EP 281: Storytelling in your business with Rain Bennett

Truly could not be more excited about today's episode than I am.

We're talking with Rain Bennett about how storytelling can help your business.

This is going to be a good one.

I hope that you enjoy it.

Welcome to the Weekly Wealth Podcast.

I am certified financial planner David Chudick.

This podcast and my wealth management practice are both designed to help the mass affluent to live better lives by how they handle their money.

We talk about financial strategies, prosperous mindsets, and simply how to build true wealth.

So come on and let's enjoy this journey together.

Hey everybody.

Welcome to this week's episode of the Weekly Wealth Podcast where we talk about the mindsets, the tactics and the strategies to help you to build and maintain wealth.

And we're taking a little bit of a different path today.

Last week or a couple weeks ago, we talked about life insurance and some of its advanced uses.

We've talked about Trump accounts accounts.

We've talked about the one big beautiful bill.

This week we're talking about storytelling, which kind of makes no sense on.

On a financial planning podcast, but I think you're going to really get a lot out of it.

So we have Rain Bennett today.

He's the CSO of Elomir and he's going to tell us what a CSO is.

But he's an Emmy nominated filmmaker, author and keynote speaker.

And he's the host of a podcast called the Storytelling Lab.

Hey, Rain, how are you?

I'm doing well, my friend.

Thanks for having me.

So what is a cso?

I know.

A cfo.

I know.

But what's a cso?

CSO stands for Chief Storytelling Officer.

And I want to right off the bat, clarify that it is not one of those clever little made up acronyms where it's like, I'm the Chief Energy officer, whatever.

Although you could argue that all of them were made up at some point.

But this is a role that has been around technically since the 90s, but in the past year alone has exponentially grown and exploded in its frequency and ubiquity in the corporate landscape.

All you have to do is look at LinkedIn and search.

Chief Storyteller, Chief Storytelling Officer, Narrative Lead, Head of storytelling.

You have companies all over the globe spending hundreds of thousands of dollars for the salaries of these new storyteller and creative positions.

And there is a.

There are many reasons for that, and I'm sure we'll get into those today.

Absolutely.

All right, so storytelling, it almost seems like some, like, why are we even talking about this?

How could storytelling help your business to be a better business?

So let's first talk about, like, why is storytelling important for business owners, business people and professionals, maybe salespeople or really anybody who influences anybody?

Why is storytelling important?

Yeah, that's a great place to start to set the stage.

I will even go zoom out a little bit further and say it is important for any human because what storytelling is, it is the foundation, it is the essence of communication and human connection.

Okay.

We are trying to build a connection first, which turns into a relationship, which then creates trust, that bond creates trust.

And when we have those things, we can collaborate with that person, whether that means selling them an item or product, whether that means actually building a relationship with them, whether that means convincing them to join our team, whatever it is.

Any engagement, any touch point between humans is an opportunity for storytelling because it is the way humans communicate.

We think in narratives.

We are constantly playing out the stories of our past or forecasting the stories of our future.

This is the way our brains work.

We can.

If you want to have an aside and go into the neuroscience behind all this, I'm happy to nerd off.

We could probably do seven episodes on this and it would be awesome.

Exactly.

But it is the way our brains are wired.

I'm happy to back up that claim if we need to.

There's a lot of science to prove that.

So it is the foundation of communication.

So why would we need that for our businesses?

It's because what is your business if not connecting with other humans and.

And building up a relationship and trust so that you can have a transaction that hopefully leads to some transformation in both of your lives.

Right.

Whatever it is, business is a give and take.

It's reciprocal.

Right.

I provide something of value for you, and in turn, you provide something of value for me.

Most of the time in a monetary form.

Right.

But not only.

But that's the exchange, and it doesn't work unless both parties leave.

And happy.

That's what we call a win win.

All right, so I get that.

But let's say I own David's grass cutting service.

Cut grass.

It's not brain surgery.

It's not.

How do I tell a story about that?

About grass cutting?

Or maybe I have a hamburger shop.

This isn't anything.

Let's talk about that.

Because you may have people kind of blue collar listening, saying, dude, I fix air conditioners.

That's not.

There's no story.

But is there a story?

Yeah, always.

There should be.

Because let's think about this.

Let's put ourselves in the minds of the consumer, of the customer.

If I'm Searching around for H Vac repair.

Yes.

I need something fast.

Right.

Because it's hot and I need to be cooled off.

But I am looking for something and this is the foundation again of relationships is where do I connect with that person?

Where does my need connect with what they have?

Right, right.

That's when we look at someone that might be a partner.

Right.

We're trying to find is it a fit?

Right.

So the, the consumer, the customer does that too.

There are a few ways to differentiate yourself.

Right.

And the customer sometimes is looking for a price.

Right.

But they say they're looking for a price.

Price is not always the very dynamic term.

Right.

It is not like there's not one definition of that value is highly subjective.

Right, Highly subjective.

Right.

So I say that to say if you are trying to differentiate yourself by price, I. E. A race to the bottom, that's not a race I want to take part in.

Right.

So that's one way to do it.

It's not the way I suggest.

So what are the other ways?

Rain.

Okay, now we have to identify.

How can I.

So I'm just going to be rude and interrupt you, but isn't Walmart's story we save you money?

That's the story and there's really nothing else or Dollar General like isn't that their story?

And that's why you buy cheap.

I'm not saying, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that.

I'm saying Walmart intentionally chose that we want to be the one stop shop and low prices for everybody.

Now Walmart has changed over the years and they have quite high quality stuff now, to be honest.

Right, sure.

Because they're competing on a different level.

When they came out, they were serving people in rural areas, blue collar people that needed that break.

But that's exactly the point.

They were trying to find where the fit was.

That was their target demographic, which was at the time, if you remember, Target or Target was almost considered upper middle class, which is ridiculous.

Right.

But there was a little bit of that, that Persona associated with them.

Now it's even.

And now I would argue that people are.

There's backlash with Target, whatever.

Everything is dynamic.

So yes, it's not to say that can't be part of your story, but it needs to be intentionally created.

You need to understand and why.

You need to understand why that's part of your story.

Walmart clearly knew what they were trying to do.

Sam Walton clearly knew what he was trying to do.

I am talking about those companies that don't know what makes them special, that don't know what makes them stand out, that don't know what makes their perspective on lawn care or H Vac work different than their competitors.

And the only way they can think to differentiate themselves is saying, oh, we'll under bid.

Doesn't matter what kind of business that you have.

You're trying to find your ideal customer.

And that doesn't mean you're going to limit yourself to one demographic.

If you, you want cookies or if you sell cookies, rather.

Yeah.

You want people of all different backgrounds and ages.

So it's not about just, we only serve 80 senior ladies.

Right.

But you have to understand, what do those people like?

Are we the giant crumble cookies?

Are we something a little small where you get a little flight of cookies, a taste of all of them or whatever.

Right.

You have to find what is the audience that you are serving.

And the most important thing about your story is like, how did we even get to where we are?

What shaped our perspective on cookie creating or grass cutting or H Vac repair?

How did we get here?

Right?

So another story that's commonly told when you talk, you brought up Sam Walton or Walmart, I should say.

I dealt with this with my wife very recently when we had a bolt that got stuck in the tire.

Let's take car mechanics in my neck of the woods at least.

And I think this is pretty generalized.

You usually have one or two types of car mechanics.

One, the one that is bigger, they might be a chain and they operate on turnover.

Right.

And you get upsold all the time.

And the service, the customer service isn't that great, but they're everywhere and they can get you in quick and yada, yada, yada.

But you usually pay a premium for that.

And sometimes you pay a price on the back end because the quality isn't that good.

The other one, especially where I live that has rural areas five minutes away, are those mom and pop shops that they rely on retention, customer retention.

So they have to deliver you the goods every time.

So you come back and you tell your daughter when she gets her car and your cousins and yada, yada, yada.

So they do that, but by not telling you, like, oh, you need a cabin air filter for 100 bucks or all this, they just say, look, we'll pass the inspection, but you really need to keep an eye on this thing.

They go deeper with you in the relationship part of it.

Now, both models probably work in some capacity, but they have to understand who is your market, who is your audience?

And how are you serving them?

That's really what we mean by the story there.

So we don't need to make it overcomplicated, which humans are tragically bad about.

Right.

We make everything more complicated than it is.

It's simple.

Right.

Who do I serve best with my approach, my philosophy in the work that I do?

I think, and tell me if I'm wrong.

We're all in business and we're in business to serve a purpose.

But also there's a money component.

If we don't have enough money coming in, we can't pay the bills and the business shuts down for sure.

I do think that some of the businesses that have a story, they get to put a bigger price on their products.

I know there are lots of coffee brands, some that are like veteran owned, and all of a sudden it's a $25 bag of coffee beans because it's veteran owned and there's a cool story.

Now, is the coffee better?

No, I mean, it's ground up coffee beans.

I'm sure it's just.

And I love coffee, so don't get me wrong, I could inject it into my veins.

But a lot of coffee is storytelling.

A lot of maybe luxury items was a story, right?

100%.

100%.

Let's take the veteran owned, for example.

Right.

That doesn't change the coffee at all.

And it doesn't just appeal to veterans.

Right.

It doesn't mean the only people that are going to come in here, ex combat veterans, right?

Military folks only.

No, of course not.

But it is people that support that, that is meaningful to them.

We think about values.

What do we stand for?

Right.

So that is a way of identifying that clearer story.

And that's just a simple tweak, Right.

It's not really even the full fleshed out story, it's just we're veteran owned.

But then you might add onto it, like how this veteran came about starting a coffee shop.

What's the why behind it?

What were they really trying to create?

Are they trying to bring back the third space?

Are they employing all veterans who typically struggle when they come back from combat, find sustainable employment?

Okay, so now if I'm looking at where am I going to spend my five bucks, is it here and support something that I care about or is it Starbucks?

Again, no offense to them, getting the same run of the mill stuff, et cetera, et cetera.

So it's just again identifying what you bring to the table differently and who would be interested in that the most.

Okay, so let's look at Devil's advocate.

Let's say when you have your story, there aren't too many people that are like anti veterans, but let's say they're just some weird anti government or you have to be willing to lose those people as customers, right?

Or, and that's just.

So by having a story you may alienate some people, right?

And that has to be cool.

Or is that not the case?

Maybe.

But the way I would reframe that is you're finding you're more clearly finding your ideal audience, right?

Because you can't.

You.

What is the old saying?

Marketing to everybody is marketing to nobody, right?

And so yeah, you have to be okay with that.

But what we're looking for when you rely on storytelling for business is the same thing I mentioned with that mom and pop mechanic, store shop is retention, lifetime value with that customer, right?

And that long term relationship.

Because when you do that, your customers will start to tell your story for you.

And now we've got exponential growth.

We have spread with the story.

That's how it grows.

And this is the beautiful thing about stories versus information versus data.

Stories are taking information and bundling it up in one little item, like one little beautifully packaged narrative that is so much easier for me to pass to you and you to pass to three people who pass it to three people, et cetera, versus a laundry list of data.

This is back to how our minds work as humans.

So when you do it right in business, those people will start to tell your story for you.

And that is what we're looking for.

So yes, I would argue why would you want somebody who wasn't really an ideal customer for you?

Because then the likelihood of them being displeased with the outcome or dissatisfied with the product is higher.

Right?

So yeah, you have to be okay with that.

And sometimes you'll get them and sometimes you won't.

But it's really more about finding the person who is.

I want your coffee.

So give me an example, either of some national company that I've heard of or just maybe somebody you've worked with that's a local company that's really used like that storytelling to grow their business, to grow their business with the right type.

Because again, like there is certain, I'm a financial advisor.

My core story is, and I will tell you this every meeting, I believe that how we handle our money should positively impact our lives and the lives of those around us.

So if what you want from a financial advisor is just the guy that's going to maybe help you make the most possible money, but fuel your greed and help you to be more of an a hole.

That's like not me.

And, and if that's, we're just not going to work well together.

But if you wanted to work with someone who's going to help you to have, you know, potentially look at philanthropy, reducing stress by handling your money, those kind of things, like, that's who I am.

So tell me, like, just give me some examples of storytelling.

Yeah, man, I love this.

Case studies are the best, right?

It's one thing to talk about at high level, but let's get into it.

In the book, in my book that just came out, the chief storytelling officer, Boom.

I use a lot of names of big brands that use storytelling as operations.

The Yetis, the Patagonias, the Nikes, Aviation Gin is in there.

But I'm going to use for this and I use specifically and strategically in the book, a local soccer organization.

Local to my town, where both of my kids have taken part in this organization.

Because I want to show people what it looks like when it's just, hey, I'm a soccer player and I want to open up this soccer camp for kids, right?

How do we use it in something like that?

Local, grassroots, homegrown, etc.

So this is, this program is called the People's Game.

And it was created by King Kingsley McLeod.

And he had been a PE teacher and he had worked at other chain like franchise soccer programs for kids.

And so he created one, an after school program.

That's what he wanted to do.

And at the time it was just him and he had eight students or eight participants, eight families.

And the thing about the People's Game is their values.

Again, everything is built off what we stand for, who we are, our philosophy, our approach, et cetera.

That's your story.

They have three fundamental core values.

Respect, responsibility, and trust.

The story has to be woven through every aspect of your business, okay?

It's not just some little platitude, some little thing you put on, on your wall in the conference room if you have a, a brick and mortar location.

It's not just some meaningless mission statement, right?

It has to define who you are and inform and influence the decisions you make.

So respect, responsibility and trust.

When my kids are playing soccer with them, they will stop the play after a play is dead or after a goal is made.

And they will ask the players, okay, how did what little Timmy do?

Showcase respect or responsibility or trust?

They discuss these things.

They also have a mindfulness practice in their soccer.

So it's not just about becoming a better player.

In fact, that's secondary.

Being a better soccer player, of course, learning the game.

But Kingsley said this in an interview that I had with him for the book.

He said, my goal is to create good humans.

That is the vision, the mission, the way in which we achieve that goal is through a soccer organization.

So if I want to create good humans in the world, I want to be a local community organization that just happens to teach kids soccer.

I have to do that by showing up and making mindfulness practice important, right?

Making it a part of what we do, making our core values, respect, responsibility and trust, part of it.

Now let me show you another example.

In that same organization, it's not just about what we teach the kids.

Again, I said it had to inform and influence every decision.

So when he's hiring people, it's the same thing.

I have to look and see if they uphold our values, if they understand our values.

I on the flip side, he has to trust his.

His coaches that he brings in, right?

He has to give them respect, let them earn their responsibility, and give them trust to be themselves and teach the way they want to teach, but still uphold those values.

So it is woven through everything that they do.

It leads the charge.

And so all of the decisions we make about the exercises we do and the drills that we perform and all of that, even how we grow, always has to come back to that central story.

And just to forecast ahead.

In three years, he went from one, himself, one coach and through and eight kids to operating full time in three different schools with about 96 families and I think 13 employees right now from 2022 to 2025, that was the amount of growth.

So that also shows it's not just about feeling good and sharing your story and all the heartfelt stuff.

If you do it right and you commit to it, it that is what leads you to growth.

Because when I have a choice between this soccer organization or this one, that's going to teach my ADHD kid how to do a breathing exercise to regulate his emotions, I'm going that way, pal.

Yeah, no question.

And I think the people with the same values as that soccer club commissioner are going to gravitate, and the people without the same values are going to go somewhere else.

And that's totally okay.

And that's totally not everybody, nobody, not everybody should be my client.

So I'm not the right fit for everybody.

And I think storytelling will help the right people to come to me that will have a great experience and the.

Wrong ones won't you know what's funny is like, Kingsley.

And often people that know how to do this inherently, like, they don't even realize it is storytelling.

They just.

They're doing it because they're trying to.

That's just what they care about.

And they're doing it to try to be a good person or create a good business.

Right.

And really create transformation.

So oftentimes they don't even realize that's what it is, but it absolutely is.

You have created an intentional story and you bang that drumbeat, that narrative drumbeat over and over until it embeds itself in the heads of the people, your ideal audience.

Yeah.

And I agree.

I've been doing what I've been doing long enough, I don't think.

Hey, Rain's coming in for a consultation today.

I need to tell him my story.

It just comes out, like, in everything I do.

Even like what's hanging on my walls in the office and everything else.

You will see it.

I've heard it said.

Everything that we do or don't do sends a message.

And I do think that's true.

I love that.

I heard a similar thing, if you don't mind me piggybacking on that.

That was.

I think this was from Bernay Brown that was talking about connection.

And that's what storytelling creates.

Right.

Every.

Everything.

Every moment is an opportunity to either strengthen that connection or widen that gap between the connection.

Right.

You can think about that with your relationship with your spouse or your significant other, and also your community, your clients, your customers.

Right.

Every passing moment is an opportunity to strengthen that connection or fracture it a little bit.

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So let's get a little deep here.

If you were coming into my office for a consultation, I would get my business's story to you.

Yep.

And you're going to like it or you're not going to like it.

You're going to become a client or you're not but what about your own story?

Are you telling yourself a story constantly?

And what if you're telling yourself the wrong story or a self limiting story?

Spoiler alert.

Yes is the short answer.

And the spoiler is almost always we're telling ourselves the wrong story.

And that's because this is perfect.

Great segue.

Go back to Kingsley's example.

Because oftentimes we don't realize that we're storytelling or we're telling ourselves a story.

This happens so much.

So we talked before we started recording about my previous coaching clients.

Even everybody that's a storytelling expert that comes on my show.

It always comes back to the origin point is the story that we tell ourselves.

We have to get that right before we can ever perfect the story that we tell others.

Okay.

And what I've always said is, is there is a narrative running in your head.

Again, this is how we process thoughts and feelings and emotions and experiences.

This is how we make meaning of life is running narratives to our head.

Sometimes they're in the back of our head.

So oftentimes there is a story being told to you or you're telling yourself however you want to frame that.

And you don't even realize it because it's subconscious in the front of your brain.

You don't even realize it.

And let me give you some examples.

I'll just ask you be vulnerable, tell us some of the stories.

Oh, dude, I'm from rural eastern North Carolina.

Right.

Making it out, like mentally making it out, and physically, but like especially mentally.

There's a lot of people that don't that have so much potential.

And it's heartbreaking to see because there is a trap of being in those kinds of areas.

So that might be one.

Like people were come that come from where I come from don't become filmmakers.

I'm just a dumb old country.

Right, right, right.

A lot of it has to do with who you come from, where you come from, what you look like.

Oh, I'll never be able to be great at this because I have this limitation, whatever that might be.

We're telling ourselves a story or just it's not time for me right now or it's all day long.

And so the first step to reframing this and flipping the script is understanding that you are telling yourself a story.

Then you start to listen, you start to turn your antennas out or you start to tune in a little bit and then listen.

What am I telling myself?

Why do I feel that way?

See, dude, most of us go through life and never even ask ourselves, like why did I react so strongly to that moment?

Why do I feel this way about this particular topic?

We don't do that.

And if we do, you would be so surprised at the answers that pop up if you're honest with yourself.

And then sometimes this had happened to me.

I was heavily influenced.

I grew up not to trauma dump, but I grew up in an alcoholic household.

It was a lot of darkness and abuse.

And so my older brother was my protector.

I idolized him for so many years.

I shadowed him, I emulated him.

And it took me deep into my 20s to realize like, oh, I've been just trying to be who he was because I looked up to him so much.

But there was a major flaw in that because it wasn't who I was.

Right.

And so there would be many thoughts on things or behavior patterns, et cetera, that I emulated that.

Finally when I started tapping in, I was like, that's not even how I feel about that situation.

Right.

So you have to understand you're telling yourself a story well before you can ever start to change that.

But once you know that you can look at it objectively, you have to zoom out.

Take the 30,000 foot perspective POV there's and say, oh, what influenced this story?

Was it my brother?

Because he was my protector.

Oh, okay, that makes sense.

So I won't beat myself up too much about it, but I can also change now and start to listen to who I really am.

This happens a lot in business.

A lot in business.

Oh, this will just be a lifestyle business.

It won't scale because I've never done that before.

I don't know how to be a founder that brings in investors and scale something, becomes a national brand, whatever, or all these limitations.

It's always limitations, right?

It's that voice in the back of your head.

So yes, we are constantly telling ourselves a story and oftentimes that story is lying to us because oftentimes that story was written by the 5 year old version of Rain or David.

Right.

And so the question I asked, and that I'll stop here is would you right now, if you had the option to give your life stories script to a five year old to write, would you say yes to this?

And I hope that a hundred percent of the people out there would be like, no, that's ridiculous.

Right.

But that's exactly what we're doing.

It's just we were the five year old that created this story in our heads about what we're capable of and what we're not capable of.

And when you see how ridiculous that is for it to be an outside party, it should feel equally ridiculous that we've allowed ourselves to determine our path and our potential based on that five year old's narrative.

Yeah.

What about social media?

It's telling a story.

It's telling you if you're a Democrat, the Republicans are holding you down.

If you're a Republican, the Democrats are holding you down.

If you don't have a, if you're working, I get the entrepreneur stuff showing up in my feed.

You know, if you're not making a million dollars working three hours a week, you're a failure because that's what some of these people with the rented Ferraris show in their Instagram feeds.

Like how do you guard against.

The algorithm is telling us what it wants us to hear, right?

And it's hard.

That's very tough.

That's another thing you have to be very self aware about.

And I don't say that lightly because being self aware alone is extremely challenging.

It is a skill, no question.

And I struggle with this too.

So I will be very transparent.

It is very, it's it.

I really don't like the power that it has over us.

And if we are, forgive this adjective, but if we are weaker minded individuals, we don't stand a chance, pal, if people just get sucked up into it.

And what I would say is two things.

One, I have always had the most success when I talk less and listen and observe more and just watch the world around you.

Now if you're only watching social media, then we're back to where you started with your question of we're being fed a filter and we're in echo chambers and we can't really do that.

The other thing I will say, which is the flip side of that is go inward, right?

Create something, don't focus on consuming, right?

So if we're talking about our business, stop going out there and trying to see what everybody else is doing or just consuming and go inward and just create.

Just try something.

Because listen, let's say, you know what, I want to try to do something silly with my TikToks or my Instagram reels for my business this week.

It's all just data.

It's all just at bats.

You're going to miss more than you're going to hit, but you're never going to know which way to go if you don't start taking those swings, right?

So, okay, you're a car dealership and you do a little TikTok trend because it gets views and now you're starting to show.

Oh, you're cool.

Younger millennial salesman.

You're hip.

So now when I'm 44 and I want to go get a car, I don't want to go get it from.

From.

I would like to go to some place like that.

And I see it happen all the time.

Like, people are like, oh, I'm going to your business just because of that.

That.

That video.

So it is a constant tug of war, back and forth and ebb and flow, and you have to be really diligent.

But the first thing is, again, changing that story in your head and knowing that you want to be diligent about it, that you want to change that.

You don't want to get sucked into that.

Some people love living in that space.

And not.

It's not for me.

Yeah, no.

It's bad for your mental health.

No, for sure.

I think social media can be hugely detrimental, and it just affects so many things, but it will suck you in.

It's the classic don't let the tool use you.

Right?

You use the tool, and we all get sucked into it.

Dude, I talk.

I deal with this every week.

Okay?

Am I using this thing, or is it using me now?

And as soon as I can identify that, I can put the phone away, but I'll get sucked into it.

Just.

I'll just watch something real quick, and then.

You've been on there 30 minutes.

Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure.

We're gonna have to get you on for about seven more episodes.

I'm down, my friend.

I love talking about mindset.

I love talking about the human mind is so fascinating to me.

And I've always heard.

What is the saying?

It's like, what you think affects what you do, and what you do affects what you get.

So, like, I could never be as successful as R.A. guess what?

That's true.

If that's what I think, or I'm a lot smarter than Rain, I could be more successful than him.

That could be true as well.

But we all know those people in our lives that just have that victim, you know?

And that just drives me nuts.

Because we're in America.

There's a lot of opportunity.

And not to say that there are not actual obstacles, because there are, but we can overcome them.

Yeah, the victim.

There.

There's.

Yeah, there is a.

It's a story, though.

Yeah, there is.

And actually, Donald Miller, who is one of the leading thought leaders in the story world, has this concept of the four characters that are in any story, which is the hero, the villain, the victim and the guide.

And the victim is like where the hero struggles, but they're willing to go through the struggle to achieve the obstacle.

The victim struggles, and instead they go, the woe is me.

This always happens.

It's never going to happen to me.

And they don't.

And that's the person who's almost is most likely to become the actual villain.

Right.

And that's why in a lot of movies, the villains have some backstory, like Scar in.

In.

In the Lion King, for example.

That's why he literally has a scar, because you're showing him that he has pain, he has trauma.

That's why he became a villain.

Right.

So they often have that story of where they could have made the right choice, but they took.

They wanted revenge.

They were cynical and jaded and pissed at the world because of their struggles, and they wanted revenge.

They wanted to take somebody with them.

That's how they devolved and became the villain.

But through those struggles to try to achieve the obstacle with the help of the guide, the fourth character.

But that's.

That.

That just made me think of that when you brought up the victim mindset.

Yeah.

No, I love it.

All right.

So I would imagine we have people thinking, this Rain dude is cool.

We're here to hear more of his story.

Where can I learn from him?

So tell us.

Tell us where to find you.

Tell us a little bit about how you help customers and if you have a gift for us.

And let's hear it all, man.

Yeah, man.

So I always give shout out to my mom.

There are not a lot of Rain Bennett's in the world and certainly not any on Google like I am, so I'm easy to find.

Rainbennett.com is my website.

I talk about this a lot.

So speaking of social media, I have a lot of content out there for free.

I have a podcast that talks to the world's best storytellers to find to break down the art and science of this.

Also free.

And then for listeners who want to check out the book, I have a gift.

Very highly discounted signed copy of the Chief Storytelling Officer.

If you go to rainbennett.com guest I think this retails at 18 or 19 bucks right now.

I'll give it to you for 10 and sign it personally to you and send it to you as soon as I get your order.

So if anybody's interested in this also, I would just say I love talking about this stuff.

I hope that came through today.

So feel free to DM me a question or email me I'm happy to take them.

I really, this is my life's passion, so I love to talk about it.

Excellent.

Now, really cool stuff.

Just fascinating to me.

And I think that stories are so important because I was working with a business coach and he said, look, we're not really in the financial advisor business.

We're in the influence business.

Because there are probably some financial decisions that I would need to influence you to take, and some of them may be a little bit difficult.

And if there's no why, none of us make a difficult decision or do hard things unless there's an important why.

That why is this whole story your story, my story.

It's all about.

All about the whys.

Yeah.

So check out rainbennett.com that's R A I N B E N N E T T. And if you can go to rainbennett.com guest you can pick up a highly discounted copy of the Chief Storytelling Officer book.

Check.

We'll have the links in the show notes, but check Rain out on Instagram and other social media.

And if you have any questions, he's very generously.

He'll.

He'll take a DM or two from you and help you out.

So now, Rain, I didn't tell you about this last question, but all of our guests, we talk about this one.

So we're the weekly wealth podcast, and we talk about the mindsets, the tactics and the strategies that can help you to build and Wayne build wealth.

So, Rain Bennett, what is your definition of wealth?

What does wealth mean to you and your family and the people in your lives that you care and love?

That is a great question.

I will quote, and don't hold this against me, Kanye west on this.

Kanye said, having money is not everything, but not having it is.

So I think wealth is really getting to the point where you have enough money that you have covered your expenses, Right.

The things you need to live the life that you want to live.

But that's the point.

The story that you tell yourself, what is the life that you want to live?

My definition of wealth also is very subjective.

Is not going to be yours or anybody else's on the planet.

Right.

So I think that's what wealth is.

Understanding what is the life that I want?

What are my values and what do I prioritize?

Right.

I am struggling right now as an artist.

I've got a film coming up in October.

I'm directing because I love my role as a father.

And I hate missing soccer games and baseball games and guitar lessons and all that.

But it's inevitable.

My life pulls me away for travel.

So my.

A big part of my rich life, my wealth, is doing stuff with my family.

I know that's terribly cliche, but there's a reason for that, right?

That's.

A lot of us really care about that.

And so it's not worth it to me to get a hundred million dollars and not spend that time with my kids.

There was a time in my life where I might have been like, oh, yeah, clearly it's a.

It's a hundred mil, right?

That's not my goal.

Now I want to make enough money that I am not stressed about work, that I can travel with my kids and show them different parts of the world.

Because when I traveled the world, it changed my whole life, right?

It changed my whole perspective and broadened my horizons.

I want them to have that experience, and that's not cheap, right?

So I have to work hard enough and I have to work smart enough to make the money that can cover those things that are important to me.

Guess what?

My mom lives in little Washington, North Carolina, has never left unless I take her to California or New York or something, right?

And couldn't be happier.

Doesn't want to go anywhere else.

Doesn't really care about seeing the world and that sort of stuff.

Her world is right there and she owns it and she loves it, and she's very wealthy for that market.

So it just depends on what you want.

And for me, it's having the expenses covered so that I can pursue the things that I, my family and I care about.

There you go.

So in the words of Kanye, I ain't saying that you're a gold digger.

So there you go.

All right, that's how we're going to close down this episode.

I appreciate this was a good one.

I really enjoyed this.

This is right up my alley.

Check out rainbennett.com find them on Instagram, get the book and let us know if you have any questions.

Email me davidarallelfinancial.com thanks, Rain.

Thank you.

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