because you didn't have time to put everything
you could think of on your website. Tell us why your website
is the way it is. So marketing in general is
nothing more than sales at scale. And a website is really a sales
rep. And so if you want to have an effective website or any effective marketing
(06:12):
channel, you got to think, if this was a sales rep,
what would a good sales rep do? We've all been in sales
conversations with good sales reps and, and bad ones. A
couple of years ago, my wife and I, my mother in law was watching our
kids and we, my wife and I run into marines and for whatever reason, I
guess we hit the age where on a Saturday afternoon we go to a vacuum
(06:32):
store. So we went to the vacuum store and we thought we need a new
one. My wife's grandparents used to always use Oreck
vacuums like her granddad. That's what he always bought. He was very particular
about those things. Went to the Oreck store, right? That guy could
have told us anything and everything possible about Oreck vacuums. What
he did really well because we walked out of there with two. Somehow I don't
(06:54):
know how that happened. Still not really sure what he did. Really well,
is he focused that entire conversation specifically on selling
to us? So he started by asking questions and then once he got a feel
for the fact we have young kids, we have a dog who sheds like it's
his job, we need something that's light because we've got stairs, you know,
because a couple of two story house, all that stuff he could recommend
(07:16):
and keep the conversation really focused. For me, I know who I'm
trying to, who I, I fit best with, what I sell, who I work with.
And so for like a website, I think how do I keep it really clear
and focused on that person? Too often, particularly for those
listening who are the solopreneurs or thinking about maybe retiring from a late,
you're kind of late career professional retiring and starting your own
(07:36):
consulting practice. Solopreneur, solo firm, whatever. Most of the
ones that I've worked with that are even friends of mine, the reason they struggle
is because they go too broad. They try to serve everybody, which means they actually
serve nobody. The counterintuitive reality is the
more focused we keep it, the easier it is to sell and the more
likely we are to attract the kinds of people that we're best suited to work
(07:58):
with. Yeah, very good. And when you go to Wes's
website, that's what you'll see. If it does not appeal to you right
away, that just means Wes wasn't writing for you.
He did not have you in mind when he built the website. Am I right
on that? You're right. We always talk about marketing attracting the right people. But
it we say marketing is magnetic. Magnets attract and they repel.
(08:20):
And that's fine because I realized like I have friends, other
agencies that I talked to a friend of mine yesterday who owns an agency, they
do a thing much better than I could ever do in a
lifetime. I'm not even going to try to do it. So like if you want
what they sell, I'm not your guy. And then you're not going to, you're. No,
I'm not going to be your guy. Which is fine because it just wastes everybody's
time because we've all bought things that were just not right for us.
(08:43):
And so when you're investing your money to help with your business, you got to
invest your money with the kinds of people that you know are going to get
a return on your investment and the right fit for you. So yeah, it's all
focused on the kinds of people that I know I can serve really well. There's
one reason in particular I asked you to come on the show,
Wes. And so I'll backfill this a little bit.
Wes and I were just talking not long ago, and he asked
(09:06):
me a question with a particular word in it that said,
you know what? There's never been an episode of the Jody
Mayberry show, I don't think, where the word framework was
used. And that question. I was talking about the work that I
do with retired executives, and Wes said, I think
it was just simply, oh, you help them build frameworks for what
(09:29):
they do. I said, well, kind of, but let's talk about that. And
instead of just us talking, let's talk about that on the
podcast, because this could be very useful. Let me set you up
for something, Wes. Let's just say you've had
a good career, lot of experience, you've learned things,
you. You've been a good leader, you've accumulated experience.
(09:51):
Maybe nobody else has. How do you now take that?
Well, let me back up. I don't want to, because I want people to say,
tell me more, not what. What does that mean? First, when
you ask, do you create frameworks for that? What do you even mean
by a framework? What is a framework? A framework is a
process that people can follow to achieve some kind of an outcome
(10:14):
or transformation. So it can be building blocks, it can
be points, but it's something that you can take
somebody through, and most of the time, they're going to get the intended
results. For example, you and I both know Donald Miller and the storybrand
framework. And the Story Brand framework is a storytelling formula that
has been around for a very long time. It's been repackaged and rearranged
(10:36):
for commercial, you know, like businesses and marketing and sales, et cetera.
It's a framework, and it's seven elements. And you t. You, you start at the
beginning, you walk all the way through the seven things, and it helps you create
clear messaging for your business. That's a framework. I've seen other
frameworks. There's a guy, there's a company in Nashville, Tennessee, that helps people build
personal brands, and they have personal brand frameworks. It's a repeatable process
(10:57):
that are going to help people get some kind of result or transformation.
All right, great explanation. Now, if I am
a former executive as an example, and I have all
this experience, how can you use past
experience to build a framework? Big question.
So I'm going to have a long answer to a short question here. The starting
(11:19):
point that I've seen a lot of people have when they go out on their
own transitioning out of corporate into their own is they try to
rush to a framework first without deciding how to focus. So we want to say,
what kind of framework do we want to build or what kind of process do
we want to have? And the way I look at that is, if I'm a
retiring executive, I'm going to look at my career and say, when I
had wins in my career that I was directly involved with, what
(11:43):
were the habits, what were the decisions, what was the
mentality, what was the my thinking process
that consistently showed up in those moments? So that way you can
clarify what makes you unique, what makes your thought process unique, what makes your approach
clear? Sometimes it's you intuitively have. Other times it's something that you
just learn over the years. One of the things I learned early, early, early in
(12:05):
my career when I was in a. I was working in nonprofits where I started
my own consulting firm, I noticed, and this
helps a lot of people in this space, I noticed how people complimented
me. And what I mean by that is I noticed that there were two
ways people would compliment me at work. One was the result of the thing I
did. Hey, that was a great X, right? So it's the
(12:27):
outcome. The other one that I would get complimented on, I
noticed occasionally was more like an identity affirmation.
You're great at X. And so when I did the
things that I was naturally good at and had a natural strength
towards and had repeated success at, most of the time when people would
comment just to affirm or just be gracious, it was a, you are,
(12:50):
you are a good. It was an identity thing. So one of the ways is
to think about what are those identity affirmations you've had over your career, the things
that you're maybe more naturally been to. And the reason we have to start with
these kinds of questions, we have to narrow in what
we're trying to create. A lot of people want to start their own thing. And
they. You say, well, who do you serve everybody with a pulse?
(13:11):
Okay, that's. And Disney doesn't even serve everybody with a pulse. They're a
multinational global juggernaut. At some point we go, if you're
going to start a business to have a framework behind it, let's look at your
expertise that you've got repeated experience in that you can
guide people into and through. So that's where I'd start is say,
what have you had past successes? Where are the things that you can speak confidently
(13:33):
on because you've got the results to back it up? That are going to say,
hey, if you follow this path, you know, in some ways, you remember P90X from
20 years ago, something that was basically a framework. Six days
a week, here's the pattern. And if you follow the pattern, you'll get the result.
If you endure this torture for 12 weeks, you know, you
might get abs, too. But, like, that was a framework. So you look, executives say,
(13:54):
okay, how to build a framework? I'm going to start with, where have I had
repeated successes? What are the decisions or the habits or the
approaches that I have that, okay, I can start to plot out.
That can be a path I can take people through. They're going to get some.
They could get similar results. All right, this is good. This
reminds me, one time, this was actually
(14:16):
someone high up at a police department, and he was thinking about leaving
and doing something on his own. And he knew the work that I did. And
he said, what's the key? Like, what do I need to do if
I'm going to leave, go out on my own, or even if I want to
be a chief of department? I said, the first step, write it all down.
And he said, what is it? And I said, I don't know. That's up to
(14:37):
you. You know what you're good at, you know what your department is good at,
you know the processes. But I don't think you can focus
in on what it is you're really good at until
you start to write it all down and capture all of it.
So explain how I have answers to
this, but this episode's about you, not me. Explain how
(15:00):
you go from starting to write it all down, that
portion, when I always like to call that the freestyle, because you're just
taking it all and you're just throwing it all out there. How do you go
from. I'm going to write down everything I can think of. My
wins, my losses, my supervisors,
the big stories, all of that. How do you go from that to a
(15:22):
framework? What are you looking for in all of that?
I'm starting to look for patterns, right? So I'm going to look
for what are the patterns, what are the
commonalities, those kinds of things from a tactical standpoint, quite
honestly, in terms of how to do it, you could do a voice note on
your iPhone or your phone, or just stream of consciousness, record yourself.
(15:43):
And then I would consider uploading that to a chat
GPT and say you are an expert instructional
designer, which is the kind of person who helps, you know, create curriculum, trainings,
workshops, et cetera. Your goal is to Help me identify a potential framework for
my area of expertise. You will analyze a transcript of my
thoughts on where I think, what I think this framework is and then ask me,
(16:04):
quite interview me to get everything you need to help me clarify a potential
framework. That's where I'd start these days, last year
or so is I go there just to have a thought partner to help me
untangle it. Too often when we try to do these things for ourselves, we're
inside the bottle trying to read the label. So we need somebody else, even
AI, Chad, gbt, Claude, whatever to help us see a different
(16:26):
perspective. That's a great starting point. What it will then do
is probably eventually over 15, 20, 30 minutes,
analyze it to the point where you go, that feels pretty good. So you've got
a draft, now the next thing you need to do is test it. Some people
think, oh, I've, I've got a draft framework. Like it's it. We're not getting forehead
tattoos, right? We're, we're putting words on documents and
(16:48):
on slides and testing stuff. So if I'm a retiring executive,
let's say from Disney, like Lee Cockrell, who I have been a fan of for
many years, and he's deciding he's going to have a operations
framework for how to lead an operation, not how to do operations, how to
lead an operations team successfully because he's done it, or hospitality
operations to be more specific to what his background is. So before he ever
(17:11):
writes a book on it or tries to go out and selling a branded framework
on it, test it, try to do a keynote, make a presentation
about it, write about it on LinkedIn, maybe put some articles on a
website, brainstorm around it, test it over a period of time. There
was one myself, there was a new framework I started working on last year
within a cross stick and kind of a process. And I tried it several times,
(17:33):
I taught it a few times, I used it with clients. But I never said
it was a framework. I just kind of said, hey, here's a process. And every
time I would go back and iterate a little bit, should make some changes. It's
always in, is in draft mode now. I've tested it for the last six or
eight months, I feel much better about it. And I'm to the point where I
can confidently say this is a framework. And so now I can use that
(17:53):
as another framework in my business to help my clients, I can talk about, I
can teach, et cetera. So you start to untangle all the things of your
experience, think about your Wins your successes, your track record. Start to look for
commonalities. AI is a great tool for this. And then see what it comes
up with. Create content around it. Maybe a presentation you give at an event
somewhere. LinkedIn is a great way to test it, that kind of stuff.
(18:16):
And then just you're in the test and measure mode for a little while until
it just. It'll start to feel right. Not only for you, but it
feels. It's something that paying clients, potential clients can understand
really quickly. And then they're going to go, oh, we need that. It's ultimately
not about the framework itself. It's about the framework being a
vehicle do the results that potential clients want.
(18:37):
So if we're saying, okay, what is that clear path? Like, I'm sure in your
park ranger days, the players you worked there were clear
trails that were much easier than other trails to get to the same
destination. We're looking for the clearest, straightest line to get
people results. And so we test it and then we say,
okay, this is what it is. And then now we can start building collateral around
(18:57):
it. Maybe a keynote presentation, a consulting package, a training
workshop, a coaching program, some product that people
can buy where they can start to understand and implement the framework in their own
lives and business. Yeah, and that's good. And mentioning
trails, I'm sure you've seen this on
campuses at a park where a park
(19:19):
designer has put together a trail saying, this is where
we want you to go. But social trails pop up
where people say, well, this is actually where I want to go,
and so I'm going to go this way instead. And I think it's a
good illustration that we quite often, without testing like
Wes is talking about, that's where we put in sidewalks on a
(19:41):
campus. But then socially, people will just start
cutting from here to there. I see it on campuses
probably even more than parks, because in parks, trees get in the way, things like
that. But campuses, you can have a sidewalk, and there will always
be places where you will see the social trails where they cut
across. That might have been a good idea to put a sidewalk there, but
(20:04):
didn't fit into the design. So I think that's what you get with the
testing that Wes is talking about. You think, okay, this is a
great framework as I've developed it, but as you see people use it
as you talk about it and get questions, use it as in a
presentation. I think as people ask questions,
you'll start to understand as what I referenced as the social
(20:26):
trail before I put the sidewalk here. Let's actually see where people
walk. Absolutely. Especially I think the some.
I'm. I'm also saying this in the context of people who may be kind of
late career professionals considering exiting their careers, retiring,
they still feel like they've got 20 or 30 years left to work in some
capacity. And they want to take their decades of experience and expertise
(20:47):
and translate that into the kind of the. The second career, sort of the second
act, so to speak. And when I think about that, I think part of the
challenge becomes when you've never worked for yourself and you're now having to define
all of the rules yourself, it is a different world. That's
scary. And so my encouragement always is. They think then I have to
go do all these things because I've got all these experiences. I've done all this
(21:07):
stuff with my career. It's like just pick one or two, you know, like Jimmy
Buffett became a billionaire off of Margaritaville. He had one hit
that like became flip flops in restaurants, in senior
retirement communities and hotels, and all these things
from one song that he said he claims he wrote in five minutes or 10
minutes. You don't need a ton of stuff. If you have one clear
(21:29):
framework, a process that you can take people through, that's a clear
path that you have iterated. And it may be something you iterate over a long
time, but you can sell that now. I can sell a process.
For example, one of mine is helping people figure out who their actual
ideal customer is. I've got a framework around that. I've got a
process around that. And almost every time,
(21:50):
occasionally there's outliers, but the norm is we're going to get
tremendous clarity on who companies need to actually be
targeting for marketing and sales. And so that's a framework and I can get
consistent results from that framework. And it's taken me a year at
least of intentional, consistent effort to refine it.
I was going to ask for an example of a framework, so I'm glad that
(22:11):
you gave one. And what Wes mentioned on it only
takes one hit. Like Margaritaville. One of my favorite
business books is QBQ by John Miller, and
He wrote that 15 years ago and he is still going
strong on that one message because it was
a hit, just like Margaritaville, that it is something
(22:34):
everybody needs, organizations need it, people need it. And he's
still going strong on that one. There's been no reason for
John Miller to say, okay, QBQ had a nice run, let's find the
next hit. I just saw him speak earlier this Year. And
he spoke on qbq 15 years after he wrote the book.
Think about how many people have used seven habits of Highly Effective People over the
(22:57):
last. When did that come out? In the 80s, 90s? I mean it's three or
four decades. Decades, yeah. Whatever the number is, it's decades.
Like it's a cornerstone book that is 7 Habits 7.
It's potent. You could consider it a framework. And what are the
elements of a. Of a framework? Is there something that has
to be in place for it to be a framework? You said it.
(23:19):
It can produce the same results when it's used. But are
there elements of a framework? There are. I think one element is
obviously it's a clear path that's going to take you to help people get
consistent results. That's one big element. Another element is
I'm going to try to make sure this makes sense. As a guy who's been
talking about clarity for the last 20 minutes, I want you to make sure it's
clear. Another element of a framework is it needs to include
(23:42):
everything you need, but not all the things you need. So in
other words, I need the. We need to get down to the critical
elements. I was listening to a podcast series last year on.
It's from Michael Lewis, the author of Blindside
Liars Poker. All those books he was interviewing a prosecutor and a prosecutor
talked about that idea. And when you're preparing for a trial, they have this phrase
(24:04):
called thin to win. In other words, you need all the evidence
you need to convict and nothing else. Like don't introduce
anything else that could be a distraction, a deviation, could open the
door for reasonable doubt. In other words, there's a thin line between
what you need to convict and what could cause reasonable doubt or a mistrial or
something else. And so in some ways it's that thin to win. What are the
(24:25):
things that people absolutely need and nothing else?
One of the challenges for career, you know, like retiring professionals,
executives particularly, they have an ocean of knowledge
and the challenge becomes they want to share that entire ocean and
share all of the things. And here's my 42 point system and my
107 part checklist. Nobody's going to buy that, nobody's going to do
(24:47):
it. We have to distill it down to the critical elements
that can, when people follow those things, it will give us the
clear, consistent, repeatable process. So it's too many people want to boil the ocean.
We're just trying to boil a pot of new for noodles, you know, so those
are a couple things. It's a clear path, but it also has exactly what they
need and nothing else. That's good. Have you happened to see
(25:09):
the Move? It's a bit of an older movie now, Enemies at the Gate with
Jude Law. I haven't seen that one. It is about a
sniper in World War II named
Vasily Zaitsev. The interesting thing about it. So
World War II would be the ocean, the
30, 40 year career. That's all of World War II.
(25:31):
Well, this author wrote a book called the Enemies at the Gate that was very
specifically about battles in Russia. There's
one paragraph in that book about Vasily
Zaitsev. The movie was made about that one paragraph.
And I think that goes along well with what you're saying. There's
all of World War II, there's the book just about
(25:53):
certain battles in Russia and then the movie about that one
paragraph. You couldn't make a movie about World War
II. You probably couldn't make a good movie
about the battles in Russia, but you could make a very good movie
about the one sniper and the work that he did around these
certain battles. And I like that one. To show how
(26:15):
broad it is. And then once you get that
focused, you can create a movie about this one
person and his story. Yeah. One of the hardest things that
businesses of all sizes have to do is they have to make decisions
on how are we going to focus of all the things we could do, of
all the people we think we could reach, who are the best people that
(26:38):
we're most likely to reach? Again, in the context of a
solopreneur building their business, consulting, business coaching, business,
potentially retiring executive, all of your expertise, how
does the expertise also match with a very specific set of
people who are most likely to pay money for this? At the end
of the day, it's got to come back to we got to make money somehow.
(26:59):
Tim Ferriss obviously with him in four hour work week. 18
years ago, that book sent him into the stratosphere. Millions of copies. It
was consistently a top ten book highlighted on Kindle for a decade. Four Hour
Body, Four Hour Chef. Tim Ferriss show like all the things come out of that
book. I remember in an interview years ago for the 10th anniversary of the book,
he said the first draft was terrible as most first drafts of a book are
(27:20):
rejected by 26 of 27 publishers. When he rewrote the next
future drafts, he rewrote the next big draft with the
idea of he had two good friends of his that were
both struggling in different ways. One guy was a business owner working Crazy
hours and just could not keep up with the business. And it was
burning them out and it was just exhausting. And Tim felt bad for his friend.
(27:43):
That was in this case. He just felt really bad for him, as we all
would with a friend in that space. The other one was a guy who was
an employee who was working a lot of hours on this verge of burnout marriage,
was stressed out. I mean, he just could not get ahead in his job. And
Tim said, if how do I take my experience and package it
in a way that if only these two friends of mine read it
and their lives are better for it, I'm good with it. So he
(28:06):
focused on two very specific men that he knew built everything around
that. And then it has. That book has impacted millions of people
for our audience. And today the question becomes of your
expertise and the visual framework you can build. Who are the kinds of
people that that framework is best suited for that are also likely to hire
you to help them go through it? Again, we're
(28:29):
building companies here. We're building businesses. So a framework
for the right kinds of people. The more we focus in and
the more we get specific. We've mentioned Disney, obviously, because of
Lee and other people you know and worked with over years. I worked for a
nonprofit in Orlando 15 years ago, and not long after I started, we
had our board meeting at Bay Hill Country Club there in Orlando, Arnold
(28:52):
Palmer's place as a non golfer, I was still like, this place is outrageous. This
is incredible. I wish I played golf. I'd play here today. We had dinner one
night with our board, and our president invited several people he knew in
Orlando. One of the guys at our table was a former imagineer,
and he was of that first wave of imagineers in the late 90s, early 2000s,
who went and started like architectural consulting firms after they left being
(29:13):
imagineers. And so we're all fascinated by the project he did at Disney,
the project he had done in his post Disney career, et cetera. And he started
walking us through the process for how they would kind of the imaginary way, how
they build stuff. He said, for example, there was some project he was working on
for a client of his architectural design firm in Southern
California. And he said part of our design plan was this
(29:34):
water feature of some sort. He said, but when we're building it, designing it,
we have to consider all the factors. Physics,
plumbing, city codes, county ordinances. We have to consider all
of the factors that you could possibly think of. He said, in some at Disney,
things, you don't even think About. You don't even know about certain things you have
to consider. But the more we consider all those factors, the clearer it becomes
(29:57):
on how we get to the end game. It's the same thing here. Now, the
difference is we're just the ones in charge of our businesses. So we have to
put in the mental effort to say, how do we create as much context as
possible? Let's get real specific on who we're trying to we think we can serve.
What outcome do we know we can consistently help people get and then based
on our expertise and experience, what is a consistent, clear path that
(30:18):
will help people get to that result? That becomes our framework. We test
it, we try it out, we tweak it, we edit it. And then over time,
that becomes a thing we're known for. Wes, I think this is a great spot
to end on. I've got so many more questions and I know other people
do as well because you're so good at laying this
out. It's funny how much clarity you have when you talk about this,
(30:40):
Wes. But if. If we want to follow up with you, just see
what you're up to, keep up with what you're doing. Where can we find out
more? Yeah, you can follow me on all social media. LinkedIn,
Instagram, Facebook. I'm wesgay on all those. You can also check out my website,
Westgate.com and I will say if you go to Westgate.com
JMS for Jody Mabry show. I have a resource
(31:02):
for you specifically on how to start and work into a
consulting business. That's what I've done over many years. I know a lot of people
are in that space, consulting, coaching, et cetera. So I have a free guide there
to help you figure out how to clarify who your audience is and then clarify
what your offer is. All right, thank you so much, Wes. This
was a wonderful conversation. Thanks for having me. And thank you for
(31:23):
listening to the Jody Mayberry Show.
Well, here's cactus. It's sugar. J.
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