Meet your guide · Win With Words
→ Founder of Win With Words. StoryBrand Certified Guide. Your biggest fan.
Ashton Ivey
Founder, Win With Words
I’m Ashton Ivey, founder of Win With Words, based in Newton, North Carolina. I help business owners, nonprofits, churches, and public figures say what they do so clearly that the right people can’t help but pay attention.
I trained with Donald Miller’s StoryBrand and earned my official certification in 2019. Since then I’ve helped over 200 organizations clarify their message and reach their audience with confidence.
I was born in Norfolk, Virginia, in 1995, and I spent the first seven years of my life in an RV. My parents were traveling evangelists who used theater productions to share the gospel, so home was wherever we parked next. Their ministry involved theatrical skits way ahead of its time, involving cinema lighting, writing, and too many fog machines. According to my mom, I was able to run the light cues for the entire 90 minute production at the age of 3 (which they made my official job).
I can easily trace my love for storytelling and media to those earlier years of my life. The places my parents took us both in and out of the country planted something in me that never left: I didn’t want to give my life to numbers and recognition. I wanted to help people.
I was fifteen and freelancing when a local politician, whose family I was close with, needed a website. I gave it a shot to help her out. What I didn’t expect was what came next: soon, people I had never met were asking me to build theirs. I had no experience and no formal credentials to point to, just a poorly built two page website in my portfolio and a love for creating. By the time I finished high school, I realized I might never have to work a nine to five, so I kept looking for clients until freelancing became my full-time gig.
Fast forward to college, I had enrolled for a business degree, but a few weeks in I realized my money would work harder somewhere else. So I took a risk and headed to Nashville, Tennessee to train with Donald Miller and earn my certification in the StoryBrand framework. What I walked away with was far more than a certificate. Where school offered theory, StoryBrand handed me practical tools I could put to work the moment I got home, and I did. Within a week after returning home, I landed my first 5 figure contract, and though small, it gave me the confidence to keep pursuing my love for communication.
Over the years I’ve worked with more than 200 organizations, helping them clarify their message and build eye-catching websites that convert, with the backend they need to scale. My heart has always been with small businesses, the ones without deep resources trying to compete with the big fish in the pond. We started there, and we still serve them today, even as the work has grown to include large enterprise companies across Charlotte and Raleigh.
That work has opened doors in the film industry too, where I’ve assisted on documentary films that have taken me from Zimbabwe, South Africa, Moldova, to India and all across North America. When I’m not writing playbooks and building websites, you’ll usually find me with my kids slipping down park slides I’m much too big for, playing board games with friends, or trying out a new food spot with my wife (we’re foodies).
I met my wife Victoria after a mutual friend introduced us. Three weeks after our first taco date, we were engaged, and married three months later. Six years in, we now have three kids: Ezra, our oldest, Elliott, our second, and Callie, our first daughter.
I also serve as a worship pastor on staff at Christ Alive Church in Newton, where I get to put these same skills to work for churches while staying close to everyday people. Some are wrestling to put food on the table, some are discovering that Christianity is far more than a Sunday tradition, and others are learning how to build a strong marriage. It’s a community that cares for its own without forgetting the stranger who needs a helping hand, and those are exactly the people I’m surrounded by and treasure doing life with.
At the end of the day, it’s not really about business. It’s about the people we get to serve through business. From the first consultation, we take a genuine interest in you, your family, how you’re really doing, and look for any way we can cheer you on.
The words we say, or don’t, have a much bigger impact on our world than we realize. Words can win or break a marriage, start or end wars, walk someone away from a cliff’s edge, or help move your business forward. I founded this company so the things you dream of achieving are never hindered by a lack of words or clarity.
Tell me about your business, and let’s find the words that make it win.
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