Episode 1327: Turn Your Story Into Something That Matters with Ashley Stahl

What if feeling stuck isn't a sign that you have no options, but a sign that you need to reconnect with who you are and what you do best? In this episode of SharkPreneur, Seth Greene interviews Ashley Stahl, CEO of Wise Whisper Agency, who shares how her career evolved from counterterrorism and national security to speaking, entrepreneurship, and helping other thought leaders turn their ideas into influential talks and personal brands. She explains how to identify your zone of genius, distinguish between pushing through and making a career U-turn, and uncover the original thinking that makes your message stand out. Ashley also explores how speakers can move beyond telling inspirational stories to create actionable, transformational content that builds authority, generates opportunities, and makes a lasting impact. Key Takeaways: → Career decisions should be guided by your strongest skills and natural gifts, not simply by the subjects or activities you enjoy. → Spending roughly 70% of your time in your zone of genius and 30% stretching into new areas can create a balance between contribution and growth. → A career does not always have to provide a sense of purpose, but it should give you a meaningful way to contribute. → Original thinking does not require inventing an idea nobody has ever heard before; it can come from expressing familiar ideas through your own perspective and experience. → One powerful talk can create opportunities far beyond the stage, including clients, book deals, licensing opportunities, and greater authority. Ashley Stahl runs Wise Whisper, a boutique speaking agency that's helped hundreds of clients craft signature speeches and secure speaking engagements on hundreds of BIG stages worldwide. Ashley is also the international bestselling author of YOU TURN: Get Unstuck, Discover Your Direction, Design Your Dream Career; host of the You Turn Podcast (ranked among the top 100 mental health shows on Apple in the US); and a keynote speaker with a top 100 most-viewed TEDx talk on YouTube. With a Master’s degree from King’s College London’s Department of War Studies and a Master’s in Psychology from the University of Santa Monica, Ashley began her career in counterterrorism and learned speechwriting while working for the government. Connect With Ashley: Website: https://wisewhisperagency.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ashleystahlcoaching/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ashleystahl/ https://www.instagram.com/ashleystahl/?hl=en LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashleystahl/ X: https://x.com/ashleystahl https://x.com/ashleystahl?lang=en

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Welcome to the Shark Preneur Podcast with Kevin Harrington and Seth Green. Kevin Harrington is the inventor of the infomercial, one of the original sharks from the hit TV show Shark Tank, and has generated over $5 billion in TV and digital direct response sales. Seth Green is the world's first trusted authority on cutting-edge direct response marketing, a bestselling author, and the only three-time marketer of the year nominee. On the podcast, Kevin and Seth interview shark preneurs who share straight talk on what it takes to explode your business.

• 0:38Speaker 01

  Forty-nine faces looked to him in triumph. Over the last 12 months, they had each taken turns and promoted his business for a week at a time, driving over $987,342 in revenue. What if you had a network of 50 centers of influence who promoted your business every week for a year? Grab your copy of the number one Amazon bestselling book, The Ultimate Guide to Growing Your Business with a Podcast. It's 33% off the Amazon price by going to ultimatenpodcastbook.com. Again, that website for 33% off the Amazon price is ultimatenpodcastbook.com. Welcome to the podcast. This is your host Seth Green. Today I've got the good fortune to be with Ashley Stahl. She is the author of U-Turn and the founder of the Wise Whisper Academy. Ashley, thanks so much for joining us.

• 1:22Speaker 02

  Thank you so much for having me.

• 1:24Speaker 01

  It is our pleasure, so let's go back in time a little bit. How did you get started?

• 1:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, I started my career in counterterrorism during the Obama administration. I studied languages, went to graduate school, and wanted to make an impact. And the way that I knew how to make an impact the most was through words. Like, I've always been a competent words person. I've always been a spelling bee student. And I guess I thought, you know, can I use my words to help this country? Can I? And what I learned was that there's a big difference between being an emotional communicator and being a writer for intelligence reports. Very different type of word use. So I eventually pivoted and started speaking. I started getting awards in national security speaking. And I got invited to give a TED Talk when I was 24 years old.

• 2:12Speaker 02

  I had no, I'd never spoken on a stage before that. And that challenged me and scared me in a really healthy way. And that one talk I gave put my career on the map, unlike anything else I'd ever done. And it was this one tiny nine-minute talk, hit the TEDx channel. And for about eight years, I had more leads than I knew what to do with. I got licensing deals on my courses. I got multiple book deals. I didn't have to market myself. I pivoted into entrepreneurship. I never really needed a client because my speaking online kept sending me more. I attracted an agent. I got a spokesperson deal. I mean, the list goes on. And it was all from this one nine-minute talk.

• 2:55Speaker 02

  And that got friends to start asking me for help crafting their TEDx talk or any speech in general. And I went on to watch all of my friends' TEDx talks I helped them with go viral, like mine did. And eventually that framework became my company, Wise Whisper. And we have white glove services where we help people craft their talk directly. Or we have coaching cohorts that are very intimate and small, up to 15 people each, with our creative directors. One of our creative directors spent 13 years writing talks for Steve Jobs' executive team at Apple. So just really next level people, helping future visionaries use their words in a way that can move millions and allow them to truly be seen and be the mentor that they

• 3:39Speaker 02

  needed, and to get paid for doing it. So helping people land paid stages and stuff like that. And that all started with me working in national security and realizing it wasn't the perfect way to use my skills.

• 3:51Speaker 01

  Well, that is an absolutely incredible journey. Congratulations. The book is called U-Turn. How can someone tell the difference between needing to push through a difficult season and generally needing to make a U-turn?

• 4:03Speaker 02

  It's a really great question, and I think a lot of people struggle with that. To me, I believe that you shouldn't just do what you love, you should do what you are, and that we all have unique skill sets and gifts inside of us. And that is what we are. So you might love sports, but your gift might be writing, like mine, or words. And instead of letting sports guide your career, it really should be your skill set, because that skill set exists in many places. So I think a common question that readers of U-Turn will have, and I think I really wrote this book for like, entry to mid-level managers, but anyone can read it and get a lot out of the exercises for sure, for their career and clarity.

• 4:46Speaker 02

  But one thing that I really wanted people to take with them was the question, should I stay or should I go? Having to do with, are you sharpening your core skill set still? Are you harnessing your core skill set? There's the zone of genius. I think you should be in probably 70% of the time. And then there's the zone of growth. 30% of the time at least, you should be doing something that allows you to grow, right? Sometimes that means learning new skill sets that aren't your favorite, but they're allowing you to grow and become more and contribute more. I also think people have a belief that they should love their career. I think you should really like what you do, and your career doesn't always have to be a place of purpose. It can instead be a place of contribution.

• 5:29Speaker 01

  That is awesome. So let's talk about why highly successful people sometimes feel stuck.

• 5:38Speaker 02

  I would say, when you're feeling stuck, it's not really that you're stuck. It's just that your thinking is stuck. You don't, you know, people who feel stuck believe that they don't have other options. And so the work you need to do when you feel stuck is, number one, instead of trying to create a solution or a new plan, you need to get more connected with yourself. So that means, instead of saying, what should I do next? Saying, who do I need to be next? How do I get back to myself next? How do I feel like myself? And I think that comes down to asking yourself, what are the people, the places, the things that make you feel like you? In my case, like, going to the beach makes me feel like me. You know, breath work, meditation, there's so many different things that make me feel like me.

• 6:23Speaker 02

  I think it's really important people go inward and ask themselves, what are those things? And can they start doing those things so that they can come home to themselves a little bit more? And yeah.

• 6:35Speaker 01

  That makes a lot of sense. Before building a personal brand, how do you decide what you want to be known for?

• 6:44Speaker 02

  I think people far too often make the mistake as speakers of saying, what is my message? Or what is the title of the talk I want to give? Versus, where do I have my most original thinking? This is what we teach people at Wise Whisper. We help them craft their talk, get it booked for major stages, including TEDx, and become a paid speaker and understand the speaking business. Over a six-month accelerator, and what I've found is that too many people come in saying, you know, I'm stuck, I have this message, or I don't know what my message is. And I think that obscures really brilliant people. Like, you are far too multifaceted and interesting to have one message or one talk title. So instead, I would ask yourself, what is your goal from speaking? Like, why do you want to get on stages? What do you want to happen if you're on all these stages?

• 7:28Speaker 02

  And then I think from there, saying, if you're on these stages, and that your goal is getting more leads for your business, or your goal is becoming an authority at your topic, or selling books, whatever it is, or just leaving a legacy. Okay, what topics could you speak on that support that goal? Maybe just start with what topics can you speak on? And then from there, circling which ones support that goal, right? So maybe the topics that support that goal, if you're wanting to work in leadership and get clients, is leadership, burnout, how to manage people, how to go from leader to, or manager to leader. Like, what are those topics?

• 8:08Speaker 02

  And then asking yourself, okay, if I have these topics, which one do I have the most original thinking on? That's the really important question, is where do I have the most original thinking? A lot of people aren't tuning in to where they, original thinking does not mean it's never been said before. It simply means it's never been said in the way that you're saying it. And a lot of people think, oh, I don't know, everything's been said, all the ideas have been shared. Yeah, but there's probably a way you talk about salary negotiation, or management, or there's a metaphor you give that other people aren't giving. So it's really about your unique way of expressing yourself.

• 8:52Speaker 02

  And another way to become an original thinker is to read a lot of books. Like, you become a knowledge curator. So one way you could do that is taking your best topic and saying, okay, like, I used to speak a lot on intuition. Like, coming out of the intelligence world and being a career coach after I left, I spoke a lot on clarity. And I read an old, old book from Carl Jung, and he talked about intuition. That's like an old-school thinker. And then I read a very current book, like Seven Habits of Highly Effective Thinker, or People. You could say that he's an older-school writer, but it's still a very current book. People are still reading that book. And then I also read a book I was drawn to. I read Intuition by Osho, who's obviously quite a controversial figure.

• 9:36Speaker 02

  And I was able to take all three of those books and get on stages and say, Osho says this, Sigmund Freud says this, Carl Jung says this, here's what I have to say about all of that. And that perspective on bodies of work makes you an original thinker. So there's many ways to achieve that. But I think asking yourself, where do you have a few things to say that are truly original? Can you write a talk based on that? And at the end of it, look at the talk and say, okay, what message is this pointing to? I think is a much more effective path for a speaker to make an impact. Otherwise, they're just writing because they have a title, and is what they're really having to say that transformational? Potentially not. But leading with where you're transformational, I think, is what makes the impact.

• 10:19Speaker 01

  Absolutely. How do you turn this happened to me into this matters to you?

• 10:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's a big difference between a story and an actionable piece of content. I think too many speakers think that their story is going to carry them through a talk.

• 10:34Speaker 02

  I would say there's two types of keynotes on the speaking scene. One is a story keynote. So let's say you're Nike, and your message is just do it. And for 45 minutes, you keep having stories that point back to just do it. And then people should be motivated, and it should be inspirational. The problem is inspirational is not always transformational. So people might leave being like, I need to just do it. But they don't feel like they can, or they feel like something's missing, right? So in that case, that's more of like a traditional keynote. I like the more educational keynotes. The structure I use for that at Wise Whisper that we teach our students and clients is opening up with a story that's really powerful.

• 11:19Speaker 02

  And threading it into your topic, right? So if you look at my TEDx talk, my story was about my dad getting a phone call that I was kidnapped. And when you look at the inspirational side of that,

• 11:38Speaker 02

  what does that have to do with a talk about how to figure out what you really want and your purpose? Very little. But I drew a thread between me and the purpose and the kidnappers. I wrote about like, why would a person pretend to kidnap somebody? And why do we do these things as people? We, we do things that feel that they're not kind. And a lot of the times we do it because we're scared. And these kidnappers must have been operating on the belief that they needed to be this way to get by in the world. And that was how I drew the, the tie between the kidnappers and purpose and fear. And, and then I moved into actionable talking points and my most original thinking.

• 12:19Speaker 02

  So if you watch my TEDx talk called How to Figure Out What You Really Want, I have more than one. But if you watch that one, you'll see I open up with a seemingly irrelevant story, but in a lot of ways it makes itself relevant.

• 12:32Speaker 01

  You've helped so many people reach millions more. What's your biggest challenge now?

• 12:37Speaker 02

  Yeah. I'm scaling my business right now. So right now we get, you know, 30 to 50 students per month coming in. And I don't want to be somebody that scales it too hard because I want to keep the soul in the business and my touch on it. But scaling the business has required so much more of me as a leader, like learning how to manage and inspire people, learning how to, you know, right now I have two colleagues that don't really like each other. I love everybody that works with me genuinely. Like I've gone to that place where I really love my team. And so learning how to inspire people to overcome challenges and keep harmony on my team is an edge that I've been working with for a while now.

• 13:18Speaker 01

  Your passion is obvious. What do you like best about what you're doing?

• 13:22Speaker 02

  I think I get to be the woman behind the people that are impacting millions. And you never really know when someone comes into my business, who the next Brene Brown could be. And I always tell my junior sales reps, like you never know if you're on the phone with the next Brene Brown or the next Simon Sinek or, and so just like really paying attention to what people are saying and remembering that.

• 13:45Speaker 01

  That is awesome. Well, we know your time is incredibly valuable. We greatly appreciate you spending some of it with us. For our folks who are watching and listening and want to learn more, where is the best place for us to send them?

• 13:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, going to wisewhisperagency.com, filling out the contact form, or just heading straight on over to my Instagram at Ashley Stahl, sending me a DM.

• 14:07Speaker 01

  Okay. Well, we, this has been Seth Green here with Ashley Stahl from Wise Whisper. Ashley, thanks so much for joining us.

• 14:13Speaker 02

  Thanks for having me.

• 14:15Speaker 01

  Thanks, everybody for watching or listening. We will talk to you or see you next time.

• 14:19Speaker 03

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