Tim Reed: Joining me from Nashville, Tennessee, is a curator of clarity. I’m here with April Sunshine Hawkins. April, thanks for being here.

April Sunshine Hawkins: Oh my gosh, Tim, I’m thrilled. Thanks for having me.

TR: I’ve been looking forward to this for a while. We met about eight years ago at a StoryBrand conference in Seattle, and ever since—following the work you’ve done hosting the Marketing Made Simple podcast, and seeing you recently in Nashville at another Donald Miller StoryBrand workshop—it’s been really clear to me that you deeply understand how messaging and communication work. But you also genuinely care about the people you’re helping craft the message, and the people that message is going to. That combination is rare. So I’m excited you’re here.

ASH: Thank you—you’re touching my heart. It makes me so happy that you see the care, because that really is my intention. I just want to serve people. I want them to walk away feeling, “OK, this thing I came up with—this is what I’ve been searching for. I’ve been looking for this kind of clarity in my life.”

TR: If we look around the world, there’s a lot of bad marketing out there—marketing used for manipulation, marketing based on fear. That’s not what we want to do. We want to tell true stories that win in life and in the marketplace, that compel people toward better decisions about things that will make their lives, and the lives around them, better. But marketing is one of those nebulous things. There’s that old adage attributed to Henry Ford: “Half of my marketing works—I just don’t know which half.” Could you start by giving us a brief history of your foray into the marketing world and where it’s taken you?

ASH: Like so many people, I started out about 15 years ago throwing marketing spaghetti against the wall. I was doing social media and websites for people, thinking, “I don’t know—is this right? Is this it?” Then I heard Donald Miller and JJ on the original Building a StoryBrand podcast—which I bet you listened to as well. When they were talking, it was like, ding—this makes so much sense. I’d been an elementary school teacher for seven years before my burnout, which so many elementary school teachers go through, and that’s why I was doing social media and websites. When I heard that podcast, I thought: I need to go there. I need to learn this at a higher level. I want to teach it to people. I want to empower people with it. Because it was the thing I felt I’d been missing. And what I loved, like you said, was that it didn’t feel manipulative. It felt like I could provide empathy on behalf of the person reading the website or consuming the social media posts. It doesn’t have to feel slimy or slicky. It really is all about them—the person on the other side of the screen, going through whatever they’re going through. Here we are however many years later, and I’m so grateful to have this framework. Anytime I sit down to write something—or sit down with someone else, a blinking cursor in front of us going, “Well, where do we start?”—the StoryBrand framework has been essential for me.

TR: You’re downplaying this, but you were the host—cohost with JJ Peterson—of the Marketing Made Simple podcast, a huge show that helped a ton of people. You’ve gone all over the world, hired by companies to facilitate workshops where people are really trying to figure this out. For those not familiar: Donald Miller wrote Building a StoryBrand back in 2017. Listening to those original podcasts and reading that book did a few things for me. It confirmed things I already knew worked but wasn’t sure why. It brought clarity to why it resonates—and why it doesn’t work when I do something else. To this day, I go back to those first seven or eight episodes about once a year, just to keep myself grounded. But let’s get practical. If we want effective marketing, let’s first talk about what’s ineffective. What are some telltale signs of marketing that just isn’t going to resonate in our world today?

ASH: So many people are experts at what they do, and it’s so difficult for them to reel in all the information they know and put themselves in the position of someone at the starting line—someone who’s just experiencing the problem but doesn’t have any of the know-how, hasn’t gotten the engineering degree or whatever it took to figure out the ins and outs. So what a lot of people do is hand somebody too much information right out of the gate. Don calls this cognitive load. We hand people all this heavy information that may not even be conversational—it’s the way the person who knows everything knows how to say it. But the person on the other side of the screen is going, “Hmm, I don’t really know what this means.” And anytime our mind is confused at all, it says no—or it says, “Maybe I’ll figure that out later,” and it’s off somewhere else, trying to find somebody who can connect with them and say exactly what they’re experiencing, right on the nose. That’s really what I want people to watch out for: How heavy is the cognitive load of what you’re saying? Because any chance you have to lower that cognitive load, the more people are likely to recognize themselves in the story and engage.

TR: There’s so much there. Speaking from the fireplace industry, we have so much insider jargon that we just yak at people on websites and in brochures. We say, “Hey, this is 40,000 BTUs an hour,” and it’s like—well, what’s a BTU? “Don’t worry about that, there are 40,000 of them.” “Oh, this is a zero-clearance fireplace with direct-vent termination and an IPI ignition system.” To fireplace nerds, of course we know what that is. But when we go to the doctor, the doctor doesn’t give us the name of every bone in the body and every muscle ending. The doctor gives us what we need, at the level we can understand, to solve our problem.

ASH: And anytime we go to the doctor, a lot of us are just looking to be listened to—for that doctor to say, “You’re not crazy. We’re going to work together to get to the bottom of whatever you’re experiencing.” That’s what we want in a really great guide. We want their expertise, but we also want them on our side, really listening and meeting us at a high level.

TR: We talk about this a lot on the show, but I’d love to hear you articulate it—this idea of not being the hero. Our job is to be the advisor, the guide, to come alongside. As soon as we become the hero in our marketing, we lose. Why is that, and how can we position ourselves as the guide?

ASH: Everybody wakes up every single day as the hero of their own story. So anytime we point at ourselves and go, “Hey, we’re here to save your day,” people think, “What do you mean? I’m the hero of my story. I’m the one making the decisions that drive my plot forward. I don’t need you to come rescue me.” They’re not looking for a rescuer—but they are looking for somebody who can guide them. So when we point at them, get them to pay attention to the problem they’re experiencing, and name it so accurately that they think, “This person completely gets what I’m going through,” we provide empathy as the guide. Then we can sprinkle in some competency—why we’re great at solving this problem, how our solution actually works—but we can’t start there. That’s almost where every single business starts. They start by saying, “We do this.”

TR: “We’ve been around since 1975.”

ASH: “We did this, we did that.” Well, that’s great—how is that relevant to me? So anytime I’m writing, I’m constantly hoping people will write “you” statements: You’re experiencing this. You are feeling this. You will gain this benefit. If you walk through this process, you, you, you. So many people constantly use the word we—we do this, we do that. Anytime I write the word we, I ask: Is it appropriate here, or can I flip it to a “you” statement? Because that’s what really resonates with people.

TR: I love that. My friend Tim Rethlake says, “You can’t go ‘wee wee wee’ all over your customer.” It’s such a subtle shift. If the first thing on your website is “family-owned business since 1953,” you have to ask: Who’s the hero of that story? It’s not the customer—they’re not mentioned once. It’s the business, which immediately starts to turn the customer off. So say you’re a plumber who’s been in business since 1953. How could you shift “family-owned since 1953” from a hero statement to a guide statement?

ASH: Well, something like, “We’ve been serving customers just like you for however many years.” It’s so subtle, but it makes a huge difference in someone feeling like you’re talking to them, not about yourself.

TR: There you go. And it’s like the stages of a relationship. When you go to a website, or see a TV ad or a Facebook ad, there are topics you just don’t get into on the first date—until you’re a little deeper in. “We’ve been around since 1975” might have a time and place later in the conversation. But if my house is freezing cold and I go to a fireplace website, I’m not thinking, “Boy, I’m looking for someone who started in 1975.” I want a picture of a happy family sitting in front of a fireplace, and a tagline like, “Never be cold in a power outage again.” Something that goes straight to their problem.

ASH: That’s right, exactly. It’s so key, and it’s wonderful to do the switch. Even in some of the therapy sessions I’ve done, there’s a moment where I’m sitting in a chair and there’s an empty chair across from me representing someone else, and they say, “OK, what do you want to say to this person? Now switch roles.” That exercise is so helpful for our brains to do physically. How can I turn my computer around, sit in a different chair labeled “customer”? You could even use the name of someone you’ve just done business with—say, a person named Suzy. So I label this chair Suzy, turn it around, sit in it as Suzy, and read through this website going, “Does this apply to her? If she’s reading this, is it going to resonate?” And if it does—ding, ding, ding—you’ve nailed it.

TR: This speaks to a fear a lot of people have. A lot of marketers, executives, and leaders are afraid that if they make their message too narrow—if they only make it for Suzy—they’ll alienate everybody else. “We also do this, and other people could benefit from our product too.” But the adage “a message for everyone is a message for no one” is so absolutely true. Why should people not be afraid of crafting that message just for Suzy?

ASH: Oh my gosh, because then the Suzys of the world—and there are plenty of them—will go, “I’m in the exact right spot.” And so many other people will come along too. But if you say, “We are going to serve this specific client,” all your messaging sounds authentic. It sounds like it was built for someone. Yes, we’re nervous, we’re fearful that we’ll miss out on a ton of business by going so narrow. But we’ve got to get over to that abundance mindset—the fact that there are so many Suzys. If we’re calling out to her, she’s going, “Yep, I’m in the exact right place. These people are my guide.” And so many others will come along. With that, we just have to take a deep breath and give things a try. Because if you’re playing too general, it’s boring. People go, “I guess this is kind of for me.” That’s why music has so many genres: People are using the same chords on the guitar and piano, but we make it sound different and call out to people, so we welcome them into our style, our way of doing things. Once they hear it, they go, “This is for me. These are my kind of people.”

TR: A hundred percent. There are a lot more Suzys than you think. I’m thinking of Seth Godin—he says the key to marketing is the phrase “people like us do things like this.” People like Suzy do things like Suzy, and Suzy has a bunch of other Suzys in her network she’ll spread the word to, if it actually solves a problem. So I’d love to get really practical and talk about the PEACE framework. A couple of months ago in Nashville, Donald Miller hosted a workshop on the StoryBrand PEACE framework, and I found it so helpful. Literally 15 minutes before this call, I was putting one together for a proposal. Last night I did two more for classes I’m teaching at a conference. Why don’t you walk through it? If you want marketing that captures people and is repeatable, I think the PEACE framework is where you start.

ASH: I could not agree more. It’s just a streamlined version of the StoryBrand framework, so if you’re like Tim and me and you’ve listened to the podcast from the beginning, this is so similar. It’s really five pieces. I love that Don talks about the PEACE framework like stair steps up to your business. Imagine getting somebody to step on the first step. PEACE is P-E-A-C-E. The first P is problem. Once you name the problem, somebody goes, “Yep, that’s me. I’m going to step on that first step.” It piques their curiosity, because when we name someone’s actual problem with words that make them think, “Yeah, that’s me,” we’re calling them to pay attention and step up toward our business. The next step is to provide empathy for exactly what they’re going through. As a great guide, that’s what we do. Our hero is in a hole, experiencing this problem. We’re up top—we’re not down in the hole with them—looking down going, “Oh man, we get how hard this is.” Sometimes it’s as simple as saying, “We understand what you’re going through.” That’s all you have to say for somebody to go, “Thank you. You’re not just talking at me, you’re connecting with me on a heart level.” Now that they hear you’re empathetic to their plight, it’s time to give them the answer. This isn’t a rescue move. It’s just, “We know the way out of here. Let us tell you about it, and then you can choose it for yourself.” The guide throws a rope down into the hole: “This is the way out. Here’s how it works.” At this point you can break down the plan—the steps of doing business with you. Then we’re at C, which is for change. Change is what happens if they decide to take the answer you’ve provided. Once they get to the top and they’re standing next to you, they’re going to think, “This has changed me—not just taken my problem away, but internally.” People don’t always buy products and services to solve the problem happening externally to them; they do it so the discomfort inside them goes away. So when we’re changed, we go, “Oh my gosh, now I get to be . . .” and then you fill in the aspirational identity. When we name that change and call it out, people can see themselves having it in their life. And the final step, the E at the end of the staircase, is the end result. Where do we want them to go? What is their future going to be like? If we can cast that vision, they can take themselves there in their imagination and go, “Yup, that’s exactly where I want to head, and I’ll do what needs to be done to take this answer and get rid of this problem for good.”

TR: That’s really good. This framework is powerful because it lets you create snippets—Don calls them sound bites. You have a sound bite for P, for E, for A, for C, for E. And these sound bites can be applied like chords on a guitar. Maybe your website header is the problem; you scroll down and get empathy; maybe a brochure has change and end result. There are a lot of ways to play it. Anybody listening could apply the PEACE framework to their website today for zero dollars, and it would transform it—more leads, more people on your site longer. Thinking in the fireplace sense: pick a problem. Fireplaces make things warm, so your problem statement might be, “Are you tired of being freezing cold when the power goes out?” There’s the problem. The empathy could be, “No family should feel insecure on the coldest winter days.” The answer: “Get a fireplace to stay warm and save money.” The change: “Never worry about being cold again.” And the end result: “Save money on your heating bill for years to come.” Each one of those is a sound bite.

ASH: Yes—and what you just crafted with those sound bites would be perfect for an email. I’m in Nashville, and we recently experienced a snowpocalypse where I was without power for nine days. So that’s a perfect follow-up email for me, because I do have a fireplace. However, my partner and I don’t use it, because it’s a wood-burning fireplace and he doesn’t want us burning wood in the house. I’d love to convert it to a gas fireplace that actually puts out heat. So that could come in your answer breakdown: “Here are three different ways you could solve this—this type, this type, or this type. We wonder which one would be for you. But here’s the main thing you’re going to take away: You’re not going to be cold in a blackout again.”

TR: It’s easy to get self-conscious and think, “This is too simple.” I want to transition to fear, ego, and identity, because a lot of bad marketing is fueled by insecurity. It really is. It actually takes a strong ego to say, “No, I’m going to speak really simply,” even though you could go really complicated. Can you talk about how fear, ego, and identity play into this?

ASH: My goodness, this is one of my favorite topics. So many times I’ll sit down with someone—even today, I was running a coaching group and asked, “What’s your two-word check-in? What are you coming into this time with?” And one woman said, “I’m having an identity crisis. I don’t know what I want to say. I don’t know what problem I solve for people.” That inner turmoil really keeps people from moving forward. It’s important to negotiate the internal struggle we have so we can pick things, try them out, and see what works. A lot of people, myself included—I’ve got a part of me that really wants me to get things right all the time. It’s very scared that we might do it the wrong way. It comes up a lot, not just in marketing but in my regular life. It wants me to do everything perfectly, and that’s because of my background and growing up. Of course I’m going to have a part that acts that way—it’s young. It thinks we’re back in second grade not doing something correctly, and it’s afraid for us. So I have to learn to turn toward those parts as my adult self and go, “Don’t worry, everything’s going to be all right. If you need anything, I’m here.” We don’t have to get it exactly right, because there really is no right or wrong here. There’s a framework we can use to move forward, pick something, and see how it lands—for us and for other people. That’s just one part of me that comes up a lot, but there’s a myriad of different parts. There are parts that are really harsh, that come in as a critic and go, “Ugh, what you’ve written is terrible.” That’s somebody else’s voice—that’s not your voice. Your voice is kind and wonderful to yourself. So it’s about getting curious about where those other voices come from, turning toward them, and giving them what they need. Then we move forward in our adult selves, going, “Hey, I understand what you’re going through,” offering compassion and guidance, and becoming our own guide in our own internal world. It’s a lifelong journey.

TR: What you’re saying is that self-awareness is the ingredient—and it’s one of the hardest things for anybody to grow in. I resonate with this so much. From a strictly business perspective, being more self-aware will make you a better salesperson and a better marketer. Because when people are self-aware, A, they take themselves less seriously, and B, they’re a lot more pleasant to be around, and they’re not a threat to other people.

ASH: Yes. And whenever you sit down to write something, it’s just an invitation for parts to come up and have a say. So we have to become a really good negotiator—that’s part of being a great guide. It’s also good to be aware that when somebody is telling us something in a sales scenario, I’m likely speaking to one of their parts if they’re carrying that fearful energy. What does that part of them need in this moment to deescalate and go, “There’s no threat here. We’re OK, we’re on the same team”? The thing I’m doing might be putting pressure on a part that feels threatened. How can we deescalate and get to a spot where I can keep coming back in and offering that empathy again? That’s really one of the keys: having empathy for whatever’s going on inside myself, and then empathy for whatever I’m noticing inside the person across from me.

TR: Empathy is so critical—to sales, to marketing—and the reason is that it’s critical to relationships. Someone with no empathy is like a megalomaniac or a psychopath; if people can’t empathize with someone else, it makes relationship virtually impossible. I told this story earlier this season, but maybe two or three years ago, I flew out for a big sales meeting with a company. It was me and a friend I work with, and I just bombed. It went terribly. Afterward, my friend said, “Tim, what happened to you in there? You just started talking about yourself.” And I realized—oh man, it’s so tempting for me, when I’m not sure of the environment, to seize the power dynamic. That’s what I did. I’ll never forget that he was gracious enough to give me that feedback. Since then it’s been on my radar: don’t take the power, don’t take the power. But it’s hard, because that’s my tendency. That sale actually came through nine months later, which was cool. But there are all these things inside us that shape our identity, good or bad, and it comes out in sales and marketing.

ASH: That’s right. And having that clarity from your friend—an outside perspective to say, “Hey, what was going on there? This isn’t your usual”—lets you go, “You’re right. I stepped in it this time, and that’s likely to happen again if I’m not aware of it.” Then there’s the inner clarity of, “I do this whenever this little stimulus happens.” We have to give ourselves grace and ask, “OK, the stimulus has happened—how can I decrease the amount of time before I respond?” That way I’m giving myself a beat, a moment, to choose a different way of doing things than I normally would.

TR: That’s exactly it. Whenever I teach sales, I always start here—and I think it’s true for marketing too. It’s so easy to go to a sales training that’s like, “I’m going to teach you how to overcome the objection, how to win the upsell.” I always start by saying, “If you’re here for that, that’s a different class—I’m not sure what class that is, but it’s not this one.” The definition I like to use is: Sales is communicating wisdom to bring someone to the point of a decision. That’s what it is. Marketing is similar. If we’re doing this right, we’re communicating wisdom to bring someone to the point of a decision. For now, we live in a free country, so people can say no if they want—and that’s fine. My job isn’t to make them say yes with my marketing. My job is to bring them to the point of a decision with the wisdom I can provide.

ASH: That’s right. And this PEACE framework is applicable in marketing and in live sales scenarios. If I can get somebody to articulate their problem, and I repeat it back so they think, “Yep, this person gets it,” they’re so much more ready to listen to the answer and ask, “Does that sound like something I’d want for myself?”—not because I’m trying to make them do it. Nobody wants to be coerced or manipulated. So having this PEACE framework installed in my operating system means I can use it on the fly in a conversation. I’m curious whether that’s been your experience too.

TR: A hundred percent. If I’m in a conversation and I hear something, I may not be able to put the whole framework together in a half-second, but there might be one part where I think, “There’s a statement of empathy I can give right here,” or, “I can explain what the end result is going to be.” And it goes back to repeated words and phrases. When you have easy-to-understand, easy-to-memorize things to say, people listen—because they’re easy. Versus speaking way over their head.

ASH: Exactly. It’s so powerful to just have a framework. This isn’t the only way to do marketing—marketing covers so many layers, and there are so many levers to pull. But it’s helpful to have a framework you can play within to figure out, “OK, what’s my starting place for saying this?” And I always want my starting place to have a low cognitive load—to make someone’s brain go, “I know exactly what they’re saying,” so they can decide, “Yeah, this is for me.” I want to make it a no-brainer for them.

TR: The purpose of the framework, like you said, is putting lines on the court so we know what game we’re playing. Without that, we spin off into nothingness. Honestly, there are a lot of marketing companies that come in and say, “We’re going to help you tell your story, because we help a lot of businesses tell their story.” They might make something that looks really nice and fancy, but it’s the emperor’s new clothes—there’s nothing actually there except a bunch of wasted money. The reason companies pay for it is, A, they don’t know what to do, and B, it caters to the ego. If a marketing company puts together something completely self-serving to the business, it feels really good to look at and go, “Yeah, we really are the innovators, we really do it better than anybody else.” But that’s not what your customer cares about.

ASH: I know. And it’s the easy thing to do, because it’s the seat we’re sitting in. Again, it’s that role-reversal skill—not everybody has it, and we haven’t been taught it. We sit in our seat, inside our own body, and we are “we.” The more we can practice switching roles and going, “I’m not going to think about this from my spot, I’m going to think about it from the customer’s spot,” the better. That skill of switching over there is one of the most undervalued skills in marketing.

TR: So let me ask you this: What does it look like if you’re listening to this and thinking, “OK, I want to lead with clarity. I want to speak in ways that are effective, for my team and my customers.” What does it look like to do that?

ASH: It looks like play. I want you to play with the framework—not treat it as an assignment you have to go out and crush. If you’re a person who can do that, amazing. But I want there to be an element of not taking it so seriously, because I’m a person who takes things very seriously.

TR: Me too. I even take having fun too seriously.

ASH: I’ve been accused of being a little too competitive at times. So I want it to be playful, fun, like an experiment you’re trying out: “What about this works for me?” And once you start playing, I want you to notice what’s coming up inside of you. Is there a part coming up saying, “Excuse me, I don’t know if we should do that”? What is it? Just notice. Any part that has some agenda, or a message that isn’t full of confidence, courage, compassion—all of those juicy c-words, like calm and creativity and curiosity—that place inside us is an essential ingredient in every human being. When we can get over to that spot, that’s really where clarity lives, and it allows us to move forward. Anything happening internally that makes us hesitate has some message for us. So the first step is just to notice what’s coming up, get curious about it, and start turning toward those parts: “Whose voice is that? Where did it come from? What’s the history of this for me?” That will help you form a relationship with that part inside you, so you can negotiate and move forward together.

TR: It’s funny—this is becoming a bit of a psychology session. But if we want effective marketing, we have to know what’s pulling our levers. Otherwise we project all kinds of things onto our customers—and, frankly, onto the people within our own company. I want to close here. As you start to craft a marketing message and ask, “What’s our customer’s problem? How can we show empathy?”—fear pops up. Fear can be good or bad; it’s not the all-defining thing. How should we think about fear as business owners and leaders, and how can we move past it?

ASH: I always start with curiosity, because curiosity opens me up to figuring out what could be going on. A lot of times, when I’ve got a part that comes up giving me fearful vibes, there are other parts that come in really strong, and they might be polarized. One might say, “We’re going all in on this.” Another says, “We’re not spending any money or shipping any of this until we’ve got it exactly right.” So now I’ve got these protective parts coming in with ideas on how to handle it—but there’s something underneath those protectors that needs my attention. It’s telling me something, and it probably needs something from me. So it’s that curiosity: Can I go within and find out what this part needs to tell me? That turning-toward is so difficult at times, because a lot of those parts feel like us. It feels like the adult version of us—“This is me.” But it’s not. It’s typically something from our past showing up again, going, “Remember when this happened? We’re never letting this happen again.”

TR: Yeah—“Remember when you were hurt. Remember when you were embarrassed.”

ASH: “Don’t even think about going down that road again.” So these protectors show up and say, “Maybe we should handle it like this.” They’re either acting proactively on our behalf, or they’re firefighters, coming in to put out that feeling as quickly as possible. Of course, your audience knows so much about fire—so it’s great to notice these protectors coming in and managing, or firefighting, on our behalf. Then we can finally get to know what they’re protecting. What part of us from the past needs us to update it and say, “Hey, look at all the decisions we’ve made from our adult self that have really worked out. What do you need in order to move forward? Do you just need some love? Do you need to not attend some of these sales calls because they’re scary for you?” And for anyone listening, all of this is based on internal family systems—a therapy modality I’ve become obsessed with, similar to becoming obsessed with the StoryBrand framework. I’m just amazed at how much the internal work to find clarity and the external work to find clarity go hand in hand.

TR: April, this is so good. If we want to be effective with our messaging, our marketing, our communicating, we have to know ourselves, we have to know our customers, and we have to be the guide. It’s not about us—we’re helping them overcome a problem. If we can understand those things, we can come up with material that actually helps make things better. This has been amazing. If people want to find you and work with you, how can they do that?

ASH: I’m on Instagram, @april_sunshine_. You can just slide into my DMs.

TR: Awesome. This has been so good. Thank you for being on the show today.

ASH: Tim, thanks for having me.