StoryBrand Templates with Ben Manley

Learn how Ben Manley of Knapsack Creative spun off StorySite, a StoryBrand-ready website template shop.

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Transcript by Rev.com

Omari:
All right. So I'm here with Ben of knapsack creative. And this is actually our very first conversation. So you're gonna, you know, jump in with us and, and get to know a lot about knapsack creative. I want to talk to you Ben, a lot about story site. That's really what got my attention. Because I've been, I've been a fan of the StoryBrand framework and approach for some time and I've always had like a dream that there should be some, some Squarespace template that is specifically crafted to, to kind of capture what story brand does. And so when I found a story site, I was like, oh wow, this is, this is it, it's done it. And so it's always like really fun and exciting for me when I get to talk with the people who have like, created things that I've I've once jumped about or thought about. So very excited to have you on Ben. If you don't mind just sharing a little bit about, you know, who you are and what you do.

Ben: (01:10)
Sure. Yeah. I mean, thanks for having me and I just, before I even answer that, I just want to say thanks for all the tools you put out there. I mean, just as a quick example, Lightbox, anything is amazing and we use our team uses that a lot, so yeah. I really appreciate all the stuff you were putting out there. Cool. Thanks. Yeah. And yeah, I guess a little bit about me and knapsack. So yeah I guess, you know, I've been a designer pretty much. My whole life kind of started even as a kid just doing design for different companies or organizations around town. I just loved it so much. And eventually that grew into me, you know doing design for other people and other agencies and stuff like that. Even at, you know, a large university kind of having a team and stuff like that, but eventually I kind of felt like this push that I really wanted to be able to choose my own tools and wanted to kind of have more control over the process and make things super efficient.

Ben: (02:06)
And so, you know, kind of working in my university job alongside doing my freelance work when I had young kids, it got to the point where, you know, for me, I try to keep my, my I guess my work hours to a minimum, if I can. So I was working about 60 hours a week then, you know, 20 hours and freelance 40 hours at work. And I was like, you know, I, I kind of have to choose one or the other. And I was making the same income with both at that point it's I was like, well kind of makes sense to work the 20 hours and make the same as the 40 hours. So I kind of did like a three month test, you know, to kind of see if I could switch over to that and kind of did that test and then passed. And so I went with it.

Omari: (02:50)
Wow. So it sounds like you've been, you've been making websites for a while, man, like from the sounds like maybe the nineties, how far did we go back? Yeah.

Ben: (02:58)
That's a good question. So I guess technically, yeah, because let's see, I was born in 86, probably around when I was nine. So 95, I think I learned my first age HTML, which is, think about my dad had this black and white laptop that he brought home from his engineering job and I just got to play around with it. He brought some book home, you know, HTML for dummies or something like that. So yeah, it's, it's been fun and yeah, just connecting with Squarespace eventually discovering that was super helpful. We were fortunate to be one of the first like probably like gosh, like three or four people in that original specialist list back when it was just a bullet list on a webpage, but yeah.

Omari: (03:41)
Cool. Yeah. All right. That makes sense. Because I'm like, I've, I've seen, I've seen knapsack creative. It's like somewhere in my subconscious somewhere, but you know, it does, it does go back to that that specialist directory, the OJ one. So yeah fill me in, on, on like story site and how that came to be. And, and the whole concept behind that. Sure.

Ben: (04:05)
Yeah. So just in relation to knapsack, so you can understand that for P-level window, a knapsack, has we basically, we have a team of five of us now and we're solely, you know, building websites on Squarespace. That's our, that's our main business. And so I kind of, you know, we're building the Squarespace sites and we have a great process we really enjoy doing and our clients enjoy it, but I was kind of noticing some weaknesses because we focus mostly on design. So we keep seeing, you know, people bring us their content or their texts, and we do some little tweaks to it here and there to make it a little better, but I'm still like, man, the weakest point of the sites we're building really is the content and that's super important. And you know, it's just as important as the design.

Ben: (04:48)
So I was like, we need to fix this. And I had heard from a friend about a story ran at one point. So I started looking into it, decided to get certified in the framework, there's their whole guide certification program. And basically for anybody who doesn't know, it's like a, a marketing framework that's, you know, pretty cool in that it's systemized. I love systems. I love, you know, stuff like that. So kind of reading, building a StoryBrand the book got into it, and then I ended up getting certified. And so it's kind of one of those things where you kind of see a a problem in the market and you just know you're in the right place to solve it. You know, you see like to retrain problem, basically people are building websites over and over following what StoryBrand is a very I guess, somewhat formulaic approach to how you play out a homepage, for example based on recommendations from you know, Donald Miller's, the founder StoryBrand so, but people will follow it very closely, even though you don't really have to follow that closely, but most people do.

Ben: (05:46)
So there's this pattern kept seeing over and over of people doing the same layout, but everybody's building these from scratch. So it just kinda made sense to, like you were saying, like, why hasn't somebody built a template for it yet? So we thought, all right, let's, let's go ahead and do it. So when I was actually at the first certification, I went ahead and started building the first template, I think, during the actual either during the actual workshop or maybe it was that night when it got back to the hotel, I was staying at school. So yeah, just started doing it then. And it's been it, the goal is to kind of solve that problem for people that don't have the money to, you know, invest in a full custom site and like, why not have a template they can start with and I can get into, I don't know how much you want to talk about it, but we basically kind of like wrestled with, do we do DIY versus done for, yeah.

Omari: (06:36)
There's a lot of people listening who are trying to figure this out for themselves. So it's good to talk about it.

Ben: (06:43)
Cool. Yeah. So we, you know, I think DIY is, is a great thing to offer to people. And I really liked that idea, but one of my concerns, there's a couple of things. One is if we were to sell DIY templates, you'd definitely sell at a lower price point, but the cool thing is, you know, you're, you're a lot closer to having that passive income. I think with the exception being like in my, and I don't have a lot of experience with this as selling products online more, I've been more like productized services. So I'm wondering, okay, if I sell these templates, how much support am I going to have to do for these? You know, and how much is that going to eat into profit margins? Also, what's the end result going to be for my clients? Are they going to actually get a great website?

Ben: (07:26)
If they buy a template, do it themselves. So originally we were like, okay, let's sell our template for like 499, something like that. And then people can do it themselves. Well, we basically did that like one time. And then I was like, well, we have them put their stuff in themselves. And then we do a session to kind of clean it up for them afterwards basically is what we were including. Then I realized, if you just add one extra hour of work then, and they gave us the stuff up front, we do it for them. They have to learn hardly anything. It's one more hour of our time. That adds huge value to them. Cause it goes from a DIY product into a done for you product. Yeah. So we basically tripled the cost, made it 1500 instead of 4 99 and then added one hour extra of work on our end to kind of fill it out because, you know, since it's formulaic, we can ask the right questions up front.

Ben: (08:12)
So we created like a a kind of fill out form in Google drawings, that's follows the exact format of our templates. So that basically we could just fill in, Hey, here's my actual text. Here's what I'm thinking photo wise. Then they give it to us and we build it in Squarespace. And I mean, it's not that hard to build Squarespace, but you know, as you know, there's still a barrier to entry for certain types of clients. And so it just makes it even that much easier for them. So then they can pay 1500 to get the full site built instead of 500 for just a template they have to still put in, you know, 20 hours of work themselves or something. And what's the turnaround time. Good question. So right now we're actually, so it's then selling pretty well. So we, right now it's like eight weeks.

Ben: (09:00)
So there's two, there's two reasons for that one is because, you know, through knapsack, you know, it's basically sort of say it's the same team as knapsack, right? So we just have two different brands. And so if we're busy with our, so with knapsack, we're doing these, you know, one basically we do these one day builds where we build site and one day it scales up. Some, some sites are two day builder, three day build, but most of the time it's like a one day build and we can do two of those a week. So Tuesdays and Thursdays are our build days. So it was kinda like, okay, if we have those full and like Mondays and Wednesdays are our meeting days. So we can't really squeeze in a whole lot. We can do like one template a week with our current design capacity, right.

Ben: (09:44)
So we just hired another designer. And she's getting trained. She's almost finished being trained now. And so then that'll kind of open up the capacity to be like, okay, we can do more than one a week of these templates. And then that will be, you know, closer to like the goal is to have it around two weeks. That's where we had it for awhile. So I would like it to be like, Hey, you buy it two weeks. It's done in, you know, basically all the client needs to do is give us their copy and then show up on a video call for an hour and their sights belt.

Omari: (10:12)
That's cool, man. Like I, the thing I love about this is there's so many different, you know, angles and approaches. And it sounds like in, in solving one problem, you know, you always create another one better problem for yourself. That's true. But yeah, demand problems are great problems to always have.

Ben: (10:32)
Yeah. I feel, yeah. I'm not complaining very great. Very grateful for that for sure.

Omari: (10:38)
Because then I feel like you can then always break off. So inherent you describe the, the behind the scenes part about how you guys have your internal kind of a doc that you plug everything in. When I hear that, I think about that as another product for that's the actual DIY product that they would get off the shelf and learn how to use themself for creating possibly, you know, more websites. But yeah, it's a great, it's a great it's a great model. And especially because I think most people think about the templates originally just as the do it yourself kind of thing. And I think solving that additional problem of, okay, what do I put in here? Like, well, what kind of copy do I need? And it's the biggest, that's been my biggest kind of I don't know what to call it.

Omari: (11:35)
Like yeah. The hidden problem behind all websites when you start off on Squarespace because I think the people who, who come to Squarespace are usually more creative and visually inclined and, you know, we're typically more attracted by something that just looks good first. And you know, we'll think about all of the, we won't even think about the persuasive elements unless you kind of call them out. And I think that's what, that's what the benefit of StoryBrand is. And for anyone who's not familiar with it it's basically like a narrative. I look at it like a narrative framework for selling anything. And it, it approaches it from the perspective of the customer or the client versus typically we think about, you know, we have to put our brand upfront. It's, it's more so about putting them upfront and helping them along in their story to solve a particular problem where you offer a specific solution and help to guide them through you know, whatever their ultimate goal is. And it allows you to do that really. Like, I use that framework for small pieces of content for like, you know, three minute pieces of content. I'm like, all right, what's the problem here? What's the solution, you know, what's the villain you know, go through the whole thing and then I'm like, all right, perfect. This is very easy. Yeah,

Ben: (13:11)
Yeah, yeah. It gives you such a good starting point to create something that's useful because it helps you identify what the customer's problems are. Yeah. Like you said, the solutions and some of the key principles that you mentioned are super useful, like presenting yourself as, as the guide, you know, and them as the hero of the story is how their language, how they kind of put it. And everybody wakes up that morning. They're thinking, you know, they're the hero in their own story. They don't think of you as like, oh, I need some way to save me. They're thinking of, Hey, I'm going to, I'm going to make this happen. I just need somebody to help me get there. And if you present yourself as like a humble, like service-oriented guy, that's like, Hey, you know, I understand your problem. You identify it. You, you say what their problems are on your website, so they can resonate with that. And then you show them what the solution is. And then you give them like a step-by-step process to get it done, because, you know, people don't want to walk into a fog, you know, they want to know like, oh, here are the three stepping stones I need to walk across and then we're going to get to where I want to be.

Omari: (14:09)
Yep. And once you see it, you start to like, see it all around you. You're you're here. Market envision is now clear especially when it's done well. Alright, cool. So I want to go touch a little bit more on I guess what now, you know, you've been doing this for some time, obviously. You solve some, some good problems and you've done it, I think in a, in a pretty elegant and graceful way. What's, what's the future like for knapsack creative and Ben Manley?

Ben: (14:46)
I can say so many things. I have lots of, lots of dreams. But I mean, one thing I'm really passionate about is systemization and creating good processes because I think it gives creative people, a good framework to work within, and kind of lets you be more creative if you have guidelines. So so one thing I'm passionate about as you probably noticed from, our schedule is that I love creating these, you know, basically timeboxing almost everything we do in our business. So Mondays and Wednesdays are days where we have meetings with the clients. So maybe I'll have four to six meetings with different, you know, potential clients who might work with like on a Monday and then Wednesday, same Tuesdays and Thursdays are completely blocked off for focus work where each designer is working on one website project and finishing that day.

Ben: (15:34)
So it's like this very organized way of thinking. So you just kind of plug and play these different modules into your schedule. So I love that because it decreases stress. It lets people focus. So one other piece of that is that we, on Fridays, we actually take Fridays completely when we're basically close on Fridays to the public. So what we do is we have this whole system called the Friday habit system that we've created. And that's something I'm passionate about. I, I started a podcast about it and stuff, but the whole principle is taking one day per week to work on your business instead of in your business all the time. And it involves, I won't get into all of it, but it involves things like capturing any ideas or issues that come up that week and then going ahead and reviewing them as a team every Friday.

Ben: (16:19)
So that morning we talked through every good and bad thing that happened that week that we made a note of and figure out how do we keep doing the good things? How do we fix the bad things by tweaking our processes and things like that. And then we take action on those that afternoon. So we go ahead and spend that day fixing stuff. And it helps us because, you know, throughout the week you're so busy working on client work, it's kind of hard to focus on that kind of stuff. So, so that's one of the things I'm passionate about is just helping other businesses kind of systemize you know, actually focusing on themselves kind of like self care for their business. So the podcast is one thing, another quick thing. And just as that with knapsack, my dream is to kind of create a a team of people that when I come up with a new idea or a new brand or a new service that I think would be good for the world that I can just say, Hey guys, here's my idea.

Ben: (17:11)
Let's make it happen. And then I can spin up a new brand. So I want to create lots of small creative companies not necessarily one big agency but I want it to be like a lab where I can, I can say an idea. I have good people on the team and we can execute it. And it's a lot like a local restaurant company here. There's a guy, Steve Perry. And instead of his company, instead of like franchising, one of his restaurants and turning it into like a pizza hut or something, he instead does lots of small concepts in our town and in local surrounding areas. But he has the team in place already from one or two restaurants to pull a couple of people from that and start a new one. So I want to be able to have these ideas and say, okay, let's pull this designer from this team, this team, from this team, and we're going to start this new idea. Let's run it for six months. See if it's successful, if not, shut it down, no problem. If it is successful, then we'll build that team. And then I have a little bit more diverse of a you know, income source with different brands. And once one succeeds, we can jump onto that ship and ride it.

Omari: (18:12)
Dude. I love that, man. I love the systems approach. I was never able to crack it or I haven't cracked it yet. I'm still cracking it. I've, I've regressed back to my six or seven-year-old self and I'm just starting from scratch with my six-year-old. So, fortunately, you know, I kind of have the time to do so.

Take a look at these StoryBrand Templates from Story Site