Why Telling Your Story Will Not Grow Your Business (And What to Do Instead)

You're listening to the Storybrand podcast based on Donald Miller's best-selling book, Building a Storybrand. The Storybrand framework is made up of seven key elements, all of them anchored in one powerful idea. Your customer is the hero and you are their guide. Each week on the podcast, you'll get exactly what you need to craft clear messaging that connects with more customers and grows your business. Now let's dive in with your hosts, Donald Miller and Kyle Reed. A big desire that small business owners have, any business owner has, is to tell the story of their business. They want to tell their story and people come to be all the time after a keynote address and say, hey, we'd love to talk to you. We have got such a great story, we really need help telling it. My subconscious answer, I don't always say it right there to them, is you don't need to tell your story. There's almost never a reason to tell your story and telling your story will not grow your business. Inviting customers into a story will grow your business. Now here's what I mean by that because I want to caveat this, I'm going to teach you to tell your company's story here in a minute. So obviously there is a place to tell your story. However, it's not where you want to begin. Tell me, I just met with the company yesterday, they clean airplane engines so they can pull up to an airplane. They spray foam into the front of the engine, they run the engine for about an hour and they catch the foam and the liquid on the back side of the engine they put in a tank and they haul it off. This increases efficiencies to the engine, this decreases the amount of danger that the engine might have. It increases the link that the engine can stay in the air, increases fuel efficiency. They charge $3,000 per engine and you probably get somewhere around a $30,000 return on that investment in saved maintenance and fuel costs. They brought me their pitch deck and the first 10 pages of the pitch deck were all about their company values and they were wondering why they were having so much trouble closing accounts and the reason is you're opening with stuff that's about you instead of stuff that's about the customer. We completely redesigned their pitch deck and we made a visual grid, a graph, a map, if you will, of what the process looks like to clean an engine. We tried to answer every subconscious question that a buyer, usually a chief financial officer in an airline, would have about this company so that the pitch deck as they went through it was zero cognitive load from beginning to end. And by the end of the pitch deck, it basically the pitch deck that we came up with, they said, saved them six months in the selling cycle literally like clicking through the pitch deck once answered six months of resistance and questions that that buyer would normally have all in one 30 minute pitch. And here's how much we talked about their company, not at all. There was nothing in the pitch deck about their company. It was all about how much money that engine is costing the airline that they're leasing them. And so why should they clean an engine that does anything belong to them and the truth is the force that still saves them about 50% of the cost of that engine, even if they're not if they don't own the engine. We answered every single concern and address in a format and the format was problem slide solution slide problem side solution slide actually it was more like problem slide deeper deeper deeper deeper deeper deeper deeper problem slides then solution slide because that's how you want to start a pitch deck. It's got to be negative negative negative negative negative negative negative negative and then positive. That's the way you hook the person into the story that you're inviting them into. These are the ways that you actually quote unquote tell your company story. You don't tell your company story. What you do is you tell the you invite the customer into a story that is about you and your company solving their problem. That's how you tell a story or invite customers into a story that actually leads to business growth. So when do you actually tell your story the formula that you want to use for telling your story is what I called the backstory of the guide in a story there's a hero there's a victim there's a villain there's a guide. The customer to use this metaphor is the hero of you of the story of your company and you are the guide you never want to play the hero because the hero is a weak character. It'll equip doesn't know what to do in desperate need of help you only want to play the guide the character that has already been there already saw the problem and is capable of helping the hero win. However, it is appropriate for you to tell the story of how you became the guide especially if you became the guide because you once had a problem that the customer had. But you figured out how to solve it and you develop some competency to solve it and now you're turning around your helping other heroes solve the problem because you are now the guide in the story hero looks guy walker guide Yoda or Obi-Wan Kenobi. So you're really telling Yoda's backstory and that's giving the customer confidence that you can help them. So I want to go through a formula that you can use to tell your story when it's appropriate so when is it appropriate here's when it's appropriate. You've given your pitch deck to the airline they're very interested they're going to need to run this up the flagpole this is going to have to go all the way. You know if it's the chief financial officer they're going to have to go to engineering they're going to have to go to maintenance they're going to have to get approvals from compliance they're going to have to get approval from from legal they're also going to call general electric roles Royce and Pratt to say. This is the technology they want to use inside these engines should we allow them to use them these are your engines is this safe. Also you want to mitigate all that by showing them case studies and the answer that GE Pratt and roles Royce have already given to that answer to that question but regardless. You've done all that they're very interested they're on the hook it's only matter time and you're going out for drinks after that's when you tell the back story of the guide. That's it it's not right away it's when you've established the relationship and earn trust that's when you begin telling your story and then it's actually really really effective because it adds a depth to your relationship with this client. But the only reason that you're in a relationship with this client is because they've become convinced you can help them out of a hole that's it if they're in a hole imagine this this is what every company does and it drives me crazy. You're walking around and you you stumble upon a giant hole in the ground and there's a person in the hole. You look into the hole in my gosh you're in the hole yes yes please help me please help me out of this hole I'm dying of thirst absolutely. You know I was born in parallel and Texas. That is literally the context in which you are trying to tell your freaking story. Then they're like what are you talking about and the whole audience is is glaze their eyes are glazing over they're ignoring you they're like can we please fast forward through the first 20 minutes of this pitch deck. You know they don't seem to understand we don't have a lot of time and we're only interested in solutions that get us out of our problem and they're not leading with that they're leading with their values and their mission statement. However now that you're having drinks with them you've met with them five or six times they're running it up the flagpole you're probably going to get this business. Let's make the relationship even deeper by telling the backstory of the guide in other words your company story let me give you the formula. The formula is this you want to write this down the whole the calling the refinement the dark night the miracle the breakthrough the better world and the moral. Those are the elements of the story and you want to do them in that order and I'm going to help you do that in just a second now why do I have this formula for you telling your story. The first reason is I don't want you to wing it if you wing it you're going to ramble about things that matter to you but don't matter to the here. The second reason is. The best advice I've ever been given as a writer again to the two best pieces of ice one was no editor will ever care as much as you do edit your own book. I've taken at the heart of editing every one of my own books I do have editors look at them but I edit the heck out of them before I ever send it to an editor and the next piece of ice which I've used every day every day as a writer since I got it which was 30 years ago when all else fails entertain. I don't care what kind of book you're writing entertain make it interesting make it a page turner if it's a nonfiction book make people salivate to start the next chapter. This formula that I just gave you the whole the calling the refinement the dark night the miracle to break through the better world and the moral is designed to entertain. When you are sitting back having some drinks after you've met with their team having dinner and somebody says how do you get started in this business that's your cue I want you to tell a ridiculously memorable and entertaining story that they can never forget about how you became the guide. That's what I want you to do and let me give you the formula for doing that right phase one or section one of the story is the whole what I mean by the whole. Our story started when we were facing blank and it looked like blank. So how did you get into this business. Don you know you have you have a company called story brand help people clarify your message how did you get into this that's a great story I was on an airplane once and I was sitting next meeting my book. I didn't know. That it was my book and so I said what do you think that book he said I love this book I'm flying in an apple tonight to hear this guy speak speaking at a conference I'm like well so I know. And I decided not to tell him who I was because I wanted to hear what he thought about book an honest percent perspective of it. He loved the book third time he read the book but he couldn't tell me why the book was good he didn't I said I literally said do you think I should buy this book. And he said oh you you'd have to read it to understand it the more he talked about the book the less I wanted to read my book. And I realized right then I'm great at writing 300 pages I'm not great at writing the sentence on the back that makes you want to read the 300 pages. I'm not great at clarifying my offer I'm great at writing the book I'm not great at selling the book I need to figure out how to message my books in such a way that people want to buy them. And that's when I created the story brand framework okay so what did I just do I started with the story of me in the same hole that the person I'm talking to is in now. Then I said I got out of the hole with this framework it's the tool I use to get out of the hole so now I've positioned myself as an expert of getting out of a hole and it happens to be the same hole that you're in. So even though I'm telling my story I'm telling the back the aspects of my backstory that apply to you I'm still inviting you into a story while I'm telling my story. Second after you define the whole now it doesn't have to be you that was in that hole can be the first customer you encountered. It started way back years ago we met a man named john and he was unable to to plow his field in time for the harvest and so we invented a tractor that does X you know but it's got to be a hole every story is going to start in a hole with a hero in a hole doesn't have to you best if it's you but if it's not you it's a customer. Then that story of you getting out of the hole becomes your calling and that's the second part of telling your story. It was very difficult to develop the framework but I tested it on a couple small businesses and watch those business double in revenue when they clarified their message and I knew then my framework worked so I kept going because I saw customers struggling with this and we believe they deserved to be out of that. Let me give you the formula we kept going because we saw customers struggling with X and we believe they deserved why we saw we saw so many people unable to clarify their message and they were losing revenue every day and we deserve we believe they deserve to be heard with a clear message. So the calling is second I used to be in a hole I got out of the hole and it became my calling to get you out of the hole got it calling mission God assigned objective every hero has a calling to do something amazing and then I like adding a refinement. So we kept improving because customers needed X and we refused to give them anything less I refined that framework 25 times and tested it with businesses this is kind of that like the heroes challenge and they're getting stronger and think about Tom cruise and every movies ever been having to get stronger and learn some sort of skill and learn how to use some tool in order to accomplish the objective. This is kind of exciting rebuilding momentum then now remember we're trying to entertain here with the story the dark night. This is when things take a step back now we started in a hole we got out of the hole started negative got out of the hole that becomes positive that becomes our calling that's positive the refinement is kind of a negative because we're having to work hard to make it great and then we're going to go really negative. Negative dark night of the soul incredible hardship we almost lost everything by the way in screenplay the dark night is actually called the all is lost moment it usually happens toward the end of the movie. The whole movie they're getting better they're getting better they're getting better they're getting better they're almost there they're almost there they're almost there then they lose everything and they're all the way back at the beginning. In fact often they're worse off than they were at the very beginning that's a formula for a movie and you're going to see it now every time you watch a movie you're going to be like oh my word this is the all is lost moment to talk about everything is everything is terrible she decided not to marry him the cancer is back. They are down by 20 at half time and there's no way they're going to beat this team the all is oh their star player just broke his arm it's over the all is lost moment this is this is an entertainment plot point that grabs people's attention and you can include it in the story of your business was there ever a dark night. You know when I think about the dark night story in the business the story of story brand it would be covid we were 85% reliant on people getting on airplanes coming to Nashville for our live workshops 85% of our business was about to go away. But we switched to live stream we created a few more products and because we were great at messaging we were able to use everything we ever learned. The clarifier message and we end up having our biggest revenue year yet and our biggest profit year yet but you want to get that dark night story in there just just think about in your mind like what was our dark night and you're going to go I don't know if we had a dark night we had the dark night you didn't have one but you had something that you can put there some major setback where everything fall apart. You know the government wouldn't allow us to have the trademark there you go you can use that my partner ran off with the secret formula. You know whatever it is there's some interesting tidbit that can be framed as the all is lost moment in the story that by the way over drinks sitting around over dinner everybody is going to lean in right there you wouldn't believe it but X happened. Right then you want to go to the miracle so after the all is lost moment in a screenplay you usually has something called Deus ex machina it's a plot point in the film. And what this means is Deus ex machina is Latin for God in in the machine or God enters the machine and the and I just call this in terms of your formula the miracle so after the dark night there was the miracle. And ours was covid hit we were 85% relied on people coming to town I knew I was going to have to lay everybody off. And we decided we're going to try to stay alive we launched the live stream we clarified our message to get people to sign up and you won't believe it it was a miracle 800 people signed up. At the same price they would have paid to come to Nashville is actually not true they decided to put one third that price but this allowed us to stay alive and have our greatest year ever that's the miracle. So stories like contrast they like negative then positive the negative then positive the negative then positive really what you want to start how you want to start a story is negative and they get more negative even worse even worse even worse than positive the negative then positive. Then awful dark night of the soul then way up high with miracle happened and then the breakthrough and the breakthrough is what we learned from the miracle and now repeat as process when we focused on blank customers finally got blank and everything changed. So we realized that as long as we help customers clarify their message we were going to be in business for life. Or something like that that's the breakthrough realization then the better world and by the way it's not your better world is the customers better world today customers experience blank because they no longer have to deal with blank right today our customers know how to clarify their message and they use sound bites that grow their business and they no longer have to deal with customer confusion right. The better world that happens because you have become the guide and then the moral of the story today customers experience blank because they no longer have to deal with blank the moral of the story is the bottom line is this when you clarify your message customers engage it's worked for every business we've ever worked with it's going to work for you guys thanks for asking about how we got started as a company. I mean you can get standing ovation right there at the table because it's riveting it's interesting it feels personal but it's still all about the customer so let me go through this real quickly and I'll summarize it the whole our story started when we were facing blank and it looked like blank. The calling we kept going because we saw customers struggling with blank repetition and we believe they deserved blank the refinement we kept improving because customers needed blank and we refused to give them anything else notice we've already repeated ourselves three times in the story the dark night but just when things seem to be working blank happened and we almost lost blank the miracle then something unexpected happened blank and it gave us a second chance the breakthrough when we focused on blank customer finally got blank. And everything changed the better world today customers experience blank because they no longer have to deal with blank and the moral today customers experience blank because they no longer have to deal with blank that is a formula that you can use to tell the back story of your company and how you became the guide for so many struggling heroes that's how you want to tell your story it's interesting. You also can use this in so many places one you can actually write this out and you can just enter you can actually drop this podcast into chat GPT ask it to ask ask you questions based on this formula about your business so that you can script your company's story. Remind chat GPT to never position you as the hero and always position you as the guide and make sure that it knows this is the guides back story then it will ask you questions it will say what are you trying to do. Was there ever dark night of the soul what was the hardest thing you ever went through as a business blah blah blah blah it's going to ask you the right questions and then it's going to say okay I'm ready and it will print out your story. What are you going to do with your story record it as a voice over and then use B roll that you can find anywhere that you've taken B roll of your business find that B roll use that B roll and use that as a sort of sizzle real or eight and about us put it on the about us page of your website you can create a short brand video using your story you can send that video in the third or for the email to every new customer explaining who you are. Feature that video on your website and of course use it in all sorts of public experiences and customer or public appearances customer on wrapping all that kind of stuff you want to get this story out it's a really really great piece of marketing collateral. But I will say it's not the story that you open with if you're delivering a pitch deck if you're just meeting with a customer do not open with your story don't open with this stuff. This is a how to convert an interested customer or a customer who's bought into a brand evangelist who is crazy about you and feels connected to you personally or to your brand personally that's the use case for this formula. But it's going to it's going to be incredibly effective for you I use it all the time when people say don't you went from writing memoirs to story brand how that go I say well I was getting on a plane. I don't even know how many times I've told that story I sold that to you 100 times and it's always made people feel closer and they feel like they know a little bit something about story brand they have a deeper understanding the brand and they have a deeper understanding of my mission. To help people clarify their message your company story is important it is just not as important as inviting the customer into a story however you should still do some work to create it. And plus I know you everybody wants to tell their story everybody loves their business everybody loves the back story of how they got started why not use a formula to make it even more riveting and interesting and effective for you in growing your business. I hope this episode was helpful use this formula and it's going to work. Thank you so much for listening to another episode of the story brand podcast we'll see you again next week. Thanks for listening to the story brand podcast no matter where you are in your marketing and messaging journey get the tools the training and the support you need to start clarifying that message at story brand dot com and don't forget to follow and subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcast so you never miss an episode. And if you're watching on YouTube hit that subscribe button and then leave a comment letting us know what resonated with you and what we can impact to help your business grow in a future episode. Thanks again for listening and we'll see you next week.