How Authentic Storytelling + AI Is Transforming Business Growth

Wayne Sutton: building a business in a very busy world. I am here today with my very good friend Eli Austin for another episode of Prosper with Wayne, creating health, wealth and happiness in your life. And I'm going to just jump right in. Eli, I have massive respect for you. I know you're going to have a lot of great information that you can bring to our listeners today. I always like to start these podcasts with is why you should listen to us. ⁓ So let's begin with that. Like what are you hoping to bring? What do you plan on bringing to our guests today? And what can they benefit?

Eli Austin: Yeah. Well, I think, you know, the first and foremost super short and sweet is we're in a very noisy world. There's a lot of ⁓ objects, shiny objects out there. There's tools that we're trying to leverage. are in an AI world, right? As business owners, as executives, as just individuals that consume content, AI is everywhere. And it's being embedded into a lot of what we do. And I think there's, there's fear with AI, but there's also power behind it. And what I'm hoping to bring is and understanding of how you can leverage it, what you should be aware of, but how you can leverage it. an opportunity that I really think is strong, specifically speaking to marketers, to almost go back to the authentic storytelling. I love that. That's what I'm all about. And I think that's an area that it's super exciting when you can really understand how to leverage AI.

Wayne Sutton: That's so important. So important. Yeah. I built a career on storytelling. You know, I really have, whether it be, whether it would be in sales or marketing or ministry. mean, telling a story. And I do believe that I had this conversation just a few days ago with someone I said with everything that's out there, authenticity, human to human connection.

Eli Austin: Right.

Wayne Sutton: is being kind of ignored today. Yeah.

Eli Austin: Yeah, it is. It is. it's funny. We, we've often before the AI boom, right. My partner and I, who's also my mother, so I'll have it, you know, have a slip of the tongue and I'll say my mom and I's discussion. So my mother and I have a little bit of background, have a marketing agency. have a boutique digital marketing agency called the Yazo group. We're going on over 10 years of working together, primarily in the SMB space. What are know, SMB to mid market. If you're in that sort of teetering over a million all the way up to 50 to a hundred million in revenue a year. That's, it's a big range, but that's really where we play and that B2B space. ⁓ we have some B2C folks, but it's funny we've before AI really jumped into the marketing world, right? We were just kind of like tiptoeing into the water. We had talked a lot about going back to traditional marketing, like going back to radio, going back to billboard, going back to, you know, mailers, these tactile pieces. because we are in a world where the number of communication channels is endless and there is constant use of those channels, which I always say there's constant noise. There's always things fighting for your time and your attention, whether it's these devices that we have, the screens that we're talking on now, there's so much happening ⁓ that you have to be able to create a tactile experience and we're finding almost what was old is now becoming new again. I mean, even if you think about like fashion trends, right? What was popular in the nineties is becoming popular again. If you look at music, you look at, know, just trends across the board, entertainment, a lot of those old things are becoming new again. And I believe in my heart of hearts. Why that is, is because you have a true tactile, authentic experience, bring AI into the equation. And it's only made that

Wayne Sutton: Hmm, yeah.

Eli Austin: explode even more because it gives us the ability to move so quickly, but it also opens up a lot of potential risks if you don't know what you're doing or how to leverage it.

Wayne Sutton: Yeah, that's good. So the 90s are coming back. So Walkmans, know, boombox on my side. Yeah, that's awesome. So here's the thing, you know, it's really interesting you brought up direct mail and so forth. I sat down two days ago with one of our guests that was on one of our first episodes, Adam Nagler. And Adam has a

Eli Austin: Ha Absolutely.

Wayne Sutton: You know, multiple, he 13 companies, 14 companies now, many of them seven, eight figures. So we sat down here in, uh, at Ritesville beach and we just spent hours and we were like game planning and, just catching up. And, and really we looked at three or four projects and I really loved it. The end of it. One of the ideas that he had for me and he was like, Wayne, can you write two handwritten letters a day to this specific group? And I'm like, Wow, it hit me like, yes. How rare is that? Now, are we gonna use AI to scrape data? Are we gonna use AI to get the right list? And are we gonna use AI to help craft the right message? Yes. But the handwritten, know, pen on paper. And I know there's software that can make it look like that. But no, I mean, really genuine, because that's zigging when other people are zagging.

Eli Austin: Yes.

Wayne Sutton: You know, really, I'm excited about it. And I thought, yeah, what a small, can I write two handwritten letters a day? Maybe five, but I'm gonna commit the two.

Eli Austin: while I'm sitting on my desk.

Wayne Sutton: That's so good. Yeah, yeah. So how would you? Yeah, go ahead.

Eli Austin: And it's funny how it's just, I think that those resonate to your, love where you're going with it because there's dirt. goes back to the authentic piece. But if you really wanted to do this, I think the way that the way that you approach in a digestible way is we always say, can you do it in a repeatable fashion? Is it scalable? If it's not something that you can continue to do. It's probably not worth your time because again, in marketing, it always goes back to how many touch points. It's not like you're going to send one letter and you're going to make a million dollars. That is not how it works. Right. We've said it before. Everybody wants a quick fix and they want it to stick. That ain't how it happens. All right. So first and foremost, attack something that is repeatable for you. Find an area that you can carve out and say, yes, you know what, to your point, I can commit to writing to handwritten letters, whether it's a week or a day.

Wayne Sutton: anyway. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Eli Austin: set a goal for yourself that's achievable and repeatable. That first and foremost helps create a habit. It helps create a pattern. You know, that's a big area is where we talk to a lot of executives at Yazo and they get really excited about marketing, yet they don't follow through. So that's the biggest thing I think is in this world where there's so much opportunity, there's so many shiny objects, you can get super distracted. So you have to pick and choose where you should spend your time and spending your time in an area that you can commit to a goal that's achievable. And then from there, track the data, track the results. I'm sure that's part of what you and Adam discussed is not only set a goal for yourself, but then look at the results. When you send those letters, how many responses are you getting back from those letters? What are the responses to the letters? Is there a particular message that you see is working?

Wayne Sutton: Yeah. Yeah. And it was really great too. And I would never tell somebody starting a business, just mail two letters a day. So that's just part of the process, but it is a very, very specific niche with a very specific offer that I need two clients a month to make a great, great additional, you know, maybe one client a month. we're not, but also I love this because it's the consistency.

Eli Austin: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Wayne Sutton: So now when the email, when the handwritten letter goes out, then of course we have, let's go back to AI. I've got the workflows of, you know, we're going to touch them on LinkedIn. We're going to touch them on Facebook. We're going to touch them through emails, but it's that human to human connection. And, you know, we hadn't even talked about this. know, we talked ⁓ yesterday briefly, but we hadn't even talked about this, but it's the storytelling in that handwritten letter. So when you brought that up today, I was like, that's exactly what we're talking about. It's the story.

Eli Austin: Yes.

Wayne Sutton: that connects with people. And like I said, I've made a career out of storytelling. In fact, somebody asked me probably 10, 15 years ago, what do you want to do the rest of your life? I said, I want to tell stories. I just want to talk with people and get paid for it. And so how do you design that? the story needs to lead to a call to action to actually invest with you. But how are you at

Eli Austin: Amen.

Wayne Sutton: your agency or maybe in your own personal life. I'm just curious, like how do you take something like storytelling and implement it into, ⁓ how do you get traction? Let me ask that.

Eli Austin: Yeah. Well, I think it's a great, a great way to start is understand that there are tools available to you now that we are in this world of AI. It's it's I at YASA. What we typically do is start with a structure and an outline, almost like a whiteboarding session, right? Going back to the old days, you're in a conference room and you're just writing ideas down. That is, that is still a starting point. Get a jam session, get a whiteboard session, work through concepts and ideas and create a list.

Wayne Sutton: ⁓ yeah.

Eli Austin: and start to whittle those lists down until you find two or three that are repeatable, that are scalable, that you're excited, you're truly excited about because excitement comes emotion and with emotion comes authenticity. So it says two to three that you zero in on, right? To create an authentic opportunity. Then go out and leverage. That's the beauty of what we have now with AI and automation is you can take those two or three ideas. pump them into some form of structure, whether it's a Claude, a Chachi PT, a Gemini, Copilot, whatever it is, and just get ideas generated. It's a super quick way to get down and dirty and spit out 10 to 20 ideas that are building off of your two or three concepts and see what works, see what lands with you. Take those and do ⁓ like an internal review with your team. Take it to your client, see if there's any that stick with them. So it's... That's typically what we do is we start what I call jam session whiteboard, get down and dirty, get two or three ideas that are authentic, that are repeatable, and then leverage AI or automation to create a larger library of messaging that you then test. So it's sort of like a step-by-step process. Now that we're weaving in AI and automation, it can be sped up and expedited a lot more quickly. You can get things generated. That's the beauty of it. But a lot of folks where we see the misstep is they don't take the time to truly go through the jam session, right? To sit down and say, who is my client? Or what am I selling? What are my products? What are my services? And nail down two or three authentic ideas. They're immediately going to AI and saying, here's what we do, give me ideas.

Wayne Sutton: Yeah.

Eli Austin: It's what we've talked about before with AI. It's bad data in bad data out. It's all about your out, your prompting. What are you putting into it? And that's really where I truly feel like those, those marketers, there's business leaders, those just storytellers out there that love to really get into candid, authentic stories are going to find this is a super big area of opportunity because you can do that and then leverage AI to push out content in a more efficient manner.

Wayne Sutton: Very true. Yeah. And I know you're a big fan of EOS and I'd love to hear like your thoughts behind it, why that's something for you as ⁓ a marketing agency.

Eli Austin: Mm-hmm. Honestly, you know, Wayne, we've been in business for over 10 years, which is crazy to think about. ⁓ and just like there's AI and there's shiny tools, there's so many structures and frameworks and business leaders that say they've got the right. You know, the right five things, et cetera. EOS. mean, I have the book sitting right here on my, on my desk. It, takes simple ideas. It's five to seven simple ideas and it breaks them into, you know, I think there's six components. It's. vision, it's people, it's data, it's issues, it's process and it's traction. And then it gives you the simple framework to really make it a practical operating system for your business. You don't have to be distracted by like, ⁓ my gosh, we have 10 metrics over here. We've got 15 over here. And if those don't cross pollinate and we don't find the exact right person, you just, get super inundated and then you get analysis paralysis, which I feel like today is probably the most. impediment to any business leaders analysis paralysis, because there's so many, have the greatest solution ever out there that you can't figure out where do I spend my time? So traction for us, you know, with myself and my, you know, my business partner, my mother, it was an opportunity for us to really say, okay, we're going to commit again, committing to something that's digestible. And then putting it into place. What was nice about traction in the OS is they give you like rocks, something that you work towards on a quarterly fashion. keep each other accountable. So it's just super simple framework. And that's why I loved it. And it's why it's we've implemented it so quickly. And then I take that and I think about it from a marketing perspective, right? It's find a simple framework that fits your business. Don't be distracted by the, you know, 100 different metrics that could potentially be success. Right? That's it's the kiss method is why I've loved it.

Wayne Sutton: Hmm. Sure, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so it's so powerful too, because, I worked with a, I was running a sales team for a probably the largest real estate, ⁓ investment company trainer there is. And in running that team, he said, here's our system. won't mention it here, but I looked at it I said, well, this is the EOS.

Eli Austin: Huh?

Wayne Sutton: Kind of, kind of. They just rebranded it. But the point was they took EOS and they applied it just for real estate investing. But something he said, said, Wayne, every phone, every computer has an operating system. And that's what makes it work. We need the same thing in our business. So have an operating system. Also, something that me and you talked about just last evening was the ability to go, hey, this is a great idea, but Is it worth my time? Is it worth my effort? You know, I used to tell people when you have an idea, like number one, can you do it? Is it possible? Is it possible? If it's possible, great. Is it worth it? And that thing, that's where people miss it. You know, I had a, you know, I had a couple of other steps in there, but a number of years ago, I had a gentleman here in Wilmington come up to me and he said, I have a six figure photography business. He does.

Eli Austin: Yes. Yeah.

Wayne Sutton: beachfront photography, you know, just not people, just, you know, visuals. And he said, I'd love to, I'd love to give it to you. Literally give it to you. I want to show you how to do it. I want to train you. And this could be yours. And he just, we'd built such a, just a friendship. And I said, well, how much do you want for the business? And I'm going into, you know, that he said, I just want you to take time. If you want to buy my equipment, great. If not get your own, but I just want you to take time and let me show you how to do this. What a great offer. And, um, is it, could I learn how to take a photo of a seagull? Sure. Um, was it a very successful business? Absolutely. But was it worth the time? It was possible, but it wasn't worth my time and energy. I'm like, cause I didn't have a passion behind it. I would have been like, doing everything else I do. mean, so you have to look at that. And I think that's something too. And I don't know if you how this in your storytelling goes, but I always tell people, I think back to my story that's led me to here. the internal stories, the real life stories that led me to where I'm at right now, doing a podcast interview with you. And then what story do I want for the next 10 years, 20 years, whatever. And I think that goes back to, this is more on an individual basis, but if you know that story, I know as a coach, a consultant, a minister, what my story is.

Eli Austin: Yes. Yes.

Wayne Sutton: And I want to share that in a way that other people go, ⁓ I want to be part of that. And, ⁓ and I think that's important. I'd love to hear how do you, that how you go from jam session to, you know, creating marketing material for your clients or.

Eli Austin: Mmm, that's good. It's good. Yeah, we, it's funny, Wayne, we, we've talked a lot, you know, in our seaside podcast, right? And Jerry has this thing where he looks at the word and it's, I'm going to relate this back to marketing. So bear with me here where we see the word therefore in the Bible and we have to understand what it's there for. We do a very similar process at Yazo. We are here. Why are you here? What are you here for? Right? What, what, how have you gotten here?

Wayne Sutton: Therefore, yeah.

Eli Austin: What is your, you know, is there a change in your business? Or is there something you're passionate about? How did you start your, so it's very much getting an understanding of when we interact with leaders is why are they doing their business? Why are they involved in it on a day-to-day basis? What makes them happy in their business? What makes them happy outside of their business? And most importantly, what do they not want to do? What do they not like? And why I think a lot of people miss that, that part.

Wayne Sutton: Yeah.

Eli Austin: and why it's so impactful is you've started a business because you've you're passionate typically about something you're excited about something or it's your education, right? It's maybe you were brought up in a family business, et cetera. There's there's all potential avenues there, but what people miss is there's something that you very much dislike. And often what you dislike is similar to what your customers dislike. So you need to able to steer away from that, or you can use it as a way to generate

Wayne Sutton: Hmm.

Eli Austin: messaging, et cetera. So we really dig in to understand the individuals at a basis and then the company. it's like individual level, company level, product services, right? But it's, it's not just what you do and how you do it, but why you do it, what makes you tick. And that's, that's a huge piece of authentic storytelling, right? That makes up your, your voice guide. It understands, you know, what is the style of the writing? What is the voice that you should be carrying out? What do you, you know, What do you want the emotion to be behind it? That's why we go into and we ask, what don't you like? Because that often that's where the emotion comes out. It's like, I hate that. I don't want to do that. We do not. That's do not what our product should be doing. So you say, okay, there's the big no-go zone, right? Everything else around that is fair game. This is where we should be playing. So it almost creates your sandbox for you. We talk about that a lot at Yazut. Let's get in the sandbox together. Let's build some ca like some castles. Let's dig some tunnels. Let's figure out what works.

Wayne Sutton: Cool. you

Eli Austin: But you have to understand the parameters of your sandbox first and foremost in order to be able to create authentic stories that land with your customers. I think that's another piece today in the world is you can have a million messages, but do you really know who your customer is? Like truly, if I said, okay, Wayne, who is your customer? Can you tell me who they are, where they live, what they like? Like your true ideal customer profile. ⁓ Honestly, a lot of people can't.

Wayne Sutton: No, they cannot. Yeah. Yeah. That's exactly. I've seen that because you, it's not everybody. That's one of the, you are not well-worn. And so really getting into that RCP, you're exactly right. And I think that's something that I would even say.

Eli Austin: Exactly.

Wayne Sutton: Your, your ideal client in one area of business will not be the same ideal client in another area. So if you have multiple businesses, a lot of times we miss that. Or if you're, ⁓ you know, I've done fractional sales management and sales management for two to three companies at a time. And I have to understand they're different ICPs. But also, and I, I think also as we grow.

Eli Austin: Exactly. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Wayne Sutton: You know, I hear at 50, I'm different than I was at 30 as a businessman. And so not only what do I want, but who I want to help in, and even my, you know, like how do I see me working for the next X amount of years? And I think that goes back to your, ⁓ ICP can change based on not just a product, but with technology.

Eli Austin: Completely.

Wayne Sutton: You know, things that are changing today, I mean, I look at the, what AI has done and the, like one of the teams I'm working with now, I mean, I can see where AI, mean, like two months ago, we were going to hire another SDR. And now we're like, wait a minute for 1500 a month. We can save $8,000 here. $12,000 here. I'm seeing AI already, you know, take jobs if that's what you want to call it. So we have to use the technology. No one, I mean, that's just reality. ⁓ I laugh about when people get, for lack of better words, just pissed off about AI, don't believe in it, want to ignore it. I'm like, they said that about the combustion engine at one time too. They said that about computers in a home. Who needs a personal computer in their home?

Eli Austin: Yeah.

Wayne Sutton: you know, and now we have them right here. So, really it excites me. It makes me a little nervous sometimes because I'm like, okay, where, where's this heading? ⁓ but I think it's a good shift. I really do. I think it's a good.

Eli Austin: It is. I do too. And I believe it's created right now where we are. It's done three things. You know, it's, created opportunity, but it's exposed weak areas, weak areas of strategy, weak processes. And then it's created a lot of noise. So that's exactly what by those three is happening. That's exactly where a real story with a clear foundation or a framework is going to be successful, which is why I get so excited. because it allows us to go back to that true storytelling piece. But it also is you're finding with the more AI driven, I want to say, I don't want to say if it was 2026, but 25 into 2026, there's like 95 % of our interactions are driven by AI in some form or fashion. To your point, whether you're calling something and it's an AI, an AI recorded machine, or it's an AI driven personalized email, or it's a follow-up automated text message because you there's always some form of AI driven impact to your engagement, right? What that inherently is going to do now is the thirst, the desire to talk to somebody real, engage with someone who's really saying, hear you, Wayne. And you're gonna find those people that can do this, that can connect.

Wayne Sutton: Yes.

Eli Austin: are gonna be the ones that are truly going to be successful. So that's why I don't necessarily get scared. I do see it replacing. mean, there's things I'm doing today versus what I did a year ago that just 12 months ago were not possible. The amount of things that we can do, the efficiency that's there, you may be efficient, but is it effective?

Wayne Sutton: That's a very, very effective. I mean, that's a very good point. Efficient and maybe not effective because... You know, I really believe humans. I really see people are either very lazy or very inspired and and sometimes both. And yeah, hey, I don't have to. I can be efficient here with AI, but if it loses the effectiveness. What have you done? You've created more noise. Really interesting. I was listening to I was listening to YouTube music. I know everybody's a Pandora or whatever or.

Eli Austin: Yeah, true.

Wayne Sutton: Spotify, I just love YouTube music. And I heard the song, I'm like, my goodness, this is a great song. Who is this? And it was AI. And I didn't think, ⁓ this is probably AI. I really thought, who is this band? I've never heard it. And I'm not a big music person. And I looked and it was AI worship. And it was like, and I was like.

Eli Austin: Uh-huh.

Wayne Sutton: ⁓ my goodness, how crazy of a world we live in. but I also, let's go back to authentic. also want to hear the person that I want to hear their journey into the music world. I want to hear how this person went into the music world, whether it's your, know, Taylor Swift's or whether it's, whoever, like then Jelly Roll, whoever, like this is their story. ⁓ When I hear, it's not my favorite song, but there's that ⁓ heartfelt hallelujah or whatever jelly roll. I loved it the first 10 times, my goodness, they played it. But yeah, they played, but the song, when you know the hell he went through, you feel that authenticity and you can take that into marketing as well. mean, how many rags, riches stories, how many, this is what we do. You buy a shoe, we give a shoe.

Eli Austin: Yeah. Yeah, it's played. Yes. Mmm.

Wayne Sutton: You know, you buy a pair of shoes, we give a pair of shoes away. Those stories, they hit here. And that's when you go, wow, this is, you know, that's what I think AI can help you make the story, but AI cannot create history. can tell it. It can fictionalize it, but it can't create history and cannot create connection.

Eli Austin: Absolutely. It's funny that you say that because we just did a project. I mean, literally last week we did the recording for it. ⁓ but it's a, have a client who's celebrating 25 years in business, which is a huge milestone. mean, forget the percentage, but there's very small percentage of businesses that make it past six months, even less beyond three years, let alone 25. So we've been kicking the tires on how do we want to do this? You know, they have an anniversary event coming up. We really wanted to do some storytelling opportunities and we went through some different.

Wayne Sutton: Yeah.

Eli Austin: ⁓ exercises and we kind of like landed on what I would call scripted versus unscripted. And it's funny as I was preparing for the shoot, I said to myself, and I said to the client, we're going to pivot away from this and why, because I want to hear authentic from them, their 25 year story and having them read a teleprompter with a line is not their true emotional, authentic 25 year story. Asking them.

Wayne Sutton: Yeah.

Eli Austin: and letting them give it to me is. Now the difference there is, you you read from a teleprompter, you can get them to say exactly what you want them to say, right? But going back to efficiency versus effectiveness, yes, it's an efficient way to get words out of their mouth, but is it truly an effective story coming from their heart and truly bringing their emotion out? No. So will it?

Wayne Sutton: Yeah.

Eli Austin: By us making the pivot, it puts a little bit more work on the marketing team to say, okay, we have a little bit more of a long winded answer, but this is the true emotion of their 25 year journey. So we're going to take that and stitch it together. So that's where I think we are today. It's, leans into the authentic piece, but also it's an example of like having. Call it healthy AI versus unhealthy AI. Healthy AI is, you know, get rid of the.

Wayne Sutton: Yes. ⁓ No, no, no.

Eli Austin: It allows you to create things. can, you can get first drafts done. You can do the ideation. can repurpose things unhealthy is when you go and say, I want to outsource the entire voice. want you to write the entire script. Do not do that. Do not let the toll decide what you think, what you sound like and what you believe. You need to say, this is what I think. This is what I sound like. This is what I believe. Take the transcript of that recording that you just did and help to find those areas that were truly authentic versus you saying.

Wayne Sutton: Yeah.

Eli Austin: All right, AI, write me the script and have them, you know, repeat it. Like it's just, it's ⁓ perfect example of where I think we're going and where I think true authentic storytelling is going to be the differentiator.

Wayne Sutton: Hmm. Yeah. In, in sales, just, will say this too in sales. I don't think there's anything more powerful than a story. ⁓ I introduced stories in my, in my pitch. ⁓ when someone has an objection, a lot of times I'll revert back to a story. In fact, when I teach coach, when I coach on sales, I'll be like, what's your top three to five objections.

Eli Austin: Amen.

Wayne Sutton: Let's try to handle them before they get there. But if you have them now, let's have a story about the company, a story about the product, a story about you, a story about whatever for each of those objections. And when I really had so many clients go, Wayne, it's too much. said, yeah, but it's the key because stories bring relatability stories, lower resistance. I'm talking on distance sales here. Not really as much marketing. doesn't marketing too, but the stories are lower resistance and stories allow you to get in there and shift ⁓ or elicit maybe belief, elicit buying patterns. So authentic storytelling is so important. It's so important. I agree with you. And that's on a one-on-one sales, but I go back to that and not people are using AI to just create content. I see it also when people are in sales. I'm talking, you know, one-on-one or one to many, and they're just like, here's my script. You get in there and tell a story. Can you share emotion? You know, can you really just bring that? And that's what I think is going to change a lot of people's lives over the next few years as more AI. And I watched two or three videos this morning and they were AI created. It was good knowledge. It was. And the person looked, I mean, almost had me fooled, but, but they're still, is that authentic or was it a script from Claude that went to 11 labs that went to, know, and just here it is. I'm pretty sure it was. ⁓ Maybe that's working for them in a scale. you scale that, most people. I feel like authenticity is going to be something not just that works better, but actually you feel better at the end of the day. Cause you've connected with people.

Eli Austin: Yeah. Well, I take it back to the evangelizing and your spirituality. What your story is the best, your testimony is the best way to connect with people. And it's the same way in marketing. It's the same way in sales. It allows who you're talking to, it allows the audience to almost self identify.

Wayne Sutton: Yeah.

Eli Austin: They can see themselves in the story, but whether you're sharing your testimony and spiritual, whether you're talking about an objection sales or whether you're trying to build a story arc and marketing by you using storytelling tactics, the audience can hear it and they can put themselves into the story. That was huge. And once they do that, they've subconsciously committed. then you're, you've already bridged that gap.

Wayne Sutton: Yes, absolutely.

Eli Austin: and you can push forward. And that's a huge piece of it. And I think a tactile example of that is if you look at some of the most successful brands right now, particularly in like the nutrition space, I follow someone Nick Bear. He's an endurance athlete and he started out of his college dorm and now has a multimillion dollar nutritional products business called Bear Performance, Bear BPN, Bear Performance Nutrition. ⁓ And he is the reason why is he is the most authentic storyteller I think I've seen yet. Everything that he does, he talks about why he's doing it, how it's impacted his life. He's recently, you know, has talked about his spiritual journey and how that relates to his endurance and how that has driven him to create specific products. All of that is storytelling and his, that is what's led him to find other people that like his brand. So he's found other

Wayne Sutton: Yeah.

Eli Austin: what we would call influencers, but really he's finding other storytellers to help share their story so that you can connect. There's more people that can connect. that is like, it sounds so simple, but it it's truly what moves the needle regardless of what industry you're in.

Wayne Sutton: It really is. And if you really look at why is Joe Rogan, Sean Ron, why, why do people Taylor Welch people are going to these podcasts not to get information, phone information, I can go to, like you said, I'm going to Gemini, Claude, I can just download or so much information. ⁓ You know, probably without exaggerating. terabytes of information I'll never get to on a hard drive. You know, they've just invested in this, but I want to hear the story. I want to hear that story. And here's another thing too. People, you bring up Joe Rogan, you bring up these people that are storytelling and allowing people to tell stories, there's an automatic trust there. There's an automatic, you're borrowing their credibility. So anyway, the point is people go there to hear this. ⁓ I'm listening to a great podcast this morning. And it's like, man, you it's the story behind this process he went through. And yeah, he could probably take the points and make five bullet points and go, Wayne, do this, this, this, and this in your life would be better. Great. But I want to hear the story behind it. So, ⁓ and I love that you're doing it. And you understand that because I think a lot of marketing agencies, they're not going to be here if they don't bring in some kind of heart. I think it, because we get so excited with the shiny object, we get so excited that Claude can create this or, you know, Jim and I can do this. And I do too. I love it. Here's another, but, ⁓ but how do we love it?

Eli Austin: Yeah.

Wayne Sutton: use it properly and still help build our business and others.

Eli Austin: Amen. And I, it's funny because I go back to it again. I know he said it a few times, but we're so, we, we want instant gratification and the technology and AI has only drives that further and further. So there's a lot of you, you inherently see, ⁓ there's five things that you can do in five minutes and make a million dollars. That's a, that's a headline brother. You know what I mean? It's, it's not going to be practical. It's where you see things really changes.

Wayne Sutton: Sure. Yeah.

Eli Austin: Here's five things that you can do. Here's five stories that back it up. And here's how I've implemented it over the last five months. The difference there is it's truly something that you can touch. You can feel, you can hear the substance behind it. And then it gives you a little bit of a runway of how you can implement this. It's not five minutes, five things, quick fix forever. Like it's just a different way of approaching it. And I think it's gonna weed out a lot of the bad marketers. You know, I really, It's going to happen. It's going to weed out those folks that just simply rely on technology to do things, which I think there's an effectiveness. There's an efficiency piece there. And then it goes back to, it truly effective on the, on the long run? And I think honest, emotional, relevant stories are going to be what resonates with folks. And we're going to enter a season where that's going to be in high demand because we are in, I think what they're calling it is the first AI native year for brands, meaning that AI is not just a side product.

Wayne Sutton: and

Eli Austin: or side project, it's baked into everything that they're doing. So inherently you're getting more and more and more, but you're getting less and less and less of substance. So it's going to create this huge gap where folks want to touch and feel real things, real stories and get, pull on those heartstrings. So, I mean, is it, is it uneasy?

Wayne Sutton: Yeah.

Eli Austin: Absolutely. Is you look at things and I'm like, ⁓ my gosh, man, we did this in 18 months. How am I going to have a job in, three years? But you just have to go back to the, your grassroots and understand what moves the needle in your organization. Is there a cultural thing that you can lean into? Is there some form of emotional connection between your product and your service? Like think about those things. Think about what are you doing? How are you giving back to the community?

Wayne Sutton: me.

Eli Austin: Like all of the, there's ways to tell the stories that you can connect with people. I just think you have to take the time and dedicate it to figuring those points out. Like I said, everybody now thinks you can just throw things into AI and it's going to give you the best 10 ideas in 10 seconds. Well, you just need to dedicate the time and the space and then leverage AI. Understand what you're framing and then use it. Yeah.

Wayne Sutton: But you're so good. Yeah, so good. That's so good. ⁓ Eli, share with the audience how people can get in touch with you. What's the best way for them to reach out to you?

Eli Austin: Well, ⁓ easiest things find me on LinkedIn, Eli Austin on LinkedIn or go to yasso group.com. That's our website. We're going to be in the process of overhauling some of that over the next probably 12 months, maybe even less, but connect with me on LinkedIn. That's probably where I spend the most of my time. ⁓ if you find us on the website, drop us a note, do a contact form. I'll get back to you. My partner, Angie, we'll get back to you. are. Very, very, we over communicate, I think sometimes, but that's how we build our business at Yazo. It's our say do ratio. We believe in that. We are super transparent on whether we think we can work with you or not. So if you're just trying to figure out where you are, whether you have a small marketing team or you do not have a marketing team at all, we work in a couple different models, whether we plug in as a virtual chief marketing officer, or we just support your marketing team with deliverables, strategy, et cetera. ⁓ we're happy to kick the tires together and see what potentially works. But that's the easiest way is LinkedIn, I would say.

Wayne Sutton: Yeah, that's good, that's good. And I will say this, I'll just give you a little, the companies I know that you're personally working with have only said great things about you and I know them personally, so that's good. So yeah, definitely check out Eli. As we wrap up the show, Eli, I always like to end with health, wealth, and happiness. Choose one, leave us with a word of wisdom.

Eli Austin: Okay, I talked to you about this the other day. It's a mixture of health and happiness, but for me, it's an idea that I found in training for the Half Iron Man last year. It's faith, power, and provision. Where you have faith, God's power and provision will step in. So that's what I leave everybody with this year is faith, power, and provision. Where you have faith, God's power and provision will step in.

Wayne Sutton: so good. That's so good. Eli, thanks again for being on the show. Really enjoyed it.

Eli Austin: I appreciate it, brother. I love it. I'm excited to be here.

Wayne Sutton: Good, good. Me and Eli, for those who don't know, me and Eli do a weekly podcast at our church. So I'm kind of getting used to the podcast thing. Really great. And for everybody else that, you know, following us here on Prosper, do me a favor, click that share button. If you haven't subscribed yet, subscribe, but click that share button. Someone out there needs to hear this. And the beautiful thing about, you know, Prosper with Wayne is we do talk about health.

Eli Austin: That's right. Hahaha

Wayne Sutton: We do talk about wealth. We do talk about happiness. We talk about metrics and KPIs and we talk about Jesus and everything in between. ⁓ and then that probably goes, and I love that Eli, because that probably goes against everybody that said Wayne niche down, niche down, niche down. But I thought, you know what? I want to be authentic. And I love talking about all these topics. So here we are. ⁓ our last episode was a ⁓ lady who went from, ⁓

Eli Austin: Allah Yes.

Wayne Sutton: which ⁓ a witch from a Wiccan lifestyle into a Christianity. We had one before that talked about how to get into international trade. And now we're talking about marketing. So if you, yeah, yeah. And it's all about Prosper is like getting the edge, getting and maintaining the edge. So again, guys, thanks for following us here and be sure we have a new website now for the podcast. So just go to prosper with Wayne.com. You can see all of our.

Eli Austin: of it.

Wayne Sutton: shows, show notes, and if you're looking to be a guest, you can also fill that out as well. Until next time, go out there, prosper in all areas, and God bless.