Stop Rambling, Start Riveting: Your Elevator Pitch Finally Grows Up

Want to hold a room without trying so hard? We break down a five-step storytelling framework that turns scattered explanations into clear, high-impact narratives people actually remember. No jargon, no theatrics—just a simple arc that ties head to heart and moves listeners to act.

We start with why stories outperform facts for memory and empathy, then introduce the sequence you can use anywhere: Belief, Remember, Taught, Passion, Challenge. You’ll hear how we coached a great but sprawling origin story into a tight message for a realtor who loves serving single moms, and how Chad shaped his own mortgage narrative around hospitality and human connection. Along the way, we connect the dots to neuroscience—how core memories often forged between ages nine and thirteen anchor your deepest convictions—and show you how to mine those moments without drifting or oversharing.

You’ll also learn to partner with AI to refine your message. We share prompts and guardrails for using tools like ChatGPT to condense, clarify, and soften your close without losing your voice. The result is a reusable story you can deliver in an elevator, on a sales call, on stage, or on social—always landing with focus and heart. If you’ve ever felt your message was good but your delivery wandered, this is your blueprint to captivate, differentiate, and invite action.

Subscribe for more practical frameworks, share this with a friend who over-explains, and tell us: what’s your “I believe” statement? Your story is the one thing no one can copy—own it.

Chapters

• 0:00 Why Stories Beat Facts
• 0:36 Season Launch And Big Promise
• 0:57 The Case For A Story Framework
• 2:40 Introducing The Five-Step Model
• 4:23 Belief And Remember Explained
• 6:49 Taught, Passion, And Challenge
• 7:37 Coaching Example: Single Moms Story
• 9:15 Using AI To Refine Your Story
• 11:28 Chad’s Hospitality Mortgage Story
• 14:40 Neuroscience And Core Memories
• 16:40 Applying The Framework To New Goals
• 17:01 Purpose: Past Meets Calling

Transcript

Why Stories Beat Facts

Lacey 0:00

Facts and claims are often forgotten or dismissed very quickly, but a story, especially a vivid, emotional one, engages memory and empathy.

Season Launch And Big Promise

Chad 0:12

This is a secret sauce podcast with Chad Trees and Lacey Moore, where we want to help people build big businesses and live big lives. We think every episode's gonna maybe give you one ingredient that you could add to your recipe to create your own secret sauce. Let's get into it. You know those people who captivate a room without even trying? What if I told you there's a framework behind that? Today we're breaking down the five steps so you can do it too. Lacey, season three, twenty twenty six. We're filming this at the very end of 2025, but it is launching in 2026. It's been a ride, huh?

Lacey 0:48

Yeah, I can't believe we're already on season three, but it's been fun.

The Case For A Story Framework

Chad 0:50

I know. I think we've got a pretty banger episode to kick off season three. I'm excited about this one. Do you want to intro it or do you want me to intro it a little bit? I mean, we already did a little bit, but this is a framework for you know how to create influence, how to be a better storyteller. I think we all wish that we were better storytellers, and we've we've learned, we've studied from the best in this with Renee Rodriguez and put it into practice quite a bit. And I think we've got a good good story to tell.

Lacey 1:12

We really do. You know, the thing is everybody has a good story. Like we ask people, like, and we coach and everything, why'd you, why are you doing this? As or as a realtor, why are you in the business? And they'll go on their story and they'll start explaining everything. And if you really listen to the whole thing, it's probably a pretty good story. But the problem is, is a lot of times it's long, it's all over the place. Right. You find yourself checking out, you're looking at other things, you're thinking about other things, and this is so common now. And so when we had this training with Renee, it was so empowering, but it was also so apparent that we have to work on this skill. We have to be in a place where we, when we say this, and man, 10, 15 years ago, we probably would have called it an elevator speech, kind of.

Chad 1:54

Yeah, I think it definitely fits in that category. Your why story at least, right?

Lacey 1:58

Yes.

Chad 1:58

Yeah, or like what when somebody asks what you do, even.

Lacey 2:01

Well, that's the why in the elevator, but this tool you can use for so many things.

Chad 2:05

Right.

Lacey 2:05

And so when I hear people telling me stuff now because we've been practicing this, I'm like, ooh, let's bring this in and use these five steps. So let's kind of explain the steps. Um, but I do think that guys, it's so important. We Chad and I both could go on forever and ever and ever and tell you all these things and we lose you. We would be annoying. Uh we'd be like, okay, fast forward, like let's land the plane. And I think that's such an important piece. This five-step approach literally makes people at the end wanting to hear more.

Chad 2:35

Yep.

Lacey 2:36

Wanting to know more because it's not this long drawn out story.

Introducing The Five-Step Model

Chad 2:39

Yeah, it truly is a way to captivate uh whoever you're you're talking to. This framework is it's money for sure. So let's do step number one. Do you want to start with that?

Lacey 2:47

Yeah, I do, but I want to I want to read something really quick to set the stage on this. It says if you speak in a disjointed, unclear way without a framework, your message likely fades into noise. A structured story prevents this. So that's exactly what we're just talking about. But then it says facts and claims are often forgotten or dismissed very quickly. But a story, especially a vivid, emotional one, engages memory and empathy. So this framework that Renee did emphasizes that storytelling isn't just a decoration, but an essential tool for making message messages memorable. And so that's that piece right there is why this is so important. Because it will, if we can work on this and tweak this, and we're gonna teach a little thing as we do this with chat. Like you can use Chat GPT or whatever you want to help refine this and make this so good for you.

Chad 3:37

Yeah. And it's something that you can just then use over and over and over again. But if if you get one thing from this episode, I'd love it that you know if you're listening, that you get how to build a story around uh for your business, like why you're in this business, why you're passionate about what you're passionate about in that business, because that's something that you're gonna use over and over and over again and work it into your marketing and your meetings with people and literally everything. And it's gonna connect them to you so much more.

Lacey 4:02

Yes, absolutely. So let's talk about the well, let's do all let's go over all five really quick and then we'll break them down. Um, but these are the five steps or just actually five words that we're gonna incorporate into our story. And I've had people play with these and move them around. It's so he knows what he's doing, right? He knows what he's doing and the flow of these.

Belief And Remember Explained

Chad 4:21

Yeah, to give props to the creator, he has a neuro, uh he is in neuroscience. Oh yeah, right, and he uh studies how the brain works. So he's put a bunch of neuroscience along with the emotion and everything to tie the head to the heart. And uh so it it's pretty cool uh to see it in action.

Lacey 4:38

Oh, to see it in action for sure.

Chad 4:40

Step one.

Lacey 4:40

Um so the first word's belief.

Chad 4:42

Yep. So like I believe this, right? Is the best thing.

Lacey 4:46

So that's your first statement is I believe in whatever it is. The second word is remember. So now we're gonna pull in. I remember a time when this happened, and the third word is taught.

Chad 4:55

What that taught me was. Right.

Lacey 4:58

And then the next word is passion.

Chad 4:59

I'm passionate about.

Lacey 5:00

Well, that gave me a passion.

Chad 5:02

That gave me a passion for, yeah.

Lacey 5:03

And then the last word is challenge, and this word I'm getting better with, but sometimes some stories like you and I talked about, sometimes challenge can turn into the one you said a lot is what this means for you. What this means for you. And so the challenge word c sometimes feels uncomfortable in certain frameworks.

Chad 5:20

Yeah, like I'm gonna challenge you to think differently about this thing uh or all this passion and my my beliefs and everything, what that why that's important to you and basically how you how you close it and tie it down.

Lacey 5:31

Exactly. So I here I want to just share an example just to narrow this down and and and make this make sense. I was coaching and a student, and we were talking about our goals for this next year. And when we do goals, I always want to try something next year that I want to learn and get really good at inside of my industry. And I challenged her to think through that. And she said, you know, I feel really good when I help single moms and when I'm able to teach them that they can own a home and whatnot. And so instantly I knew there was a story behind that. And I asked her to tell me that story. And as she's telling me all this, I'm thinking of these five steps. So she's telling me these stories. I'm thinking of belief, I'm thinking of remember, I'm thinking of taught, thinking of passion, and then challenge. And so what was really fun with this is we use Chat GPT and we put it on the voice. So we just talked to it and then we said, hey, here's here's a story and use the five steps with Renee Rodriguez. And in my phone knows those five steps because we've been working on this a bunch of people.

Chad 6:28

ChatGPT should know as well. Actually, when I was doing it, I said, Can you can you identify from the internet? Basically, can you identify Renee Rodriguez? This is five steps, and it does.

Taught, Passion, And Challenge

Lacey 6:36

But I tell it, I want you anytime I'm trying to build a story, this is the framework I want you to help me with. So it goes back to that. And so we explained it all. And let me read how good this was just from us telling Lacey's condensed story. Um, I believe that everyone deserves the opportunity to understand how they can own a home, including those who might feel overlooked, like single moms. I remember my own mother feeling lost after my parents' divorce, unsure where to turn for housing help. And that moment really stuck with me. It taught me just how many people are unaware of the pathways to homeownership and highlighted the lack of education in that space. That experience gave me a passion to become that educator and let people know there are ways forward, practical plans to help them and secure homes for their families. So I challenge anyone who feels uncertain or intimidated to lean in. Find someone willing to teach them and realize that they truly can do this.

Chad 7:29

Yeah, and that's good. It's so good.

Lacey 7:31

And it's not like it's so good, and people aren't losing interest.

Coaching Example: Single Moms Story

Chad 7:34

Right. And it's her story, right? And it is not fabricated, it's just pulled together in a way that is more engaging for the audience. Yes. And it makes it tight, a really tight narrative. So yeah, I love that.

Lacey 7:44

It's just beautiful how it connects and how it makes you feel without the losing interest.

Using AI To Refine Your Story

Chad 7:50

Right. I love it. Uh, I love this framework because when I read his book the first time around, I was like, I need to do this. I need to create, like, I have a general idea of what I what my why is, you know, and like to be able to actually sit down and tell somebody that was really challenging for me. Yeah. And I still struggled with it until these five steps were like right there. And I was like, okay, it's just as easy as laying it out. Yes. Right? I'll do mine real quick. Yeah. Right. But it it it all comes around like with unreasonable hospitality and everything, like injecting that back into the mortgage business, right? But how did I actually how can I get that point across? And I'd struggle with that. You know, just tweaking it, I'd probably have spent, you know, an hour really refining the message. So here we go. I believe everyone deserves a mortgage experience filled with hospitality and heart, not just efficiency and paperwork. I remember watching my mom create warmth and connection in every room that she walked into. When I was a child, she was the most hospitable person. Like she'd never met a stranger. She would always have a fresh baked pie out or like a crude out of like vegetables. Whenever we go over there, still to this day, it's like she's entertaining. And it's literally just my wife and I go in to pick up our kids and she's like entertaining, right? Uh so uh our home wasn't fancy, but it was a safe place because of her. The way she loved people, the way she hosted people, it made everyone who crossed our threshold feel like they mattered. What that taught me was that hospitality has no boundaries. It isn't something you turn on in certain settings. It's a way of showing up in the world. It's a lens. And when you embrace it fully, it reaches into every corner of your life. Now I have a passion. After COVID, I watched our industry lose its heartbeat. Everything became digital, transactional, efficient to a fault, right? People stopped meeting face to face. They stopped creating real moments of connection. So I made a decision. I'm ch I'm charging in the opposite direction. My passion is bringing unreasonable hospitality back into an industry that has long forgotten it. Even when I didn't know that it would work, I knew that I couldn't stay in the business if it wouldn't work. And what this means for you is it's simple. You get the best of both worlds. We make a complex process feel simple and clear, but we also sit with you, talk about your goals and dreams, and walk every step with you. You're never just a file, you're never just alone. You're a human being with a story that deserves to be honored. And even though that's not typical in our industry, it's the heartbeat of our business. That's it.

Lacey 10:05

It's good. It's good. You feel so much out of it, right? Like you you can feel, I can feel the way you would feel it when your mother, when I walked into your mother's room and I could see the vegetables or the apple pie, I can feel how that makes you feel.

Chad 10:19

Right.

Lacey 10:20

And what what's how you want to give that to somebody else?

Chad’s Hospitality Mortgage Story

Chad 10:22

What's interesting is I had to I had to search for that a little bit. It's like, why did when I read Unreasonable Hospitality, why did it resonate with me so much? Like I knew I was searching for something to bring the life and the human connection back to the mortgage business after COVID. Yeah. But I didn't, I don't know what I couldn't figure out if that book was just like just happened to be put in my path somehow and fate and the universe. But whatever it was that that book like connected to me so much. And then I had to think about it because typically the I remember thing, what creates your passion or what you bel your beliefs, I guess more so than anything, is your beliefs, like your strongest beliefs, typically are formed based on something that happened. This is the neuroscience part, right? Typically happened between the ages of like nine and 13, I believe, is what Renee says. So uh I'm trying to think back like what went wrong in my life at that point. And I couldn't come up with anything. Like I had a pretty blessed childhood, I'm not gonna lie. Like, I always struggle with that too, is like I didn't have this like challenge that I had to overcome that like made me who I was. And then I was like, no, it was it was the the home that I grew up in being that the most hospitable place on the block. Like literally all the kids would come to our house because my mom would have all the snacks and she'd always make everybody feel well welcome. And if they didn't have a, you know, if they weren't didn't have family for Thanksgiving or Christmas, they were always welcome in our house. So that's why it connected, but I had to search for that for a while. So I think that's a really important step when you're doing this is take the time to actually invest in thinking about those core memories from your childhood, those years from nine to thirteen, when you're coming up with your I believe statement, it typically is tied to something from your I remember that happened back when you were in that formative nine to 13 year old years.

Lacey 11:59

I like it. I like it. Yo, I I just was so the thing I'm working on for this next year for me is there's a there's a large amount of people my age and and probably my age plus 10 years older than me that I've helped and done home loans for years now, right? And we're moving into this time frame that we really need to be considerate and and thinking about our parents and what that looks like for their housing and what that, you know, this next 10, 10 years looks like. And I want to become really knowledgeable as a mortgage lender for that. And so when I was working on this, when I was working on this story, like why do I, for your we were saying, why do I believe then? And so these can be your big why statement, but it can also be about, you know, something smaller, like something smaller that you're working on. But for you to be able to influence others and not just influence them, but want them to listen to you, want them to understand where you're going with this. And it's been like I've used this now so many times for different things, and it's it's fun. Like it's really neat to see a story to come together, but also it's not long and drawn out, and people, you're not losing people in the making of it. And so it's such a nice piece. So we're gonna let's do it one more time. So believe, remember, taught, passion, and challenge. Yeah.

Chad 13:17

So with I can I just real quick, I with I with believe, like I believe, the moment that you say I believe, you stop sounding like everybody else. For everybody else, they're telling a story, they don't start with I believe. They start with, well, yeah, so I was walking down the street one day and whatever, and you're already losing people right off the bat. But when you start a story with I believe, right? People are like, oh, well, we're jumping right into what you believe. Like, okay, this is serious, right? So I I love that. Yep. Then I I remember, right? Like I said, your earliest memories kind of uh explain your deepest convictions, typically. What that taught me was go ahead. Sorry, go ahead. No, you're fine. What that taught me was, right? Experience shapes you, but interpretation defines you. What was the next one?

Lacey 13:55

Passion. Yes.

Chad 13:56

So because of that, I have a passion for.

Lacey 13:59

What it created these things ahead of time, why it created a passion in you to do whatever it is that you're gonna be challenging people.

Chad 14:06

That's awesome. So it's kind of like your purpose, uh, like on your why statement, it's kind of like the purpose, right? Like purpose happens when your past collides with your calling. So that would be tying it all together. I love it. And then lastly, challenge.

Lacey 14:18

Challenge.

Chad 14:18

Yeah. Sorry, I put you on the spot.

Lacey 14:20

Well, I already did it. You did? I just said it.

Neuroscience And Core Memories

Chad 14:23

Well, there we go. I'm I'm all right. Uh challenge. Or what maybe it was because I always look at it as I literally have changed it because challenge, I couldn't come up like I was forcing a challenge statement. Yeah. And so when Renee said, or this is what this means for you, for me, it just naturally flows better for what this means for you. So just know that's interchangeable. That is I challenge you, or what this means for you.

Lacey 14:45

And you can work on the challenge piece, like that one I read that was really good. So I challenge anyone who feels uncertain or intimidated to lean in, find someone willing to teach them, and realize they truly can do this. I'm just gonna go back to yours really quick when you were wrapping yours up. So I challenge anybody who feels like you're lost in this mortgage process and you're just another number. No, you don't have to be.

Chad 15:07

Right.

Lacey 15:08

There are people out there who actually love helping people achieve their goals. Or, you know, however you want to wrap it up. However you wanted to wrap that up. But um, I think that the more I've worked with challenge on this, it's become easier. But in the beginning, it was very, very uncomfortable. Um, but there are some stories that you do that definitely you can interchange them into what this means to you. Because challenge, if if you do it wrong, it sometimes feels like a direct hit to somebody or confrontational. Confrontational. That's yes, that's what I was thinking of. And so if you feel like it's that, use chat, have it help you make it less confrontational.

Chad 15:44

Yeah, that'd be a perfect use case for Chat GPT. Is like this sounds all right.

Lacey 15:48

Yeah. And make it make that softer or change it so it doesn't feel like it's attacking. And it it will help with that. Chat doesn't make it unreal, it just helps you put your feelings into better wording. So we're not all over the place with it. And so it's just the more and more you practice this and and use it, I'm it is a game changer. And it has been, this is one of the things that I've gone to a conference and we hear a lot of things at conferences. I have left with and used and used and used, and I keep finding ways of using it, and it gets me really excited, gets my goosebumps going because it's that good. And he knows what he's doing behind that neuroscience.

Applying The Framework To New Goals

Chad 16:26

Yeah, I think you've you've leveled up where it's like to for people to just use it to just create their origin story or why they do what they do is huge. Now you're using it, you're thinking, like, how can I do this more and more and more? And and you're integrating it into kind of everyday life, which is which is awesome because the most impactful person on earth is a great storyteller for sure.

Lacey 16:43

And this makes it so much easier to follow to do it. So I love it. I hope this helps you guys.

Purpose: Past Meets Calling

Chad 16:48

Awesome. Yeah, I agree. So just uh before we go, just remember that your story is the one thing that no one can copy not your scripts, not your systems, not your market knowledge, just your story. So own your story. I love it. Thanks for listening, guys.