April 24, 2025 • 36 mins
Storytelling isn't just for movies, it’s one of the most powerful tools in business. In this episode, Caleb Marsh, founder of Red Legend Media, shares how great stories can win customers, inspire teams, and drive real results.
From growing up on film sets to leading a top video production company, Caleb reveals his unique formula: every great story has a character, a journey, and, most importantly, a transformation. He explains why starting with the change you want to create makes your message more powerful and clear.
You'll learn the three must-have story types for every business, and how one 58-second video helped a struggling company turn things around in a big way.
If you want to make your message stick, build trust, and spark action—this episode is for you. Hit play and learn how to tell stories that actually make a difference.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to the Confidence Curve with Ashley and
Rick Bowers, where personal andprofessional journeys define
the art of scaling withconfidence.
Whether you're a businessleader navigating change or
someone seeking personal growth,this podcast offers insights
and actionable advice to helpyou thrive.
Now let's dive into today'sconversation with our incredible
(00:26):
guest.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Welcome to the Confidence Curve.
I'm Rick Bowers and I'm excitedto have our guest today, caleb
Marsh, with Red Legend, and he'skind of that serial
entrepreneur from a young agewhere he's kind of started and
done a lot of different things,enjoys putting the different
teams and things together tokind of get things done.
So with that, welcome Caleb.
Thanks for having me RickExcited to kind of dig into your
(00:52):
story and kind of where you'vekind of grown over the years and
how the different events haveshaped what your current
business is.
So maybe you can start with alittle bit of background on on
red legend yeah, so, uh, I mean,red legend is a video
production company.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
We serve businesses primarily in, like, the trades
and contracting space, um and uh, we got started in a way that
dovetails nicely into what wefocus on today.
Like I tell the team, we arestorytellers, first video,
second, um.
So if we wake up and it's theyear 1802, uh, and our cameras
(01:31):
stop charging, we show up towork.
We do the same job.
We just have to figure outdifferent tools, uh, versus the
videographer, um, which thereare a lot of great storytellers
out there.
But if you're just a technician, your camera camera stops
charging.
You're out of a job.
We started.
I was actually 11 years old.
I was an extra on a film setthat shot up in northern Arizona
.
No one's ever seen what wasmade.
(01:52):
It was History Channel.
It was fine.
But I fell in love with theprocess.
I was like, okay, I don't careabout being in front of the
camera and the output wasn'tgreat, but they had a camera on
a crane, on a truck, filming ahorse.
I was like I'm going to do thiswhen I grow up, followed a
(02:13):
production assistant around thatwhole day.
He showed me a ton of things.
I started getting on film sets.
And then, 16 years old, gothired with my good buddy that
lived down the street to makemake a video.
It's a one minute video for alocal school, private school,
and they aired it in the uhmovie theater up in payson where
(02:33):
I grew up.
Um, like you know, the localads before the actual previews
start, so we would buy movietickets, uh, show up 20 minutes
early, watch our video and leave.
Um, and that was.
That was a game changer for me,because I always wanted to go
hollywood director, producer,like that's where storytelling
lives.
And then we got paid to tell astory.
(02:56):
It took us half a day to shoot,uh, and it was all of the same
techniques, all the passion andworking with people that were
actually making a difference,doing something that we thought
was worth doing.
So it kind of clicked that wecould maybe do this for a living
.
And then we said, hey, let'sstart a business.
(03:20):
How hard could that be?
And seven years later, here weare.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Okay, that's exciting .
It's really cool that at such ayoung age you were able to kind
of like pinpoint exactly whatit was that you wanted to do.
And a lot of people strugglewith that, whether they they go
through college and change theirmajor a few times or they don't
go to college because they'renot sure what they want to do.
But having that vision fromsuch a young age, it's awesome.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
It was a blessing, I will say.
I started my degree in softwareengineering and IT Because I
was like, well, you know thisfilm thing.
There's no way I'm going tomake money doing that, so I'm
going to have a fallback in caseit doesn't work.
Learned early on in thebusiness that having a fallback
is a terrible idea.
You've got to just be all in.
(04:07):
But that actually led to mestarting another business that I
own, which is a softwaredevelopment company.
So I've got that skill set.
I love that world.
I just can't write code foreight hours a day.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
I'd go nuts.
Yeah, I can't imagine doingthat either.
So so you had a an interestinginternship as you were coming up
in the ranks.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
Yeah, uh.
I spent a year over in Dubai.
Um first interned at a uh likea data analytics company that
was mind numbing Um, and then myboss there took mercy on me and
connected me with a friend whoran a production company and
they I mean they did ads forEmirates Airlines and big you
(04:50):
know, big name productions andthat just cemented the idea of
all of the stuff that we love todo with telling stories we can
do for businesses and we don'thave to compromise on
storytelling to do corporatevideo.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
yeah yeah, I had a chance to to go to dubai when I
was with tti and early 2000s.
It's a it's a reallyinteresting place and cool city
and, other than the businessaspect of it, I think my
highlight was getting to ski inthe indoor ski slope, which was
pretty cool yep, molly emmer,it's spent a lot of time there
in our first conversation we wespent a lot of time talking
(05:27):
about the word story or defininga story, so let's dig into that
a little bit.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
Yeah, about two years ago, a buddy of mine asked me a
question that I should haveknown the answer for and I
didn't, and it bothered me.
And he does web design supergood at his job.
I do video.
We send each other a lot ofwork and he said hey, caleb,
you're a storyteller, right.
And I was like, yeah, like I'm aprofessional, I get paid for it
(05:57):
, I've won awards for it, we'regood at storytelling.
And he was like, awesome,what's a story?
And I said let me get back toyou on that.
I don't know, uh.
So I went and I asked a dozenplus of my filmmaker friends,
people with like professionalstoryteller in their bio, and
they said, oh, you know, storyis like like storytelling, like,
(06:21):
uh, maybe you know beginning,middle end, which is the
structure of a story, but that,but there's a lot of things that
have a beginning, middle andend that aren't a story.
Didn't get a single gooddefinition, bothered the crap
out of me, and so I went on adeep dive, researching what is a
story, trying to understand thephilosophy of storytelling,
(06:42):
like the way to think aboutstory at a fundamental level,
universal, because that is goingto unlock all of the
applications.
I know for a fact that in thebusiness world we are not using
storytelling the way that wecould and should, and there are
a lot of great frameworks outthere and they tend to be these
sort of top down approaches of,like you know, story.
(07:04):
Brandald miller, that's theperfect one, it's genius, it's
great, it works incredibly well.
If you go all in, thecertification is worth it, like
it's a good system and it's topdown and it's one structure
that's applied multipledifferent ways.
Uh, and it doesn't truly answerthe question what is a story
(07:26):
like?
What's the universal definition?
So and I'm open to feedback onthis because it's still fairly
fresh, a year or two old, butthe definition we found that
really works well is a story hasthree pieces.
It's got a character, a journeyand a transformation.
The problem we fall into asstorytellers, especially in our
(07:48):
industry, is we focus on thecharacter, because you got a
character that goes through thisjourney and at the end they
reach this transformation.
So we start with the character,which makes sense.
You and I are characters, weare human beings and we are on
journeys and in our story, likeour life story, we have not yet
reached our final transformation.
We're still alive, um, so wethink character journey it's
(08:12):
very intuitive to us.
The interesting bit when you'retelling a story is the
transformation, and people knowthis like it intuitively makes
sense.
It's kind of the way westructure stories.
It's not a groundbreakingdefinition.
The problem is, if you startwith the character, you
haphazardly end up at atransformation, and that's the
part that matters.
(08:33):
What we found is when we'retelling a story for business, we
start with the transformationand reverse, engineer the
character and the journey thatget us there.
And all of a sudden, when weare telling a story, whether
it's on video or we're justadvising in there, you know
writing it or speaking it, orit's in a conversation that
story becomes shorter're goingto and not bringing in
(08:53):
superfluous fluff that feelsgood to talk about but isn't the
point.
So that character journeytransformation model completely
(09:16):
changed the way that we approachvideo, sort of like it.
It changed the way we thoughtabout it, like intuitively,
we're good at storytelling, sothe videos didn't look that much
different, the structure wasn'tthat different, but we
understood it, we knew why wewere doing what we were doing.
That was powerful.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
So some of the impact that you get is being able to
get to the point for lack ofbetter words sooner with your
stories and make that impact sothat the transformation can
happen.
Is that one way to say it?
Speaker 3 (09:47):
Yeah, and it's sooner and it's more intentionally.
Okay, because we want to takethe viewer on a journey.
Right, they are a character andyou want to transform their
mindset.
If you're a business, you're inthe job of changing people's
minds Period, end of story ordigging a trench but for any
(10:08):
sort of marketing, sales,operation, leadership, like,
your job is to change people'sminds and you're not just going
to tell them the transformationthat you want and they're going
to flip.
So you have to treat them likea character and take them on a
journey, which means you mayneed to tell multiple stories to
make them feel heard andunderstood and then willing to
(10:28):
listen, and then listen, thenunderstand how to apply it.
Like there's a lot ofpsychology.
That isn't storytelling.
That story supports.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
Okay, it was interesting.
Yesterday I did a communicationworkshop for a cohort that was
going through a leadershipprocess and one of the people
sitting next to the person nextto her she's like I understand
the details, but I like to tellthe stories.
And she's like my husband willsay what are the facts?
And she's like, well, I'mgetting to that, but listen to
my story.
(10:55):
And then the next person waslike but I just like bullet
points and so people like tocommunicate in in very different
ways, but that storytelling issuch a powerful process.
How can businesses get more outof the story?
Speaker 3 (11:11):
The first thing is to first understand what a story
is and start looking fortransformations.
That's the biggest thing.
If you go out in the world andyou look for transformations and
then think who is the characterand what journey did they go on
to get to the transformationthat people care about, that
alone you're now a 10 timesbetter storyteller, as opposed
(11:31):
to the intuitive my grandmabetty one time.
Which character, journey,transformation, it's all there.
That's the way it's structured.
We're just not taking advantageof it.
I would say for businesses,break it down.
There's really three bucketsthat your stories are going to
fall into.
The first is company, second isproduct or process service and
(11:52):
the third is customer.
So what that means is you'vegot stories about the company
and the people in the companyand you know the core values
fall into that.
Like how do we apply our corevalues in the real world?
That's a great story to tell,not just like here's our core
value, but here's what it means.
We had a fork in the road,character on a journey, had this
obstacle and here's thetransformation we reached.
(12:15):
That's a core value applied.
That's a type of story.
So the company stories areabout the company and the people
inside the company.
The product or service orprocess story is about the thing
that you make, the thing thatyou offer.
You ever watch the show how it'sMade?
Yeah, great show, grew up on it.
You'll sit there for 20 minutesand you'll start with just some
(12:39):
block of plastic and you'll endup with an empty water bottle.
These are two of the mostmundane, boring everyday objects
.
And yet you just spent 20minutes of your life that you'll
never get back, glued to the TV, because there is a character
on a journey that reached atransformation.
Like that show is masterful.
Storytelling about a product, awidget, um, so uh.
(13:02):
You've got the.
That's the, the product or theservice story, and you can.
We work with a ton ofservice-based businesses.
They have stories about likehere's how I, here's how we
diagnose and change a hvAC part,whatever.
Then there's the customerstories.
These are insanely powerful,but they're not the only story
(13:24):
you should be telling.
You should typically lead as abusiness with the customer story
if you're trying to attractcustomers.
Customer stories, we think likecustomer testimonial, especially
on the video front.
Everyone wants customertestimonials.
It's a really powerful type ofstory.
But there's other ones.
There's like the customerreferral, which is not hey, I'm
(13:45):
Joe and here's why I bought fromthis company.
It's hey, I'm Joe and here'swhy I sent my grandma to buy
from this company.
If you're trying to build trust, that is a powerful story to
tell.
Ume trusted his grandma.
I can, I can trust him myself.
Um, it's like the customerreferral story.
There's the uh community impactstory which is um, we'll take
(14:05):
that, that hvac example.
Uh, they are, um, like hvaccompany does work for a school.
You could get the customertestimonial principal saying, oh
, they saved our behinds andwhatever.
Uh, you get the referral storywhich principal saying oh, they
saved our behinds and whatever.
You could get the referralstory which is however, they got
connected in there.
Or you could say here's a kidand here's their life and here's
(14:27):
how much this school means tothem and here's how their life
was impacted by being able toshow up at school on a hot, 118
degree day in May because ofthis HVac company and here's how
that affected them and theirfamily.
That's the community impactstory and it falls under that
customer story bucket.
Um, but it's.
There's so many types ofstories that people don't even
(14:49):
think to tell.
They just go ah, customertestimonial, or I'll tell how
the company started or I'll showyou how it's done, but there's
a lot more nuance that could befound there.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
And it really helps the potential customers or
existing customers relate to theorganization, because once you
get that connection with thecustomer, it's more likely that
they're going to stick with you,even if a cheaper brand or a
cheaper option comes down theline, because they have that
connection.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
Yep, when you're telling those three types of
stories, here's what they do topeople.
You've got the company storywhich says I like these people,
I could see myself working withthem.
You got the product or theservice story, which is they
know what they're doing, I trustthem to perform the work, uh.
Or I trust their thing theymanufacture.
And the customer story saysthey changed someone else's life
(15:41):
, I could see them changing mine.
You got to tell all three ofthose together.
If you do that, you are nowharnessing storytelling in a
very analytical, cold way, butit it works incredibly well,
yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
Yeah, so when we had a conversation the other day and
Ashley was involved, we talkeda little bit about how
storytelling is a little bitlike building that strategy for
the business's future, where youhave kind of where you're at,
how you're going to get there,what, what you want to
accomplish and things.
So how do you see storytellingas part of building a winning
(16:20):
strategy for the company?
Speaker 3 (16:22):
so it's actually our, our system that we built.
Um, call it story lab.
Uh, has 27 different types ofstories that we tell.
What you just talked about,there is the vision for the
future story.
Um, that is a very useful storyto tell.
First, as an entrepreneur,especially if you're small to
yourself, you've got to buy intothat and you've got to write it
(16:42):
down and you've got to remindyourself of it, sometimes
multiple times a day, throughthe tears, through the blood and
sweat.
You talk about mindset.
All that is is telling yourselfa story that you believe in,
even when it's hard to believein it.
Then you tell that to your keystakeholders leaders, partners,
(17:05):
vendors, clients, the world liketalking about that vision for
the future.
Uh, that is the strategy.
Like a business strategy, abusiness plan is just that
vision for the future broken outinto a lot of numbers.
Yeah, it's.
It's just a story at the end ofthe day.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Yeah, but it's powerful, because that's one of
the things that we do at apex iswe try to make sure that the
vision of the organization andthe people are connected, so
that those people are are reallydriving that vision forward.
They're not just doing a job,wondering how their work is
really impacting theorganization.
They people want to be part ofsomething bigger and people
(17:42):
struggle with what are the rightways to tell the story, so it's
it's can be just internalcommunication where that's it's
powerful.
What you do is powerful as well.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
Think about it this way If you've got people like
mission and vision, which visionis what I want the world to
look like?
Mission?
is what we're going to do everyday to get there.
You probably do a lot of workwith people on mission and
vision.
Yeah, it's incredibly important.
Imagine having a mission withno vision.
Yeah, that's a journey with notransformation.
It's like we're going to we'regoing to do all this hard work
(18:13):
yeah, we're going to do all thishard work, yeah, and then you
just end it there.
No, we're going to do all thishard work and it's going to get
us to this transformation.
We're going to literally changethe world.
Yeah, well, now you got a storythat transformation is
everything.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
Yeah, I think it was in a Patrick Lencioni book or
something.
It's like starting out yourjourney, where you go to the
corner, you turn right, you goto the next corner, you turn
right, you go to the next corner, you turn right, and you just
keep repeating that process.
Well, you haven't done anythingbut go around the block, and so
you really have to understandwhere the entire journey is
taking you, because otherwiseyou're just turning right and
(18:49):
you don't ever get to that enddestination that you want to get
to.
Yeah, so how does a companyknow when they're ready for your
services?
Speaker 3 (19:01):
So I mean we've got monetary minimums, but they're
not much.
We generally work withcompanies in the trade space.
Call it $2 to $50 million inrevenue, or divisions inside of
larger companies that are doingthat In professional services.
If the margins are higher, aslow as about a million in
revenue, or divisions inside oflarger companies that are doing
that in professional services.
If the margins are higher, aslow as about a million in
revenue.
(19:22):
What I will say is this if youare in business, in leadership,
in sales or in marketing, thenor if you're a human being, or
if you're a human being, startusing stories immediately Like
there's, there's.
It just makes life easier.
If you understand how to tell astory to change people's minds
(19:45):
and it kind of sounds evil.
Right, oh, I'm going tomanipulate people and change
their minds.
But no, you're.
You're trying to get work doneand you need people to help you
to get there and you need tobuild a team.
And whether you're leading upor work done, and you need
people to help you to get thereand you need to build a team.
Whether you're leading up ordown the chain of command or
lateral, use stories to helppeople understand where you're
(20:06):
trying to go and how it benefitsthem.
Talk about their transformation.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
Yeah, and it comes down to communication.
Whether you're a salesperson,you're an accountant, you're
leading a company, it's allabout communication.
And how clearly are you gettingyour point across?
How clearly do you set theexpectations for somebody, even
if you're delegating something?
It's like you can't just saypaint the wall because it's like
(20:29):
, okay, which wall?
What color, I mean, what sheen,all of these things.
So you have to be very specificin this process.
What have you done in terms ofbuilding your own company, red
Legend?
What have you done from astandpoint of using videos to
(20:50):
maybe inspire the team?
Speaker 3 (20:52):
Yeah, I will say this these cobblers' kids have
minimal shoes.
Okay, um, we've, uh, we put alot of energy into other
people's companies and notenough into our own.
Um, we're actually making ahire in probably two weeks.
That's going to free up a tonof time and that person is going
to spend one day a week makinginternal content.
(21:14):
Um, okay, we, we use a lot ofstorytelling video.
Is it's expensive?
Um, it's definitely expensiveto do well, it's also expensive
to do poorly, uh, and it takes alot of work, but the story is
the important part.
So we do a lot of internalstorytelling of.
(21:35):
I mean, actually, let me pullup a resource here.
Our backend database of all thedifferent types of stories
which, no, you cannot see oncamera, spent a couple years
building that IP.
So some of the stories thatwe'll tell internally are we'll
(21:59):
talk a lot about our core valuesin action.
I mentioned that one earlier.
It's here's what core valueslook like in the real world,
whether I'm telling a storyabout hey, here's what we did
last week that was either goodor bad, or here's something that
I see coming up.
I know we have this one clientcoming in.
We've worked with them beforeand they're going to throw this
challenge at us, and then I'llput it back on the team.
(22:21):
Tell me a story about howyou're going to use the core
values in action in XYZsituation.
Milestones and achievements area really good one.
Those are simple stories totell.
Hey, we started here and we didthis.
You know, every Julyuly 9th, weturn a year older as a company.
That's, that's a simple storyto tell.
Um, vision for the future is abig one.
(22:43):
That's one of our powerhousestories.
Um, and then, uh, and we'lltalk about innovation and
quality.
Um, which is telling a storyabout how there are challenges
out there that require us tostep up the game and make new
things.
Um, so, sharing what we did,sharing what we want to do, uh,
(23:06):
and then, um, customertestimonials and customer
experience improvement are tworeally big ones.
The customer experienceimprovement is used for a
negative situation.
Uh, something went wrong.
Here's what we did to make itmore writer.
Or the customer transformation,or even a customer testimonial.
(23:27):
Whenever we have reviews thatcome in, talk about that to the
team.
Don't just send the review outlike hey, we got this new Google
review.
Congrats, guys.
But if they don't know thedetails of the project, have
whoever ran that project writeup a little piece about it, or
get on video for 30 seconds.
Or talk to the team in yourweekly meeting and tell a story,
and you can, you can outline.
(23:47):
Here's how to tell a storyright.
Here's how to set up thecharacters, here's how to talk
about the journey and then forthe transformation, here's how
to talk about it.
That's a powerful story thatyou're probably not going to put
on video realistically.
You want that a real timeconversation that takes one
minute in, like we run on eos,like I'd put it in our l10s.
(24:07):
Yeah, I'd add a section.
Yeah, we'll break the eos rules, add a one minute section to
tell those stories, that's.
I mean they actually have asection for it, but like that,
that's powerful, yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
Rules are meant to be broken.
Heck yeah, one of the thingsthat you mentioned there were
core values and so manycompanies they they write their
core values, they put them inthe employee handbook and they
hang them on a poster on thewall and then they don't ever
use them again.
Yeah, and it's such a powerfultool If you really take the time
(24:41):
to do the core values right andand really make sure that this
is what everybody is living by.
It ties to the culture, it tiesto all of these things you're
hiring and you're firing basedon your core values and those
kinds of things.
So, with video or withstorytelling, how do you, how do
you make the core values andthose kinds of things?
So, with video or withstorytelling, how do you make
the core values come to life?
Speaker 3 (25:02):
So our structure is this and it's nice to have done
all the work to lay this out.
So the basics of a core valuestory are first, um, you may
want to establish, like, whatare our core values and what is
(25:23):
this core value, and then justexplain it.
Like we have five core values.
I've written short paragraphdescriptions of each one, so
it's not just a word, it meanssomething.
Um then, uh, most stories aregoing to follow some sort of
like problem plan, action,result format, with your
characters, journeys and thetransformation baked into that
(25:45):
result.
So talk about when a core valueneed was felt, like, hey, when
did we need to apply a corevalue which is just a decision
making metric when we reach afork in the road?
So what was the need?
What was the problem in thesituation?
Talk to me about when or why,how.
(26:05):
So you set up this problem andthen talk about the consequences
of doing it poorly.
That's great, because thatgives stakes.
Now people are bought in.
Oh no, are they going to messup?
We could lose a client or looklike idiots or like something
could go wrong if we don't applythis.
Well, then talk about thechoice you made and the thought
(26:28):
process behind that choice, andthen you want to talk about the
change.
So this is your transformation.
There are four main charactersin this core value story, which
is you've got the leader, theteam, the industry and the
customer.
(26:48):
Talk about how it made a changein the leader to see this core
value applied well, probablychanged an emotional state for
them.
They went from worried to notworried.
Talk about how it created achange in the team.
Maybe they went from lack ofclarity on this issue to extreme
clarity on the issue, or lackof confidence to extreme
confidence.
So there's a transformationcreated in the team, a change
(27:11):
created in the industry.
Not every story is going tohave one of these, but you can
either talk about how now wethis is how we set ourselves
apart from the industry, or thisis how we made the industry
better, and then a changecreated in the world or for the
clients, which is that's the one.
That.
That's the external change, butthere's all this internal
change that happens in this typeof story of applying the core
(27:32):
values that you also want tobring out, because that makes it
real to every characterinvolved so can you think of a,
an organization or a situationwhere it made like a significant
impact for the company?
Speaker 2 (27:51):
core values or no, that your your storytelling and
the video process that you do.
Speaker 3 (27:57):
Yeah, um.
So I mean, we have a client,they do window installation, um
and uh, like they were, we gavethem an ad.
Uh, that just focused on verysimple story, focused on the
customer story instead oftalking about the company story.
Company story is a great storyto tell, but it's not the right
(28:18):
story to tell if you're on likea brand awareness piece and I
need to check in with them tosee how it's going now, but I
know overnight their conversionrates went up significantly, 50
to 80% just by running this ad.
With a good story.
I will say this there's a one ofmy favorite videos we've ever
(28:39):
made is seen by I don't know,maybe a hundred people a year.
It's not a very highly viewedvideo, but it's for a niche
manufacturing company that sellsinto a very, very niche market
with incredibly expensive piecesof equipment, and these guys
(28:59):
are brilliant engineers, madethis product that outperforms
like 10x whatever's in theindustry, and so they're
engineers and they're sellinginto engineers in like the
mining and energy space, andthey talked about a lot of
features and they were havingtrouble selling it, and so now
(29:20):
they're on track to do millionsin sales as of one 58 second
video.
That's all it took to tell avery simple story of hey, this
product makes life easier for Idon't know.
There's like 300 people in theworld who are their target
customer.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
That's amazing and it just you're talking millions of
dollars of impact by telling agood story.
Yeah, it took work to craft it.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
Oh, for sure it sounds a little like some of the
Simon Sinek stuff the startwith why, which I read years ago
.
I'm currently listening to findyour why, which is kind of
helping people understand whatis their purpose or what is
their why and what drives them,and it's an.
It's an interesting thing andthere's some similarities in
(30:05):
what you do, because it's kindof you have to, you have to fill
in the blanks and then expandout, and it's really all about
the stories in a person's lifethat you can kind of utilize to
find that, and so it's been aninteresting, interesting to
listen to of.
Yeah, like even some of thestuff on the way here, like
drawing a horizontal line on apiece of paper and then just
talking through stories, and thepositive ones go above the line
(30:27):
.
The negative ones that stillimpacted your life go below, but
they still could be significantin understanding what the what
the purpose is for the person,which could be for the
organization as well.
Speaker 3 (30:38):
Yeah, I think one of the dangers of storytelling is
that it gets really big reallyfast because we are surrounded
by story.
It's built into us.
We are built into it Like youcan't get away from story, which
is, I think, why it's hard todefine it, because we, us, we
are built into it Like you can'tget away from story, which is,
I think, why it's hard to defineit, because we're so just
wrapped up in it Um and uh.
(30:59):
Part of my passion is to createstructures and start to
organize this mass amount ofdata that's out there about
stories and types of stories andwho can tell them and where are
they used, cause, yeah, I meanwhat you just described you
could use that tool in therapy.
It's not a space we're touching, but that's a space where story
(31:21):
lives and story is.
You can't avoid it.
So, yeah, there's a ton of workto be done on developing story
in all these areas.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
So what's next for Red Legend?
What do the next five or tenyears look like?
What does that story look like?
Speaker 3 (31:41):
That's a good question.
We've got pretty aggressivegrowth plans.
Spend the next three, two and ahalf actually now years taking
over Phoenix.
We've got probably 4X that wewant to hit there.
We're meeting next Monday toredo our 10-year and 3-year and
(32:05):
1-year, so I can get back to youthen but 4 to 5X in the next
three years and then start goinginto other markets in the next
three years, Um, and then, uh,start going into other markets
in the U S um building.
We've got a.
We've got a great system forhow to tell a story.
Uh, it makes video productionway more efficient.
(32:25):
Like we're currently in themiddle of building software
Cause I've got that asset that Ican use.
Um, that makes your averagevideographer twice as good and
twice as fast.
Twice as good meaning theirstuff performs better.
Twice as fast meaning we helpplan out all the stories, all
the questions to ask in aninterview, how to write all the
scripts and how to edit all thevideos.
(32:46):
And there's a lot of aiacceleration there, but ai can't
tell a story.
We rely on the humanstorytelling.
We rely on the science of howstories are structured and the
philosophy of what it means totell a story.
And then have ai crunch a bunchof data and make videographers
way better at what they're doing.
So we'll be rolling outsoftware that does that, and
(33:09):
then our top users are targetsfor acquisition in other states
okay that's exciting.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
The master plan, yeah , okay, so um one more question.
Uh, what is the favorite videoyou've ever created, and can our
listeners find it onlinesomewhere?
Speaker 3 (33:27):
gotta say so, I'm a I'm a sucker for comedic ads,
okay, um, and we've got plentyof those on our website.
My favorite, though, is atleast currently, as of april
10th 2025 the, the main video onour home page.
Um, if you scroll down like onesection, uh, it's an ad for a
body armor company.
(33:47):
Um, locally based.
Uh, and it's my favorite for acouple reasons.
One, there is a lot of purposeand intention behind the message
.
It's a lot bigger than theproduct that they're selling.
That matters we, we want towork with companies that care
about something bigger.
(34:08):
They care about changing theworld.
This company definitely fallsinto that bucket.
Um, so, uh, we got to shootacross four different days in
four or five locations.
Uh, it was a beast of a shoot.
Um, I had just hired an editorand I made him drive three hours
off road and then he got stuck.
So he still gives me a griefabout that.
(34:31):
So good experience, and I thinkthe final product we ended up
with was highly effective andgot a lot of people excited
about the company.
To me, that's a win.
If we get a viewer excitedabout the prospect of working
with my client, we have done theclient a much bigger service
(34:53):
than help them sell more stuff.
We've now created a raving fanand they haven't even interacted
with the company.
They just saw one video.
Love that.
Speaker 2 (35:02):
Yeah, for sure I appreciate your time today.
I'm looking forward tocontinuing our conversations
offline, obviously, and seewhere Red Legend goes and how we
can help you along the way.
Where can people get a hold ofyou if they want to do some
storytelling?
Speaker 3 (35:18):
Yeah, I appreciate it .
So we're on Instagram andFacebook Red Legend Media
R-E-D-D Legend or redlegendcomR-E-D-D legendcom.
That's us.
Okay, great, thank you.
Thanks, rick, that's us.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
Okay, great, thank you.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
Thanks, rick.
Thanks for tuning in to theConfidence Curve.
We hope today's episode leftyou inspired and ready to
embrace your journey confidently.
Remember whether you're leadinga team, growing your business
or pursuing personal growth,each step forward builds your
curve.
Each step forward builds yourcurve.
(35:57):
If you enjoyed today'sconversation, don't forget to
subscribe, share and leave us areview for more insights and
resources, visit us atapexgtscom.
Until next time, keep climbingthe curve.
Welcome to the Confidence Curve with Ashley and
Rick Bowers, where personal andprofessional journeys define
the art of scaling withconfidence.
Whether you're a businessleader navigating change or
someone seeking personal growth,this podcast offers insights
and actionable advice to helpyou thrive.
Now let's dive into today'sconversation with our incredible
(00:26):
guest.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Welcome to the Confidence Curve.
I'm Rick Bowers and I'm excitedto have our guest today, caleb
Marsh, with Red Legend, and he'skind of that serial
entrepreneur from a young agewhere he's kind of started and
done a lot of different things,enjoys putting the different
teams and things together tokind of get things done.
So with that, welcome Caleb.
Thanks for having me RickExcited to kind of dig into your
(00:52):
story and kind of where you'vekind of grown over the years and
how the different events haveshaped what your current
business is.
So maybe you can start with alittle bit of background on on
red legend yeah, so, uh, I mean,red legend is a video
production company.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
We serve businesses primarily in, like, the trades
and contracting space, um and uh, we got started in a way that
dovetails nicely into what wefocus on today.
Like I tell the team, we arestorytellers, first video,
second, um.
So if we wake up and it's theyear 1802, uh, and our cameras
(01:31):
stop charging, we show up towork.
We do the same job.
We just have to figure outdifferent tools, uh, versus the
videographer, um, which thereare a lot of great storytellers
out there.
But if you're just a technician, your camera camera stops
charging.
You're out of a job.
We started.
I was actually 11 years old.
I was an extra on a film setthat shot up in northern Arizona
.
No one's ever seen what wasmade.
(01:52):
It was History Channel.
It was fine.
But I fell in love with theprocess.
I was like, okay, I don't careabout being in front of the
camera and the output wasn'tgreat, but they had a camera on
a crane, on a truck, filming ahorse.
I was like I'm going to do thiswhen I grow up, followed a
(02:13):
production assistant around thatwhole day.
He showed me a ton of things.
I started getting on film sets.
And then, 16 years old, gothired with my good buddy that
lived down the street to makemake a video.
It's a one minute video for alocal school, private school,
and they aired it in the uhmovie theater up in payson where
(02:33):
I grew up.
Um, like you know, the localads before the actual previews
start, so we would buy movietickets, uh, show up 20 minutes
early, watch our video and leave.
Um, and that was.
That was a game changer for me,because I always wanted to go
hollywood director, producer,like that's where storytelling
lives.
And then we got paid to tell astory.
(02:56):
It took us half a day to shoot,uh, and it was all of the same
techniques, all the passion andworking with people that were
actually making a difference,doing something that we thought
was worth doing.
So it kind of clicked that wecould maybe do this for a living
.
And then we said, hey, let'sstart a business.
(03:20):
How hard could that be?
And seven years later, here weare.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Okay, that's exciting .
It's really cool that at such ayoung age you were able to kind
of like pinpoint exactly whatit was that you wanted to do.
And a lot of people strugglewith that, whether they they go
through college and change theirmajor a few times or they don't
go to college because they'renot sure what they want to do.
But having that vision fromsuch a young age, it's awesome.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
It was a blessing, I will say.
I started my degree in softwareengineering and IT Because I
was like, well, you know thisfilm thing.
There's no way I'm going tomake money doing that, so I'm
going to have a fallback in caseit doesn't work.
Learned early on in thebusiness that having a fallback
is a terrible idea.
You've got to just be all in.
(04:07):
But that actually led to mestarting another business that I
own, which is a softwaredevelopment company.
So I've got that skill set.
I love that world.
I just can't write code foreight hours a day.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
I'd go nuts.
Yeah, I can't imagine doingthat either.
So so you had a an interestinginternship as you were coming up
in the ranks.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
Yeah, uh.
I spent a year over in Dubai.
Um first interned at a uh likea data analytics company that
was mind numbing Um, and then myboss there took mercy on me and
connected me with a friend whoran a production company and
they I mean they did ads forEmirates Airlines and big you
(04:50):
know, big name productions andthat just cemented the idea of
all of the stuff that we love todo with telling stories we can
do for businesses and we don'thave to compromise on
storytelling to do corporatevideo.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
yeah yeah, I had a chance to to go to dubai when I
was with tti and early 2000s.
It's a it's a reallyinteresting place and cool city
and, other than the businessaspect of it, I think my
highlight was getting to ski inthe indoor ski slope, which was
pretty cool yep, molly emmer,it's spent a lot of time there
in our first conversation we wespent a lot of time talking
(05:27):
about the word story or defininga story, so let's dig into that
a little bit.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
Yeah, about two years ago, a buddy of mine asked me a
question that I should haveknown the answer for and I
didn't, and it bothered me.
And he does web design supergood at his job.
I do video.
We send each other a lot ofwork and he said hey, caleb,
you're a storyteller, right.
And I was like, yeah, like I'm aprofessional, I get paid for it
(05:57):
, I've won awards for it, we'regood at storytelling.
And he was like, awesome,what's a story?
And I said let me get back toyou on that.
I don't know, uh.
So I went and I asked a dozenplus of my filmmaker friends,
people with like professionalstoryteller in their bio, and
they said, oh, you know, storyis like like storytelling, like,
(06:21):
uh, maybe you know beginning,middle end, which is the
structure of a story, but that,but there's a lot of things that
have a beginning, middle andend that aren't a story.
Didn't get a single gooddefinition, bothered the crap
out of me, and so I went on adeep dive, researching what is a
story, trying to understand thephilosophy of storytelling,
(06:42):
like the way to think aboutstory at a fundamental level,
universal, because that is goingto unlock all of the
applications.
I know for a fact that in thebusiness world we are not using
storytelling the way that wecould and should, and there are
a lot of great frameworks outthere and they tend to be these
sort of top down approaches of,like you know, story.
(07:04):
Brandald miller, that's theperfect one, it's genius, it's
great, it works incredibly well.
If you go all in, thecertification is worth it, like
it's a good system and it's topdown and it's one structure
that's applied multipledifferent ways.
Uh, and it doesn't truly answerthe question what is a story
(07:26):
like?
What's the universal definition?
So and I'm open to feedback onthis because it's still fairly
fresh, a year or two old, butthe definition we found that
really works well is a story hasthree pieces.
It's got a character, a journeyand a transformation.
The problem we fall into asstorytellers, especially in our
(07:48):
industry, is we focus on thecharacter, because you got a
character that goes through thisjourney and at the end they
reach this transformation.
So we start with the character,which makes sense.
You and I are characters, weare human beings and we are on
journeys and in our story, likeour life story, we have not yet
reached our final transformation.
We're still alive, um, so wethink character journey it's
(08:12):
very intuitive to us.
The interesting bit when you'retelling a story is the
transformation, and people knowthis like it intuitively makes
sense.
It's kind of the way westructure stories.
It's not a groundbreakingdefinition.
The problem is, if you startwith the character, you
haphazardly end up at atransformation, and that's the
part that matters.
(08:33):
What we found is when we'retelling a story for business, we
start with the transformationand reverse, engineer the
character and the journey thatget us there.
And all of a sudden, when weare telling a story, whether
it's on video or we're justadvising in there, you know
writing it or speaking it, orit's in a conversation that
story becomes shorter're goingto and not bringing in
(08:53):
superfluous fluff that feelsgood to talk about but isn't the
point.
So that character journeytransformation model completely
(09:16):
changed the way that we approachvideo, sort of like it.
It changed the way we thoughtabout it, like intuitively,
we're good at storytelling, sothe videos didn't look that much
different, the structure wasn'tthat different, but we
understood it, we knew why wewere doing what we were doing.
That was powerful.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
So some of the impact that you get is being able to
get to the point for lack ofbetter words sooner with your
stories and make that impact sothat the transformation can
happen.
Is that one way to say it?
Speaker 3 (09:47):
Yeah, and it's sooner and it's more intentionally.
Okay, because we want to takethe viewer on a journey.
Right, they are a character andyou want to transform their
mindset.
If you're a business, you're inthe job of changing people's
minds Period, end of story ordigging a trench but for any
(10:08):
sort of marketing, sales,operation, leadership, like,
your job is to change people'sminds and you're not just going
to tell them the transformationthat you want and they're going
to flip.
So you have to treat them likea character and take them on a
journey, which means you mayneed to tell multiple stories to
make them feel heard andunderstood and then willing to
(10:28):
listen, and then listen, thenunderstand how to apply it.
Like there's a lot ofpsychology.
That isn't storytelling.
That story supports.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
Okay, it was interesting.
Yesterday I did a communicationworkshop for a cohort that was
going through a leadershipprocess and one of the people
sitting next to the person nextto her she's like I understand
the details, but I like to tellthe stories.
And she's like my husband willsay what are the facts?
And she's like, well, I'mgetting to that, but listen to
my story.
(10:55):
And then the next person waslike but I just like bullet
points and so people like tocommunicate in in very different
ways, but that storytelling issuch a powerful process.
How can businesses get more outof the story?
Speaker 3 (11:11):
The first thing is to first understand what a story
is and start looking fortransformations.
That's the biggest thing.
If you go out in the world andyou look for transformations and
then think who is the characterand what journey did they go on
to get to the transformationthat people care about, that
alone you're now a 10 timesbetter storyteller, as opposed
(11:31):
to the intuitive my grandmabetty one time.
Which character, journey,transformation, it's all there.
That's the way it's structured.
We're just not taking advantageof it.
I would say for businesses,break it down.
There's really three bucketsthat your stories are going to
fall into.
The first is company, second isproduct or process service and
(11:52):
the third is customer.
So what that means is you'vegot stories about the company
and the people in the companyand you know the core values
fall into that.
Like how do we apply our corevalues in the real world?
That's a great story to tell,not just like here's our core
value, but here's what it means.
We had a fork in the road,character on a journey, had this
obstacle and here's thetransformation we reached.
(12:15):
That's a core value applied.
That's a type of story.
So the company stories areabout the company and the people
inside the company.
The product or service orprocess story is about the thing
that you make, the thing thatyou offer.
You ever watch the show how it'sMade?
Yeah, great show, grew up on it.
You'll sit there for 20 minutesand you'll start with just some
(12:39):
block of plastic and you'll endup with an empty water bottle.
These are two of the mostmundane, boring everyday objects
.
And yet you just spent 20minutes of your life that you'll
never get back, glued to the TV, because there is a character
on a journey that reached atransformation.
Like that show is masterful.
Storytelling about a product, awidget, um, so uh.
(13:02):
You've got the.
That's the, the product or theservice story, and you can.
We work with a ton ofservice-based businesses.
They have stories about likehere's how I, here's how we
diagnose and change a hvAC part,whatever.
Then there's the customerstories.
These are insanely powerful,but they're not the only story
(13:24):
you should be telling.
You should typically lead as abusiness with the customer story
if you're trying to attractcustomers.
Customer stories, we think likecustomer testimonial, especially
on the video front.
Everyone wants customertestimonials.
It's a really powerful type ofstory.
But there's other ones.
There's like the customerreferral, which is not hey, I'm
(13:45):
Joe and here's why I bought fromthis company.
It's hey, I'm Joe and here'swhy I sent my grandma to buy
from this company.
If you're trying to build trust, that is a powerful story to
tell.
Ume trusted his grandma.
I can, I can trust him myself.
Um, it's like the customerreferral story.
There's the uh community impactstory which is um, we'll take
(14:05):
that, that hvac example.
Uh, they are, um, like hvaccompany does work for a school.
You could get the customertestimonial principal saying, oh
, they saved our behinds andwhatever.
Uh, you get the referral storywhich principal saying oh, they
saved our behinds and whatever.
You could get the referralstory which is however, they got
connected in there.
Or you could say here's a kidand here's their life and here's
(14:27):
how much this school means tothem and here's how their life
was impacted by being able toshow up at school on a hot, 118
degree day in May because ofthis HVac company and here's how
that affected them and theirfamily.
That's the community impactstory and it falls under that
customer story bucket.
Um, but it's.
There's so many types ofstories that people don't even
(14:49):
think to tell.
They just go ah, customertestimonial, or I'll tell how
the company started or I'll showyou how it's done, but there's
a lot more nuance that could befound there.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
And it really helps the potential customers or
existing customers relate to theorganization, because once you
get that connection with thecustomer, it's more likely that
they're going to stick with you,even if a cheaper brand or a
cheaper option comes down theline, because they have that
connection.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
Yep, when you're telling those three types of
stories, here's what they do topeople.
You've got the company storywhich says I like these people,
I could see myself working withthem.
You got the product or theservice story, which is they
know what they're doing, I trustthem to perform the work, uh.
Or I trust their thing theymanufacture.
And the customer story saysthey changed someone else's life
(15:41):
, I could see them changing mine.
You got to tell all three ofthose together.
If you do that, you are nowharnessing storytelling in a
very analytical, cold way, butit it works incredibly well,
yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
Yeah, so when we had a conversation the other day and
Ashley was involved, we talkeda little bit about how
storytelling is a little bitlike building that strategy for
the business's future, where youhave kind of where you're at,
how you're going to get there,what, what you want to
accomplish and things.
So how do you see storytellingas part of building a winning
(16:20):
strategy for the company?
Speaker 3 (16:22):
so it's actually our, our system that we built.
Um, call it story lab.
Uh, has 27 different types ofstories that we tell.
What you just talked about,there is the vision for the
future story.
Um, that is a very useful storyto tell.
First, as an entrepreneur,especially if you're small to
yourself, you've got to buy intothat and you've got to write it
(16:42):
down and you've got to remindyourself of it, sometimes
multiple times a day, throughthe tears, through the blood and
sweat.
You talk about mindset.
All that is is telling yourselfa story that you believe in,
even when it's hard to believein it.
Then you tell that to your keystakeholders leaders, partners,
(17:05):
vendors, clients, the world liketalking about that vision for
the future.
Uh, that is the strategy.
Like a business strategy, abusiness plan is just that
vision for the future broken outinto a lot of numbers.
Yeah, it's.
It's just a story at the end ofthe day.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Yeah, but it's powerful, because that's one of
the things that we do at apex iswe try to make sure that the
vision of the organization andthe people are connected, so
that those people are are reallydriving that vision forward.
They're not just doing a job,wondering how their work is
really impacting theorganization.
They people want to be part ofsomething bigger and people
(17:42):
struggle with what are the rightways to tell the story, so it's
it's can be just internalcommunication where that's it's
powerful.
What you do is powerful as well.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
Think about it this way If you've got people like
mission and vision, which visionis what I want the world to
look like?
Mission?
is what we're going to do everyday to get there.
You probably do a lot of workwith people on mission and
vision.
Yeah, it's incredibly important.
Imagine having a mission withno vision.
Yeah, that's a journey with notransformation.
It's like we're going to we'regoing to do all this hard work
(18:13):
yeah, we're going to do all thishard work, yeah, and then you
just end it there.
No, we're going to do all thishard work and it's going to get
us to this transformation.
We're going to literally changethe world.
Yeah, well, now you got a storythat transformation is
everything.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
Yeah, I think it was in a Patrick Lencioni book or
something.
It's like starting out yourjourney, where you go to the
corner, you turn right, you goto the next corner, you turn
right, you go to the next corner, you turn right, and you just
keep repeating that process.
Well, you haven't done anythingbut go around the block, and so
you really have to understandwhere the entire journey is
taking you, because otherwiseyou're just turning right and
(18:49):
you don't ever get to that enddestination that you want to get
to.
Yeah, so how does a companyknow when they're ready for your
services?
Speaker 3 (19:01):
So I mean we've got monetary minimums, but they're
not much.
We generally work withcompanies in the trade space.
Call it $2 to $50 million inrevenue, or divisions inside of
larger companies that are doingthat In professional services.
If the margins are higher, aslow as about a million in
revenue, or divisions inside oflarger companies that are doing
that in professional services.
If the margins are higher, aslow as about a million in
revenue.
(19:22):
What I will say is this if youare in business, in leadership,
in sales or in marketing, thenor if you're a human being, or
if you're a human being, startusing stories immediately Like
there's, there's.
It just makes life easier.
If you understand how to tell astory to change people's minds
(19:45):
and it kind of sounds evil.
Right, oh, I'm going tomanipulate people and change
their minds.
But no, you're.
You're trying to get work doneand you need people to help you
to get there and you need tobuild a team.
And whether you're leading upor work done, and you need
people to help you to get thereand you need to build a team.
Whether you're leading up ordown the chain of command or
lateral, use stories to helppeople understand where you're
(20:06):
trying to go and how it benefitsthem.
Talk about their transformation.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
Yeah, and it comes down to communication.
Whether you're a salesperson,you're an accountant, you're
leading a company, it's allabout communication.
And how clearly are you gettingyour point across?
How clearly do you set theexpectations for somebody, even
if you're delegating something?
It's like you can't just saypaint the wall because it's like
(20:29):
, okay, which wall?
What color, I mean, what sheen,all of these things.
So you have to be very specificin this process.
What have you done in terms ofbuilding your own company, red
Legend?
What have you done from astandpoint of using videos to
(20:50):
maybe inspire the team?
Speaker 3 (20:52):
Yeah, I will say this these cobblers' kids have
minimal shoes.
Okay, um, we've, uh, we put alot of energy into other
people's companies and notenough into our own.
Um, we're actually making ahire in probably two weeks.
That's going to free up a tonof time and that person is going
to spend one day a week makinginternal content.
(21:14):
Um, okay, we, we use a lot ofstorytelling video.
Is it's expensive?
Um, it's definitely expensiveto do well, it's also expensive
to do poorly, uh, and it takes alot of work, but the story is
the important part.
So we do a lot of internalstorytelling of.
(21:35):
I mean, actually, let me pullup a resource here.
Our backend database of all thedifferent types of stories
which, no, you cannot see oncamera, spent a couple years
building that IP.
So some of the stories thatwe'll tell internally are we'll
(21:59):
talk a lot about our core valuesin action.
I mentioned that one earlier.
It's here's what core valueslook like in the real world,
whether I'm telling a storyabout hey, here's what we did
last week that was either goodor bad, or here's something that
I see coming up.
I know we have this one clientcoming in.
We've worked with them beforeand they're going to throw this
challenge at us, and then I'llput it back on the team.
(22:21):
Tell me a story about howyou're going to use the core
values in action in XYZsituation.
Milestones and achievements area really good one.
Those are simple stories totell.
Hey, we started here and we didthis.
You know, every Julyuly 9th, weturn a year older as a company.
That's, that's a simple storyto tell.
Um, vision for the future is abig one.
(22:43):
That's one of our powerhousestories.
Um, and then, uh, and we'lltalk about innovation and
quality.
Um, which is telling a storyabout how there are challenges
out there that require us tostep up the game and make new
things.
Um, so, sharing what we did,sharing what we want to do, uh,
(23:06):
and then, um, customertestimonials and customer
experience improvement are tworeally big ones.
The customer experienceimprovement is used for a
negative situation.
Uh, something went wrong.
Here's what we did to make itmore writer.
Or the customer transformation,or even a customer testimonial.
(23:27):
Whenever we have reviews thatcome in, talk about that to the
team.
Don't just send the review outlike hey, we got this new Google
review.
Congrats, guys.
But if they don't know thedetails of the project, have
whoever ran that project writeup a little piece about it, or
get on video for 30 seconds.
Or talk to the team in yourweekly meeting and tell a story,
and you can, you can outline.
(23:47):
Here's how to tell a storyright.
Here's how to set up thecharacters, here's how to talk
about the journey and then forthe transformation, here's how
to talk about it.
That's a powerful story thatyou're probably not going to put
on video realistically.
You want that a real timeconversation that takes one
minute in, like we run on eos,like I'd put it in our l10s.
(24:07):
Yeah, I'd add a section.
Yeah, we'll break the eos rules, add a one minute section to
tell those stories, that's.
I mean they actually have asection for it, but like that,
that's powerful, yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
Rules are meant to be broken.
Heck yeah, one of the thingsthat you mentioned there were
core values and so manycompanies they they write their
core values, they put them inthe employee handbook and they
hang them on a poster on thewall and then they don't ever
use them again.
Yeah, and it's such a powerfultool If you really take the time
(24:41):
to do the core values right andand really make sure that this
is what everybody is living by.
It ties to the culture, it tiesto all of these things you're
hiring and you're firing basedon your core values and those
kinds of things.
So, with video or withstorytelling, how do you, how do
you make the core values andthose kinds of things?
So, with video or withstorytelling, how do you make
the core values come to life?
Speaker 3 (25:02):
So our structure is this and it's nice to have done
all the work to lay this out.
So the basics of a core valuestory are first, um, you may
want to establish, like, whatare our core values and what is
(25:23):
this core value, and then justexplain it.
Like we have five core values.
I've written short paragraphdescriptions of each one, so
it's not just a word, it meanssomething.
Um then, uh, most stories aregoing to follow some sort of
like problem plan, action,result format, with your
characters, journeys and thetransformation baked into that
(25:45):
result.
So talk about when a core valueneed was felt, like, hey, when
did we need to apply a corevalue which is just a decision
making metric when we reach afork in the road?
So what was the need?
What was the problem in thesituation?
Talk to me about when or why,how.
(26:05):
So you set up this problem andthen talk about the consequences
of doing it poorly.
That's great, because thatgives stakes.
Now people are bought in.
Oh no, are they going to messup?
We could lose a client or looklike idiots or like something
could go wrong if we don't applythis.
Well, then talk about thechoice you made and the thought
(26:28):
process behind that choice, andthen you want to talk about the
change.
So this is your transformation.
There are four main charactersin this core value story, which
is you've got the leader, theteam, the industry and the
customer.
(26:48):
Talk about how it made a changein the leader to see this core
value applied well, probablychanged an emotional state for
them.
They went from worried to notworried.
Talk about how it created achange in the team.
Maybe they went from lack ofclarity on this issue to extreme
clarity on the issue, or lackof confidence to extreme
confidence.
So there's a transformationcreated in the team, a change
(27:11):
created in the industry.
Not every story is going tohave one of these, but you can
either talk about how now wethis is how we set ourselves
apart from the industry, or thisis how we made the industry
better, and then a changecreated in the world or for the
clients, which is that's the one.
That.
That's the external change, butthere's all this internal
change that happens in this typeof story of applying the core
(27:32):
values that you also want tobring out, because that makes it
real to every characterinvolved so can you think of a,
an organization or a situationwhere it made like a significant
impact for the company?
Speaker 2 (27:51):
core values or no, that your your storytelling and
the video process that you do.
Speaker 3 (27:57):
Yeah, um.
So I mean, we have a client,they do window installation, um
and uh, like they were, we gavethem an ad.
Uh, that just focused on verysimple story, focused on the
customer story instead oftalking about the company story.
Company story is a great storyto tell, but it's not the right
(28:18):
story to tell if you're on likea brand awareness piece and I
need to check in with them tosee how it's going now, but I
know overnight their conversionrates went up significantly, 50
to 80% just by running this ad.
With a good story.
I will say this there's a one ofmy favorite videos we've ever
(28:39):
made is seen by I don't know,maybe a hundred people a year.
It's not a very highly viewedvideo, but it's for a niche
manufacturing company that sellsinto a very, very niche market
with incredibly expensive piecesof equipment, and these guys
(28:59):
are brilliant engineers, madethis product that outperforms
like 10x whatever's in theindustry, and so they're
engineers and they're sellinginto engineers in like the
mining and energy space, andthey talked about a lot of
features and they were havingtrouble selling it, and so now
(29:20):
they're on track to do millionsin sales as of one 58 second
video.
That's all it took to tell avery simple story of hey, this
product makes life easier for Idon't know.
There's like 300 people in theworld who are their target
customer.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
That's amazing and it just you're talking millions of
dollars of impact by telling agood story.
Yeah, it took work to craft it.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
Oh, for sure it sounds a little like some of the
Simon Sinek stuff the startwith why, which I read years ago
.
I'm currently listening to findyour why, which is kind of
helping people understand whatis their purpose or what is
their why and what drives them,and it's an.
It's an interesting thing andthere's some similarities in
(30:05):
what you do, because it's kindof you have to, you have to fill
in the blanks and then expandout, and it's really all about
the stories in a person's lifethat you can kind of utilize to
find that, and so it's been aninteresting, interesting to
listen to of.
Yeah, like even some of thestuff on the way here, like
drawing a horizontal line on apiece of paper and then just
talking through stories, and thepositive ones go above the line
(30:27):
.
The negative ones that stillimpacted your life go below, but
they still could be significantin understanding what the what
the purpose is for the person,which could be for the
organization as well.
Speaker 3 (30:38):
Yeah, I think one of the dangers of storytelling is
that it gets really big reallyfast because we are surrounded
by story.
It's built into us.
We are built into it Like youcan't get away from story, which
is, I think, why it's hard todefine it, because we, us, we
are built into it Like you can'tget away from story, which is,
I think, why it's hard to defineit, because we're so just
wrapped up in it Um and uh.
(30:59):
Part of my passion is to createstructures and start to
organize this mass amount ofdata that's out there about
stories and types of stories andwho can tell them and where are
they used, cause, yeah, I meanwhat you just described you
could use that tool in therapy.
It's not a space we're touching, but that's a space where story
(31:21):
lives and story is.
You can't avoid it.
So, yeah, there's a ton of workto be done on developing story
in all these areas.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
So what's next for Red Legend?
What do the next five or tenyears look like?
What does that story look like?
Speaker 3 (31:41):
That's a good question.
We've got pretty aggressivegrowth plans.
Spend the next three, two and ahalf actually now years taking
over Phoenix.
We've got probably 4X that wewant to hit there.
We're meeting next Monday toredo our 10-year and 3-year and
(32:05):
1-year, so I can get back to youthen but 4 to 5X in the next
three years and then start goinginto other markets in the next
three years, Um, and then, uh,start going into other markets
in the U S um building.
We've got a.
We've got a great system forhow to tell a story.
Uh, it makes video productionway more efficient.
(32:25):
Like we're currently in themiddle of building software
Cause I've got that asset that Ican use.
Um, that makes your averagevideographer twice as good and
twice as fast.
Twice as good meaning theirstuff performs better.
Twice as fast meaning we helpplan out all the stories, all
the questions to ask in aninterview, how to write all the
scripts and how to edit all thevideos.
(32:46):
And there's a lot of aiacceleration there, but ai can't
tell a story.
We rely on the humanstorytelling.
We rely on the science of howstories are structured and the
philosophy of what it means totell a story.
And then have ai crunch a bunchof data and make videographers
way better at what they're doing.
So we'll be rolling outsoftware that does that, and
(33:09):
then our top users are targetsfor acquisition in other states
okay that's exciting.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
The master plan, yeah , okay, so um one more question.
Uh, what is the favorite videoyou've ever created, and can our
listeners find it onlinesomewhere?
Speaker 3 (33:27):
gotta say so, I'm a I'm a sucker for comedic ads,
okay, um, and we've got plentyof those on our website.
My favorite, though, is atleast currently, as of april
10th 2025 the, the main video onour home page.
Um, if you scroll down like onesection, uh, it's an ad for a
body armor company.
(33:47):
Um, locally based.
Uh, and it's my favorite for acouple reasons.
One, there is a lot of purposeand intention behind the message
.
It's a lot bigger than theproduct that they're selling.
That matters we, we want towork with companies that care
about something bigger.
(34:08):
They care about changing theworld.
This company definitely fallsinto that bucket.
Um, so, uh, we got to shootacross four different days in
four or five locations.
Uh, it was a beast of a shoot.
Um, I had just hired an editorand I made him drive three hours
off road and then he got stuck.
So he still gives me a griefabout that.
(34:31):
So good experience, and I thinkthe final product we ended up
with was highly effective andgot a lot of people excited
about the company.
To me, that's a win.
If we get a viewer excitedabout the prospect of working
with my client, we have done theclient a much bigger service
(34:53):
than help them sell more stuff.
We've now created a raving fanand they haven't even interacted
with the company.
They just saw one video.
Love that.
Speaker 2 (35:02):
Yeah, for sure I appreciate your time today.
I'm looking forward tocontinuing our conversations
offline, obviously, and seewhere Red Legend goes and how we
can help you along the way.
Where can people get a hold ofyou if they want to do some
storytelling?
Speaker 3 (35:18):
Yeah, I appreciate it .
So we're on Instagram andFacebook Red Legend Media
R-E-D-D Legend or redlegendcomR-E-D-D legendcom.
That's us.
Okay, great, thank you.
Thanks, rick, that's us.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
Okay, great, thank you.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
Thanks, rick.
Thanks for tuning in to theConfidence Curve.
We hope today's episode leftyou inspired and ready to
embrace your journey confidently.
Remember whether you're leadinga team, growing your business
or pursuing personal growth,each step forward builds your
curve.
Each step forward builds yourcurve.
(35:57):
If you enjoyed today'sconversation, don't forget to
subscribe, share and leave us areview for more insights and
resources, visit us atapexgtscom.
Until next time, keep climbingthe curve.
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