Harnessing Practical Magic in Marketing
with Andi Jarvis
Struggling to make your digital marketing campaigns resonate with your audience? Discover the secrets to transformative storytelling in this enlightening episode with Andi Jarvis, your guide to narrative marketing excellence. Learn how to effectively harness your personal and client stories to boost engagement, enhance brand storytelling, and drive impactful change.
Tune in to master the art of turning marketing challenges into captivating, successful campaigns. Don’t miss out on these essential strategies that could elevate your marketing to new heights!
Key Takeaways:
The Power of Narrative in Marketing: Andi shares how effective storytelling can transform complex marketing strategies into engaging, understandable concepts that captivate audiences.
Overcoming Personal Challenges: Learn about Andi’s personal journey through major life changes and how it influenced his professional life, offering a unique perspective on vulnerability and resilience.
Practical Tips for Effective Storytelling: Discover practical ways to use your own stories to connect deeply with your audience, making your marketing efforts more relatable and impactful.
Key Moments with Timestamps:
[03:01] Andi Jarvis discusses the essence of marketing strategy and how he simplifies complex concepts for better audience engagement.
[16:27] Exploration of how happiness and personal contentment can transform professional interactions and client relationships.
[26:00] Andi shares insights on the importance of storytelling in business and marketing, comparing religious and corporate storytelling techniques to highlight the power of engaging narratives.
About Andi Jarvis
Andi is the Founder and Strategy Director of Eximo Marketing, a marketing strategy consultancy based in Belfast and Liverpool.
Andi is a professional speaker, who talks about marketing strategy and buyer behaviour. And he hosts the Strategy Sessions podcast, a show that interviews some of the best marketers in the world.
He holds an MSc in Marketing and the Marketing Week Mini MBA in Marketing. He also runs a fundraising project, Eximo & Friends, where marketers volunteer to provide consultations to small businesses in return for a donation to support refugees.
Connect with Andi Jarvis
Website: https://eximomarketingstrategy.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andijarvis
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jarvisandi
About Aleya Harris
Aleya Harris is the spark for your spark™. A trailblazer in purpose-driven story crafting, she is a former marketing executive and ex-Google Vendor Partner who brings her dynamic experience to her role as the CEO of The Evolution Collective Inc. Aleya is a StoryBrand Certified Guide, international award-winning speaker, and the host of the award-winning Flourishing Entrepreneur Podcast. Her unique approach as a Strategic Storytelling Consultant has revolutionized the way businesses communicate, transforming workplace cultures and market positioning. With her dynamic energy and proven methodologies, she guides clients to unlock their potential, articulate their radically authentic stories, and achieve unparalleled success.
Sign Up for a Free Workshop
Each month, Aleya hosts a free 90-minute, hands-on workshop to help you use the power of radically authentic strategic storytelling to improve your personal growth, career, and company.
Register at https://www.aleyaharris.com/workshop
Book Aleya to Speak
To book Aleya to edutain your audience at your next event as a keynote speaker, please visit www.aleyaharris.com/speaking to check out her speaking topics, reels, and why. Click "Schedule a Call" to secure the speaker with "that something new" you've been looking for.
If you are a Corporate Event Planner, Employee Experience Professional, Head of Marketing, Learning & Development Professional, Executive Assistant, Speakers Bureau Destination Management Company, or Destination Management Organization who is looking for a top-quality, energetic speaker, you should definitely hop on a call with Aleya.
Connect with Aleya Harris
Speaking & Media: https://www.aleyaharris.com
The Evolution Collective Inc.: https://www.evolutioncollective.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aleyaharris/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aleyaharris/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thealeyaharris
Links Mentioned on this Podcast
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[00:01] Aleya Harris: He's gonna kill me for opening the episode this way. So that's why I'm gonna do it. Anyways, today we get to talk to someone who is all about practical magic, someone who is a wizard, if you will, when it comes to story based, narrative marketing and who uses his own story to create transformation in the lives of his clients. And as a speaker from the stage. You guessed it. Or maybe you didn't, but you should. After this. That we are talking to the amazing Andy Jarvis. Andy is the founder and strategic director of Eczema Marketing, a marketing strategy consultancy based in Belfast and Liverpool. He's a professional speaker who talks about marketing strategy and buyer behavior, and he hosts the Strategy session podcast, a show that interviews some of the best marketers in the world. Not to toot my own horn, but I was on it. A toot toot, a beep beep, a toodle toot toot. Andy old, an MSc in marketing and the marketing week mini MBA in marketing. He also runs a fundraising project, Eximo and friends, where marketers volunteer to provide consultations to small businesses in return for a donation to support the refugees. Above all, you have no other reason to listen to this episode. It should be the fact that Andy has something in common with Beyonce, Harry Potter, Kool Aid, gray sweats, and cult leaders. If you're not intrigued by now, I don't know what would get you intrigued. But another tidbit that I could add in is that this episode will help you become a better storyteller, will help you better connect the dots between how to use a story, your story, the stories of your clients, to help motivate and create large scale change across your personal life and organizations. So if you're ready to get some practical magic in your life with the amazing Andy Jarvis, then, my friend, it's time. Let's go.
[02:12] Yuliya Patsay: Welcome to the flourishing Entrepreneur podcast with Aleia Harris. If you're looking for actionable ways to overcome communication and differentiation challenges by sharing radically authentic stories, you are in the right place. Listen in and learn how to stand in the power of your unique narrative to transform your personal life, business, and workplace culture. And now, your host, award winning international speaker, strategic storytelling consultant, and japanese whiskey lover, Ruby Coral's mom, Alayah Harris.
[03:01] Aleya Harris: Andy Jarvis, thank you so much for being here on the flourishing entrepreneur podcast. How are you doing today?
[03:10] Andi Jarvis: I am great, thank you. And thank you for having me. This is an honor.
[03:14] Aleya Harris: Well, I mean, is it? Because I feel like you could just be doing me a favor because I was on your podcast and that was truly an honor because you didn't know me from Adam. At this point in time, we've had several conversations. You could have just felt like you said yes already and had to come.
[03:30] Andi Jarvis: No, no, no. Look, I am happy to be here. When we spoke initially back in January, we'd only just met, but I was really taken by the way you approach things and the way you approach problems. So I was like, I need to get a layer on the podcast. And then I was like, you've got a podcast. Like, I want to be on the other side of this. So I'm happy to be here. Very happy to be here.
[03:50] Aleya Harris: I'm just teasing. I'm just teasing. But before we get into what I'm sure will be a very interesting conversation, because I love the way you work through things in your brain and the often challenging and thought provoking ways you approach the world, let's start off with the baseline. Tell the people in, like, two or three sentences what it is that you do.
[04:10] Andi Jarvis: So I am a marketing strategy consultant. What that really means is trying to get the big questions that most companies have in marketing solved before we set off to do something. Typically, I like to say it's a bit like planning where you're going on holiday before you decide how you're going to get there or vacation. Sorry, on vacation.
[04:30] Aleya Harris: So if you don't, listeners in the UK, I mean, we do. Okay, they got it.
[04:35] Andi Jarvis: So we'll stick with holiday. That's fine. Yeah. If you don't have a destination in mind, you might jump on a plane, you might get in a car, you might catch a bus, but you end up somewhere different to where you thought you might have been going. So putting marketing strategy in place is about understanding the destination, understanding who you're going to talk to, why they're going to buy from you, what we're trying to achieve, what problems are we solving? And then we can help put the tactics in place after that. So that's what I do for companies, mainly kind of medium sized companies I don't work with too often, with kind of fortune, find 500 people like that, but big enough companies that have got a good sized marketing department and just maybe lost the way a little.
[05:13] Aleya Harris: I love that. I, you know, as a person with a marketing strategy background as well, I find that work to be incredibly fascinating. But you've left out the thing that you do. That is actually the reason why we met.
[05:26] Andi Jarvis: So I'm also a professional speaker. I speak. I speak around the world about marketing strategy and what I do hopefully, I believe I do quite well, is I try and explain it in very accessible terms. Marketing is an industry, is a sector full of people who like to complicate things. That should be quite simple. We think it makes us sound clever. We think it means we can charge higher fees. I like to try and just open the door to it and say, this is what this thing means, and this is how you can do it better and hopefully do it in an entertaining way that people are going to want to, want to be part of. And that kind of also led me to having a podcast as well. The strategy sessions. If you want to search for it on Apple or Spotify, we can say.
[06:08] Aleya Harris: That in our outside voice strategy sessions. That is the podcast. That is the podcast that I was on. So you should definitely check out the episode that I was on. Strategy Sessions podcast by Andy Jarvis. And as a speaker, I would like to just give you so many kudos. You do, you accomplish your goals. You do make everything accessible, make it enjoyable. The time flies. You end up learning things you didn't even know you were going to be learning because you're really engaged in your stage presentation. You have phenomenal job. One of my favorite speakers. And you guys know, dear listener, I don't say that lightly. I'm normally, like, when someone speaks, I just, like, smile and nod, like, oh, yeah, girl. Hey, girl. Good to see you, girl. I don't actually say much after that.
[06:56] Andi Jarvis: Well, look, I'm a Brit, right? And taking compliments is really difficult for british people to do. So I'm kind of smiling out here and dying a little bit inside listening to that. I. For people who've never heard the story before, Alaya opened the. The conference, we were both speaking at Disney World. Disneyland. The one in Florida. Anyway. Disney World. Disney World in Florida. We're in Florida. So there's nothing I like better. A little secret is the person who's speaking before me is terrible. There's nothing better because you can feel them sucking the energy out of the audience. And I know I can go and put it back in, and I'm sat watching Alaya go on stage, and I'm like, oh, how do you follow this? This was just an amazing moment of sort of 30, 40 minutes of theatre. It was just incredible. And I was just thinking, what am I? Everything I do is gonna be downhill from here. So I was feeling the pressure. I was feeling, oh, no, the imposter syndrome. And I just had to go into the. Into the bathroom and have a word with myself. I was like, right come on, you know these stuff, you've got this, you just go out there and do your thing. And I actually think it liberated me a little bit because instead of thinking, how am I going to be brilliant? It's just like, just go out and do your best. And it felt like that day, I really did do my best, and that was really, you know, you just, you know, sometimes you're in the flow and it's going. And I was like, this is just keep going, keep going, stay in that moment. And I loved that conference. It was brilliant. I loved meeting you. I loved speaking after you. And, yeah, look, so thank you for the feedback. I really enjoy it. And I'm available for bookings and international travel too.
[08:34] Aleya Harris: Yes. And should anybody, should anybody want to book Andy, you should definitely do so, because, I mean, after the conference, people are saying, oh, that was the best one two punch of speaking ever. So, I mean, Andy, if nothing else, you and I apparently need to go on the road.
[08:51] Andi Jarvis: Absolutely.
[08:53] Aleya Harris: So, speaking, marketing, all of those are wonderful. But as I tell my audience, anything that I do is an excuse to do the larger thing that I want to do. And the larger thing that I want to do in the world is to love people into the highest version of themselves. That's the legacy and the story that I want to leave behind. And there's been many parts and points in my life and in my story that have led me to unearthing and having the aha. Moment that that is who I want to be and what I want to do. And that's what comes out of me, whether I like it or not, no matter what I'm doing. Those pivotal moments often shape us, and they might not necessarily feel fun and exciting, but they are needed to get us where we are going. So tell me and us a story about a pivotal moment in your life and how it shaped you.
[09:46] Andi Jarvis: I think the pivotal moment, one of many pivotal moments, but a good jumping off point because it's the start. Start eshov the journey towards self employment and running my own business was going through a divorce, which I initiated. I started the process. But that doesn't make what happened over the following couple of years any easier. And I think there's two types of divorce. There's messy and there's absolutely, completely and utterly, disastrously messy. Mine was in the second category. Right? It was. It was in the latter, and it turned into just a mess, a complete mess of custody battles and restriction of access to my daughter and things like that, which was just hellish to go through. And you spend a lot of time awake at night. Unfortunately, when that thing happens, you know, it's sort of chewed up with your shoulders up, breathing quickly, angry about everything, angry at the world, angry you're not asleep. Inevitably you fall asleep minutes before you do to wake up, which just makes you even more miserable. You're drinking more coffee than any, you know, enough coffee to keep an elephant awake for a week just to get through the day. And then the same thing happens again and again. And I was just becoming a car crash of a person, just not nice to be around. And I got to a point when I realized I don't even really like being around myself a huge amount of the time, to be honest, because I was just angry constantly and couldn't quite put the, my finger on why. And for the first time ever, I went to therapy. I went to see my doctor because I wasn't sleeping, but the doctor was smart enough to ask the question, why wasn't I sleeping? Rather than just, here's a tablet. And so I went through the story, kind of, it all came out. And he's like, maybe you should talk to somebody. And we touched on this, I don't want to keep referring back to the podcast we did, because people are listening to this one, not to that one. But we touched on this a little bit, that there's a very different view in the UK to therapy than the US. Like in the US, people have been having therapy for years, whereas in the UK, if you had therapy 20 years ago, you were just whispered about in corners, you're like, he's crazy. He's got therapy, he's having therapy, he's got issues. And you could quite comfortably become kind of excluded from things if people knew you were going through therapy. That's changed, luckily. Thankfully, that's changed. But the british journey with therapy is quite bad. So for me, it was this huge hurdle to get over because I was like, I'm not weird, why do I need therapy? I'm not weird. But I went and I got something like six sessions. I can't remember anything from many of them, except one thing this guy said to me. And I'd been telling him about the story and everything that had gone along, and it turns out I was carrying some, I don't know, what's the word, negativity with me because I'd instigated the divorce, and because of that, I'd seen it as my fault, therefore carrying all the responsibility for what happened. And he just looked at me at one point and he was like, you do know you are allowed to be happy, Andy. It's such a strange thing to say. And I kind of brushed it off and moved on. And that night, it wouldn't leave me the day after. It wouldn't leave me the day after. And I picked it up in the next session. And the other thing he said to me that stuck with me was, when you laid awake at night and you're feeling angry, what are you doing? Who are you directing that anger towards? And mainly my ex wife. I was like, you know, she's caused me this. She's doing it. And he said to me, what impact's that having on her at 02:00 a.m. in the morning? Nothing. He said, and what impact it having on you at 02:00 a.m. in the morning? I was like, well, it's this. It's this, it's this, it's this, it's this, it's this. And he's like, okay, so why don't you just let it go? I went home that night. I had the best night's sleep I'd had in about 18 months, right? I just, bang. It was like that. And those two things of you are allowed to be happy. Hopefully, it comes across. I'm relatively happy most of the time, right. And just kind of freed me from that. You've got, you know, you should be carrying the weight of this. That freed me from that and telling me just a really obvious statement that my anger is only hurting me, not hurting anybody else. So I'm not saying I never get angry anymore. I'm not saying I never get sad anymore. I do. I get both of those things fairly regularly. But on the whole, I feel happy, and I feel freed. And that kind of. That moment of therapy allowed me to open lots of doors to the rest of my life, which is just wonderful now, you know, married, happily married. It's brilliant. I'm running a business. I love it. And that moment of release was beautiful.
[14:32] Aleya Harris: What a great story. And, I mean, you're such a good storyteller. So for a second there, I had to be like, oh, wait, I'm the host of the. I'm hosting a podcast. I'm not listening to a podcast. I actually am eventually gonna have to say something, because I was so engrossed in your story.
[14:50] Andi Jarvis: It's when people say to me, would you come on my podcast? Yeah, yeah. What is it? And they're like, it's 15 minutes. I was like, I don't think I'm your guy. I could give you one answer to one question.
[15:00] Aleya Harris: Yeah, I'm not that. I'm not really great at that. I'm not great at that at all. But no, it wasn't about the length. It was about the way that you paint the picture. I totally see the entire journey. And I often have to say, I had my postpartum depression journey. I had to say to myself very similar things. You're allowed to be happy, but also you're allowed for me now. In my mind, you're allowed to not work so hard to be happy. That's where I'm currently at. It doesn't have to be difficult. You don't have to work for it. You could just be happy. That's it. That's all that's required of being happy, is just being happy.
[15:36] Andi Jarvis: There's no other being happy in yourself as well. Again, you don't lose these things overnight. But in my twenties and teens and twenties particularly, I was very much a people pleaser. And I still do a little bit of that now. But this journey has taken me on to if I'm happy, then that will make lots of people around me happy. Instead of giving everything I have to make them happy and then being sad myself. So it's just a switch around of approach to it, man.
[16:10] Aleya Harris: It's. I love the way that you go about it. And I also love that you have sought help around it and as you, though, have been more happy. How has that changed your relationship with your business and with going and making money?
[16:27] Andi Jarvis: I think the two things go hand in hand in hand because you. You bring that approach to life to it. So the best piece of feedback I ever had from a client and I get anonymous feedback at the end of every engagement. So you never quite know which person it is. But somebody described working with me as practical magic and I love it. Now it's quite hard to.
[16:53] Aleya Harris: Did they also call you Sandra Bullock or.
[16:57] Andi Jarvis: No, it's like some sort of Hollywood b movie or something. But I was like, oh, my God, no.
[17:02] Aleya Harris: Do not hate on practical magic. It's a really good movie. You should see it.
[17:06] Andi Jarvis: Well, okay, okay, okay. Well, Sandra, buzz it. Sandra Bullock movie. Yeah. Oh, anyway, but I took it. I took it as a compliment anyway, and I. Well, I didn't take it as a movie, actually.
[17:16] Aleya Harris: It's a good movie. But what I'm gonna tell Sandy that you didn't like her.
[17:22] Andi Jarvis: Well, listen, the way you tell stories, she probably lives next door, doesn't she? The most la story ever. Nobody like that lives next door here. I don't. But what they qualified that statement, which was, everything you say is really practical, but the results from working with you are magic. And I just, like, I wanted to put it on my website, but without that context, it just feels a little bit self aggrandizing and maybe, I don't.
[17:51] Aleya Harris: Know, you need the context and God, you're so british. Just put the thing on your head.
[17:58] Andi Jarvis: I am.
[17:58] Aleya Harris: Of course.
[18:00] Andi Jarvis: It's like, we can't say too many positive things because people think you're weird.
[18:04] Aleya Harris: So, I mean, that doesn't need any context. That sentence in and of itself is great.
[18:11] Andi Jarvis: Well, I. But I took that feedback and I really liked it. To go back to what I said about my public speaking, I try and be quite practical and demystify things, but the results were magic. It was like, yes, he knows his stuff and look what happens here now. I think that was because I was liberated from just happy in what I do and bring that into the room whenever I'm in there and people enjoy working with me. One of the other bits of feedback I get fairly regularly and genuinely, this isn't made up. One of the bits of feedback I get regularly is we wish the workshop was longer. Have you ever been in a corporate meeting and ever thought, I wish this would have gone on longer? And I get that feedback maybe three or four times a year, that they. That people wish the workshop I was running would have been longer. And, like, when I first read it, I was like, nah, this is rubbish. And then I saw it again a few months later, and then I saw it again not long after that. Like, maybe I'm planning my workshops to be too short, you know, maybe that's it. But, like, some of these are half day workshops and people saying it'd have been nice to be longer. I'm like, leave the people wanting more. Right? That's good feedback.
[19:27] Aleya Harris: So they just want more. They want more of that practical map.
[19:31] Andi Jarvis: Absolutely. So I think that is all down to being happy within myself. And I also think that you get that little bit the more you've been in business as well, the more you start to realize who you want to work with and who you don't want to work with. So my business is generally full of people who I like working with. So you don't get worn down by it either. So, you know, these are all combinations of factors that all add to it.
[19:54] Aleya Harris: I love it, love it, love it. And I love that you're happy and it took you being vulnerable with your therapist to be able to be happy, and you did that. But I know that vulnerability is not necessarily everyone's strong suit. So when were you reluctant to be vulnerable, to share part of your story, but you did it anyways, where it was not necessarily in a private setting, but maybe even in a more public one. And what happened? How did that shape your relationship with vulnerability and courage as a human and as a business owner?
[20:32] Andi Jarvis: Look, as previously discussed, I'm british, so being reluctant to be vulnerable is a default setting. We have this. There's a phrase for it, the stiff british upper lip. It doesn't matter what's going on. You just pucker up and get on with it and have a cup of tea, and everything will be okay. That's what we're.
[20:51] Aleya Harris: Tea must be the magic component.
[20:54] Andi Jarvis: Tea, yeah. Look, Britain conquered a third of the world drinking tea. You know, we went to some really hot places and still drank tea. It doesn't make sense. But anyway, so we're beating this into us as kids that. The stiff british upper lip, and you just get on with it. So it's been a journey to talk about, the journey I've been on, and I think that the first time I did it was on a podcast. And the beauty during lockdown. And it was the first time I'd really spoken about going to therapy. A few people knew, my wife knew, and some family members knew, but it was the first time I'd really spoken about it, because podcasts were like this back then. Nobody was doing in person podcasts because we were locked down. So it wasn't me with a load of people in the room or in a room. It was just me talking to one guy on a podcast. And it was almost like the plug had been pulled out of the bath. He asked me just this one short question, which was almost like a quick fire, bang bang question. And about 15 minutes later, I was kind of like, and then this happened. And then I went to. And then he said this in therapy, and then you could see him on the other end going, checking his watch. And then I was like, sorry, I think I've gone on a bit too long. And he was just like, that's okay. So that made me realize that nothing bad's gonna happen when you talk about this stuff, and genuinely only good things happen about it. People come and talk to you about it and go, do you mind if we talk about therapy? Because I know you're like, yeah, let's do it. Let's have that conversation. So just starting was probably the moment to answer that question. Just starting to talk about it is probably the moment.
[22:38] Aleya Harris: Yeah, I could totally understand that. And I also understand how vulnerability builds connection. I've had very similar experiences. The more, not the more vulnerable, because, I mean, I'm not going to tell. I'm not telling you all my dirty laundry and all my dirty business, but when you are vulnerable, you do build connection, you build relationship, you build commonalities, and you wouldn't be able to do that if you just kept it all close to the vest and you were just. I am a robot marketer.
[23:12] Andi Jarvis: When you think about the things that the vulnerabilities I've shown, and there's a bit of me that doesn't even like the term vulnerability because it almost frames it as a negative. And it's just talking about some of the stuff that's happened in my life, because we've all had good and bad things happen throughout our journey. And the two times I've engaged with therapy, which is, again, a very british thing, only when something goes wrong do we do therapy. The two times I've been through therapy, one when I was going through divorce, and then several years later, my wife and I, we lost our son, Jude. We had a little tattoo of Jude. And you see there that I carry with me all the time. And it took a long time to get your head around that. And it took a long time to feel comfortable talking about Jude, but now it kind of makes you smile talking about him. And which is a nice thing. Not all the time. There's sad moment, very sad things in there as well. But when you think about it, businesses take away the shiny sign, take away the fancy website. Businesses are collections of people trying to move something in a direction. And organizations are inert by default. You have to shove them to move them. So what that really means is you have to connect with people to make them think that the thing you really need them to do is going to be more useful and better for them than not doing something. Now, that's not to say that I'm telling them these stories because I think it's going to manipulate them. That's not it. But I'm talking about divorce. Now, I think the stats in the UK are like something like 45% to 50% of all marriages end in divorce. So that means half of the people sat in the room are either have gone through this, so are going. Mm hmm, mm hmm. Or are about to go through it, or are in the middle of going through it. Half of the people have been through a similar experience to me. Now, if half of the people supported the same soccer team that I do. We'd be talking about it. So why aren't we talking about that now? Most of the people in the rooms you're in have had children or are going through that process. Let's talk about that, too. You know, so this isn't about, this is just about human connection, because those people are going to leave that room after your practical magic workshop and go back to 60 emails that they haven't got back to. Somebody stood at the desk needing them to sign a form, hr screaming about something, purchase orders that need looking at. And you've got to hope that when you're not there as a consultant, they still ring fence the hour they need to do in their diary to do that thing. And if you connect with them, they'll do it. And if you don't connect with them, they'll be like, oh, yeah, that was nice, but we're not doing that again. So it's essential to build that connection in whatever, you know, whatever way works for you.
[26:00] Aleya Harris: So one of the ways that you build connections really well is through telling stories and through helping people feel comfortable with being vulnerable while you're being vulnerable. That's part of the, I would imagine, some of the magic in the practical magic. But how does that relate in a very tangible sense in a marketing setting? You're in a company with this bunch of people and you're talking or you're using stories to do the shoving around right and left to get them to do something that's in their own best interest. You are an amazing storyteller. You can't help it. It's just how you talk. It's. You're an amazing storyteller. I love listening to you. I forget myself when I'm listening to you.
[26:43] Andi Jarvis: Thank you.
[26:44] Aleya Harris: So it's an innate skill, but I'd love for you to share how you use it within these organizations to help them make more money.
[26:56] Andi Jarvis: So the example I always give is, I was, for my sins, I don't go to church these days, but I was brought up in a church and I always remember one guy called Alan Evans, who was the minister. And Alan used to tell these amazing stories. He had this big booming voice and I used to be captivated by Alan. Right? He was just this incredible storyteller, painted vivid pictures. And I don't know if that influenced me. I think it did influence me because I always say that religion, and this isn't trying to belittle religion, but religion is asking you to believe in something you can't see, hear, or smell or touch. And you'll only really get the benefits of it after you've died. And you need to change the way you live your entire life based on the story that someone tells you from the front of a stage every Sunday or Friday, depending, or whatever, depending on your religion. Now, the one thing you never hear religious preachers say or use is percentages. And they never use statistics when they're talking about the walls of Jericho going down. It wasn't like, and 68% of people were playing the french horn and 42% were playing the trumpet. They were just like, they blew the trumpets and the walls came down and this thing happened, right? Nobody, nobody cared about the percentage. And you roll that forward into business, and what do we do? We just try and batter people to death with percentages. It's like, oh, and here's another chart. And here's another chart, and here's, these things are important because we have to know where the numbers are going. We have to do this thing. But ten minutes later, after that meeting, ask everybody what those charts said, ask them what the percentages were, and nobody knows. I could ask people a year after they work with me, what was that story I told? And they repeat that story almost word for word, and they get it right because they can capture it, they can feel it, and they can believe it. I think storytelling is this fundamentally crucial skill to be able to get this. As I said, organizations are inert by default. And that's not people being lazy. That's people have a lot of competing pressures on their time. So if you want to start getting that momentum, you have to get people to be able to believe in something and be able to move it. And how do you get people to believe in it? Well, the religious guys have been doing it for a couple of thousand years, so why are we looking at Harvard Business Review, and why aren't we looking at the religious guys and girls? And I kind of draw inspiration from that. And that's, again, I'm not trying to say I'm religious or some sort of preacher, but I draw a bit of inspiration from that and try and match it. The practical bit, the stats, and the bits to say, right, this is how we can move this organization, because the three things I think you need are focus, momentum, and consistency. What does a good marketing strategy look like? In many ways, it doesn't really matter. If you've got focus, momentum, and consistency, you'll probably be more right than the best strategy that doesn't have those three things going for it. So storytelling is a key part of that.
[29:55] Aleya Harris: I hear you about the storytelling, but I also heard you say that you're a budding cult leader, so I'm putting you on a bit of a watch list, and you can sign up for my cult.
[30:08] Andi Jarvis: It's only $3,997. You can. I don't have venmo, but I've got paid. If you want to send me the money, that's fine. I will then tell you the day the world's going to end and we can watch movies until then.
[30:20] Aleya Harris: Okay, sounds good. Oh, it's a very easy, breezy cult. We're just watching movies. I mean, I can sign up for that cult. I could sign up for that cult as long as there's no Kool Aid and gray sweats involved. Way, we could totally sign up for that cult. But I do appreciate what you're saying, because I was watching a video of myself, and I didn't grow up in church, but I, oddly enough, found religion and Jesus in college. Like, I still was twerking and Jesus, like, you know, it was a balance. It was a balance of life. But then from then on, I was in church, church, church. And then, you know, I started getting a more comprehensive view of spiritualism and religion after that. But I still think that that pivotal time in my life was important to my speaking style and my teaching style, because I was watching a video of myself the other day, and I was basically, I had. Was kind of whipping people into that baptist fervor. And I **** you not, someone's in the back said, amen. And I didn't hear it at the time when I was on stage, but I heard it in the video and I said, shut up. Yeah, but I heard it. And I do that. I hear it in my. In my podcast as well. And what that is, is most of the time, I'm, again, not doing it intentionally. I'm like, and here's the step by step on how I'm going to whip you into a fervor. It's emotion. It's me channeling an emotion, you feeling that emotion that we're all in an emotion now. That's that momentum like you're talking about now. We have the momentum. We have the focus because of the topic that we're talking about now. Let's go. Let's go do this thing. And that's when people talk about inspiring and motivating and all of that. It really is that piece. And, yeah, why aren't we looking at the people that have been doing it for thousands.
[32:17] Andi Jarvis: Amen.
[32:20] Aleya Harris: Amen.
[32:21] Andi Jarvis: Amen. And I look, the other reference point is I do look to America for inspiration. So I wait, like, not.
[32:31] Aleya Harris: Not the whole country, right? Like not everything we do.
[32:35] Andi Jarvis: No, no, not the whole country. But just as an example. And it's not to say that I look at sort of baptist preachers, but just as a real working example, a reference that people will know if you go back to picture in your mind the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, right? So the archbishop of Canterbury, who is the leading church of England bishop, was running 95% of that service. And Justin Welby is called. He's a very clever man. He's a brilliant. He knows the Bible and he preaches and he did it. And he was like, and on the 7th day, the Lord shall blah, blah. And it was a very british Church of England service. But as part of the wedding, Megan had asked for her minister to come over and do a little bit of it. And somebody brought a black guy in, and then. And he's leaning on the pulpit and he's giving it. And then on the 7th day, the Lord said, westminster Abbey does not get that type of preaching. Let me get you right, but both of those two people were doing a wedding based on the word of the Lord. Their source material was exactly the same. The room they were in, the wedding they were at was exactly the same. But the American interpreted that and read the brief differently to the english guy. So I'm not trying to be american when I'm presenting. And that, that's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is I draw inspiration from different places. And I look at how Americans bring things to life and go, okay, I need to take a little bit of that and then find my way to do it. And when you can marry those two and draw in influences from different places, so it's not all just preaching. Alan Evans. But when I look at people and when I watched you on stage, I was like, I can see you took a room full of people early in the morning with you on a journey somewhere. And I was like, I don't necessarily do that. I talk and I entertain them, but I didn't move them on a journey the way you did. And I looked, I was like, okay, what can I learn from this and how can I do that? And then start to pick bits from different places? So my style is my style, but it's actually, it's a jigsaw puzzle of lots of different styles put together and maybe Rubik's Cube is a better example. It's kind of different bits that come together, and then when it matches, you're like, oh, wow. Yeah. But I always fear that if I get it wrong, it could just look like a bit of a mess, which is why I put so much pressure onto, like, right, I've got to get this right. I've got to get this right and do the rehearsals, make sure all those bits are lined up.
[35:04] Aleya Harris: So what I'm hearing you say is that you are Beyonce coming up with your cowboy Carter album. That's all I heard the whole time.
[35:14] Andi Jarvis: You were talking, this ain't Texas, right?
[35:18] Aleya Harris: Because, I mean, if you think about it, she has all these styles all mishmashed together to make what's a quote unquote country album. It's really a Beyonce album, and it's brilliant because of its expert use of intersectionality. And when you say that to me, my favorite speakers, my favorite marketers, my favorite business people use that intersectionality in a very expert way. I mean, even the conference that we met at was a conference for education, but they purposely brought in people from outside of the industry so that they could work on intersecting, intersecting their world with another world and finding that uniqueness and also the commonality of the human experience within there. Beyonce, don't you find that to be true?
[36:07] Andi Jarvis: I mean, I love, listen, if somebody said, who would you want to be compared to Beyonce, the greatest, fastest of all time? I mean, we could start a riot asking that question. But come at me with someone who's better. I mean, I'm in the land. I'm here in Liverpool, the land of the Beatles. The Paul McCartney Penny Lane of the Beatles song is about half a mile from where I'm sitting. So, look, we're not going to get into who's the greatest, but I think that intersectionality point of drawing in different references and different things that you enjoy and making something new, it's alchemy, you know, taking all these things, putting them together and creating something new. I think the worst thing that could happen to this Beyonce is somebody says, oh, yeah, Andy's just like this person when he presents. I'd be like, that's the biggest insult anyone can ever throw in shade my way. I'm like, I ain't taking this because hopefully my style is unique to me and I couldn't teach anybody else to. To do it because they're not me. I could help people find who they are, hopefully, but you can't. How do I present like you? You need to go back a few years and start from the beginning. That's.
[37:18] Aleya Harris: You have to live through my story to present. Like me. I struggle with that, too, because I have a course, spark the stage, which is a program that teaches people how to become professional speakers. And often people join the course after they've heard me speak, and they want. How did you do that? How do you do? I want to be just like you. And the very first thing I tell them is, if I'm not, I can't do that. I can't turn you into me, but I can help you be the best version of you. We don't need more aleas and we don't need more andes. One more might be good. One more, Andy, would probably be good. But we. I mean, just in a general scheme of things, right. We need people to be themselves and to just know how to deliver that so that it lands. That's what you do really well on stage, Andy. What I'm sure you do really well with your clients. What I do well on stage with my clients is taking the ideas and knowing how to convey them in a way that. So that they hit their hearts, minds, and guts all at the same time. And that concept lands. So if people are looking to tell a story and they have the momentum, but they don't have the framework and they don't have that focus that you were talking about, without all of the elements in the right place, it's not gonna work.
[38:37] Andi Jarvis: Great. Great marketing, great storytelling, great public speaking and professional speaking taps into emotion and ration. So the head and the heart. And if you look at I clearly, if anyone's looking at the video, don't use shampoo. I have not a hair on my head. But if you look at how shampoo. Yeah, absolutely. It's shiny here, but if you look at how they promote shampoo, there's always a picture of somebody with this amazing hair moving around, but they always throw you some science as well. You know, vitamin C qt will help make your hair stronger. The reason they do that is because the picture is a bit appealing to you emotionally, going, wow, I want hair like that. And the science is appealing to you rationally. If you just do one or the other, you wouldn't make. You wouldn't do as well. And it's the same with. With speaking. It's the same with most things we need to do. We need to kind of capture people's hearts but convince their minds as well. And that's hopefully what I try to do with the practical magic, but speaks to that a little bit as well.
[39:39] Aleya Harris: It totally does. It totally does. I mean, you are a magician. So, so far, you're Beyonce, occult leader, and Harry Potter. We've uncovered multiple identities for Andy Jarvis on this episode.
[39:53] Andi Jarvis: You probably can't see it. I do actually have a scar in this eye, one of these eyebrows. An old rugby injury. I ran into an elbow, straight elbow a few years ago.
[40:02] Aleya Harris: So really what you're saying is you just need to get you glasses and figure out where your Hogwarts letter is. Okay, done.
[40:08] Andi Jarvis: Yeah. Platform nine and three quarters. Here it comes.
[40:12] Aleya Harris: Here you go. There you go. That's perfect. Andy, this has been a wonderful, wonderful discussion, but I have one final question for you. If you could ask the universe, God, spirit, your higher self, for anything, and be 100% sure that you would get it, what would you ask for my hair back? That would actually look weird. You'll have to send me a picture of you with hair because I only know you bald, and I wouldn't know where your hairline would stop. And if you have, like, a huge forehead or even, actually, maybe even worse, like, a little teeny forehead, I think that we couldn't do things anymore.
[40:53] Andi Jarvis: My hair started falling out so long ago that it was pre mobile phone or cell phone cameras. So there are not many pictures of me with hair. What I can tell you is this was. I had something on my head that I had operated on as a kid, and this was where my hair used to come to at one point.
[41:13] Aleya Harris: So, ladies and gentlemen who are not watching this video, I would say, you know, average people have a forehead. I think if we were going to think about, Andy probably has a three head. I have, like, a five head, which is why I have lots of hair. So. Well, may God, the spirit, the universe, your higher self, grant you all the hair you could ever ask for or think.
[41:37] Andi Jarvis: What sort of answers do other people give if you ask them that question?
[41:41] Aleya Harris: I think that might be the first spiritual hair request we've had on the show. But that doesn't make it any less balanced. Andy, along with all of our conversations, this one has been one of my favorites. I love just sitting around you. I feel like a better, more enlivened person. That happiness that you have spills out. And I appreciate you for sharing that. If people want to get some more of that practical magic from some more of that Beyonce, Harry Potter cult leader spirit, where can they find you and connect with you?
[42:20] Andi Jarvis: Yeah. So I LinkedIn. Collect me the ball. Yeah, you'll see me there. So LinkedIn and Instagram are probably my two kind of favorite platforms or where I am most. Andy Jarvis. Andy spelled with an I, which usually makes me easy to find. And Jarvis is J A R v I S. On Instagram. Somebody really annoyed me. They got Andy Jarvis first. I'm Jarvis. Andy on Instagram. I'm backwards. But look, you'll find me anyway. And the website is eximore marketing strategy. But just type me into Google, I'll definitely be there. The bald one.
[42:53] Aleya Harris: The bald one. Andy, thank you so much. You have graced me with your presence on a wonderful episode, this podcast, and I appreciate you for being here today.
[43:04] Andi Jarvis: Elliot, thank you very much for having me. It's been wonderful to sit and share this time with you again, and hopefully we can do it again soon.
[43:11] Aleya Harris: Hopefully? Yes, hopefully. Every time I talk to that man, I leave with a bigger smile on my face than when I started. I kid you not. When he was telling his stories, normally when I'm talking to guests, I'm like, oh, okay, let me get my next question. And how am I going to fit it into what they say? He caught me off guard a couple of times because I was so engrossed in the stories he's telling. He's that good of a storyteller. And as a storyteller myself, I love being in the presence of a true artiste in that area. If you were looking to tell better stories and use them to motivate behavior, well, then I hope that you got a lot out of this episode, because I know I sure as heck did. I also really got the power of being vulnerable and embracing change and embracing everything that life can throw at you from the perspective of growth and resiliency. I got that a lot better and more deeply from what Andy was saying here with us today. I'd love to hear what you got. I'd love to hear what you think. Go ahead. Leave a review. Leave a comment wherever you're listening, especially Apple podcasts. A five star review would be great, but you're back. If that's not it, and also talk to me, baby. Send me a dm. Send me a message. Leave a comment on instagram at alayahara. H a r r I s. You can also send me an email aleahleaharris.com. i would love to hear from you. And yes, I do respond to all the emails that I get, and I appreciate them when they come from the episodes. I love building community with you. Until next time, my name is Alayah Harris, who in fact, although I called him Beyonce, I'm gonna take that title back. I am, in fact, the one queen Beyonce of marketing. Alright, fine. I can share the title with Andy. But all my friends call me Alayah. Alayah Harris. And this is the flourishing entrepreneur podcast. And until next time, my dear friend, I wish you lots and lots and lots of love, light, and abundance. Bye for now.
[45:29] Yuliya Patsay: Thank you for listening to this episode of the flourishing entrepreneur podcast with Alayah Harris. Vibing with what you hear here, leave a five star review to spread the love and be sure to click subscribe. We wish you love, light, and abundance. See you next time.
